The Expanse: Memory's Legion by James S.A. Corey

As I have chronicled here in the past, The Expanse novels were accompanied by a series of short stories and novellas fleshing out the world and characters of the main series of nine novels. These were all released in electronic format originally, and I read them in between the novels, reviewing them on this blog. Once the series was complete, the stories were collected in a single hardcover edition, and I picked that up so I'd have a volume to match the rest of the series even though I'd read them before; over the past few weeks I read the volume, picking up stories in between Hugo finalists.

The stories were:

1. "Drive" (2012): about the often-mentioned inventor of the Epstein drive
2. "The Butcher of Anderson Station" (2011): how Fred Johnson went from hunter of Belter terrorists to advocate for their cause
3. "Gods of Risk" (2012): about a cousin of Bobbie Draper's after the events of book two
4. "The Churn" (2014): the backstory of Amos on Earth 
5. "The Vital Abyss" (2015): a side story about a group of kidnapped scientists working on the protomolecule
6. "Strange Dogs" (2017): kids growing up on a Laconian subject world 
7. "Auberon" (2019): the governor of a Laconian subject world discovers maintaining order is harder than he thought
8. "The Sins of Our Fathers" (2022): follows up a loose strand about Naomi's terrorist child, long after the events of the rest of the series

If you want my thoughts on individual stories, you can get them above. As I mentioned in my review of Ann Leckie's Lake of Souls, one of the benefits of a reading a single-author collection is it allows you to really triangulate an author's interests, figure out what kind of themes and ideas drive them.

Memory's Legion: The Complete Expanse Story Collection by James S.A. Corey

Collection published: 2022
Contents originally published: 2011-22
Acquired: July 2024
Read: May 2025

It would be easy, I think, to dismiss James S.A. Corey as a pulp writer, someone who write competent action-adventure but not more than that, a sort of John Scalzi figure, the kind of writer with little to say. But to do that would be unfair to Corey, who I think—if this doesn't sound too weird—is honestly a better and more thoughtful writer than they need to be. Reading this volume shows how much Corey is engaged in a bigger project than political thrillers and spaceship combat.

Of particular note to me, I think, is how interested Corey is in empathy: who do we connect to, and how our ability to build connections enables or disables our ability to commit violence. You can find traces of this in all of these stories, but in particular it runs through "The Butcher of Anderson Station," "The Churn," "The Vital Abyss," and "Auberon." "Butcher" is about a man who commits an unjustified act of violence, and whose ability to empathize leads him to switch sides as a result. Both "The Churn" and "The Vital Abyss" are about people without empathy, but opposite sides of the same coin: "The Churn" explores a man who cannot empathize but desperately wants to, and so seeks out others who can help guide his violence appropriately; "Vital Abyss" focuses on a man who did have the ability to empathize, and purposefully got rid of it so that he could commit violent acts. (This is a very real phenomenon that Elana Gomel discusses quite compellingly in her monograph Bloodscripts: how do we convince ourselves that other human beings are sufficiently different from us that we are okay with hurting them?) "Auberon" comes at this idea from a different direction, showing us how a Laconian governor's empathy compromises him—his love for his wife stops him from carrying out his duty, even as he also has the ability to kill his own subordinates to further the Laconian cause! Meanwhile, his enemies understand him well enough to manipulate and control him.

Outside of violence, other stories consider other consequences of empathy: "Gods of Risk," for example, follows how a teenage boy's seeming feelings for a girl lead him in dangerous directions, while "The Sins of Our Fathers" focuses on how one character regains his ability to work with groups after a lifetime of isolation. Perhaps the most potent story in this regard, though, is "Strange Dogs": in their author's note on the story, Corey argues it's about immigration, about how children of immigrants do things their parents just don't understand because what seems normal to them is alien to their parent. And I think that's true—but you might also have called it "Strange Empathy," as what distinguishes the children from their parents is their ability to empathize with the alien... even when that alien is deeply disturbing to your parents.

There's a lot about childhood here, actually: being a child trying to escape the burdens imposed on you by your parents is the point of (in varying degrees) "Gods of Risk," "The Churn," "Vital Abyss," "Strange Dogs," and "Sins of Our Fathers." As a character in that last story says, "our parents can lay burdens on us, all without meaning to, that we'll have to carry around for the rest of our lives and there's nothing we can do about that. But you and I still get to decided how we carry those burdens." Broaden the idea of "parent" and you get, I would argue, the whole thesis of The Expanse. Those who have come before us have set the stage for us: they've given us politics and violence and economics and religion and all these other systems that have shaped our lives. We can't escape those influences, but we get to decide what we do with them.

The universe is, after all, a place where anything can happen: a wide open expanse.

Hugos 2023: Ballots for Dramatic Presentation and Graphic Story

Next, we have my nominations and votes in the "visual" categories: comics, tv, and film. (I have linked the titles if I have written a review elsewhere, or if the work is freely available on the Internet.)

Things I Nominated

As I said in my last post, I lost my nominating ballot (if I ever had it), but I am pretty sure I nominated an episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season one, "Spock Amok," for the Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) category.

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Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) 

6. Star Wars: Andor 1x12: "Rix Road", written by Tony Gilroy, directed by Benjamin Caron

Andor is a Disney Plus show that's a prequel to Rogue One, a film I found overrated—and I have to admit, I don't really remember the character of Andor at all. (Plus, as a Star Trek fan, I find his name confusing.) Normally with shows I don't watch that are Hugo finalists, I just watch the relevant episodes, not any other ones. Sometimes this works (I think both For All Mankind episodes I've seen work great on their own), sometimes it does not (my friend Christiana is always criticizing the scattershot way I viewed The Good Place). This year I acceded to Christiana's advice, which was to not watch all twelve episodes of Andor, but to at least watch the first and sixth before moving onto the two that were Hugo finalists.

This was good advice, in that I had some helpful context, but also bad advice in that I thought the sixth episode, "The Eye," was much better than the two that were actually finalists; had "The Eye" been a finalist, I probably would have ranked it first. "Rix Road"—like most of the Andor episodes I saw—does a great job of building to a dramatic climax, as the inhabitants of an Empire-occupied planet take to the titular road to hold an illegal funeral procession for Andor's mother. But unlike "The Eye" and "One Way Out," I felt like the energy of this dramatic confrontation fizzled rather than exploded; the speech by Andor's mother is good, but then it just kind of ends. So I would put it roughly on a par with "Babylon's Ashes"; I gave a slight edge to The Expanse based on my long-term loyalty to that show.

