In this episode of Critical Friends, the Strange Horizons SFF criticism podcast, Amritesh Mukherjee and Abigail Nussbaum join Dan Hartland to talk about literary awards. Discussions and debates about awards shortlists often seem to be a point of gravity in broader critical discussions, and can even affect how individual reviews get commissioned and written.

How do and how should critics interact with awards? What are they for? And do critics spend too much time thinking about them?

Amritesh’s review of Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta.

Abigail’s review of Angel Down by Daniel Kraus.

Transcript

Critical Friends Episode 26: On Awards

Dan Hartland: Welcome to Critical Friends, the Strange Horizons SFF criticism podcast. I’m Dan Hartland, and in this episode I’ll be joined, as always, by two of SH’s finest reviewers. This time, longtime friend of the show Abigail Nussbaum, and first-time caller Amritesh Mukherjee.

In every episode of Critical Friends, I think we still discuss SFF reviewing: what it is, why we do it, how it’s going. In this episode, we think especially about literary awards. Discussions and debates about awards shortlists often seem to be a point of gravity in broader critical discussions, and can even affect how individual reviews get commissioned and written. How do and how should critics interact with awards? What are they for? And do critics spend too much time thinking about them?

Abigail and Amritesh talk with me about the Pulitzer and the Le Guin, the Clarke and the Hugo, the Booker and the Commonwealth Prize and more. We even talk a bit about books. With a number of awards announcing winners and shortlists over the coming weeks, it’s a timely conversation. But we did wind up wondering whether we should have had it at all.

And if that doesn’t get you excited for the next forty-five minutes, surely nothing will.

[Musical sting]

Dan Hartland: Thanks for joining me for this, what I hope will not be a kind of thorny and controversial conversation. But somehow, whenever awards and awards shortlists get brought up into the discourse, somehow we always wind up at thorny and controversial. There’s something about them which acts as a lightning rod for discussion, and I guess that’s one of their purposes.

But what I’d like this conversation to be about is a little bit more of an under-the-hood conversation about how critics and reviewers should operate in this shortlisty, awardsy space. When a book is acknowledged, garlanded, whatever it is, how do we, as critics, react to that? How should we? How do we in practice, and perhaps how should we in theory? Because I think there’s probably a separation there at times.

And both of you have recently reviewed for Strange Horizons books which have been either recently shortlisted or have recently won quite significant awards. So I thought you’d be the perfect people to talk this through with, not least because one of you wrote your particular review before we knew that a book had been shortlisted for an award and one of you specifically wrote it because a book had won an award.

And so that seems to me to start to prise open this question of how critics should/should not, do/do not, react to this stuff. Amritesh, I wondered whether we could start with you, because you came to me partly as a result, I think, of something I’d said: that Strange Horizons is trying to push back against recency bias, and we’d missed Mad Sisters of Esi when it first came out, and you said, “Hey, should we fill that gap?” And I said, “Yeah, absolutely we should.” It was a hole I was really upset about having.

And then while you were writing it, or certainly just as it was published, brilliantly it was shortlisted for the Le Guin Prize. So I wondered whether you could start to talk to us about how you experienced this book—because it’s a great review, it’s a really lyrical review that you wrote for us of a book that obviously really affected you. It had already been garlanded—critics had said how great it was—but now it’s been shortlisted for a major award. And I just wonder, first of all, how you experienced the book, but second of all, how you experienced that shortlisting.

Amritesh Mukherjee: Yeah. So it’s very interesting the way—and this is something that I cover in my review as well—the way fantasy itself is received in India. It’s seen with, “Oh, this is like a superstitious, magical hoodoo realm that fantasy occupies,” no such space for this hard sci-fi. I mean, there must be between the genre authors, but as a general reader—as a general watcher of such kind of cinema, even; if you see most of Indian sci-fi films, there’s a certain level of messiness, if you can call it that—there’s a certain sense of, “Oh my God, this is magical” sort of sensibility to that, right?

Mad Sisters of Esi completely goes against that entirely and I wanted to read the book, to be honest. That was the my end goal, was not review the book. My end goal was to read the book. And I saw that Strange Horizons hadn’t covered it, so I was like, “This would be a nice way to do both of those things at the same time.”

And I’m glad that it was shortlisted for the Ursula Prize because I think it deserves more of that sort of attention, which might have been lacking in the Indian strata—because it still is not the kind of talked-about book that it should have been, the kind of milestone it is. And this has been a gripe for many Indian sci-fi authors, especially in the past: that books are not really talked about in the Indian literary space.

The genre that we most prioritize is literary fiction, right? Or sometimes non-fiction. But there’s not a really solid or a decent niche of people, or a bunch of people, who actually want to read that book, read those books, consume those books. There’s not really that much of an appetite, and that’s also the reason why publishers aren’t always very willing to publish those books. So that was there.

Regarding my experience, I don’t think really it changed. It helped for sure. I was wondering if, I got ... Because I sent the review, I think, around nine months, eight or nine months after I had pitched it to you. So I was wondering at some point, “Will Dan say, ‘No, this has been way too late. You already pitched it to me late.’” And so I was glad that it got published in the US! I was like, “Okay ... I have at least one thing that’s going on in my favor.”

