The New Hugo winners Book

A collection of Hugo winners for best Novella, Novellette, and Short Story for the years 1985, 1986, and 1987.

Short story collections, as I've said many times before, are a mixed bag. Award-winning ones can sometimes be better, or sometimes worse, if you just don't match the tastes of the majority, it can be painful to work through. And here, honestly, I don't know what 1985 was thinking, or much of 1986. I round roughly the first half of the collection to be a slog with stories that did virtually nothing for me or just went on too long or both. Each year had at least one story I kinda liked... in 1985 it was Harlan Ellison's "Paladin of the Lost Hour", in 1986 it was Greg Bear's "Tangents" (which was probably the best of the collection as a whole), and in 1987 I liked both Orson Scott Card's "Eye for Eye" and Lawrence Watt-Evans "Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers."

The others ranged from 'not my thing but I can see how others might like it' to 'An okay story but I don't see why anyone thought this deserved an award.'

As a whole, I'd rate it a 2, just because some of the longest stories were the ones that were a slog for me.