Sleeping Late on Judgement Day would definitly be an interesting nominee for best novel, in short fiction I say that even unread probably every Tad Williamsstory would have been an improvment over what Brad slated. Somethink to critisize the Hugovoters with, not somethink that he taught about while starting his slate.
I think that it was probably an after the fact taught like The Martian. (Nothink of this is meaned negative of Tad Williams)įor Brad, Tad Williams was not one of his buddies. Perhaps he is also a writer where the sum of his work is more than a single novel.
RPG BASED ON TAD WILLIAMS OTHERLAND SERIES
Tad is also writing a lot in series and he is probably over the sweetspot in his carrear for Hugonominations.Īs I said before he hasn’t written a book that you can point at and scream how the voters could have overlocked it. I am not sure if the antifantasybias is still as strong in the Hugos as it was before, but at the beginning of his carrier it probably was. The irony being, that whatever Brad’s reasons are, they also partly answer why Tad Williams has been overlooked by the Hugo Awards - people who might have nominated one of his books, nominated something else instead. Alternatively, Brad didn’t want to have a second magical-detective story on his slate given that he wanted Jim Butcher’s most recent Dresden Files on there. So why no Tad from Brad? The simplest answer is Brad didn’t look and only did the most minimal research in making his picks. It was mainly fiction from earlier years but it contained two new stories A Fish Between Three Friends and Omnitron, What Ho! I haven’t read the collection and I don’t know if the stories are any good but as far as I can check, they look like stuff Brad could have included. His short story collection The Very Best of Tad Williams was published in 2014. ĭid William have eligible short fiction? This is less obvious but yes, he did. That would also have meant SP3 would have included a book from DAW, another publisher like Baen that could claim to have been underrepresented in the Hugos. Sleeping Late on Judgement Day, the third in his urban fantasy Bobby Dollar series was published by DAW in 2014. The question I have though (and I know people wondered about this at the time) is why Brad Torgersen didn’t nominate Tad Williams in Sad Puppies 3?ĭid Williams have an eligible novel? I believe so. (Aaron Pound looked at this back in 2015 )
Even so, Tad Williams was a reasonable example for a critic of the Hugo Awards in 2014 and a good argument for the addition of a Best Series category. That doesn’t quite add up to only 5 chances at a Best Novel Hugo but it does limit the chances. Williams has mainly written fantasy series and the bulk of his published list on ISFDB is covered by just five series over 31 years ( ). Having said that, I don’t think it is that mysterious. It’s hard to say he didn’t have a point, after all Williams has been writing a lot of interesting and popular fiction for some time and he’s often hit that Hugo sweet spot of writing novels that fit within the expectations of the genre but which stretch the edges of what can be done. One of the names that kept coming up from Brad Torgersen as an example of an author overlooked by the Hugo Awards was fantasy writer Tad Williams. Not a Debarkle post as such, just an extended footnote.