For only the third time, the Hugo Award for Best Novel was awarded to two books: China Miéville's The City & The City and Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl. Both books have been dominating science fiction and fantasy awards lists all year. This year's winners join good company, 1993's shared best novel went to Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep and Connie Willis's Doomsday Book and in 1966, Frank Herbert's Dune and Roger Zelazny's ... And Call Me Conrad also deadlocked the voters.

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer went to Seanan McGuire, author of Rosemary and Rue.

A complete list of this year's winners in all categories may be found here.

 

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The Mediocre Assassin's Handbook$9.95 add to cart

Hyabusa Jao isn't much of an assassin--at least he hasn't been since his partner and lover Waya was killed. Jao's sadistic boss has given him one more chance to get his head straight, if he doesn't: he won't be a mediocre assassin, he'll be a dead one.

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The Windup Girl$14.95 add to cart

Continuing a stellar awards season in which it has already won the Nebula Award and been nominated for a Hugo, Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl just won the John W. Campbell Award. The Award will be presented to Bacigalupi at this year's Campbell Conference. Canadian Robert Charles Wilson placed second in the juried prize's balloting for Julian Comstock: A Novel of 22nd-Century America, China Miéville's The City and the City was third.

The Theodore Sturgeon Award for best short science fiction will also be presented at the Campbell Conference, with this year's prize going to James Morrow's novella Shambling Towards Hiroshima.

Influential comic creator Harvey Pekar passed away early in the morning of July 12th at his Cleveland, Ohio home. A Harvey Award winner in 1995 for his graphic novel Our Cancer Year, Pekar got his start in comics in 1976, collaborating with celebrated underground cartoonist R. Crumb to begin American Splendor. The title would continue over many years and at many publishers; 2003 saw an Academy Award nominated movie based on Pekar's life and work, in which actor Paul Giamatti assumed the role of Pekar. Harvey Pekar's recent work included the graphic novel The Quitter, illustrated by Dean Haspiel and an adaptation of Stud Terkel's Working.