In Science Fiction, some awards have become almost meaningless as they came to be dominated by interests other than the pure enjoyment of a truly good story. The Hugo Awards, for example, have descended into a left/right catfight. They have become as meaningless as a Nobel Peace Prize.
Some, like yours truly, have entirely stopped reading about awards after getting burned once too many times and rely almost entirely on word of mouth or serendipity to find new authors and worthwhile books.
Our recent discussion of "The winners of the 2018 Hugo Awards" brought the idea (from bzipitidoo) that perhaps Soylent News could do a better job of pointing out new works of Science Fiction that could be of interest to soylentils and janrinok supported the idea, going so far as offering a kidney to the best author. (I think he's British, so he might have meant a kidney pie. [Not true, but funny])
Mind you, we would need to separate Science Fiction from Sci-Fi, Fantasy and other genres that have been mishmashed into one by most publishers and awards organizations.
So what do you think? What is the best new author/book in Science Fiction?
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday August 24 2018, @07:45AM
Ender's Game is a great story. Probably fails the Science Fiction test for lack of an identifiable "what if" element, everything in the story is just there to drive the character development of Ender. The sequels (the ones with Ender, never got around to the others) are closer but still more character studies than speculation about the future with a pretty generic "futuristic" setting that isn't examined and clearly not the point of the stories.