 

5. The Expanse 6x6: "Babylon's Ashes", written by Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck and Naren Shankar, directed by Breck Eisner

As I say every year, I stopped watching The Expanse back during season 3, but it's not the show's fault, it's my own. However, I have enough context to follow what's happening because I read all the books, and the show is fairly faithful. That said, I suspect the emotions of the pay-offs of a season finale (series finale?) would come across much more strongly had I watched the preceding episodes. So, yeah, this was fine and had its moments, but if I ever catch up on The Expanse, I think I will like it more. (Bits of it were very sudden, though; it seems pretty crazy that they did the first book in fifteen episodes, but the sixth one in six!)

4. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, ep. 9: "Whose Show Is This?", written by Jessica Gao, directed by Kat Coiro

As always, it is perhaps silly for my only episode of a show to be the season finale, but that's how I (usually) roll. This was okay, I guess, but it more fizzled out than climaxed. Which maybe was on purpose, given the meta gags, but I didn't think those worked terribly well (though I did like how she broke out of her show); my favorite jokes were the ones about Charlie Cox's Daredevil, who put in a completely unexpected appearance. But I was moderately entertained, so fourth place it is.

3. Star Wars: Andor 1x10: "One Way Out", written by Beau Willimon, directed by Toby Haynes

"One Way Out" is a solid prison break story, but perhaps one that would have benefited more from seeing the prison set up in previous episodes. Christiana told me that Andor has a lot of wheel-spinning episodes, but if you jump around like I did it has an admirable tendency to be completely different each time out. Episodes one, six, and ten have almost nothing in common in terms of character or setting except for Andor himself.

2. For All Mankind 3x10: "Stranger in a Strange Land", written by Matt Wolpert & Ben Nedivi, directed by Craig Zisk

 

Even though I have only seen one previous episode of For All Mankind (the season two finale, a Hugo finalist last year), I found the pay-offs in this much more effective. In this episode (of a show about an alternate history of the space race), while terrorists attack NASA on Earth, a group of astronauts on Mars must figure out how to get a pregnant woman to a waiting orbiter where she can safely give birth even though they're almost out of fuel. Groups of smart people working together to come up with bizarre plans is basically my favorite genre of television, and this is a strong example of it. If I can ever stomach paying regularly for Apple TV+, I will have to go back and watch the rest of this show.

1. Stranger Things 4, ch. 4: "Dear Billy", written by Paul Dichter, directed by Shawn Levy

 

As I've been saying, I normally watch only whatever episode of a show is specifically nominated... but I had seen seasons one and two of Stranger Things, before I fell behind on my tv watching, so I resolved this would be my impetus to catch up. I saved Stranger Things for last in my schedule just in case I couldn't make it through everything, but I was indeed able to view twelve episodes in the month of September, getting me up to "Dear Billy." I can see why this episode was a finalist; Sadie Sink is excellent as Max throughout, and in particular the famous ending with its use of Kate Bush is harrowing and triumphant, a great depiction of depression and the ways we can sometimes escape from it. I really struggled to place this against For All Mankind, but ultimately decided to go with the show I actually watch otherwise. (Now that I've fulfilled my Hugo obligations, I can stop watching again, right?)

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Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)

6. Avatar: The Way of Water; directed by James Cameron; script by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa, and Amanda Silver

I successfully went fourteen years of my life never having seen Avatar; alas, I was not so lucky with the sequel, which I suffered through in all its inexplicably-three-hour entirety. It seems to me that the entire movie suffers from—among other things—a nonsensical and morally abhorrent premise. That is to say, the main guy, Jake, is a human living as a Na'vi on the planet Pandora, leading its people in a war of resistance against occupying human forces. But early on in the film, he goes on the run because his family is threatened. The problems are: 1) he flees to a place where he has no ability to blend in, among a different race of Na'vi; 2) this is an awful thing for him to do, he's depicted as the only hope they have; 3) the movie then just totally ignores the plight of the Na'vi he abandoned, either because they are okay (which makes no sense) or they are all being slaughtered offscreen (which makes him even worse).

It's all a bit The Word for World Is Forest, isn't it? Yet even though that's one of my least favorite Le Guins, James Cameron could have done a much better job if he had ripped it off more: the thing Le Guin shows in her novels of conflict between colonizer and colonized is that the colonized have to avoid buying into the values of the colonizer. If the Na'vi really offer an alternative to the values of Earth, then why is the only way they can be defended with the values of Earth? That is to say, with overlong fight sequences that could have come straight out of a Marvel movie? At the end of the movie, Jake and his family haven't really accomplished anything at all! So anyway, this was an astounding technical achievement, I guess, but so what? I did like Jemaine Clement's character. If I have to suffer through another, he had better be in it.

5. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, directed by Ryan Coogler, script by Ryan Coogler and Jay Robert Cole

This second Black Panther film was basically fine. Some good moments and action and humor, good character work dealing with the death of Chadwick Boseman/T'Challa. Namor from the comics was reworked quite a lot here, but in a way I found really interesting and successful. I had totally forgotten Lupita Nyong'o's character from the first film, though, so some parts of the movie were a bit confusing, and as a friend pointed out, why is this sequel to a groundbreaking Afrofuturist text about two victims of imperialism fighting each other as opposed to, you know, the colonizer? The final battle was, thankfully, surprisingly short for a Marvel movie. But I look forward to seeing where they go with Shuri as Black Panther; I've been a fan of Letitia Wright since Cucumber and Banana. So, not a great film, but certainly doing more interesting things than The Way of Water, and doing them better.

4. Nope, written and directed by Jordan Peele

The nice-but-actually-mean thing to say about this movie is that at least it's better than Us, but it's no Get Out. This is about a horse farm that trains horses for films suddenly coming under attack by a strange force. It has some good comedy, and there's a nice sense of group-of-disparate-people-pull-off-a-crazy-plan, and the explanations are reasonably satisfying, but it's one of those cases where I read the Wikipedia article and ended up feeling that the movie the director said he was making was more interesting than the one I watched, if you see what I mean. But, you know, better this than another Marvel movie.

