After taking a year off due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the committee behind the Sidewise Awards have announced the finalists for its annual award for books published in both 2019 and 2020.
Named for Murray Leinster’s 1934 story “Sidewise in Time,” the award was first handed out in 1996 to honor the best works in alternate history published in the prior year. The award comes in two categories: one honoring short fiction (anything less than a novel) and the other honoring long-form works.
Here are the 2019 finalists:
2019 Short Form
- “Any Way the Wind Blows” by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com, June 2019)
- “Drang Nach Osten (Drive to the East)” by Christopher Nuttall (Trouble in the Wind, December 2019)
- “The Kaiserin of the Seas” by Christopher Nuttall (To Slip the Surly Bonds, September 2019)
- “The Blue and the Red: Palmerston’s Ironclads” by William Stroock (Those in Peril, February 2019)
- “Christmas Truce” by Harry Turtledove (Asimov’s Science Fiction, November-December 2019)
2019 Long Form
- Famous Men Who Never Lived by K. Chess
- Walking through Dreams by Jared Kavanagh
- The Fall of Rorke’s Drift by John Laband
- The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz
Here are the 2020 finalists:
2020 Short Form
- “1827: Napoleon in Australia” by Andrew J Harvey (Alternative Australias, December 2020)
- “Moonshot” by Matthew Kresal (Alternative Australias, December 2020)
- “Wheel of Echos” by Sean McMullen (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, January-February 2020)
2020 Long Form
- The Good German by Dennis Bock
- The Cold Last Swim by Junior Burke
- The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal
- The Day Lincoln Lost by Charles Rosenberg
- The Doors of Eden by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The award committee hasn’t said when the winners for either award will be announced.
The award was last handed out in 2019, in which Oscar (Xiu) Ramirez and Emmanuel Valtierra won the short form for “Codex Valtierra,” and Mary Robinette Kowal earned the award for her novel The Calculating Stars. Eric Flint also earned a Special Achievement for his work in on his 1632 series.
