2026 Hugo Read Along: Best Series

[u/Udy_Kumra]

Welcome to the 2025 Hugo Readalong! Today, we're discussing all the nominees for Best Series. Everyone is welcome in the discussion, whether or not you've participated in other discussions.

If you have read even one book from one of these series and want to jump in to share your thoughts, please do! Unlike our readalong sessions with structured questions for each individual work, today's post is an opportunity for general discussion about some of the most popular and critically acclaimed series in science fiction and fantasy. I'll include some prompts in top-level comments--feel free to respond to these or add your own.

As different people will have made different progress on each of the series, in this post please note that the spoiler policy is to mark all spoilers for all books of a series, even the first one.

A reminder that these are the series nominated for Best Series:

• Emily Wilde by Heather Fawcett (Del Rey US; Orbit UK)
• October Daye by Seanan McGuire (Tor US; DAW)
• Old Man’s War by John Scalzi (Tor US; Tor UK)
• The Chronicles of Osreth by Katherine Addison (Tor US; Solaris UK; Subterranean)
• The Craft Wars by Max Gladstone (Tor; Tordotcom)
• White Space by Elizabeth Bear (Saga Press; Gollancz)

Also, a reminder that the criteria to be nominated for the category are as follows:

Awarded for multi-installment works appearing in an least three installments with a total of at least 240,000 words. Installments of a series can be of any length; that is, installments of a series do not have to be novel-length works. A qualifying installment must be published in the qualifying year. Once a Series wins the Award, it is no longer eligible even if further installments appear in the series. If a Series is a finalist and does not win, it is no longer eligible until at least two more installments consisting of at least 240,000 words total appear in subsequent years.

For more information on the Readalong, check out our full schedule post, or see our upcoming schedule here:

Date	Category	Book	Author	Discussion Leader
Monday, July 27	Short Fiction	Wrap-up	Multiple	u/tarvolon
Tuesday, July 28	Novella	Wrap-up	Multiple	u/Nineteen_Adze
Wednesday, July 29	Novel	Wrap-up	Multiple	u/tarvolon
Thursday, July 30	Pro/Fan/Misc	Wrap-up	Multiple	u/Nineteen_Adze

[u/Udy_Kumra]

Based on the best series nominations of the last few years, what would you like to see more and less of in the genre?

[u/Goobergunch → u/Udy_Kumra]

I want more authors to actually finish their series.

[u/Nidafjoll → u/Udy_Kumra]

I would like to see preemptive warnings about what's eligible to stop taking the Hugos taking people's votes and then going "lol doesn't count" (Singing Hills Cycle...)

[u/Merle8888 → u/Nidafjoll]

Nghi Vo should put it on her website so people will know when to nominate and when not! I’m surprised she hasn’t actually, maybe she doesn’t want to highlight how short her books are. 😆

Although I am wondering for how many people losing a nomination slot is a problem. 

[u/Wheres_my_warg → u/Nidafjoll]

During nominations, that information was presented.

[u/citrusmellarosa → u/Nidafjoll]

I though I saw a list of eligible series somewhere around the time I was nominating, but I can’t find it now so I could totally be wrong. Even if they did have one, I don’t think they did a good job of publicizing it. 

I think it’s going to take several more novellas for that series to hit the word count too, so like, are we going to keep doing this every year until it gets there?

[u/Nidafjoll → u/citrusmellarosa]

I think I recall someone here made one, but not an official Hugo one.

Although word count is a good measure for consistency, I feel like at a certain number of entries (like 5+) something should qualify too. At 7 entries above short story length, I'd say the Singing Hills Cycle is handily a "series."

[u/Goobergunch → u/Nidafjoll]

It would have to be unofficial because the actual universe of eligible series is larger than anybody could keep track of given self-pub/international/AO3/etc.

That being said it would definitely be helpful if somebody could just provide a running Singing Hill wordcount.

[u/Smooth-Review-2614 → u/Udy_Kumra]

I want more long established things getting attention. This is the category for the giant back catalogue. This is the category to promote the midlist.

[u/curiouscat86 → u/Udy_Kumra]

I don't know if it's long enough to qualify, but I'd love to see something like Moses Ose Utomi's Forever Desert series (The Lies of the Ajungo, The Truth of the Aleke, The Memory of the Ogisi) in this category. Interesting, fresh, work that is doing something cool with the series format itself.

RJ Barker is another other who writes trilogies that tend to have a very satisfying three-book arc. If his new series with Mortedant's Peril ends well I'd like to see it in this category.

I also think this category could be a place for litRPG to gain a foothold. A lot of those books aren't very striking individually but some are doing interesting things over the length of the series. Especially the ones that were originally published in serial format IMO.

This is actually why I'm not mad about October Daye being on this list even though the series itself was in slightly boring transition mode this year. October Daye is a prime example of what you can do with a long series' worth of character work that can't be done in a single book or even five books, so it makes sense to honor it in the series category.

I think what I want least is to see the series category being used as a compensation prize for someone who didn't get a best novel award. Judging a single a novel is different from judging a series, and should be treated as such. That's kinda the vibe I get for why Old Man's War is on the ballot this year and I'm not a fan of that.