3. Severance Season One, created by Dan Erickson

I had never even heard of this before it became a Hugo finalist, but dutifully signed up for Apple TV+ for two months to work my way through it. It's about a corporation where people are "severed": your work self and your home self become different people, each with no memory of the other. For the "outie," it's a great deal: you get paid, but never remember going to work. But for the "innie," it's a slog, because you spend your whole life at work and know nothing better. It's a bit phildickian, in a good way; it captures that feeling I really liked in Ubik or Martian Time-Slip, of "new technologies, same old bullshit," the alienation from the world that is the postmodern condition. There are some great performances (Parks and Rec's Adam Scott, of course, but all four leads are strong), some excellent jokes, and some decent twists. That said, there are probably a bit too many twists; I would have been more interested in exploring some of the psychological and sociological consequences of the "severance" technology, but the series moves into the kind of conspiracy thriller territory that is a bit too standard in streaming shows. I might have ranked it higher except that the first season doesn't really tell a complete story, so it's not totally satisfying, and hard to judge as a whole.

2. Turning Red, directed by Domee Shi, script by Julia Cho and Domee Shi

I watched a lot of Pixar films as a child, but few in adulthood; in the past five years thanks to the double-whammy of parenthood and Hugo voting, that has changed. Of the several I have seen in the past few years (which include Inside Out, Onward, and Soul), this is a clear favorite, abandoning the usual Pixar formula (two disparate personalities work together to cross a strange landscape) in favor of a beautiful story of adolescence and the experience of immigration and assimilation. The main character is a Chinese-Canadian who turns into a red panda when embarrassed, and this is a potent fantasy metaphor for her relationship with her mother and with the culture of her classmates. Lots of good jokes, great character beats, and a beautiful climax that gave me goosebumps.

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once, written and directed by Daniels

This squarely hits my interests in storytelling: big sf concept that is interesting on its own merits but also a powerful metaphor for real life, takes itself totally seriously but also not seriously at all at the exact same time, characters who are just regular people living regular lives turning out to be the moral linchpins. I thought this was excellent from top to bottom, hilarious and also touching. I don't think anyone talks about the "New Sincerity" anymore, but surely this is it at its best: all the techniques of postmodernism deployed to a heartwarming message. This year's top three were all excellent, but this was an easy winner.

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Best Graphic Story or Comic

7. Dune: The Official Movie Graphic Novel, script by Lilah Sturges, art by Drew Johnson

The comic of the movie of the novel? Really?? This seems spectacularly pointless. Sure, do a comic of the original novel and unleash the visual imagination of Frank Herbert in a way that can't be captured by another medium. (And I believe there are some comics directly based on the novel.) But why try to capture the visual imagination of a film of a novel on the page? It seems pointless—and once you read it, you realize it is pointless. This vastly accelerated set of highlights with art that essentially copies film stills gives you little sense of the grandeur of either film or novel.

6. No Award

I find the nomination of Dune fundamentally inexplicable. There is no way this is one of the six best sf&f comics of the year.

5. Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams, script by Bartosz Sztybor, art by Alessio Fioriniello and Filipe Andrade

This is a tie-in to the game Cyberpunk 2077, and its nomination is also inexplicable. It's about two people in some kind of cyberpunk dystopia, one of whom wants to climb the criminal ranks, the other of whom just wants to fantasize about living an easy, meaningful life in the country. It's okay, but some of the art is hard to follow and much of what happens is pretty cliché. It has its moments, but there's nothing here to make you care.

4. Monstress: Devourer, script by Marjorie Liu, art by Sana Takeda

I've put Monstress—which I believe has never missed the Hugo ballot since 2017—in sixth several times. That I did not do so this year is more a testament to the low quality of the other nominees in this category than anything else. I didn't think it was very great this year, but I'd definitely prefer to see it win over a Dune or Cyberpunk 2077 tie-in.

3. Once & Future: Monarchies in the U.K., script by Kieron Gillen, art by Dan Mora

This is volume four of Gillen and Mora's sequence about King Arthur returning in modern Britain... only as a zombie. As is so often true of Kieron Gillen comics, I can't help but feel the premise has more potential than is used. There are a lot of clever spins on Arthurian legend here... but they mostly only justify exciting action sequences, rather than say something interesting about Britain. But it is exciting and I like the characters, so it is certainly better than Cyberpunk 2077 or Monstress.

2. Saga, Volume Ten, script by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Fiona Staples

Saga is back! It's been what, three years I think since volume nine? I usually read it in the form of the huge hardcover omnibus volumes, but I am glad to have this little taster of what is to come. It's been a while, so my memory on many story points is murky, but I still enjoyed this a lot. Good character work, decent twists, and as always amazing art from Fiona Staples. Not so sure about the villain who speaks like a Twitter conservative. It isn't quite as good as the self-contained Woman of Tomorrow... though even if it was, I'm don't think the Hugo Awards are really for rewarding tenth volumes in ongoing series! Give the award to something new and interesting. (Saga won for its first volume, and was a finalist for volumes two, three, six, seven, and nine; if I was king of the universe, it wouldn't be a finalist again until its final volume—assuming, of course, that it sticks the landing.) But given the weakness of the other finalists this year, it acquits itself fairly well regardless.

1. Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, script by Tom King, art by Bilquis Evely

This was the first of the Best Graphic Story finalists I read, but as soon as I read it, it felt clearly like the one to beat. Beautiful art from Bilquis Evely, but also a really well put together story with a new-but-familiar spin on a classic character. In the end, I was right; nothing in this category came close.

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Overall Thoughts

I feel like Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) is unusually strong this year. Even though I don't care for, say, She-Hulk, I can see that it's interesting and why other people would like it. The top three finalists, in particular, are pretty strong. (Though it really is too bad "The Eye" wasn't a finalist.) I think it's probably going to be "Dear Billy," but if not, I think one of the episodes of Andor.

Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) was also interesting (Avatar aside), but in this case, there's a clear winner: I have little doubt that Everything Everywhere All at Once will not win. It won't be close as, say, Arrival, but it will win.

Best Graphic Story continues to slog along as a category. We have four repeat finalists... but alas, the two new series/creators are the worst ones! Move over, Monstress. I am going to go out on a limb and claim this will be Tom King's year to finally win it... but he came in sixth last year, so what do I know?

The Expanse Reading Order

There are just nine novels in The Expanse, and they are numbered, so reading them in order is pretty easy.

