This is not technically a "Hugo" but a separate award for "Best new writer". All of these writers were unknown to me and all submitted work. What makes it a bit odd is that the three short story authors, by the very nature of the mediums, submitted a lot less text.

1: Gord Sellar: Gord Sellar is a Canadian living in Korea. He submitted three stories: A story about a jazz musician in an alternate 40's where aliens have musicians tour the solar system. A dark story of a future about longevity and politics. A comic superhero piece about a Korean superhero with an overbearing mother. I thoroughly enjoyed all these stories and was impressed by their variety.

2: David Anthony Durham: A published historical novelist, he submitted "volume 1" of an ox-killer fantasy series. I normally am not much into this sort of thing, and it took me a couple hundred pages to get into this one. It is similar in some ways to Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" in that it is a fantasy story in an alternate Earth with solid historical influence. But as the the second volume of the first book opened, I started really getting into it and I ended up reading the third and final volume in a single day.

The world is a quasi-Europe ruled by an island kingdom in the "middle sea". One of the things I really liked about it is that it was very much a multiracial book (in contrast to the way so many fantasies are pure white) but it was very much grounded in the classical view. The villains are quasi-scandinavian and the heroes something else (Phoenician?) but what made it good is that it is a book of gray areas. The "good" kingdom pushes forth many evils and the bad guys often seem bad by circumstance.

3: Felix Gilman: I almost voted for him as number 2, only decided not to because of the two years of eligibility, this is number one for him and 2 for Durham. He submitted Thunderer, which is a "new weird" story, a sub genre which I love. It is a tale set in a strange infinite city where "gods" roam free. But these gods are strange impersonal forces and like most new weird stories, this is very steampunk. I did find that it suffers in comparison to Mieville, and the novel itself was a bit too long.

4: Aliette de Bodard: She submitted three stories, all set in an alternate Earth where the Chinese colonized North America. Chinese aid meant the Aztec empire never fell, instead becoming a high-tech bloodthirsty nation while the United States is a poor, third-world country hugging the East Coast. I enjoyed these stories, but none of them seemed to be fully their.

5: Tony Pi: I couldn't really get into any of his stories. They were mostly magic realism. I found them forgettable.

This is the last diary. I am not voting in the other categories because I just ran out of time to read the materials. Also, the "fan" awards just don't interest me.