Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Book Lists

Individual Recommendations:

Every WWEnder has their own personal award worthy lists for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror novels written in the year. Those lists are visible within the member's My World pages for all to see. These lists help our members keep track of their favorite new novels as the year progresses.

If you read a great new SF novel early in the year, you may not remember that novel when it comes time to cast your ballots a year later. With this list you flag that novel when it's fresh on your mind, and as you read more new novels, you fill up your 5 allowed slots. If you read a sixth great SF novel, you'll have to decide if it's good enough to unseat one of your earlier picks. If you read a lot of new novels, your list will change many times over the course of the year, and may be a completely different list than your original 5 picks.

Your first 5 picks will be easy. You read a good novel early on and it will go on your list. Simple. Your list will essentially be a "Here's what I've read so far this year that's good" list. When you get past your fifth pick, you'll have some hard decisions to make and those decisions will only get harder the further into the year we get. By the end of the year, you'll have a "Here are the best novels I've read this year" list that you have refined for months - just in time for awards season.

Crowdsourcing:

As members add new novels to their personal award worthy lists, we take those listed novels across all members and build our Award Worthy Novels list. The list will start out small as there are fewer available new novels, and people will need time to read them.

The Award Worthy Novels list will be constantly in flux with novels coming and going all the time, and will be a fun index of what's trending in genre fiction. When a hot new novel comes out like Andy Weir's The Martian, you'll see it pop up on the bottom of the list and climb up to the top within weeks.

Eligible Years:

The Award Worthy Novels list is mostly intended to help folks keep track of the novels they read throughout the current year but after getting many requests to do previous years we have made it possible for you to fill in novels from 2015 forward. Each pick will go into a list for that year and you can always update your picks when you read another great novel from those years.

Not Award Specific:

You may have noticed that we only say "Award Worthy Novels" not "Hugo Award Worthy" or "Clarke Award Worthy" or "Red Tentacle Award Worthy" etc. The reason is that we want to focus our lists on the best novels published in the year regardless of whatever eligibility requirements are imposed by any specific award. Plain and simple, these are the novels the WWEnd community has determined over the course of the year to be worthy of recognition. Whether they fit into any specific award is beside the point, and will be left to the individual to discover for themselves.

Only Novels:

While there are many categories across the awards we cover here on WWEnd, the only category we are concerned with for the Award Worthy Novels lists is obviously novels -- no anthologies, collections, or short fiction etc. at this time. Perhaps down the line we might include these, but for now we're focused on novels. Of course we're talking about SF, Fantasy, and Horror novels and that can include first novel awards or young adult novels etc. depending on the book in question.

Spreading the Word:

If you like our list and want to help make it better, then join WWEnd and make your own personal picks! After that, help us spread the word. Tell your friends and family, your reading group, and that guy at Starbucks with the WorldCon T-shirt about us. Post about us on your blog or share us with any blogs you think will help us spread the word. And of course use your social media outlets to draw in your followers.