However, there are also a number of novellas and short stories, available for individual purchase from ebook retailers like Amazon, and now collected in the book Memory's Legion. Some are prequels to the main series, showing what characters did before them; others are follow-ups to specific novels, showing more of characters and situations from the main series.

Possible Order #1: Release Date

The obvious, spoiler-free, way to read them is release order:

1. Book One: Leviathan Wakes (June 2011)
2. Short Story: The Butcher of Anderson Station (Oct. 2011)
   
3. Book Two: Caliban's War (June 2012)
4. Novella: Gods of Risk (Sept. 2012) 
5. Short Story: "Drive" (Nov. 2012)
   
6. Book Three: Abaddon's Gate (June 2013)
7. Novella: The Churn (Apr. 2014)
   
8. Book Four: Cibola Burn (June 2014)
9. Book Five: Nemesis Games (June 2015)
10. Novella: The Vital Abyss (Oct. 2015)
    
11. Book Six: Babylon's Ashes (Dec. 2016)
12. Novella: Strange Dogs (July 2017)
    
13. Book Seven: Persepolis Rising (Dec. 2017)
14. Book Eight: Tiamat's Wrath (Mar. 2019)
15. Novella: Auberon (Nov. 2019)
    
16. Book Nine: Leviathan Falls (Nov. 2021)
17. Novella: The Sins of Our Fathers (Mar. 2022)

Possible Order #2: Chronological

I really don't think I would recommend this. It seems silly to me. The Expanse is definitely one of those series where the prequels are interesting because they tell you about characters you already like. Who would care about The Churn if you didn't already know Amos? And in some cases, it spoils: The Vital Abyss takes place over a span of time that ends around Cibola Burn, but builds on something revealed in Nemesis Games. But for completion's sake, here it is:

1. Short Story: "Drive" [a long time before Book One]
   
2. Novella: The Churn [some years before Book One]
   
3. Short Story: The Butcher of Anderson Station [a few years before Book One]
   
4. Book One: Leviathan Wakes
5. Book Two: Caliban's War
   
6. Novella: Gods of Risk [between Books Two and Three]
   
7. Book Three: Abaddon's Gate
8. Book Four: Cibola Burn
9. Novella: The Vital Abyss [in parallel to Books One through Four]
   
10. Book Five: Nemesis Games
11. Book Six: Babylon's Ashes
12. Novella: Strange Dogs [between Books Six and Seven]
    
13. Book Seven: Persepolis Rising
14. Novella: Auberon [between Books Seven and Eight]
    
15. Book Eight: Tiamat's Wrath
16. Book Nine: Leviathan Falls
17. Novella: The Sins of Our Fathers [after Book Nine]

My Suggested Order

I actually came up with a different order to both. The thing off-putting about the release order is the somewhat erratic way the shorts were released—some books had two shorts between them, others none. I think having a small taster between each larger work is nice. So to maintain that, "Drive" gets pushed out of sequence a bit... but it can pretty much be read anywhere.

And I think in one case the prequel actually does benefit being read first: Auberon might have come out after Book Eight, but is more interesting read prior. So here is my "machete order" for The Expanse books, which tries to alternate between full-length novels and shorts, and also doesn't put anything where it will spoil something:

1. Book One: Leviathan Wakes
   
2. Short Story: The Butcher of Anderson Station [fills in background of a character introduced in Book One]
   
3. Book Two: Caliban's War
4. Novella: Gods of Risk [follows up on a Book Two character]
   
5. Book Three: Abaddon's Gate
   
6. Novella: The Churn [sets up some stuff that is used in Book Four]
   
7. Book Four: Cibola Burn
8. Short Story: "Drive" [could go anywhere]
   
9. Book Five: Nemesis Games
10. Novella: The Vital Abyss [fills in backstory for some stuff revealed in Book Five]
    
11. Book Six: Babylon's Ashes
12. Novella: Strange Dogs [takes place in this gap]
    
13. Book Seven: Persepolis Rising
14. Novella: Auberon [released after Book Eight but works well before it]
    
15. Book Eight: Tiamat's Wrath
    
16. Book Nine: Leviathan Falls
    
17. Novella: The Sins of Our Fathers [follow-up to Book Nine]
    

It does kind of bother me that the alternating structure breaks down at the end! Maybe read The Expanse: Origins comic there, or maybe the answer is to work in "The Last Flight of the Cassandra" (a short story exclusive to the Expanse RPG sourcebook) somewhere.

My Expanse collection is a mish-mash. Mostly US trade paperbacks, but I have two UK trades and one US hardcover. Note that with the later US books, the author name and title switched prominence, but that didn't happen in the UK.

Hugos 2022: Ballots for Graphic Story and Dramatic Presentation

And here is my last Hugo ballot post! We have my nominations and votes in the "visual" categories: comics, tv, and film. I should note that I was done with the comics back in June... and didn't finish the film/tv stuff until two days before the deadline. I find it easier to organize my reading than my watching, I guess. (I have linked the titles if I have written a review elsewhere, or if the work is freely available on the Internet.)

Things I Nominated

I don't read many comics right as they come out, so my ability to nominate things for Best Graphic Story is always pretty limited. This year I nominated the same thing I did last year... a My Little Pony / Transformers crossover comic! Seemed unlikely to me that The Magic of Cybertron would make the ballot, but I did my bit...

I nominated two tv episodes in Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), both episodes of Star Trek: Lower Decks season 2 that I enjoyed immensely: "wej Duj" (Klingonese for "Three Ships"), where the lower-decks crew of the USS Cerritos are paralleled by lower-decks escapades on Klingon and Vulcan ships, and "First First Contact", the delightfully triumphant season finale. To my surprise and delight, "wej Duj" actually made the final ballot! It's the first Star Trek installment to make it since an episode of Discovery in 2018.

I also nominated some random Big Finish stuff I enjoyed, though I have no expectations that any of it will ever make the ballot. Two Torchwood audio dramas (The Five People You Kill in Middlesbrough and Madam I'm) in Short Form, and one Doctor Who audio drama (Shadow of the Daleks) in Long Form.

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Best Graphic Story or Comic

6. Monstress: The Vow, script by Marjorie Liu, art by Sana Takeda 

Below, I said I was only really interested in the backmatter in Die. Well, at least Die has interesting backmatter...

