Here is my first set of ranked Hugo finalists; the short fiction was the first stuff I finished. Can't lie; I always approach short fiction a bit trepidatiously these days, because I don't think my tastes are strongly aligned with the nominators', and the same authors and venues tend to come up again and again. (Three stories are from the same issue of Uncanny!) But that's unfair, because I actually do come across a lot of good, new-to-me short fiction!
Things I Nominated
I nominated just one thing across all three short fiction categories, the short story "Lena" by Sam Hughes, an indie short story writer better known by his screen name (do we say "handle" these days?) of "qntm." It's a fictional Wikipedia entry about the first person to have their mind simulated via computer, and I think I will be teaching it in my "life extension"–themed college class. Anyway, no surprise to not find it on the ballot; Hughes comes out of the SCP Foundation, which I don't think has a lot of Hugo-nominator overlap.
Best Novella
7. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
Dex realized with a stomach-souring thud that they were standing on the wrong side of the vast gulf between having read about doing a thing and doing the thing.
A "tea monk" spends a bunch of time in the wilderness and meets a robot. Felt like this was about twice as long as it needed to be to make its point. Also for some reason I find Chambers's use of "fuck" jarring. It's not the word in prose in general, just her books. Anyway, bafflingly dull.
6. Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de BodardEldris, after all, is the kind of princess who gets rescued.
Like a lot of de Bodard that I have read, this read less interesting than it would sound if described to me. A young princess in a fantasy world must navigate false friendships and a fire spirit. Felt to me like the story could never quite focus on what it was actually about.
5. Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire
She chose this world, where she could never be normal, over the world she had been made for.
The Wayward Children novellas will continue until the morale improves.
Seriously,
though, this was one of the better ones, probably because the twee
narrative voice McGuire affects in most of these is largely absent here. It's about an intersex kid who finds belonging in a fantasy world of centaurs and unicorns.
I am not convinced the twist made a ton of sense, but I mostly enjoyed
it up until that point. Probably better put together than Fireheart Tiger, though I wouldn't rush to recommend either.
4. No Award
If the Hugo electorate will insist on only nominating Tordotcom novellas, then I will insist on using No Award to separate the worthy from the unworthy. (Most of the time I don't bother using it unless I think something is really bad.)
3. A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. HarrowMaybe the universe doesn't naturally bend toward justice either; maybe it's only the weight of hands and hearts pulling it true, inch by stubborn inch.
I've read a number of pieces by Harrow for the Hugos the past few years, and this is definitely the best of them. This is a sort of postmodern, feminist, ("hopepunk"?) take on Sleeping Beauty, which moves quickly and does some interesting things: a recent college grad with a degenerative disease finds her degree (from OU!) in folklore comes in useful when she's plunged into the world of her favorite fairy tale. It didn't totally grip me, and Elder Race was more in the area of what I find interesting, but a solid entry overall.
2. Elder Race by Adrian TchaikovskyI have lived a long, long life and it has meant nothing, and I'm on a fucking quest with a couple of women who don't understand things like germs or fusion power or anthropological theories of value.
An anthropological observer from an advanced but lost culture must team up with a princess from a more primitive one who insists on seeing him as a wizard. Pretty enjoyable but I never found it as arresting as I did, say, The Past Is Red. I think it had some interesting things to say (how different cultures process the same things), but I also felt like it could have been richer thematically. I kept comparing it unfavorably to Le Guin.
1. The Past Is Red by Catherynne M. Valente
“Have you been running a quality assurance test on me all this time, Tetley?” she teases, laughing.
But I keep eating snap peas and I don't say anything back because when you really think about it, it isn't funny. When humans meet other humans, that's all they do forever.
This is a postapocalyptic novella about a young girl, and then a young woman, who lives in a place called Garbagetown after the seas have risen so high there's no land left anywhere. It has a strong narrative voice, and a strong sense of theme: it's a great story about the places we look for hope, in each other and in stories, and about the ways we're often let down. Obviously it's a Tordotcom novella, but it's not one of the ones that reads like a pilot for a streaming show, it's an actual piece of prose.
Best Novelette
7. "O₂ Arena" by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki
Now the merchants of death sold life and oxygen because death was now
in abundance, and life was the commodity in demand. You had to pay to
breathe. O₂ credit was life.
Set in the near future where oxygen is scarce; the narrator is a law student in Nigeria who ends up battling in the "O₂ Arena" for more O₂ credits. I kind of felt like the whole story was constructed based on that pun. I thought this was pretty bad, to be honest. It spends a lot of time on things that don't matter (how law school works) and not much time on things that do (the narrator's decisions). The writing is clumsy: it consistently implies a thing but then in the next sentence, tells you the thing anyway.
6. No Award
I don't think "O₂ Arena" is not to my taste (as, say, "Unseelie Brothers" is); I think it's outright bad. Sometime after I originally wrote this post, I realized that meant I should rank it below No Award, so I came back and added that to it. Also I guess I am hedging: this won the Nebula somehow!
5. "Unseelie Brothers, Ltd." by Fran Wilde
Inside, the machines—old Singers, new 3-D printers, and everything in between—waited, surrounded by fireflies and shadows.
A girl in fashion design discovers a magic dress store. It felt pretty aimless at first, and I was like, why am I not enjoying it? Then I remembered that an unseelie is a fairy, and nothing interests me less than a fantasy story about fairies. But I guess it was fine for what it was.
4. "Bots of the Lost Ark" by Suzanne PalmerAs unfathomably alien as humans were, that at least made sense to 9.
The Mantra of Perseverance was clearly fundamental to all thinking
units.
