The Pulitzers - Hugo Compilation

The Pulitzers - Hugo Compilation

The What

This is a compilation/comparison of the Pulitzer and Hugo awards by year.

I first thought of creating this list when I was writing a review of a mediocre Pulitzer novel, and thought to myself, "I bet the Hugo winner was a better book that year."

Science Fiction books are excluded (shunned?) from the Pulitzer Novel category. So in many years, an average fiction book wins the Pulitzer when a great SF book wins the Hugo. So I guess the Pulitzers are "The best book that year, that isn't a mystery, SF, or romance novel". (I took EQMM for 10 years, so I know about the Edgars, too.)

The Lists

Here is the official list of winners from the Pulitzer website.

Here is the official list of winners from the Hugo website.

Note that the Hugos didn't begin until 1953, so that is where the list starts.

The Comparison

Year	Pulitzer	Hugo	Comments
1953	Ernest Hemingway The Old Man and the Sea	Alfred Bester The Demolished Man
1954	no award	no award	Big year for SF: Ray Bradbury - Fahrenheit 451, Arthur C Clark - Childhoods End, Isaac Asimov - Caves of Steel These guys would have beaten almost any current American writer at this point.
1955	William Faulkner A Fable	Mark Clifton and Frank Riley They'd Rather Be Right
1956	MacKinlay Kantor Andersonville	Robert Heinlein Double Star
1957	no award	no award
1958	James Agee A Death In The Family	Fritz Leiber The Big Time
1959	Robert Lewis Taylor The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters	James Blish A Case of Conscience
1960	Allen Drury Advise and Consent	Robert Heinlein Starship Troopers	Both of these books are about politics, fyi.
1961	Harper Lee To Kill A Mockingbird	Walter M Miller Jr A Canticle for Leibowitz	Interestingly, both of these are single book authors who write significant works, and then fade away.
1962	Edwin O'Connor The Edge of Sadness	Robert Heinlein Stranger in a Strange Land	Heinlein is the better author (over O'Connor) by any measure.
1963	William Faulkner The Reivers	Philip K Dick The Man in the High Castle
1964	no award	Clifford Simak Here Gather the Stars
1965	Shirley Ann Grau The Keepers Of The House	Fritz Leiber The Wanderer
1966	Katherine Anne Porter Collected Stories	Frank Herbert Dune	Herbert could have crushed the entire Pulitzer field this year.
1967	Bernard Malamud The Fixer	Robert Heinlein The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
1968	William Styron The Confessions of Nat Turner	Roger Zelazny Lord of Light
1969	N. Scott Momaday House Made of Dawn	John Brunner Stand on Zanzibar
1970	Jean Stafford Collected Stories	Ursula K Le Guin The Left Hand of Darkness	I know I am biased, but Le Guin should be in the top 10 all-time American Novelists. This is her most significant work.
1971	no award	Larry Niven Ringworld
1972	Wallace Stegner Angle of Repose	Philip Jose Farmer To Your Scattered Bodies Go	McCaffery (Dragonquest), loses to the more 'literary' Farmer. But McCaffery was just getting started. She should get more credit.
1973	Eudora Welty The Optimists Daughter	Isaac Asimov The Gods Themselves
1974	no award	Arthur C Clark Rendezvous with Rama
1975	Michael Shaara The Killer Angels	Ursula K Le Guin The Dispossessed
1976	Saul Bellow Humboldt's Gift	Joe Haldeman The Forever War
1977	no award	Kate Wilhelm Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
1978	James Alan McPherson Elbow Room	Frederik Pohl Gateway
1979	John Cheever The Stories of John Cheever	Vonda N. McIntyre Dreamsnake	McIntyre is massivly overlooked and underrated. I think she could go head to head with Cheever in both novel and short story.
1980	Norman Mailer The Executioner's Song	Arthur C Clark The Fountains of Paradise
1981	John Kennedy Toole A Confederacy of Dunces	Joan D. Vinge The Snow Queen
1982	John Updike Rabbit Is Rich	C. J. Cherryh Downbelow Station
1983	Alice Walker The Color Purple	Isaac Asimov Foundation's Edge	First year the big three (Asimov, Clark, Heinlein) are all short listed. Interesting.
