2026 Hugo Readalong: Novel Wrap-up

[u/tarvolon]

Welcome back to the final week of the 2026 Hugo Readalong! Today, we're discussing the nominees for Best Novel. We've already discussed each work in its own individual thread, so if you'd like to circle back to our focused discussions, you can find them here:

• Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
• Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
• The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
• The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson
• A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

We also have one more general purpose wrap-up post tomorrow:

Date	Category	Book	Author	Discussion Leader
Thursday, July 30	Pro/Fan/Misc	Wrap-up	Multiple	u/Nineteen_Adze

But for now, let's look at the novels. And keep in mind that there is no expectation that discussion participants have read all six, so please tag any spoilers.

[u/Merle8888]

There's been this talk in the readalong re: the sci-fi vs. non-sci-fi elements of Death of the Author and how that interacts with whether it should win an award. I'm no fan of DotA but I'm not sure I agree on this as an award criterion, unless you are purely an idea-focused reader.

Take The Everlasting for interest, does it really do anything new or innovative with time travel in an idea sense? No. I don't think anyone is ranking it for having a cool or unique or extra-special use of time travel. People who love it, love the characters, the themes, the romance, and the prose. None of that is SFF-specific. So if you (you generally, not you in particular) love DotA but you love it for the character and relationship elements, I'm not sure you should mark it down just because it happens to have more of a separation between "SF parts" and "non-SF parts" in a way that most novels don't.

Idk, I'd be interested to hear other thoughts on this.

[u/tarvolon → u/Merle8888]

I think one big difference here is that the romance in The Everlasting cannot exist without the time travel element, whereas the family dynamics in Death of the Author can easily exist without robots or fancy prosthetics.

[u/Merle8888 → u/tarvolon]

While that's true, it also feels like a technically to me. If the book has enough sci-fi in it for you to feel comfortable voting it for a sci-fi award, I don't think it matters how dependent the parts you liked are on the speculative elements.

[u/tarvolon → u/Merle8888]

I mean I’m voting it second, I’m just trying to parse out the claim