 

5. Die: Bleed, script by Kieron Gillen, art by Stephanie Hans

The first volume of this series was a finalist in 2020, the second in 2021. This is the fourth and final; I didn't enjoy those previous volumes enough to feel motivated to read the third before this, so I just skipped it. (It's about people trapped in a TTRPG, and each volume focuses on a different writer who influenced RPGs. The first did Tolkien, the second the Brontës, and this one Lovecraft; it turns out the one I skipped did Wells, so maybe I ought to go back.) I found this hard to follow—too many characters, and even though it came out as twenty issues across three years, it's clearly meant to be read in one go. It seems to be trying to say something interesting about queerness and RPGs, but I couldn't follow the story enough to tell you what. The most interesting part was definitely the backmatter, where Kieron Gillen interviews people about the evolution of RPGs.

4. Lore Olympus, Volume One by Rachel Smythe

This is a webcomic, now released in print, that retells the story of Hades and Persephone with modern trappings. The comics language here uses a lot of manga conventions, and manga tropes dominate the romance story, too. Overall I enjoyed it well enough. Some good jokes, nice art, but sometimes I struggled to keep the characters straight, and the emotions are a little overwrought. This is clearly the beginning of a long story (this volumes collects episodes 1-25 of a serial that has run 200 thus far), and I am not sure it is really aimed at me, though the end promises a darker turn that I would be curious to see the repercussions of.

3. Once & Future: The Parliament of Magpies, script by Kieron Gillen, art by Dan Mora

This is volume three of a series about the Arthurian mythos rising up again in modern Britain; I read volume one when it was a finalist last year. (I didn't intentionally skip volume two; I didn't realize I'd skipped an installment until there were a bunch of references to Beowulf in this one.) It's pretty fun stuff, with strong characters, good art, and occasional moments of genius... but like all the original Kieron Gillen comics I've read, I have this sort of vibe that he's almost but not quite as good as Brian K. Vaughan. Unfair but there you go.

2. Far Sector, script by N. K. Jemisin, art by Jamal Campbell

In some ways I enjoyed this more than Once & Future: as a somewhat erudite superhero comic, it's just more my jam than the non-stop-high-concept kind of thing Kieron Gillen tends to write. On the other hand, this is a good superhero comic but not a great one, and Once & Future is definitely up to more. On the whole, I would say my enjoyment of the two is pretty comparable, so I gave the edge to Far Sector on two bases: I do like superhero comics a lot, and it's also a complete story as opposed to a fragment.

1. Strange Adventures, script by Tom King, art by Mitch Gerads & Evan "Doc" Shaner

As soon as I finished this, it was clearly the best of the four Graphic Story finalists I had read thus far. Beautiful art, thematic complexity. There are snatches of greatness in, say, Once & Future, but this is the kind of thing this category ought to be rewarding.

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Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)

6. Encanto; directed by Jared Bush & Byron Howard; script by Charise Castro Smith & Jared Bush

This is (if you need to be told) an animated musical about a Colombian family who lives in a magical house, where each resident of the house has a magical power... except one. I really enjoyed this; it's a solid film with some great songs and interesting thematic beats. I really liked "Surface Pressure," about one sister's need to never stop doing what the family needs, and "Waiting on a Miracle," about the protagonist's desire to do something to help the family. It's a good depiction of the complexity of family dynamics, about how people want to contribute to a system that has disappointed them. I think it deserves awards, but I'm not convinced it deserves this award. Sure, it's got magic, but is it really in dialogue with the genre of science fiction and fantasy? Or is it more a contribution to the genre of children's animation? (if that makes sense) This is to say, don't let its low ranking leave you thinking I didn't like it. I just don't think it's in the core sensibility of what I seek to reward with a Hugo.

5. Dune, Part One; directed by Denis Villeneuve; written by Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, and Eric Roth

I have never been a Dune partisan. I largely bounced off the book as a teenager (though I probably would find it more digestible now), I have seen the Lynch film a couple times, and I remember enjoying the Sci-Fi Channel original miniseries. This adaptation is probably the best one you could imagine, with room to breathe due to the increased running time but also the budget not afforded the Sci-Fi Channel mini. It's impeccably cast, and like all Villeneuve films I've seen, it looks great. But I felt... somehow unmoved by it all. Magisterial, but I didn't feel invited into either the world or the characters' emotional lives. It's like you're at a remove the whole time.

4. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings; directed by Destin Daniel Cretton; script by Dave Callaham, Destin Daniel Cretton, and Andrew Lanham

Last year, my wife and caught up on Marvel films (at the time, Spider-Man: Far from Home was the most recent), and I felt like that was it: following Avengers: Endgame, there was nothing more I wanted out of them, and I was ready to move on. I haven't seen one since, though I guess I ought to go see Thor 4 in theatres given I saw the other three in theatres. All this is to say that I was actually quite charmed by this, which follows the Marvel origin story formula, but is a reasonably strong execution of it. It has a real sense of style and flair, a good soundtrack, some great set pieces, the best villain I can remember in a Marvel film for a long long time, and a totally gratuitous but excellent comic relief character.* On the other hand, I thought star Simu Liu was charismatic and likeable, but his emotional arc didn't really seem to be present, writing-wise. I really struggled with ranking this. Is it a better movie than Dune? I don't know. Certainly it is less ambitious, and do the Hugos need to award (what is by my count) the eighth Marvel origin movie? Anyway, as it often is, my tiebreaker was the question, "What am I more likely to rewatch?" And the answer to that question is definitely Shang-Chi.

3. WandaVision, created by Jac Schaeffer, directed by Matt Shakman

Thankfully, this was the only complete-season finalist this year. I found this pretty fun at first: the sitcom pastiches are excellently done, and the language of television is abused to disconcerting effect. Moments where the camera angle suddenly shifts out of the sitcom standard, or the credits roll and things keep on going, or the crossing over of the better Quicksilver, are wonderful. Elizabeth Olson and Paul Bettany get to show off more here than in every Avengers film put together. Plus the episodes that are basically just sitcoms are very well done ones! I found this less interesting the further away it got from that basic set-up, however. There are a lot of characters who ultimately don't serve very important functions, narratively or thematically, and by the final episode, the show has abandoned its interesting meta play in favor of a somewhat-above-average Marvel punch-up. The sitcom stuff was ultimately a puzzle to be solved, not an idea to be explored. The idea that someone who lost her real family life and found solace in sitcom families might try to make her own sitcom family seems ripe with possibilities for saying something about family, but the finale doesn't go there, and it has none of the playfulness that characterized the rest of the series. Still, we have a number of episodes of really enjoyable stuff prior to that point, and I was definitely more involved than in Dune, and I would happily see this win.