1984	William Kennedy Ironweed	David Brin Startide Rising	Frankly any of the Brin books are better than Ironweed.
1985	Alison Lurie Foreign Affairs	William Gibson Neuromancer	Gibson rocked the SF field with this book and introduced and entire sub-genre (cyber-punk). Lurie and her book fade away to obscurity.
1986	Larry McMurtry Lonesome Dove	Orson Scott Card Ender's Game	Holy crap, another huge year. Brin's Postman, and Bear's Blood Music, and Niven/Pournelle's Footfall are also shortlisted.
1987	Peter Taylor A Summons to Memphis	Orson Scott Card Speaker for the Dead	If you don't read Ender's epic (Enders Game, Speaker, Xenocide), shame on you!
1988	Toni Morrison Beloved	David Brin The Uplift War	FYI, book 3 of a trilogy.
1989	Anne Tyler Breathing Lessons	C. J. Cherryh Cyteen
1990	Oscar Hijuelos The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love	Dan Simmons Hyperion
1991	John Updike Rabbit At Rest	Lois McMaster Bujold The Vor Game	Bujold is every bit as good as Updike, maybe better. She wins in a competitive year, Updike wins with a 4th-in-series in a weak field.
1992	Jane Smiley A Thousand Acres	Lois McMaster Bujold Barrayar	The scene at the end of the book where Cordelia ends the war, is one of the top ten passages I have ever read.
1993	Robert Olen Butler A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain	Vernor Vinge/Connie Willis A Fire Upon the Deep/Domesday Book	First place tie. Willis would have easily won if Vinge hadn't been shutout in previous years with 2 better books to Card and Gibson. Good company to be in, I suppose.
1994	E. Annie Proulx The Shipping News	Kim Stanley Robinson Green Mars	I see this as compensation award since he didn't win for Red Mars.
1995	Carol Shields The Stone Diaries	Lois McMaster Bujold Mirror Dance
1996	Richard Ford Independence Day	Neal Stephenson The Diamond Age	Sawyer should have won for Hobsons Choice. Both of these better that Independence Day
1997	Steven Millhauser Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer	Kim Stanley Robinson Blue Mars
1998	Philip Roth American Pastoral	Joe Haldeman Forever Peace
1999	Michael Cunningham The Hours	Connie Willis To Say Nothing of the Dog
2000	Jhumpa Lahiri Interpreter of Maladies	Vernor Vinge A Deepness in the Sky	And Cryptonomicon loses, which is a better book than any of the Pulitzers for 5 years bebore or after.
2001	Michael Chabon The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay	J. K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
2002	Richard Russo Empire Falls	Neil Gaiman American Gods
2003	Jeffrey Eugenides Middlesex	Robert J. Sawyer Hominids
2004	Edward P. Jones The Known World	Lois McMaster Bujold Paladin of Souls	A weak year for books all around.
2005	Marilynne Robinson Gilead	Susanna Clarke Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
2006	Geraldine Brooks March	Robert Charles Wilson Spin	A good book, but Scalzi (Old Man's War) is better.
2007	Cormac McCarthy The Road	Vernor Vinge Rainbows End
2008	Junot Diaz The Brief Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao	Michael Chabon The Yiddish Policemen's Union	Oh ho! The only author who appears on both lists!
2009	Elizabeth Strout Olive Kitteridge	Neil Gaiman The Graveyard Book
2010	Paul Harding Tinkers	Paolo Bacigalupi/China Miéville The Windup Girl/The City & the City
2011	Jenifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad	Connie Willis Blackout/All Clear
2012	no award	Jo Walton Among Others
2013	Adam Johnson The Orphan Master's Son	John Scalzi Redshirts	This wasn't his best book. I have all 6 Old Man's War books, and they are bettter.

After 2013, things start to go sideways at the Hugos. Andy Wier doesn't even get shortlisted for 'The Martian'. Multiple groups are created to game the voting. There are still good SF books being written, but they are not showing up at the Hugos.

The Pulitzers - Hugo Compilation