Regarding the book itself, it’s just … it’s one of those books that makes you want to write. I think that is the best compliment I can pay any book is that it makes me want to write. And those are really rare books. There are some books that you have to write about, and there are some books that get written about; it was one of those books for me. And yeah, it was just a very memorable experience.

Even the writing of the review was extremely fluid. It was one of those reviews where I did not have to think “how many words do I have to meet,” et cetera. So it was one of those pieces where I had to look back and see where can I cut and make it shorter and make it more concise.

Dan Hartland: Yeah. And I think you can tell. We will tell the listeners of this, we will admit to the listeners of this podcast that I did make you delete some sentences from the review, which is my fault. I apologize for that, I do. Because there’s no doubt, even in the published version, that it made you wanna write. It was a really—

Amritesh Mukherjee: But the review was all the better for it as well.

Dan Hartland: That’s very kind of you to say. I’m rarely convinced that my edits help, but it’s nice of you to say that! The book obviously made you want to write, because you wrote this lovely review. It was wonderful to read.

It sounds like you weren’t surprised that it was shortlisted for an award, because you just thought it was great. But you are hopeful that the shortlisting—and this is, as I said in the introduction, may be one of the functions of awards—that the shortlisting will bring the novel more notice. And of course, the Le Guin has form: Vajra Chandrasekera—a Sri Lankan author of course—won in 2025.

You mentioned, though, that Indian literary culture is somewhat more kind of interested, or puts slightly more weight upon, literary fiction than genre fiction. So does an award like the Le Guin, which is very big in the Anglophone world—we all talk about it, we all look at it—does it have an impact outside of the Anglophone world, in other literary cultures? Are these awards doing what you’re hoping that they will?

Amritesh Mukherjee: No, not really. There are many sci-fi authors who are Indian, but who are more popular in the Anglophone world because they are writing … they are genre writers, right? But if you ask a regular Indian reader as well, they would not even know their name, right? For example, a good example is, for instance, Mimi Mondal, who’s the Dalit sci-fi writer. Most Indians don’t know about her, but she’s a decently big name, say, in the Anglophone genre circles, right?

In India, from a general reader perspective, it’s usually the Bookers, it’s usually the Pulitzer, and, one or two awards other than that. Those are the usual awards that make the rounds that people read and they talk about. But genre fiction, again, it has a very extremely sort of limited presence, and that is why I’m hopeful that she gets the kind of audience she deserves, at least in the Anglophone world, if not in the Indian spheres.

Because she’s still looking for agents in other countries, if I’m not wrong—in the UK, in the Australia as well. I do really hope that she gets the kind of reader she deserves. Because if you look at Indian publishing imprints or the books that are coming out, let’s say in the last ten, fifteen years, it’s mythological one after another. It’s crazy the kind of appetite for mythology that is there.

It started with Amish … there was this guy called Amish Tripathi who wrote this, mythological retelling of sorts of Shiva, who’s one of the primary Hindu deities, and that sold like cupcakes. And that just started this sort of chain of mythological retellings and it just … it was like some sort of an explosion had occurred somewhere, and everyone was running behind them like crazy. Self-published authors cropped up who were writing in this genre. It was crazy.

So that is the thing, and that is partly why you see that it’s not that fantasy as such can’t sell. It’s just that a very specific subset of fantasy, at least so far, sells. Maybe someday if a genre writer wins a Booker who’s Indian, maybe then we can start to hope about that. But for now, I’m not sure.

Dan Hartland: And we’ll circle back to this question of what material impact awards have. But I’m also interested in this other question—and now we’ll come to you, Abigail—which is the push/pull, the relationship between genre and literary. So Ameritech is talking about genre awards probably aren’t gonna have a huge impact upon a literary culture that is primarily interested in, quote-unquote, “literary fiction.” But your review looks at things from the other side of the lens, right? Which is you look at a, quote-unquote, “genre book” which has won, in fact, the breathless literary award, the Pulitzer.

And unlike Amritesh, you came to me saying, “Look, I think I should read this book because it’s won the Pulitzer and it’s a genre book, and I think, that deserves some looking at.” And you looked at it!

So let’s talk a little bit about that first, which is here’s a book that none of us—part of your review is talking about how this book, Angel Down by Daniel Kraus, wasn’t really on anyone’s radar in the genre criticism sphere. So here’s this book that none of us had noticed, which then wins an award … and, to go back to the material impact of awards, we suddenly all notice it.

Talk to me about that. Like two things: Number one, what is the pull of these awards that makes us think, “Oh, we should. We should read this book because it’s won an award”; and then number two, briefly—let’s not go into it too much, but briefly, again, like I asked Amritesh—what was your experience of this award-winning book?

Abigail Nussbaum: I need to clarify that actually Angel Down was on my radar before it won the Pulitzer, because it had ended up on a couple of years’ best lists at the end of 2025, and the premise sounded intriguing. I don’t think I would have read it if it hadn’t won the Pulitzer—for one thing because my library might not have gotten a copy—but it certainly pushed it up the list, because it was an unexpected result, but in a positive way.

