Colin Harvey has a new post up at Suite 101 in which he catalogs all of the British Hugo winners in the written fiction categories. There are quite a few (though nowhere near as many as there would be had he included the fan categories). Towards the end he makes this observation: “The reader will notice a distinct surge in winners since 2001.”

And he’s right, there is a definite upswing in the number of British winners, especially in Best Novel where the frequency has gone up from around one a decade to every other year. What is the explanation for this? Have British writers suddenly got heaps better?

No, I don’t think so. Nor do I think that Emerald City had anything to do with it. What I think we are seeing here is the effect of the Internet, email and cheap air travel. It is now much easier for British writers to get published in the USA, and for them to travel to North America to meet their fans. In the next decade I look forward to seeing a sudden rise in winners from places other than the US, Canada and UK.