This is a sequel to Palmer's "The Secret Life of Bots," which was a finalist (and won) in 2018. Like that story, it was entertaining and engaging... but I don't know that I would give it award. Still, not boring like "Unseelie Brothers" nor actively bad like "O₂ Arena."
3. "Colors of the Immortal Palette" by Caroline M. Yoachim
“An art collector is hoarding time. Time spent by the artist applying paint to the canvas, yes. But there is more to it than that. Each successive painting contains something of the time that went into all the previous canvases, not to mention the time spent studying, practicing. And the art holds other time as well—the model that sits for the painting, holding a pose for hours on end. Time that she has devoted, perhaps, to keeping a certain figure, or creating an appealing hairstyle.”
An immortal Japanese woman who has always been known as a model for painters seeks to become a painter herself. Pretty good, with some great observations on gender, race, and art. Nothing wrong with it; just not my favorite.
2. "L’Esprit de L’Escalier" by Catherynne M. Valente
Marriage isn’t what he thought it would be.
She didn’t even thank him for making her breakfast. He doesn’t want that to annoy him the way it does, but he can’t shake it.
A modernized retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, where they're both contemporary celebrities, following their attempts to re-acclimate to normal life after Eurydice's resurrection. If you know my tastes in fiction, you'll know it's quite a compliment for me to say this almost read like it was by Jeanette Winterson.
1. "That Story Isn't the Story" by John Wiswell
Anton knows he doesn’t have a work ethic. The helplines have taught him better. He has a habituated trauma that requires him to do something or face consequences he’s too afraid to think about.
Very clever, well put together, moving story about a gay man escaping the thrall of a vampire, a very unsubtle but very effective metaphor for escaping the pull of an abusive relationship. This one did a great job of putting you in the protagonist's mindset, and of making you unsure what was magic and what was just the protagonist's damaged way of thinking.
Best Short Story
7. Magic: The Gathering: "Tangles" by Seanan McGuire
[T]rees had no gender as such, but dryads did, and upon discovering the
concept in her mind, he had considered his choices and decided he
preferred the masculine...
I believe that, with the possible exception of one or two Best Graphic Story finalists, this is the first ever piece of tie-in fiction to be a Hugo finalist. The occasional complaints of a tie-in author with whom I was LiveJournal friends with back in the day aside, I am certain that you could count the number of Hugo-worthy tie-in works ever produced on one hand. This confusing, mediocre story is not among them. How ever did it get nominated? (Oh, Seanan McGuire wrote it.)
6. No Award
I think I would wail in despair if a tie-in to a card game won a Hugo Award.
5. "Mr. Death" by Alix E. Harrow
I can’t quote the Book of Death line and verse the way Raz can, but I’m
pretty sure there’s a policy somewhere against playing catch in broad
daylight with a doomed two-and-a-half-year-old, surrounded by the green
hum of summer.
A reaper who when he was alive lost his toddler-aged son is assigned to recover a toddler's soul himself. I liked it most of the way through but found the final turn obnoxiously saccharine, and it ruined the story for me. If it hadn't been for that false moment, it would have ranked much higher.
4. "Unknown Number" by Blue Neufstifter
if you're asking if I named myself after Xena's girlfriend I think you probably already know the answer
Told as a Twitter thread of a series of screenshots of a text conversation, this is about a trans woman being contacted by an alternate universe self who never transitioned. Neat idea well told, but feels more like an exhortation than a story.
3. "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather" by Sarah Pinsker
>@BarrowBoy all you ever do is
mark stretches and shoot down other peoples’ theories without ever
offering any yourself. Do you care about this ballad at all?–Dynamum
>I don’t even like this song. The melody’s okay, but it needs a bridge. –BarrowBoy
>Argh. If you don’t like the song, why are you here? –Dynamum
>For those sweet sweet LyricSplainer level badges. U? –BarrowBoy
This story is a (fictional) English folk ballad, annotated by commenters on a lyrics-explaining web site. Pinsker has a real mastery of both the ballad form and the culture of Internet commenters, and manages to tell something pretty creepy despite the distanced form. Not as emotionally affected as Pinsker's best work, but middling Pinsker beats most other short story writers' best. I could have gone either way between this and "Sin of America," but there's a clear separation between this and everything I ranked below it.
2. "The Sin of America" by Catherynne M. Valente
The Blue Bison Diner is a ghost’s living room and it is serving the sin of America.
Creepy, literary, effective story about a woman eating "the sin of America" at a crappy diner. Sort of a latter-day "The Lottery" or "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," but was it really even science fiction or fantasy? Felt more "literary" than that. (By which I mean, I guess there's magic in it, but the magic seems more metaphorical than actual.) I really hated how Valente wrote Space Opera, but her prose on the short fiction ballots this year was great. (Three of them, one per category!) Anyway, neat story I was happy to read.
1. "Proof by Induction" by José Pablo Iriarte
“Don’t you feel anything at all?” He couldn’t remember if his father had ever had a feeling in his damned life.
“Would it change anything?”
Enjoyable story about a mathematician who uses a simulation of his dead mathematician father to both solve a proof and work through his father issues. Good idea, well told, though that no one else had thought of using mind simulations this way before didn't really ring true to me.
Overall Thoughts
I know I complain every year about Tordotcom and the novella category, but I found this a much better set of novellas than we've seen in a while. Literally none of them felt like streaming show pilots! And The Past Is Red in particular was very strong. On the other hand, Best Short Story felt a bit weak this year; I feel like I placed "Proof by Induction" at the top largely by default.
I find it a little tricky to predict short fiction winners—especially without Murderbot in the mix. This is McGuire's sixth sequential nomination for a Wayward Children novella, but she only won for the first one, so I don't think she'll win it this year. Who'm I kidding, though? It'll be Becky Chambers. But for the other categories, I don't any inkling at all.