Because first of all, it’s always nice when things are unexpected. It’s always nice when an award that you think you understand fully does something that you weren’t ... you didn’t think that it was capable of. It adds this sort of imprimatur to the book because it’s not just that it has won an award, it has won an award that it is not, quote-unquote, “supposed to win.”

There have been genre novels that won the Pulitzer, but they have been very literary genre novels, like for example, Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, which is this magical realism novel. But this is a novel that is very explicit about being a genre novel that is published, if I’m not mistaken, by a genre imprint. Certainly in the UK I think it was published by a genre imprint. And as I wrote in my review, those sorts of books are visible to certain readers, but not others.

And they’re not so visible to me because, as a genre reader, there are certain genre books that I’m interested in, certain genre books that I’m less interested in. But I wouldn’t have expected it to be visible to the people who read for the Pulitzer, either. Which is maybe a little unfair of me because, this year’s Pulitzer jury included Victor LaValle, who is a writer of fantasy and horror, and also other authors whose reading I’m sure is not limited only to literary fiction.

But still, if you look at the kind of books that the Pulitzer shortlists and that the Pulitzer rewards, it’s not this sort of book. And my reaction to that was to be intrigued and to be excited, because what is it about this book that has caught the attention of people who don’t usually notice books like this?

So if the review is … it is not positive, and if the review is harsh in its not being positive, that is partly because I started reading the book and there was this very quick sinking sensation of, oh dear, is this what these intelligent and well-read people think is an award-worthy genre novel, their idea of a literary genre novel where I think that there are other literary genre novels that do that job so much better? I mentioned several of them in the review—books like Audition by Pip Adam or Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera, that if either one of them had won a Pulitzer, I would not only have pumped my fist, I would have said, “Yes, you have done the correct assessment of this book’s quality as both a literary novel and a genre novel.”

Dan Hartland: This is like a really difficult question to answer, I suspect, but had you got to the book that was on your radar for a reason other than the fact that it won the Pulitzer—so if it hadn’t won the Pulitzer and you’d got round to it, for another reason—do you think you’d have been quite so cross with it? I suppose what I mean is understandably, justifiably, rightly, expectations may be set higher for a book that has been shortlisted or won an award than for one that hasn’t?

Abigail Nussbaum: I would’ve read the book if I’d come across a copy. I would’ve read the book because it was on my radar, and I don’t think I would’ve liked it.

I think the problems I had with it, I had the reaction of, “Oh no, this is not great,” within ten pages. And I probably would still have finished it. There are books that I don’t bother to finish, but this was not on a level where I don’t think I would’ve finished it. But I absolutely do not think I would’ve reviewed it.

I wouldn’t have seen it as worthy of my time if it did not have this, this mark of approval. And even then, I don’t think I would’ve bothered to write a review that was just, “The Pulitzer was wrong.” I think my concern was, “Why is the Pulitzer looking at this genre novel and not others?”

Dan Hartland: And this is one of the things we might want to talk about. Like, a review of a book that has been shortlisted or won an award can, often should, become a review of the award itself: Why has the award chosen to acknowledge this particular book?

You mentioned, Abigail, at one point the sort of book that an award is expected to shortlist. Awards gain reputations, and we might want to talk a little bit about that because the Pulitzer is an odd ... In fact, in some ways the Pulitzer and the Le Guin, which are two awards we’ve spoken about so far, have similar-ish setups. But they’re maybe, they aren’t straightforward, let’s put it that way. But ultimately, the winner is selected by a different set of people every year. The Clarke Award is similar in that sense.

But nonetheless, awards somehow gain reputations over time, and we come to think of—partly as a result of the statements that these awards put out, the mission objectives of these awards, and then partly just as a result of history of the sorts of things they’ve shortlisted or awarded in the past—we come to expect certain things of certain awards. And I would say that, to go back to Mad Sisters of Esi, it’s probably the sort of book that you would expect the Le Guin to shortlist. It seems like a Le Guiny kind of book. Angel Down, as you say, Abigail, on, on many levels doesn’t feel like a Pulitzer winner.

There’s a book on the Clarke Award shortlist this year, Dungeon Crawler Carl, which has attracted similar sorts of commentary—this idea that this isn’t a Clarke Award kind of book. Even the people that like the book say, “Yeah, I like this book, but it’s not a Clarke book,” which really interests me, this idea that there is a kind of book that should get shortlisted for these awards. Do we have thoughts on the kinds of book that awards reward?

Abigail Nussbaum: I think, yeah, absolutely: Awards have personalities, and not even just juried awards. I think if you watch the Hugo and the Nebula for long enough—and those are awards voted on by large memberships of either, the Science Fiction Writers Association or the members of the Worldcon, which are also groups that change over time—you can tell what book will hit with that community, and you can even tell what book is more likely to hit with the Hugos and what book is more likely to hit with the Nebulas. Awards have personalities.

But to talk about, for example, the Clarkes this year, a lot of the attention has been paid to Dungeon Crawler Carl, understandably, but I don’t actually think that is ... I don’t agree with it being shortlisted. I agree that it’s not a Clarke book. But more importantly to me, I don’t think it’s a good book. If it had been nominated for the Hugo, which is definitely more in its general bailiwick, I still would’ve said this nomination is unworthy because it’s just not a good book.

