Zarf Updates

The 2026 Hugo Award finalists are up. Awkward for me: I really like many of the nominees, but I haven't read (seen, played) a majority of any category. So I can't give a useful overview or say that any given work is "best of the year".

I'll just recommend a bunch!

(I am not registered for Worldcon this year. I attended last year, which makes me eligible to vote this year, but I didn't submit nominations. I might vote in the finals though.) (EDIT-ADD: Nope, I'd have to register for this year to vote in the final ballot.)

Novel: A Drop of Corruption (Robert Jackson Bennett) is an enormously readable fantasy-meatpunk mystery... with kaiju. (Series; this is book two.) Shroud (Adrian Tchaikovsky) is the old-school genre of "humans visit alien planet -- badly." (Haven't seen one of those since Dragon's Egg.) The Incandescent (Emily Tesh) is magical-college but from the teacher's side, which I thought was very interesting. Ending maybe doesn't hold together but it's still a good read. The Raven Scholar (Antonia Hodgson) is an entertaining court succession crisis. I haven't read The Everlasting but I've enjoyed Harrow's previous stuff so I'll probably get there.

Novella: Automatic Noodle is semi-cozy robot restaurant fic. I say "semi" because there's some nasty online harassment which kind of took it out of the comfort zone for me, but all does end happily. I read The River Has Roots (Amal El-Mohtar) but I'm afraid it didn't stick with me. What Stalks the Deep (T. Kingfisher) is more Ruritanian myco-horror. The series is getting more nuanced in neat ways. Also the author seems to be writing books literally faster than I can read them; I have no idea how she does it.

Novelette: I haven't read any of the nominees but I'm excited to see a new Scott Lynch story and will definitely track it down.

Graphic novel: This probably makes me an uncultured oaf, but I'm really enjoying The Power Fantasy (Kieron Gillen, Caspar Wijngaard, Clayton Cowles). No, the world did not need another take on superheroes; yes, this one is well done.

Related work: I want to read Inventing the Renaissance (Ada Palmer) but I have not yet dug in and done it. I have read most of Last War in Albion (Elizabeth Sandifer) -- interest: I support her Patreon. The nominated chapter, "The Cuddled Little Vice (Sandman)", is a stand-alone deep-dive into Neil Gaiman And That Whole Situation, but starting right at Gaiman's launch as an ambitious journalist. It's a hell of a read.

Dramatic Long Form: KPop Demon Hunters was as much fun as everybody said. I don't think a single thing in the plot surprised me, but they got a lot out of the Rumi-Celine parental relationship.

Dramatic Short Form: Okay, I have good coverage here. Murderbot (two episodes nominated) was excellently done. "The Story & the Engine" got in my head enough that I turned into a Dr Who blogger for a day. The Wheel of Time, hey, I never read the books but they got three watchable seasons out of it. And Severance is very impressive, although not in a pleasant way. (And I still think it should have been a one-season firecracker with a WTF ending. This is, after all, the spiritual remake of The Prisoner.)

Fan Writer: I know nobody reads down this far, but I follow and enjoy James Nicoll's book reviews. I particularly admire his unfailing optimism and faith in the human bwaaaaaahhh okay I couldn't finish that sentence. He's fun to read. Interest: I once went to a fan meetup at James's game store, back when he ran a game store.

Game: I surely loved the heck out of Blue Prince. The Citizen Sleeper games are solid work. (My comments: CS1, CS2.) I haven't played the others, largely due to the fact that I can't parry for crap and skip any game where I need to. Dispatch is the non-combat one that I missed; heard good things about it but never got around to.

But let's talk about stats!

You may recall from my 2025 post that, in last year's Best Game category, the final round of voting was pretty clearly split between "indie gamers" and "AAA gamers". I'm not trying to nail down category definitions; I'm just observing that almost every voter who put Dragon Age: Veilguard first put Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom second, and vice versa. Everybody else was split between Caves of Qud, 1000xResist, Tactical Breach Wizards, and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes -- but those folks generally did not rank the two "big games" high.

As a result, there were nearly (though not entirely) two separate races. Dragon Age won one, Qud won the other, and then Qud handily beat Dragon Age in the final showdown.

Will the same logic apply in 2026? Let's have those nominees again:

• Blue Prince (Dogubomb / Raw Fury)
• Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector (Jump Over the Age / Fellow Traveller)
• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive / Kepler Interactive)
• Dispatch (AdHoc Studio)
• Hades II (Supergiant Games)
• Hollow Knight: Silksong (Team Cherry)

None of those companies are Nintendo or Electronic Arts, that's for sure. Or even Bioware. These are all plausibly indie games; all six got labelled as "independent" in industry award shows. Although I've seen plenty of argument over whether Clair Obscur was too big or too big-budget to really count.

On the other hand, Silksong and Hades 2 both came in with the expectation of being Momentous Games Releases. Clair Obscur was a surprise, but rapidly hit escape velocity and, e.g., swept the heck out of The Game Awards 2025.

So when I observed a split in 2025, what was I really seeing?

• If it was between fans of giant traditional game companies and fans of small studios, then it doesn't apply at all this year.

• If it was between fans of big-budget behemoths and scrappy little projects, then it may be Clair Obscur against everybody else.

• If it was between fans of long-expected titles and fans of surprise newcomers, then it's Silksong and Hades vs the world. (Citizen Sleeper 2 is a sequel but not in a way that makes it big news.)

• If it's people who think award-winning games should win more awards vs people who want to give weird little niches a chance, then it's Silksong / Hades / Clair Obscur against Blue Prince / Dispatch / Citizen Sleeper.

Obviously none of these cases predict a winner. The whole point of the runoff system is that the race is not superdetermined by a single litmus test. (Nothing in 2025 told you in advance that Qud would be the favorite indie game.)

Really I'm just pinning down some cases, so that my post-2026 analysis has hypotheses to falsify! Gonna be an interesting race regardless.