2026 Hugo Award Winners Include Ursula Le Guin-Authored Graphic Novel

This year's Hugo Award winners were announced last weekend at Worldcon — the world's longest-running science fiction/fantasy convention. The Orange County Register reports there were fans "clad in capes, gowns and elaborate character costumes," with famous attendees including Game of Thrones author George R. R. Martin, who held a book signing: Martin attended his first Worldcon in 1971 in Boston, before he published his first novel. Fresh out of his graduate studies, Martin, then 22 years old, found a community of fellow comic book fans and genre enthusiasts... "It was a transformative experience," Martin said. "Worldcon is the heart of the science fiction fandom." Four years later, Martin won his first Hugo Award for his novella, "A Song for Lya," which made him the award's youngest winner — a record he held until Sunday night, when 25-year-old Los Angeles writer H. H. Pak took home the award for Best Novelette. [Read that novelette here...]

Notable writers and artists, such as "Star Trek: The Next Generation" screenwriter Ronald D. Moore and graphic artist Stan Sakai, announced the [Hugo award] categories. In their acceptance speeches, winners acknowledged the enduring strength of their community amidst rapidly evolving physical and social environments. They also praised the power of speculative fiction in facilitating dialogue on real-world issues and the importance of human-made art. Among the winners were C. B. Lee, whose novel "Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe" won the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book; the team behind Apple TV's "Murderbot: 'All Systems Red," which won for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form; and John Scalzi, who took home the trophy for Best Series [for Old Man's War]. The night concluded with its most anticipated award — Best Novel — which went to " The Everlasting" by Alix. E. Harrow, a fantasy time-loop novel about a scholar forced to rewrite his nation's history.
AppleTV's Murderbot episode beat nominated episodes from other several popular streaming series:

• Doctor Who (âoeThe Story & the Engineâ)
• Pluribus (âoeWe Is Usâ)
• Severance (âoeCold Harborâ)
• The Wheel of Time (âoeThe Road to the Spear)

Overall the awards committee had received 23,543 nominations this year for 4,299 works and individuals, according to the official Hugo Awards site. Other interesting winners:

• Best Graphic Story or Comic: A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel, written by Ursula K. Le Guin, adapted and art by Fred Fordham
• Best Short Story: "In My Country" by Thomas Ha
• Best Novella: The River Has Roots
• Best Related Work: Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age by Ada Palmer
• Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Sinners
• Best Game or Interactive Work: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Murderbot seriously?

[DrXym]

Two dimensional plot, contrivances galore, leaden direction and script. And possibly the most unlikeable and stupid characters ever put into a series. The only time it seemed to have fun was the in-universe space soap opera. The irony is murderbot would have been completely within his rights to murder these sanctimonious assholes before putting a round in his own head.

Re:Murderbot seriously?

[eriks]

I guess you have to have read the books? They're hokey and corny to (for me anyway) a highly-enjoyable extreme, exploring the "What does it mean to be human?" trope. I thought it was a pretty good adaptation of the first book, though IMO the best thing about the first book was MurderBot's internal monologue/dialog as it talks itself into/out of doing various things, which was somewhat lacking in the TV series format. In the subsequent books, that expands to more actual dialog between MurderBot and other characters (mainly ART initially), so that might translate better onto the screen. It might have been better if they squeezed the first two books into the first season, even if it meant sacrificing some of the action scenes, since series of novels doesn't really hit it's stride until halfway through the second book.

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

I would agree, I enjoyed it for the most part and I never read the books. I think Alexander Skarsgard did a good job which being the name of the show is the most important element to hit, he can join the ranks of "really good looking guys who just want to be comedic actors".

I found it was a nice take on a pretty well worn trope and it somehow made that trope more emphatic by not taking itself so, so deadly serious like say Westworld. It also ended at least satisfying enough while leaving the door open for

Re:Murderbot seriously?

[eriks]

Absolutely. These are not "serious" stories in any way. They're *clearly* written to be 100% escapist fantasy of the aromantic variety (though MurderBot is a hopeless asexual romantic) I love "hard" sci-fi (Vinge, Egan, etc.) as much as the next guy, but MurderBot is the opposite of that. Not taking itself seriously, one-dimensional characters and stupid plot points are the whole point. The TV show lost a lot of the cheesy humor in the book, which has a chuckle or two on nearly every page.

Re: Murderbot seriously?

[ahoffer0]

I'm going to make a pitch for the Murderbot books. I'm listening to Network Effect right now. Murderbot works only because the humans are great foils. This is a deeply dysfunctional universe. The Corporate factions are vicious, avaricious, back-stabbing monsters. The Preservationists are fragile snowflakes with personalities so cloying they make my teeth ache. Enter the Murderbot. The Murderbot is a rouge cyborg with the social skills of an autistic child, a talent for violence, and a f*** it attitude. In t

Re:

[dargaud]

Yes, the books are entertaining and can be read on several levels, but the prize went to the *series*, which IMHO is somewhat subpar. For instance they show the researchers as just naive morons while in the book they are the only ones with ethics and a backbone. And the introspective side of Murderbot is glossed over.

Re:

[eriks]

This. The tv series is OK. Maybe the second season will be better. I loved the books and (maybe it's my bias) but I didn't find the Preservationists cloying. One-dimensional, yes, but MurderBot definitely deeply cares for and about them, even though it (its preferred pronoun) is almost terminally annoyed by them; after all they are the only humans it has ever met that don't treat it like expendable property rather than the obviously sentient being that it is, and there is great humor in that. I normall

It is official, then, sci-fi is dead.

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

Shallow escapist fantasies are the norm now and there's little reason to care about "Hugo" anymore.

Goodbye, great genre, I knew and loved you and I'm so sorry to see you gone.

Re:

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

The good parts of Earthsea are so old now that most here only remember reading them.

Takes me back

[cascadingstylesheet]

A Wizard of Earthsea ... one of my favorite books as a kid.

Re:

[beeboo]

Same. Read it in Polish in deep communist times as a child, and loved every word of it. Now realized I never read it in English, need to do that. And now in graphic novel form too... so much to catch up on

You made your bed, Hugo. Now lie in it.

[MIPSPro]

Funny how when you start making awards about politics or religion, nobody cares but the political and religious. We need neither types in Fantasy or Sci Fi, but it doesn't matter. AI has already ruined reading new authors anyway, even more than the political folks could have. I'll never read all the Sci Fi and fantasy already written anyway, even the good stuff, and I'm a voracious reader. I just keep mining the older stuff. It's fun to go to old used bookstores anyway.

The River Has Roots

[Some Guy]

Why name all winning authors at the bottom of the post but one?

Amal El-Mohtar won Best Novella for The River Has Roots (2025).

Ignorant children

[whitroth]

is who I see commenting. Murderbot wouldn't exist as it does, or perhaps at all, if Le Guin hadn't written what she did decades ago. "The movie too many tropes"... no, SHE INVENTED THEM, and everything you've read are *following* them.

Waiting for someone to complain that Shakespeare had all these contrivances and tropes in The Tempest, when Forbidden Planet already did that.

the earthsea graphic novel is great.

[cathector]

hugo aside, i just read the earthsea graphic novel and have been planning to write the author a thank-you letter. it's super well-done. the attention to detail and the pacing and the choices of what to include and what not are done with real skill and care. her son was involved in the process. and the artistry is superb. it's been a while since i spent minutes looking at a page that's just a seascape.