The book that I actually find more interesting in terms of being nominated for the Clarke is There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm, which is a book I really like. I think it’s really well done. I think the way that it ties together elements that were written separately many years apart, and were part of sort of a creative non-fiction experiment, and weaves them into a story is precisely the thing that Dungeon Crawler Carl does not do. Dungeon Crawler Carl feels like watching a Let’s Play of a not even terribly good game.

But the thing is that There Is No Antimemetics Division—which has not gotten that much discussion in terms of the Clarke Award—is also not really a Clarke book. And as much as I liked it I think that argument is valid, because it’s a very good book with not much going on under the hood, and I tend to think of Clarke Award nominees as having a bit more substance to them. I’m not angry that it was nominated for the award, but it also seems a bit out of place, and maybe a bit more than the book that is just plain bad.

[Musical sting]

Dan Hartland: So you use the word substance—like, a Clarke Award book should have more substance to it. We could spend the entire podcast, we could do an episode of the podcast, on substance. What does that mean, right? But you’re right that there’s a sense in awards that each has a personality, and you just know in your bones what kind of book will tickle that award’s fancy.

And yet, I’m really … When we were talking about the Le Guin shortlisting for Mad Sisters of Esi, you were like, “Yeah, it’s great. I’m not sure what kind of impact it will have in the Indian scene.” Are there awards that would have that impact, or is it just a completely separated literary culture? And if there are awards that would have that kind of impact, what kind of personality do they have? Do you see this sort of situation where readerships expect certain things of certain awards; sometimes they’re surprised, mostly they’re not.

Amritesh Mukherjee: The social media literary Indian circle, they do follow—a good chunk of them at least do follow—Booker shortlisting, shortlistings and longlistings, whether it is Booker or International Booker.

For instance, Geetanjali Shree, who won the Booker for 2022 or maybe 2023, she won the International Booker Prize for Ret Samadhi, which was translated as Tomb of Sand. She became a superstar just immediately in India. Before that, she’s one of the most important Hindi authors, but no one knew about her. She was virtually unknown, right?

And after that, suddenly her books were selling everywhere. There were three or four editions of the same book within a year or two. It was crazy. It was the same happened with Shehan Karunatilaka, even though he’s not Indian, but he’s an Sri Lankan author, right? But he’s again, one of the finest authors from the Indian subcontinent who has cropped up in the last few decades.

So it absolutely does help. For instance, Banu Mushtaq, for that matter, who won the International Booker, I think this year? No, it was last year for Heart Lamp. Just after Geetanjali Shree, basically. There’s a very strong push towards translated literature, which was not there before that, before her—which was relatively a lot lesser.

We had a JCB Award, a sort of thing that was going on for I think six, seven years, but that had some controversy, and that has stopped for the last two, three years. But that was also pushing forward translations, the kind of push that Booker has given. So the Booker has a very strong influence in the Indian literary culture, Indian literary circles, and, especially, authors.

People for instance like one of the living—he’s not anymore living, he recently passed away—but one of the classic authors of Indian writing is Vinod Kumar Shukla. He’s an Indian auth—Hindi author. But again, virtually most people don’t know about him. Despite the fact that he’s perhaps the most important Hindi author of the last generation, he’s virtually unknown, Vinod Kumar Shukla—not just even in the English world, but even in the Hindi world, right?

So that is a problem in the sense that—and that is also a good thing in that sense—that there is a sort of Western gaze that comes into play when the Booker is shortlisting or longlisting Indian books, right? And it is something that is, again, very strongly criticized by the Indian right wing, which is also one of the reasons the ruling dispensation has been completely quiet about either Banu Mushtaq or Geetanjali Shree winning the prize, because they are very anti-establishment authors.

So there is that Western gaze as well as the other gaze that is playing around, that these are people who are insulting India or whatever. So yeah, that definitely plays a role. And, even when it comes to the personality of prizes, I would say, especially in the last decade or so of this sort of a cultural war—whatever you wanna call it—that environment we have, I feel like these jury members and the prizes, these organizations, they definitely do feel a sense of deviating from their personality, so to say.

The good thing about that is maybe you won’t be missing the Shakespeare of your time, but the bad thing about that is maybe you are uplifting someone who does not need to be. You’re just like … you’re just being very careless about the way you’re going about it.

Dan Hartland: Yeah. And this starts to get into the kind of double-edged nature of awards, doesn’t it? I’m so interested, though, in the salience of the Booker in Indian literary culture. So I read the Booker shortlist every year for my sins, and it is fascinating to watch it. Of course, because we’re a genre-based podcast, it’s worth pointing out that in recent years the Booker has become a genre-based award.

You could argue for Lincoln in the Bardo being speculative, but then a couple of years later, The Testaments gets the award. As you mentioned, we’ve had The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, we’ve had Prophet Song, we’ve had arguably Orbital—and all these books are genre-adjacent. Has that been—again, because the literary culture that you’re describing is so interested in, well, you might call it kind of respectability, right, in literary fiction—has this been noted?

