Annal:1988 Hugo Award for Novel

The Uplift War: Book 3 of The Uplift Saga

David Brin

• 1988 Hugo-Novel winner
• 1988 Prometheus finalist
• 1987 Nebula nominee
• Score: 22.38

David Brin’s Uplift novels are among the most thrilling and extraordinary science fiction ever written.  Sundiver, Startide Rising, and The Uplift War—a New York Times bestseller—together make up one of the most beloved sagas of all time.  Brin’s tales are set in a future universe in which no species can reach sentience without being “uplifted” by a patron race.  But the greatest mystery of all remains unsolved: who uplifted humankind?

As galactic armadas clash in quest of the ancient fleet of the Progenitors, a brutal alien race seizes the dying planet of Garth.  The various uplifted inhabitants of Garth must battle their overlords or face ultimate extinction.  At stake is the existence of Terran society and Earth, and the fate of the entire Five Galaxies.  Sweeping, brilliantly crafted, inventive and dramatic, The Uplift War is an unforgettable story of adventure and wonder from one of today’s science fiction greats.

Seventh Son: Book 1 of Tales of Alvin Maker

Orson Scott Card

• 1988 Mythopoeic-Adult winner
• 1988 Hugo-Novel nominee
• 1988 WFA–Novel nominee
• Score: 22.38

From the author of Ender’s Game, an unforgettable story about young Alvin Maker: the seventh son of a seventh son. Born into an alternative frontier America where life is hard and folk magic is real, Alvin is gifted with the power. He must learn to use his gift wisely. But dark forces are arrayed against Alvin, and only a young girl with second sight can protect him.

When Gravity Fails

George Alec Effinger

• 1988 Hugo-Novel nominee
• 1987 Nebula nominee
• Score: 12.38

In a decadent world of cheap pleasures and easy death, Marid Audrian has kept his independence the hardway. Still, like everything else in the Budayeen, he’s available…for a price.

For a new kind of killer roams the streets of the Arab ghetto, a madman whose bootlegged personality cartridges range from a sinister James Bond to a sadistic disemboweler named Khan. And Marid Audrian has been made an offer he can’t refuse.

The 200-year-old “godfather” of the Budayeen’s underworld has enlisted Marid as his instrument of vengeance. But first Marid must undergo the most sophisticated of surgical implants before he dares to confront a killer who carries the power of every psychopath since the beginning of time.

Wry, savage, and unignorable, When Gravity Fails was hailed as a classic by Effinger’s fellow SF writers on its original publication in 1987, and the sequence of “Marid Audrian” novels it begins were the culmination of his career.

The Forge of God

Greg Bear

• 1988 Hugo-Novel nominee
• 1987 Nebula nominee
• Score: 12.38

On September 28th, a geologist working in Death valley finds a mysterious new cinder cone in very well-mapped area.

On October 1st, the government of Australia announces the discovery of an enormous granite mountain. Like the cinder cone, it wasn’t there six months ago….

Something is happening to Planet Earth, and the truth is too terrifying to consider….

The Urth of the New Sun: Volume 5 of The Book of the New Sun

Gene Wolfe

• 1988 Hugo-Novel nominee
• 1988 Nebula nominee
• Score: 12.38

Essential reading for any fan of the four-volume Book of the New Sun. Severian, now the Autarch of Urth, leaves the planet on the huge spaceship of the Heirodules to travel across space and time to face his greatest test—to become the New Sun or be destroyed.