2. 승리호, directed by Jo Sung-hee, script by Jo Sung-hee & Mocan

Space Sweepers is a Korean space film, about space scavengers who end up in over their heads when they discover a robot with a hydrogen bomb inside it aboard a derelict spaceships... a robot in the form of a human child. Okay, look, it's not a great movie. The villain (played by Richard Armitage!) has no real motivation, and a couple of the characters' backstories feel tacked on, and I found bits of it confusing and/or clumsy. But, you know, group-of-underdogs-in-a-spaceship unite to do great things has basically been my favorite genre of sf film since Star Wars, and this is a charming example of it with a lot of heart. A special shout-out to the character of Bubs, who at first seems to be a quippy murderous robot, but is soon revealed to have extra dimensions. Is it really the second-best thing on this list? Probably not; I think on any objective measure of "good film" it goes below Dune. But would I be excited for it to win a Hugo? More than anything else on this list.

1. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Filmed Adaptation of the Chivalric Romance by Anonymous, written and directed by David Lowery

I didn't know much about this going in beyond that it was based on an Arthurian medieval text (one with which I am unfamiliar) and that it was controversially received. Well, I really enjoyed it: it reminds me of the kind of 1980s pre-Lord of the Rings fantasy film I might have randomly plucked off the shelf at Blockbuster as a kid, and been weirded out but entranced by, before the fantasy genre of film became codified as massive epics. Well, that crossed with a Tarkovsky movie! Beautiful, jarring, potent. Exactly the kind of thing I like the Hugos to expose me to (doubt I would have bothered otherwise), and the kind of thing I like to reward.

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Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) 

6. The Wheel of Time 1x06: "The Flame of Tar Valon", written by Justine Juel Gillmer, directed by Salli Richardson-Whitfeld

This seems like a perfectly acceptable piece of epic fantasy, if you're into that kind of thing. The mean thing to say is that I liked it better when it was called The Lord of the Rings.

5. Arcane: League of Legends 1x09: "The Monster You Created", written by Christian Linke & Alex Yee, directed by Pascal Charrue & Arnaud Delord

This is a 3D-animated cartoon on Netflix set in the world of the League of Legends videogame, and the only thing on the short-form ballot I hadn't even heard of before it became a finalist. I don't have anything against this, but it was the final episode of a nine-episode serialized story that made absolutely no concessions for anyone; there wasn't even a "previously on..." at the beginning. Which I get, no one but me is watching this show this way, but I had no ability to assess it really. It looks nice when it's still, but I found the way people moved a bit off, like it was, well, a videogame. Some very dramatic moments that had me curious about context... but also very gruesome in places, which doesn't appeal. I was going to put this below Wheel of Time but then I realized at least I was never bored watching this (though I didn't find the fights very interesting). 

 

4. Loki 1x04: "The Nexus Event", written by Eric Martin, directed by Kate Herron

I'm sure this was quite exciting to people who had been watching Loki, and indeed, there was some fun stuff in it: I liked Loki getting punched by Sif again and again. But, like, what is a "nexus event"? Maybe someday I will watch all of Loki, but until then, this didn't quite work on its own. My friend Christiana hates it when I evaluate tv this way, but I need some kind of limit. If I am obligated to watch the previous three episodes of Loki, am I not also obligated to watch the previous nineteen episodes of For All Mankind? And that's not happening.

3. The Expanse 5x10: "Nemesis Games", written by Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck and Naren Shankar, directed by Breck Eisner

As I always say, I stopped watching The Expanse during season 3 (not the show's fault), but since I read the books, I was mostly able to follow this out of context. It's another perfectly competent episode whose emotional beats might have landed better had I seen the previous nine episodes of the season, but landed well enough regardless, especially the bits with Naomi. The Expanse has made the ballot five out of the last six times, and this was the best Expanse finalist since "Leviathan Wakes."

2. For All Mankind 2x10: "The Grey", written by Matt Wolpert & Ben Nedivi, directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan

This did work on its own, to my surprise. For All Mankind is an alternative history show where the Space Race continued unabated after the 1960s. This episode is set in the 1980s, and America has a base on the Moon, Apollo-Soyuz is going ahead, there are missile platforms in space, and so on. I am a sucker for shows about competent people working together to solve difficult problems, and this is one of them. (I particularly liked Wrenn Schmidt as Margo Madison, director of Mission Control.) There are lots of good moments in this, a show about how even in dark times we can work together, and it very much made me want to go back and watch the first two seasons. Except, you know, it's on Apple TV+ (surely one of the less necessary streaming services; I signed up for a week-long free trial to watch this).

1. Star Trek: Lower Decks 2x09: "wej Duj", written by Kathryn Lyn, directed by Bob Suarez

Like I said above, I nominated this. This was a great episode of the overall strong second season of Lower Decks, with the story of the lower-decks Cerritos crew paralleled with their counterparts on Klingon and Vulcan ships, all coming together in a satisfying way. The character of T'Lyn, the Vulcan prone to "outbursts," was particularly fun, as was security chief Shaxs doing pottery. It's Lower Decks at its best, and you bet that if a show I actually watch gets a Hugo nomination, I am going to rank it highly.

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Overall Thoughts

This is one of the better Best Graphic Story ballots I've seen; even if I never enjoy Kieron Gillen comics all that much, there's no denying he's one of the medium's most acclaimed writers. There are no finalists this year that stick out as mediocre-but-nominated-for-some-other-reason. Monstress won for its first three volumes but hasn't won since; my guess is based on past voting patterns, N. K. Jemisin will win yet another Hugo.

Similarly, this is a strong long-form Dramatic Presentation ballot, with all six movies being fundamentally enjoyable. (I did not fall asleep during any of them, unlike last year.) I stand by the prediction I made last year before this year's ballot was even out: Dune will win.

I find the state of short form annoying... but what can you do about it when serialized shows dominate the sf&f television market? Now that The Good Place is no longer in contention, I have no idea what Hugo voters actually like.