Because we’ve been talking a little bit about how the Le Guin will barely be noticed because it’s a genre award; but has the fact that the Booker has started to reward genre—having in previous years been almost stereotypically against fantasy and science fiction—has it been noticed that the Booker has turned a corner on this?

Amritesh Mukherjee: I feel like it would require maybe African fantasy or Spanish fantasy or Mexican fantasy to win for it to have actual ripples in the Indian market. Because right now it’s mostly, again, it’s a sort of Western-adjacent, if not directly Western genre novels that are getting those awards.

Plus, I would say there’s a sort of renewed interest in the International Booker, which was not that prevalent earlier. And even the Booker wins that India has had so far, it’s mostly, again, Arundhati Roy and the Salman Rushdies and all these people who are, again, a very sort of literary fiction-centered books.

So even the publishers who are marketing the books—when they’re not marketing to influencers, random grab—they are marketing literary fiction more, at least in the fiction space. But the problem again with that is I feel like what might be happening with a lot of prizes right now is what happened, for instance, with Anora, if you’re aware of how the marketing of that movie went.

So a good chunk of that marketing for Anora—which won the Oscar I think last year or maybe the last year before that—a good chunk, most, of the marketing for that movie was just reserved for the Oscar marketing. They did not market outside of that. And so it was so specifically catered towards, and it was so heavily marketed towards, Oscars that it played a very important role in that movie eventually winning the Oscar.

I feel like that might be also happening with books—which is a problem, obviously, that certain books are ... For instance, this year’s Booker discussions that are going on, I do not see much discussion around Rahul Bhattacharya’s Railsong, which is one of the most seminal works of Indian literature that has come out in this decade or last decade or whatever.

That is a problem, because just because a book is not being marketed … and I wonder if that is the case with Angel Down winning the Pulitzer, was that a part, was that playing a part in it? Is the sort of promotion playing a part in it, or the kind of marketing that is being geared towards, “Oh, this one looks like an interesting Pulitzer book”? Maybe, I don’t know.

Abigail Nussbaum: I think with Angel Down it was really quite the opposite because it’s … Well, first of all, the author is much more in the commercial space—to the extent, like I said, that Strange Horizons hadn’t reviewed him before, even though he was a genre author. The marketing for this book—I would have assumed, I didn’t really see that marketing, it’s not, something that I am exposed to—but I assume the marketing for this book was much more commercially oriented. So really, the fact that it won the Pulitzer is an absolute shock and it would be a wonderful story if I liked the book better.

Dan Hartland: I’m really interested in this, because what we’re starting to talk about here is how awards kind of lead or are led by discourse, and what we mean by discourse.

So obviously the three of us in this conversation—and probably the three people that are listening to us—will be primarily interested in or immersed in the, quote-unquote, critical discourse. Like which books—as Abigail was saying particularly about Angel Down—which books get noticed by critics, which books don’t?

And awards have a role to play there. What I’m really interested in talking about is the sort of more popular discourse that can be influenced. Perhaps it’s more influenced by what wins awards, because most people, unlike critics, don’t read that many books in a year, and they are led by awards because they think, “Oh, if it’s won an award, if it’s shortlisted award, that must be worth reading. I’ll take a look at that one.” Given how much choice there is, it’s very helpful to have that editorial service from an award.

But are we, either as critics or as readers, and perhaps especially as critics—and perhaps especially as science fiction and fantasy critics, because I see a lot of this—are we led too much by awards? Are we too interested in them?

I’m distracted by what Amritesh has just said about, like, maybe this is getting a bit cynical. Maybe the publishers have figured out a way to market specifically to the people that give awards out, and they are focusing their fire there, and therefore it’s becoming less and less representative—what gets shortlisted, what wins—and therefore the discourse that is then affected by these awards becomes less and less broad.

Do we think that’s a danger? Do we think that we shouldn’t be even doing this episode? Do we talk too much about this stuff? Abigail, what do you think?

Abigail Nussbaum: First of all, I think you are vastly overestimating the importance of awards and science fiction awards in particular on publishing honchos. Yes, you’ve got something like the Booker that will make your book a bestseller, absolutely, but there are very few awards that actually do that. The Pulitzer is one of them, no doubt. But you know what? I’m really pleased that Mad Sisters of Esi is shortlisted for the Le Guin Award, and I hope that gives, Tashan Mehta, more exposure; but I don’t think that in terms of sales the Le Guin has much of a footprint.

I think that, as you said earlier in the conversation, a canny publisher would no doubt have pitched the book to the Le Guin jury, but that’s in terms of getting visibility, in terms of getting prestige; maybe you’re thinking about publishing the author’s next book and you want that stamp on the cover. But no one’s getting rich off being shortlisted for the Le Guin Award. Maybe—I’m not an industry insider—maybe people are getting rich off it. I hope so. But I don’t think so.

