Hugo Nominee / Voter's Packet Available

Via File 770, the Hugo Voter's Packet has been released by Sasquan, the host of 2015's Worldcon.

From the press release:

A digital file of many of the Hugo Award nominees is now available for members of Sasquan to download at http://sasquan.org/hugo-awards/packet_download/. This free download is supplied by the creators and publishers of works that are nominated for the awards. It is free to all current Supporting, Attending and Young Adult members of Sasquan, and those who become members before 31 July 2015. Its purpose is to allow those who are voting on the Hugo Awards to be able to make an informed choice among the nominated works.

All of the short fiction and graphic novels are included in their entirety (((assuming Zombie Nation comes through!))). The packet contains the full text of three of the novels: The Dark between the Stars by Kevin J. Anderson, The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, amd The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu. Skin Game by Jim Butcher and Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie are represented by extensive excerpts. One of the five finalists in the Related Work category is represented by an excerpt: Letters from Gardner, by Lou Antonelli. There is some material in each of the other categories except the Dramatic Presentations, but not everyone wanted us to include their work in this packet.

Many of the shorter nominated works had already been made available online (find links here), as is the custom, but not all. The packet appears to have covered all of the short fiction, three of the novels (with excerpts of two), four of the five graphic novels with hope for Zombie Nation, and four of the Related Works (with an excerpt for the last).

So, there may be an addition to the voter's packet (which is slightly annoying to potentially download some stuff twice to get it all, but I'd rather they release as much as they can early and then fill in the holes later as it comes out - that way the maximum amount of reviewing can be done of the nominated works. 

You can find Zombie Nation online, but there's no way to tell what is included in the nominated collection. I've been boldly reading the comic from the start, powering through, but I'm only up to 2013 strips, so it's taking a while. But, you can look at any 2014 work from Zombie Nation and use that to evaluate Carter Reid for Fan Artist if you don't want to wait for Zombie Nation to hit the voter's packet (or attempt to read five years of strips).

Happy reading, y'all.