Are the Hugo Awards getting worse? 70 years of winners, rated by readers
Every few years someone declares that the Hugo Awards are not what they used to be. We tested it with reader ratings for every science fiction Best Novel winner and finalist since 1953. Short answer: No. By reader ratings, Hugo winners from the 2010s onward average ★ 4.15, against ★ 3.87 for winners before 1990.
Average rating of Hugo winners, by decade
Bars start at 3.4 stars so differences are visible. Ratings are today’s, so older books are judged by readers who chose to pick them up decades later.
Did the winner beat the field?
A better test than raw ratings: in each decade, how did winners compare with the books they beat?
| Decade | Winners | Finalists | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1950s | ★ 3.70 | ★ 4.14 | -0.44 |
| 1960s | ★ 3.88 | ★ 3.96 | -0.08 |
| 1970s | ★ 4.00 | ★ 3.83 | +0.17 |
| 1980s | ★ 3.93 | ★ 3.82 | +0.10 |
| 1990s | ★ 4.06 | ★ 3.89 | +0.17 |
| 2000s | ★ 3.90 | ★ 3.90 | -0.00 |
| 2010s | ★ 4.07 | ★ 3.91 | +0.15 |
| 2020s | ★ 4.24 | ★ 4.03 | +0.21 |
A positive difference means voters picked books readers still rate above the rest of the shortlist.
The verdict
No. By reader ratings, Hugo winners from the 2010s onward average ★ 4.15, against ★ 3.87 for winners before 1990. Ratings cannot settle questions of taste, and newer books have had less time to find their readers, but the numbers do not support the idea of a steady decline. For year-by-year detail, see the biggest Hugo upsets and every Hugo winner ranked.
About this data
Award records come from the Science Fiction Awards Database and cover the Novel and Novella categories of the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards and the Arthur C. Clarke Award. Ratings are web-aggregated averages, counted only for books with at least 100 ratings. Everything updates automatically as new results are added. You are welcome to cite this page; please link back to it.