But you’re not wrong, I think, that we talk a little bit too much about awards, and I think that sort of comes in two directions—because, as a critic, what often happens is you read a book and it’s amazing, and you’re one of the first people, to read it and you review it. And from that point onward you’re the booster and you’re standing in the stands with a big foam finger for this book and it gets nominated for awards, and it gets recognition. It gets on the year’s best lists, and you feel this kind of hipsterish pride at the fact that you saw it first and you knew it first.

And sometimes, that doesn’t happen. For example, last year I reviewed Luminous by Sylvia Park, which I expected to see all over awards shortlists—and it has finally been nominated for the Clarke, which I’m very happy about—but in between, I felt like it was ignored far more than it deserved. It’s a great book.

So you’re also thinking about what this book deserves in terms of recognition more than you’re thinking about the book itself. And there’s a problem there, that sometimes the critical scene can feel a bit empty and isolating, especially now. It wasn’t the case ten, twenty years ago. But sometimes it feels like you’ve published this review of a book, and you’re so excited over it, and it has dropped without a ripple into the water.

So the awards are, in a way, validating of you. They shouldn’t be. They’re validating of the author and the book. But you still feel validated when this book that you were advocating for gets nominated for an award. And you shouldn’t, but still, you do, because we’re all human.

Dan Hartland: And so it becomes a two-way codependency between a critic and an award, by which I mean awards shape critical discourse. Like, Strange Horizons will be publishing a review by Nick Hubble of the Hugo shortlist, we try to cover as many shortlists as we can in a given year, usually different ones—Octavia Cade did the Climate Fiction Prize shortlist for us earlier in the year. So we’re chasing the shortlists. We’re trying to, "Okay, what are the shortlists telling us about what’s going on?"

But then also, on the other side, before the shortlists are published critics are—as you say, Abigail—cheerleading for particular books. They are trying to have their influence on the shortlists so that then the influence that the shortlist has on the critical discourse is in some way influenced … The danger is we chase our tails.

In a better world, the thing is quite a virtuous circle, and I’m as guilty as anyone! So I think when Rakesfall first came out—for Vajra fans, that’s the third mention of the novel in this single podcast—when Rakesfall first came out, I wrote a review for Foundation saying that I was worried it would be missed. Exactly what you’re saying about Luminous, Abigail: You’re in the corner for this book, you want it to get shortlisted. And I wrote in my review, “I’m worried it won’t. I’m worried that it’s come out too soon after Saint of Bright Doors,” and all of this stuff. And in the end, it won the Le Guin, which of course was thanks to me saying that, right? Yeah, of course it was.

And then, on, I think A Meal of Thorns last year, end of last year, I said I was worried about Notes from a Regicide being missed, and it’s been shortlisted for the Le Guin, guys.

Abigail Nussbaum: You’re saying that you have a direct line to the Le Guin jury.

Dan Hartland: I’m not saying that, but I am.

And this, just as a little reviewer that reviews things, does feel nice. The other thing that is interesting as an aside is that Abigail mentioned that Strange Horizons had never reviewed Kraus, and that is true. And I did a quick look-see, and I’m pretty sure Kraus was never pitched to us by publishers. But, since Angel Down won the Pulitzer, we’ve received notice of his next book, and that’s the other way I think that awards can affect authors—which is that their next book is just seen as that much easier to get out there.

[Musical sting]

Dan Hartland: To go back to this idea of the virtuous or “invirtuous” circle of critic and award, you feel good as a critic when something you like gets shortlisted. And then of course the shortlist discussion happens and, the shortlist is welcomed, the shortlist is attacked, whatever it is.

Again, Amritesh, is that, does that seem like a familiar cycle to you? Is something else happening from where you’re sitting? To what extent are reviewers led by, are leading, when we sit down to write reviews of text? Where should—not just where does, but where should—awards sit in our conception of what literary culture is?

Amritesh Mukherjee: I feel like, at least for me at a personal level, the maximum thing that awards can do is push the book into my hands. I think that is the maximum extent to which an award can go. After that, I feel like it is going to be … it might not be even shortlisted by an award, but it might be my next favorite book, or it might be it might win the Booker and I—or whatever prize there is —and I may still dislike it.

But the thing is, I feel like we do somewhat—in some sense—we do put too much emphasis on awards in the sense that, especially because we live today in an extremely trust-deficit world, right? Feeling that sense of, especially what happened with the recent Commonwealth/Granta AI thing which happened.

And I feel like it also becomes even more important than before, perhaps, for the organizations to be even more cognizant of the fact of how and what they’re pushing out. Because again, to go back to the Commonwealth thing, a lot of these judge-jury comments were very likely AI-written. It’s not just the stories that were AI written, right?

So that was, that is, a danger that something as ... Because again, the Commonwealth is one of those that has somewhat of an impact on several authors. Indian authors who have gone on to become big names in the Indian literature publishing industry have won Commonwealth prizes at some point, and that has helped them as well.

I feel like that’s where sort of critics come into play. Without a world of critics, a book like Angel Down will just go past. “Oh, see, that’s so nice. Pulitzer is promoting a genre novel” and, “Look at them just talking about a book that no one else was talking about before and how brave and whatnot,” right?

