Things I Nominated
Normally I list what I nominated in these posts... but I don't remember, and if I got a confirmation e-mail from Chengdu Worldcon about it, I can't find it. That said, I suspect I didn't nominate anything this year; I doubt I read any published-in-2022 short fiction in 2022. Other than the Hugos, my main way of finding contemporary short fiction is Neil Clarke's The Best Science Fiction of the Year anthologies, but the 2022 one only came out in September, far too late to be useful!
Best Novella
This year, I adopted a new policy, which was to not read things I was strongly certain I would not enjoy. Life is too short, you know? Every book you know you won't like but read anyway is a book you might have liked you could have read instead. Where the Drowned Girls Go is the seventh Wayward Children novella, and also the seventh one to be a finalist. I have ranked the previous ones 2nd, 4th, 4th, 6th, 7th (below No Award), and 5th (below No Award). The trend isn't very promising; though I enjoyed the first well enough, I found later installments didn't make good use of the central premise and McGuire's writing overly precious and twee. It seemed unlikely to me that this one would turn it around.
—if death or betrayal have not torn them apart, why, they must be together still.
A monk travels their country with their talking bird, collecting stories, in this case (this is the third novella in this "cycle") mostly about women who practice martial arts. Well written and with some neat moments of observation, but even though it's a story about a journey and it ends with a big fight, I didn't think it really went anywhere.
“And all I have to do for my soul and a thousand dollars is find the White City Vampire.”
She lifted her half-filled coupe of champagne. “Correct.”
“That’s quite the offer,” I mused. “Plus expenses?”
A noir story about a lesbian detective with supernatural powers who takes a case where her soul lies in the balance. Well told, but like a lot of supernatural mysteries (I find, anyway), it didn't totally hang together. Why did anyone even need the detective wasn't really clear. Everyone else seemed to know so much more than she did! But more focused and interesting to me than Into the Riverlands.
“All I wanted was power.” Her lips make a bitter shape. “I know how I must sound, what you must think of me, but I only mean power over myself. Power to make my own choices, and arrive at my own ends.”
“It's called agency.” And they said my humanities degree would never come in handy. “It's like, the power you exert over your own narrative.”
This is a sequel to A Spindle Splintered, which was a finalist last year. In the first book, the main character discovers she can travel into story worlds, and ends up rewriting Sleeping Beauty. In this book, she jumps into iterations of Snow White. I found the first one solid, but enjoyed this one a lot. There's some clever postmodern stuff, it plays with the multiverse well (it's certainly having a moment, isn't it), and it really thinks through Snow White in a very interesting way. Not quite at the core of what I think of as a Hugo winner to the extent of Ogres, but it would be a worthy winner, and it easily slotted above everything else on the ballot.
“Histories,” Minith says, as though it’s a dirty word. “Apparently we have recruited a humanities student.”
Starts like a fantasy story about a world where ogres dominate humans... but over time, something different and more complicated slowly unspools. Good twists and turns, interesting ideas, and closer to what I find interesting about the genre of sf&f than A Spindle Splintered.
1. What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
It's less galling to be mistaken for a man than a woman, for some reason. Probably because no one tries to kiss your hand or bar you from the Royal Mycology Society.
I bought this and reviewed it on its own (see above) because it's by T. Kingfisher (a.k.a. Ursula Vernon), and I always like her stuff. I was not surprised that it turned out to be my favorite novella this year by some margin. Like Ogres, it seems to be a fantasy story but turns out to be sf; like all of Kingfisher's stuff, it's expertly leavened by humor.
Best Novelette
[UNRANKED] "The Space-Time Painter" by Hai Ya
In the words of your time, the reason why consciousness and soul are beyond prying eyes is precisely because it is not only limited to the three-dimensional world. [machine translation of Chinese original]
I saved this story for last because I was holding out hope that an official English translation would be issued, but in the end, none was forthcoming. So I took the Chinese Word doc included in the packet, bunged it into an AI translator, and gave it a read. The results were less than stellar, but that's not the writer's fault, so I just left it off my ballot. (Though, functionally, that's the same as ranking it sixth.) It's about a detective investigating a haunting who finds a spirit of an artist... I think? It has some potentially creepy moments at the beginning (though they are undermined by the awkward prose and shifting tenses and weird word choice), but I soon got lost, and it was pretty long for a novelette.
It got in a lot trouble for drawing or carving or scratching its initial in desks all over the place, this funky S that kinda also looks like a pointy figure 8. But not lying on its side like the infinity symbol. Infinity standing up.I’ve seen them everywhere. Still do. The space/time continuum gets around.
You’ve probably seen it, too.
A woman narrates her love affair with the space-time continuum across the course of her life, which appears to her in a variety of guises. But what does that actually mean, metaphorically or literally? I never figured that out, and like too much by Valente, it came across as a series of weird but ultimately pointless images; by the halfway point, I was dead bored and struggled to maintain focus enough to get all the way to the end.
“My daughter, even if I can do what you assume I can, surely you must know that it is not truly your mother here with us? None of her essence, her ori, is here, only her memories and her knowledge and a record of the neurochemical pathways that primarily drove her emotions.”