* After the Mandarin reference, I reminded my wife of the events of Iron Man 3, which we saw some time ago. I figure that was it: we explain how this move relates to the other one for the continuity nerds in the audience, then move on. Little did I expect that five minutes later Ben Kingsley would turn up! If you told me that as originally filmed, his character left them before they went through the portal, I would believe it; I don't think he interacted with a main character again after they crossed over, so you could have totally beefed up his role in reshoots.

The Expanse: The Sins of Our Fathers by James S.A. Corey

The Sins of Our Fathers: An Expanse Novella
by James S.A. Corey

Published: 2022
Acquired: March 2022
Read: June 2022

This is the last Expanse novella, and also the last Expanse book full stop, to my knowledge anyway. I think there was a plan for the short fiction collection, Memory's Legion, to contain an exclusive piece, but this didn't come to pass in the end. It's a coda to the series, showing us what one particular colony got up to after Leviathan Falls, and one particular character, who we last saw back in Babylon's Ashes. At first it didn't grab me—kind of action-y, kind of slow—but the last third made me sit up and pay attention in a way that made me think I ought to have been paying more attention all along, and wasn't giving the story its due. So, if I ever get Memory's Legion, I look forward to rereading it.

I read an Expanse story every eighty-ish days. Next up in sequence: nothing!

The Expanse: Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey

Leviathan Falls: Book Nine of The Expanse
by James S.A. Corey

Published: 2021
Acquired and read: December 2021

Books seven and eight had been a bit of a return to form for The Expanse after a lackluster middle trilogy, but alas, I did not find the conclusion lived up to them. I felt like it struggled to operate on the necessary scale: we should be building up to epic confrontations with both the Laconians and the mysterious aliens, but for much the book, the Rocinante crew have a much smaller goal of getting one girl somewhere; I didn't feel very into this, knowing what the stakes seemingly ought to be. Still, a solid conclusion with good answers and some smart character resolutions.

I read an Expanse story every eighty-ish days. Next up in sequence: The Sins of Our Fathers

The Expanse by Corinna Bechko and Alejandro Aragon

As part of my holding pattern waiting for Book Nine of The Expanse to come out, I picked up this comic miniseries, which ties into the tv show, taking place between seasons 4 and 5 (and thus between books four and five, though there are some pretty big divergences from the books' canon; I haven't got this far in the show). There wasn't a digital collection at my library, but they did have the four individual issues on Hoopla. Weirdly, it seems to have no title beyond "The Expanse," which isn't confusing at all.

Most of the main cast put in only cameo appearances; the focus here is on Chrisjen Avasarala on the moon and Bobbie Draper on Mars working two different ends of a conspiracy. Some of what happens here sets up what, in the books at least, are the events of Nemesis Games, with Bobbie finding that someone is draining away Martian resources and personnel. The big difference is that here, Avasarala has somehow lost political power and ended up in an administrative position on the Moon (something with no parallel in the books), so she's being very mopey. I have to say, I found the idea of a mopey Avasarala unconvincing; I don't doubt that she could experience depression, but I do doubt that this is the form it would take.

from The Expanse #3

It's a pretty simple, quick-reading thriller on the whole, though some elements I struggled to understand. (Why does Avasarala get in that airlock? How could the bad guys have anticipated that plan at all?) Neat, I guess, as another peak into a familiar world, but it felt pretty inconsequential; Avasarala and Bobbie don't really learn anything, and we don't really learn anything about them. Alejandro Aragon's art looks nice, but I sometimes didn't realize that the character we were looking at was Bobbie until a couple panels had gone by. It was always clear who Avasarala was meant to be, but the likeness was occasionally pretty wonky. So, I would say, "get it free on Hoopla" is pretty much the exact quality level this was at. Thankfully, as I write this in December 2021, Leviathan Falls just showed up and I have already begun to read it.

The Expanse was originally published in four issues (Dec. 2020–Mar. 2021). The story was written by Corinna Bechko, illustrated by Alejandro Aragon, colored by Francesco Sagala, lettered by Ed Dukeshire, and edited by Jonathan Manning.

I read an Expanse story every eighty-ish days. Next up in sequence: Leviathan Falls

The Expanse: Origins by James S.A. Corey, Hallie Lambert, Georgia Lee, and Huang Danlan

The Expanse: Origins

Collection published: 2018
Contents originally published: 2017-18
Read: July 2021

Story by James S.A. Corey, Hallie Lambert, and Georgia Lee

Written by Hallie Lambert and Georgia Lee
Illustrated by Huang Danlan

Colored by Triona Farrell and Juan Useche

Lettered by Jim Campbell

I have read an Expanse story every eighty-one days since February 2018. At the time I plotted out this plan, only the first seven novels were out, but projections were that by the time I hit book nine in August 2021, all of them would be. Book eight was ready in time, but the final novella and final novel both ran afoul of substantial delays; up until now, Expanse novels have averaged thirteen months apart, but the gap between books eight and nine is thirty-two months! So to fill the spot that I would have read the eighth ebook short, I decided to read The Expanse: Origins, a comic book prequel from Boom that was co-plotted by James S.A. Corey, even though they left the actual writing to someone else.

Origins consists of five stories, one for each of the Rocinante characters plus Detective Miller, and is actually a prequel to the television program, though I think that in the case of every story except the Alex one, there's nothing that would prevent them from fitting into the book universe, too. The art is fine; Huang Danlan has a style that does a decent job of capturing the actors from the tv program, but it also didn't pull me in. You've seen worse art on tv tie-in comics, but you've probably seen better too.

The stories vary in quality. The only one I didn't care for was the Amos one, which was just told in this really weird, experimental format that didn't ring true for the character of Amos. The conceit that he was somehow reliving his life through the lens of a game show just went on and on and on, and didn't reveal much about him. To be fair, though, pretty much everything you could want to know about Amos was already covered in the novella The Churn.

Most of the others were fine. Holden's tells the story of how he was discharged from the Earth military; this I thought was less interesting than what I had imagined from the hints in the show. Miller's is about a case he was on shortly before the events of the show; I kind of wanted to see him as more of a screw-up than this story indicated. (He does fail, but it's not his fault.) What he does in Leviathan Wakes should be a last chance at redemption. The Naomi one was pretty neat; again, Naomi's "origin" was already pretty well covered in books, so this focuses on how she became friends with Amos, and it is nice to see.