But once it is analyzed and scrutinized by people who actually do read the genre, it gets to come to fore that it’s not really a well thought-out decision. So it is good that you are changing your personality, but that personality change should be thoughtful. And I feel like it is even more a sort of a responsibility for the prize committees to make sure that whatever they’re analyzing—how they’re analyzing, especially the process more than what they’re pushing out—should be more thought out, it should be more carefully done.

Dan Hartland: Yeah, and of course there have been quite a number of award-based controversies in recent years. And it’s interesting to wonder how much of that is an increasing democratization of who’s writing about books online, all of that stuff, coming up against the kind of more traditional, quote-unquote, “elitism” of the very idea of juried awards.

So Abigail mentioned the Hugo, which of course is a relatively popular vote, right? I say relatively because the number of people that vote for it is different each year and it’s not huge, but it’s a great deal larger than your traditional juried award. Do we have thoughts on that? Amritesh talks about the process of an award; do we have thoughts on whether juried awards are better, whether popular awards are better, what we might go to each of those different types of award for? What role the three wise people on a panel in the world of BookTok?

Abigail Nussbaum: To bring us back to what Amritesh was saying about the Commonwealth Award—which we know was quite shocking, that whole situation—it occurs to me that there’s a difference between an award you argue with and an award you distrust.

I’m gonna do something really unexpected and make a sports metaphor, but we’re in the middle of the World Cup, so: If you’re a fan of a team, then maybe you hate the coach and you hate the player and you believe very strongly that you could win the game much better than any of them could, but you’re still a fan of the team.

And at some point—this doesn’t happen with football fans I believe, but with other pursuits—at some point an organization like that, even if you argue with it, it can lose your trust completely.

So if you look, for example, at the Clarke Award this year, a lot of people are arguing with it mainly because of Dungeon Crawler Carl. But for the most part, I don’t think that there is loss of trust in the award. There’s people saying you have let down the award, or simply I disagree with you. And my response to the Pulitzer as well: I don’t think that there was any underhand funny business going on there; I think that the jury and the board and I have very different taste and I disagree with theirs.

That doesn’t mean I have tremendous trust in the Pulitzer. It’s not the first literary award I turn to, but it’s not an award I distrust. And at some point, if you make enough bad decisions and if you make enough bad decisions for the wrong reasons, then the award loses trust and then it becomes useless.

And that was of course the danger, if we’re going to bring this back to the Hugos, that was a danger with the Sad and Rabid Puppies. They brought the award into disrepute. That was the danger with the Chengdu shenanigans where votes were thrown out. That also brought the award into disrepute. And that is much more important to me in the end than whether I agree with the decisions that the award makes.

I often don’t agree with the decisions that the Hugo makes, but I trust it to reflect a group of people whose tastes often do not coincide with mine. To bring this back to your question, I think the question isn’t “is a juried award better, is a popular vote award better?” The question is, do you feel that you get this award, that you trust it, and that you understand the kind of books that it is likely to recommend to you?

And I look to the Hugo for different books than I look to the Clarke. And in recent years, I look to the Clarke more. I find the books that the Clarke shortlists more interesting. But I still value the Hugos’ existence and its input. So to me it’s not a matter of which one of them is better, it’s a matter of understanding them and being able to trust them.

Dan Hartland: Yeah, I think that is super fair. In fact, I would say that very often in a given year I will be more interested in the Clarke shortlist than the Hugo; but I think this year the Hugo shortlist is actually really interesting. I think there’s a lot in there. And I think that the Clarke shortlist is … interesting in a different way.

So these things go up and down, which is, I think, the sign of a healthy award culture. And one of the things that struck me about what you were just saying, Abigail, is that I could have replaced the word “award” in your remarks with the word “critic,” and everything would have been very similar. Like a critic … you might disagree with a particular critic all the time, but you absolutely trust that person to be reliably incorrect, right?

And you can shape your reading based on “if they hated that, I’m gonna love it.” And likewise, there are reviewers that we always agree with, and so on. And in that sense—what we’re looking at, I mentioned earlier the kind of editorial function that an award serves—in that sense, critics and awards are doing the same thing in many ways.

Let’s accept, then, that awards in general are a good thing and we might put too much emphasis on them in some years, and then in other years we might pretend they are terrible things when, of course, they’re not. Are there books this year that we would look forward to maybe being garlanded next year?

So we’ve managed to cover Mad Sisters of Esi, literally at the last minute, Amritesh, before it was shortlisted. And in fact, I think it was shortlisted right before we published the review. But we got in there because we could sense that it was likely to get something. It seemed like an important book. Are there books like that we’re seeing come out that we would like now to begin the strange dance again, where critics try to influence awards, and then awards come out, and then critics complain about them?

Where are we at? Have we read anything that we think, “That would actually be a good book to shortlist,” and do we know which award should shortlist it?

Abigail Nussbaum: I have to recuse myself at least partly because I am gonna be a judge on the Otherwise Award, for 2027.

Dan Hartland: You’ve entered Mordor! You’ve become one of—

Abigail Nussbaum: I have become one of the things that I … didn’t exactly hate, but certainly was criticizing quite a lot of. People who were Clarke judges and saw me criticizing their choices, they’re gonna have a target-rich opportunity next year, that’s for sure.

