Hugo winner: The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neil Stephenson, 1996
My view: Phyles! Nanites! A more successful look at slice-of-life Steampunk-ish culture (albeit based in the future instead of the past) than Gibson and Sterling's The Difference Engine! Although I didn't enjoy this as much as Stephenson's Snow Crash, the plot here is a lot easier to follow than the back-and-forth past/present-jumping one he tailored for Cryptonomicon. It also has two noticeable advantages over Cryptonomicon as well, namely comparative brevity (a 400-plus page difference in length makes that abundantly clear) and an ending that doesn't feel like all the air just went out of the novel you were enjoying up until then. More than deserving of the best novel award for that year, IMHO.
Nuggety? In some alternative reality, maybe. Otherwise, no.
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