Lists of award-winning/nominated science fiction books

BestSFBooks produces lists of the most award-winning and award-nominated science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as lists of new releases from writers whose works have won a lot of awards in the past. A good place to go for book reccos.

(Thanks, Adam!)

• [jeligula]

  You are on that list, Cory.  Little Brother is on the best 20 of the past 10 years.

• [Jeremy Wilson]

  Anyone else notice that Kindle books are now *more expensive* than any other edition?  I clicked on a few of these titles and without exception, if an ebook version is available, it’s more.

  How does that logic work?

  • [Jonathan Badger]

    Generally, the Kindle edition is between the paperback and hardcover price and is released when the hardcover is. You’d think that the price would be reduced when the paperback comes out, but generally it isn’t.

  • [Aloisius]

    How does that logic work?

    Instant gratification is sometimes worth more than a piece of dead tree?

    • [Jeremy Wilson]

      For me, I use Kindle books because I can read them in bed without disturbing my girlfriend with the light required to read (I use the iPad app.)

      For awhile there, I had successfully moved to Kindle books and put more money in the publisher’s pockets, but at these prices, I can’t justify it anymore, so back to the library for me I guess.

      It makes no sense that a non-physical version costs *more*.

      • [Jonathan Badger]

        You can have the best of both worlds — Kindle books for free from your library. If your library is anything like mine, you can check out kindle books from your library’s website and have them instantly delivered. Of course if your library is like mine, you’ll also only have a few hundred Kindle books available and popular books will have a waiting list, but hey, there’s waiting lists for physical books too.

  • [HerkyDerky]

    What the market will bear?

• [Charles H.]

  I see they’ve improved their sorting/selection mechanism quite a bit since I last looked at their site.

  They used to do it as a Hall of Fame where you could only select the best books of the past 1, 3, 5, 10, or 20 years, or “of all time”. (as opposed to the current 1, 3, 5, 10, and then by decade.) The problem with doing it the former way is that over time there has been an increase in the number of awards, with a particularly noticeable one in the past 10 years or so. This immediately biased the list towards more recent works, and made it somewhat less useful for determining anything other than well-received  recent works. (For an example: take the best books of 2011-2000 category, and then work out how many books from before 2000 could have squeezed in based on the number of awards criteria. Depending on how you sort them, it’s at most 5 books and possibly as low as 3.)

  Their current interface, allowing it to be selected by decade and removing the silly “of all time” grouping, makes me much more willing to recommend it as a useful tool.

• [R. Scott LaMorte]

  Thanks for this! I’ve tried discovering new SF authors via various internet Top 10 or Top 100 lists and was very disappointed, and when instead I’ve used award nominations as a guide I’ve been more happier. 

  Awesome. 

• [Phil Fot]

  Cryoburn was excellent.

• [Creesto4 Lynch]

  <> I have also noticed the Kindle pricing and have been surprised and vastly disappointed. Seems like gr33d over sense continues to triumph. This is the reason so many titles now show up in places like TPB, and soon the publishing industry will start boohooing just like the music industry

• [robertmarkbram]

  Maybe I am reading this wrong, but why does a top 10 list consist of 7, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2?

  • [Charles H.]

    ”
    Maybe I am reading this wrong, but why does a top 10 list consist of 7, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2?

    It’s the number of awards won by each work, not their positional ranking.