So there are certain books that I’m not going to mention, though I’m thinking about them very loudly. One book that I certainly hope to see get, more attention is The Misheard World by Aliya Whiteley—because that’s not, in my opinion, otherwise eligible at all, so I’m feeling free to mention it—which I don’t think has gotten as much attention as it deserved, but I hope it gets, more attention when it comes time to hand out awards for maybe the Clarke, maybe the BSFA. That would make me very happy.

And there’s a bunch of other things that I’m gonna keep close to my vest because, they are otherwise eligible. But as I said, I’m thinking about them very loudly.

Dan Hartland: We’re attempting to receive those thoughts. Amritesh, any thoughts? Is there something that’s been out recently that you were like, “I would love if that …” Even if you think—in fact more interestingly!—if you think it won’t ever be noticed by any award, but you love it. What have you been reading?

Amritesh Mukherjee: I’m reading this—it is for, Strange Horizons—I’m reading this, book called Bandigoat. It’s published by Blaft Publications, and they’re doing some, very interesting work.

Dan Hartland: They are!

Amritesh Mukherjee: Oh, yeah, it’s phenomenal the kind of work they’re doing. And again, expectedly it’s not getting a lot of notice from Indian audiences. It is getting a good amount of eyeballs from Anglophone—some Anglophone—readers. That is a good thing. So it’s not going to win any awards, likely, but, it’s a really fun book.

I am hoping—it’s more of a naive hope than actual, because I’m not seeing it much in discourse—but again, as I mentioned earlier, I would in literary fiction like Rahul Bhattacharya’s, since the award season is going to come very soon, would like his Railsong. It’s one of the finest books that’s been written. It’s a magical realism/historical fictions et cetera, et cetera, sort of book and it’s a really good book. And other than that, I usually do not read books that frequent the award circle.

Dan Hartland: Talk to me a bit about that, then. Like, why not? Because Abigail and I, I think probably are guilty of over-reading shortlists, right? We feel we need to have an opinion, right, on this particular shortlist, that particular shortlist, how wrong everyone is about it. Why aren’t you reading shortlists in the same way?

Amritesh Mukherjee: I feel like I’m also in the—since I’ve been more involved with the literary community, et cetera—I have not still decided upon what the objective of an award is.

Initially, like everyone, my thoughts used to be that an award is to find the best book out there. But the more time passes on, I wonder if it’s not just to identify the best book or maybe they want us to discover more books. Maybe they want to build a canon. Maybe they want to provoke arguments. Maybe they just want to create attention.

There are so many other reasons that can be there. So I don’t know. I feel like that might be there, that I just do not exactly know what I feel and how I feel about awards and, what their role and objective is in today’s world, and if the jury itself or the award themselves know what their role is in today’s world.

So I guess that might be part of the reason, perhaps, or perhaps I’m just bad at picking books. I don’t know.

Abigail Nussbaum: Yeah, I think I as critics, we kind of tend to view awards from not the wrong direction, but a different direction from everyone else. Because awards have two functions: they celebrate and they expose.

And to people who are not steeped in the genre community, who do not obsessively follow all the forthcoming books, six months ahead of time, the purpose of an award is to tell people, “Oh, you should pay attention to this. You probably haven’t heard of this book before,” and most people will not have.

One of the things an award does is draw attention, and if you’ve got something like the Le Guin Award, which is drawing attention to books that are not as heavily publicized, that don’t have reviews in major markets like The New York Times or The LA Times or something like that, that throws a spotlight on authors who don’t usually get that kind of exposure, and I think that’s incredibly important.

And again, that’s partly the job of a critic, but an award can do that a lot more. So I think that, as critics, we look at awards very differently than most other people.

Dan Hartland: Yeah, we’re jealous of them.

Abigail Nussbaum: Yes. [laughter]

[Musical sting]

Dan Hartland: For someone who doesn’t want to talk a lot about how much they hated this book, you’re talking a lot about how you hate this book.

Abigail Nussbaum: You keep asking the questions. I just …

Amritesh Mukherkee: You could have mentioned in the beginning of the review, Dan, to not make it a negative review. It’s not her fault, it is yours.

Dan Hartland: So this rubbish book: Let’s talk more about it! No! [laughter]

[Musical outro]

Dan Hartland: Thanks for listening to Critical Friends, the Strange Horizons criticism podcast. Our music is “Dial Up” by Lost Cosmonauts. You can listen to more of their music at grandevalise.bandcamp.com.

Our last episode on reading queerly achieved its aim in at least one quarter: It persuaded Roseanna Pendlebury to read some Judith Butler, and in that sense alone, our work was duly done.

It was also nice to hear via email from a few listeners offering thanks to the podcast for—and this is wild to me—teaching them something about critical writing and reviewing. Part of the purpose of this podcast is just to help us all think a bit more about how and what we read, hopefully in a vaguely accessible fashion. This is me inviting you to tell me more regularly how well we’re doing at that.

All unabashed praise is welcome at reviews@strangehorizons.com. Furious invective, on the other hand, should naturally be posted in as public a forum as possible. Thanks everyone. See you next time.