This is set in a future Yoruba nation, where leaders consult the ancestors in a very literal way, accessing a supercomputer programmed with all the memories of the dead. Interesting concept, but I felt it went on a bit too long compared to the complexity of the point it was making, and I'm not sure I really bought the ending twist.
“A city without people is only a ruin.”
This is about a city on Venus under a dome, focusing on the contingent labor that keeps the dome clean, and their rights under increasing pressure from a corporate hierarchy. I like the idea of the story, and it hits all the right beats, but I never felt that emotional connection that I think it was really going for. But I am interested in looking out for more from Vibbert.
2. "Murder by Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness" by S. L. Huang
After all, Sylvie plays by rules we’ve already decided are acceptable.
Told in the form of tech journalism (very well, I might add), this is about an AI named Sylvie that goes after rich corrupt people, stalking them to terrible effect. I have a feeling it might date itself a bit quickly (the story came out the day after ChatGPT debuted), but for the moment, it does a great job speaking to some of the ethical issues around AI and algorithms, that responsibility for actions are displaced and diminished.
I know. He knows I know. I know he knows I know. And, now, in a thrilling anti-climax, we finally both know that we both know. I swear a big chunk of the experience of being closeted is the bookkeeping.
This is a sort of superhero story, about two Asian-American gay bodybuilders, where one of them has superpowers. It is slow but in a good way: well-observed moments between the two characters as they come to know one another. Good application of an sfnal idea in a meaningful way. I liked this one a lot, and would happily see it win.
Best Short Story
6. "On the Razor's Edge" by Jiang Bo
There are no real borders in space; all those who walk in space are true human heroes.
The copy of this Chinese story provided in the packet was translated by AI, and is consequently fairly rough. I found it pretty old-fashioned for prose sf: there's a disaster in space, people do some clever and dangerous stuff. It was hard to get very interested.
5. "The White Cliff" by Lu Ban
“They should not be treated like this. No one in the world is good at death, and no one can impart any experience about death. Even doctors have never really died.”
I found this very slow to start, but eventually it got a bit interesting. It's about a technology to access the minds of the dying, and about coming to terms with one's mortality. Not great, but more to my taste than "On the Razor's Edge."
He wouldn’t let anyone shit-talk my pronouns. My favorite was, How’re you going to memorize spells in dead languages if you can’t even remember ze/zir?
This story is about a potential magic user who wants to go what is clearly a Hogwarts analogue—but in the story's apocalyptic future, magic might be the only thing that can solve the global water crisis, and instead of helping others, the magic school uses its powers for profit. I think the idea of it is better than the execution; there's interesting room for a critique of that aspect of the Harry Potter series, and the director of the magic school is clearly a satire of Muskesque figures, but the satire doesn't say much that is surprising or interesting or funny or biting, and the ending feels too easy, like a cop out. Succeeds as a story better than "The White Cliff" (I was never bored), but not as convincing as "Zhurong on Mars."
Like the humans who had left, e discovered freedom.
This
is (the translator's note at the end helpfully explains) a rewriting of
Chinese myth, transposed to Mars, with the main characters being a
distributed AI intelligence in charge of a manufacturing plant and a
robotic probe, instead of two gods. Well told (certainly the best
translated of all the Chinese stories on the ballot this year), and with
some interesting stuff to say about what counts as intelligence. I think it's probably trying to do less than "D.I.Y." was, but I also think it accomplishes what it set out to do much better.
2. "Resurrection" by Channing Ren
“What are you hungry for?” the old woman asked.
“Stir fried pork with garlic shoots,” said the synthetic.
“He really is my son!” The old woman burst into tears.
Originally published in 2020, this was made reeligible under Hugo rules by the publication of an English translation in 2022. It's about a soldier who dies in a war, and his consciousness is put into a new body and sent home to his grieving mother as part of an experimental program. Of the five Chinese-original finalists, this one was the most successful for me, and worked through the most interesting ideas, about life and death and grieving and memory. I'm even thinking of teaching it.
This is a story about reproductive rights, mostly focused on a girl in the 2090s who gets pregnant in a world where abortion is illegal and implants in your body can even tell your parents when you're pregnant. But it jumps through time, taking in the deployment of contraceptives and abortion rights all across human history. A really powerfully written appeal about a really powerful issue. An easy first place.It is 2091, and Grace is praying that someone might have the means, the interest, and the entrepreneurial spirit to help her out.
Overall Thoughts
The Tordotcom vibe is again a bit too strong in Best Novella, but it was good to see one from Solaris Books (Ogres) and one from a different Tor imprint at least (What Moves the Dead). I think every author in this category is a repeat finalist in this category, which is always a bit disappointing, but it is nice to see Tchaikovsky finally getting some notice from Hugo nominators. My vibe is that Kingfisher will win, but maybe that's just wishful thinking. (Obviously all right-thinking people think like me!)
On the other hand, I found this a good, diverse set of novelettes and short stories. Lots of different approaches to sf, lots of different sources. I don't think I can hazard a guess what will win Best Novelette (every blogger I've seen discuss them has had a very different ranking), but I think "Rabbit Test" will win Best Short Story unless there's more Chinese voters than not.
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