Every summer, I post a prestige ranking of science fiction and fantasy magazines, based on major awards nominations and "best of" anthology selections in the previous ten years. One question is whether such awards largely reflect the past accomplishments of an already illustrious career. Do new authors with great stories have a shot at such awards, or do they almost always go to old-timers?
Adrian Ward has shared some data with me that helps address this question.
Adrian looked at Hugo nominations (the Hugo being the best-known award) in the short story and novelette categories since 2015. For each nomination, he noted the number of "major" magazine publications by the author before the nominated story and the number published in the three years immediately after. The included "major" magazines, based on my prestige ranking, were Analog, Apex, Asimov's, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, F&SF, Fantasy Magazine, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Reactor/Tor.com, Strange Horizons, and Uncanny. Excluded from analysis were stories not originally published in English, since those authors rarely publish in English-language magazines, and the "Sad Puppies" stories of 2015-2016. (Sad Puppies was an attempt to game the Hugos.)
We might characterize authors with five or fewer major magazine publications before their nomination as "early career" authors. Of course, this isn't a perfect measure: Some might have long careers of publishing in other venues, and some might have mostly published books instead of stories. But I hope it's a reasonable enough proxy.
By this measure, almost half of Hugo nominations go to early-career authors: 51/112 (46%). Indeed, thirteen (12%) went to authors with no qualifying publications before the nomination. [For a list of authors, see Note 1]
Authors with 6-19 previous qualifying publications received 35 nominations (31%) -- though some of these authors were very established novel writers, showing the imperfection of this proxy measure. [Note 2]
Authors with 20 or more previous qualifying publications received 26 nominations over the 11-year period (23%).[Note 3]
Adrian also looked at how many publications in those same twelve magazines these authors had over the next three years (for nominations in 2022 and earlier). The majority of the early career authors (21/39, 54%) had none, and the average number was 1.3. It's unclear how much to make of this, but it doesn't look like a Hugo nomination is typically a stepping stone to further publication in these twelve magazines. [Note 4] That itself is encouraging in a way. Editors of these magazines often say they are interested in new talent and prefer not to just publish the same well-known names.
I conclude that short story and novelette nominations for the Hugo don't feature mainly the same group of big-name established writers. Lots of relative newcomers get a shot -- but it's not an automatic ticket to a prolific short-story career.
Thanks for these intriguing data, Adrian!
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[1] With zero previous qualifying publications: S.R. Algernon, Nina Allan, Zen Cho, Steven Diamond, Kary English, Isabell Fall, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Stix Hiscock, Blue Neustifter, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Shiv Ramdas, Rebecca Roanhorse, and Rivers Solomon. With 1-5: Lou Antonelli, Brooke Bolander, Siobhan Carroll, Rae Carson, Ted Chiang (!), P. Djeli Clark (2), Meg Elison, Sarah Gailey (2), Sarah Gailey, Alix E. Harrow (3), Simone Heller, S.L. Huang (2), Jose Pablo Iriarte, Ai Jiang, Rachael K. Jones, Ann Leckie, Arkady Martine, Samantha Mills, Premee Mohamed, C.L. Polk, Vina Jie-Min Prasad (2), Nibedita Sen, K.M. Szpara, Wole Talabi, Ursula Vernon, Fran Wilde, John Wiswell (2), John Wiswell, Alyssa Wong (2), and John C. Wright (2).
[2] Brooke Bolander (3), John Chu, Tina Connolly, Amal El-Mohtar, A.T. Greenblatt, Daryl Gregory, Thomas Ha, Carolyn Ives Gilman, N.K. Jemisin (2), Rachael K. Jones, Isabel J. Kim, Stephen King, T. Kingfisher (2), Naomi Kritzer, Seanan McGuire, Linda Nagata, Suzanne Palmer, Sarah Pinsker, Gray Rinehart, Eugenia Triantafyllou, Catherynne M. Valente, Carrie Vaughn, Ursula Vernon, Marie Vibbert, Nghi Vo (2), Fran Wilde (3), Caroline M. Yoachim (2). Some of these authors overlap with Group 1, as they shifted from the 0-5 category to the 6-19 category over the years. [ETA: Adrian reminds me that Vernon and Kingfisher are the same author, though analyzed separately here.]
[3] Aliette de Bodard (3), Michael F. Flynn, Mary Robinette Kowal, Naomi Kritzer (6), Yoon Ha Lee (2), Edward M. Lerner, Suzanne Palmer, Sarah Pinsker (6), Rajnar Vajra, Catherynne M. Valente (2), and Caroline M. Yoachim (2). Some of these authors overlap with Group 2, as they shifted from the 6-19 category to the 20+ category over the years.
[4] This is a highly imperfect measure of whether the author continued in science fiction. For example, Rebecca Roanhorse is among the authors who earned a Hugo nomination with her first major magazine publication. She went on to publish several novels but no more short stories in the twelve included magazines. Most of the others published multiple stories thereafter, though often in edited collections or in magazines not included among the twelve.
