Comments: The John W. Campbell Memorial Award always seems to go its own way when it comes to what works it honors. Radiomen, the winning novel for 2016, is a book that wasn't nominated for any other major award. Very few of the other shortlisted works were nominated for other awards either - The Water Knife and Aurora appeared on the list of Locus nominees for example, Seveneves was a Hugo finalist, and The Book of Phoenix was shortlisted for the Clarke Award. But the interesting fact remains that total volume of crossover between the Campbell Award nominees and the shortlisted finalists for other major awards is quite slight.
On the other hand, several of the finalists this year were written by authors who had previously won or been nominated for the award. Bacigalupi, McDonald, Roberts, and Robinson have all previously won this award. Robinson has been a finalist a further five times, and Roberts has been nominated three other times before. McDonald has been nominated two times before this one, and both Stephenson and Nagata have been nominated twice. James Morrow has never won the Campbell Award, but has been nominated four times. Hutchinson was nominated once before. The Campbell Award judges seem to go their own way when it comes to the type of books they prefer, and they seem to have recurring favorites as well.
Best Novel
Radiomen by Eleanor Lerman
Second Place:
(tie) Going Dark by Linda Nagata
(tie) The Thing Itself by Adam Roberts
Third Place:
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
Finalists:
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor
Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson
Galapágos Regained by James Morrow
Luna: New Moon by Ian McDonald
Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
Where by Kit Reed
Go to previous year's nominees: 2015
Go to subsequent year's nominees: 2017
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