In the books, Alex is a divorcee without kids. In the show, though, he has a wife and kid back on Mars that he never goes back to. (Though, between book six and seven, Alex remarries, has a kid, and gets divorced, seemingly another example of Corey synchronizing the book characters with the show ones.) In here, we learn why he would be willing to go off into space and basically never go back home and see his family again. Some art issues aside (I found two female characters difficult to distinguish), it's an effective and depressing piece of backstory that I found helpful for deepening my understanding of show Alex.

So I don't know that I would pay the $15 retail for this, but if you can get it off Hoopla like I did, it's worth the hour-ish it will take you to read it.

I read an Expanse story every eighty-ish days. Next up in sequence: The Expanse

2021 Hugo Awards for Best Dramatic Presentation Ballots

Best Dramatic Presentation is technically two categories, but I will write up both Long Form and Short Form in a single post.

Things I Nominated

I nominated one thing in each category this year. I decided to nominate a Big Finish audio drama, so I looked back over the 2020 releases that I had actually listened to in 2020 (I range from a little behind to a lot behind with my Big Finish at the best of times) and ended up picking Torchwood Soho: Parasite, which covers shenanigans at Torchwood in the 1950s, fronted by the delightful Norton Folgate, and also featuring good old PC Andy, plucked out of time. (As it's six half-hour episodes, I nominated it under long form.) My guess is that no Big Finish release will ever be a Hugo finalist, though; even if there are a lot of Hugo nominators listening to Big Finish (which I doubt), they put out so much content, it's hard to imagine any single release getting enough nominations to make the ballot.

The only 2020 tv I watched during 2020 was Doctor Who series 12, Star Trek: Picard season 1, (some of) Star Trek: Lower Decks season 1, and (some of) Star Trek: Discovery season 3. I didn't like Picard season 1 or Discovery season 3 much, and none of the episodes of Lower Decks that I saw in time spoke much to me. (I could see myself nominating "Crisis Point," but I got to it too late.)

So I ended up nominating what I thought was a pretty decent episode of a pretty dull series of Doctor Who, "Can You Hear Me?", which was probably the only episode both trying to do something interesting and almost pulling it off. It did not make the ballot, however, though a different episode did, and that one wasn't bad either.

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6. The Old Guard, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, written by Greg Rucka

This movie is about a group of four immortals who get in a lot of fight scenes. I fell asleep about halfway through; I don't think this is entirely the film's fault (I was very tired) but what is the film's fault is that I was at no point motivated to resume watching it.

5. Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, directed by Cathy Yan, written by Christina Hodson

This wasn't very to my taste. I love the Birds of Prey comics, but this isn't really a Birds of Prey film, it's a Harley Quinn film... though as my wife pointed out, it's probably the most enjoyable a Harley Quinn film could be. I did laugh couple times. I liked the performances of the actors playing both Black Canary and Huntress, so maybe I will like them better in some other, Harley-free, film. Plus... this isn't really sf&f, is it? One scene of Dinah using her sonic scream doesn't really count.

4. Tenet, written and directed by Christopher Nolan

At first, this felt to me like Nolan's take on James Bond, plus some sf elements. Our protagonist travels to exotic locations, each with a suitable set piece; what stopped it from being fully Bondian is that Bond would have slept with Elizabeth Debicki's character. The central idea is pretty neat, and the story does some cool stuff with it; by the climax, though, I will admit that I was confused. Robert Pattinson was a delightful surprise, and I also thought Debicki and Kenneth Branagh did great work. It felt to me like something Steven Moffat would have done... but once I realized that, I also realized that he would have put in more jokes! And of course I have to take points off for that. This movie takes itself very seriously... and also I'm not really sure what it was about beyond the sfnal idea; it's very sterile.

3. Soul; directed by Peter Docter; written by Peter Docter, Mike Jones, and Kemp Powers 

I feel like I always understimate Pixar. I'm like, "oh yeah they're pretty good movies," but then I watch a Pixar film and realize they always have a heft and a design sense to them that is pretty much unparalleled in contemporary animation. Things here move and live and breathe and shine. I enjoyed this a lot. I think it's not groundbreaking (it's very It's a Wonderful Life, isn't it?) but I don't know that that matters: good jokes, good performances, good score by Reznor and Ross, and great visuals. I particularly loved the way the afterlife creatures moved through the real world, and the climax with Joe and 22 plunging to Earth was glorious.

2. Palm Springs, directed by Max Barbakow, written by Andy Siara

I would have vacillated a lot on where to place this, but I watched it the day ballots were due, so I didn't have the time to dither a whole lot. Give me twenty-four hours to reflect and I might have placed it on top, who knows. This is a time loop film; I must be a sucker for these things, because in 2020 and 2018, I gave top spots to a time loop story. The time loop is a genre of its own these days, and we're surely in its decadent phase (as Joanna Russ would say) and all the better for it. This is a comedy that opens with a guy already trapped in the time loop for so long he can't remember; he inadvertently brings a woman into it alongside him. You'll know some beats from other time loop stories, but it's very original in other ways and has a good emotional core. Some great laughs, but also some really strong, thoughtful character stuff.

1. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, directed by David Dobkin, written by Will Ferrell & Andrew Steele

I really debated on where to place this. It's about an Icelandic duo with middling talent trying to make it in Eurovision; Will Ferrell and Rachel McAdams feature, and Pierce Brosnan plays Will Ferrell's dad. They have to overcome parental doubt, evil bankers, and Dan Stevens's obviously gay Russian in order to persevere and fulfill their childhood dreams. I had a blast watching this: it has fun music and a keen sense of the ridiculous that plays straight into my sensibilities. You have to take this movie intensely seriously and not at all seriously at the same time. I laughed a lot. But, you know, the sfnal content probably amounts to about 120 seconds of run time! Is it consistent of me to ding Birds of Prey but place this so high? So I was prepared to place it below Soul; Soul would be meaningless without its sf&fnal conceit, but Story of Fire Saga would honestly work just fine. But then I was like, "what would I be more excited to see win?" And it's not like Pixar films lack for acclaim. And though I think Soul is good, this was a blast. So here it is.

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6. The Expanse 5x04: "Gaugamela", written by Dan Nowak, directed by Nick Gomez

I have stalled out somewhere back in season 3 of The Expanse, but I have read all the books, and this one is adapted from book five, Nemesis Games, so I had enough context to follow. In isolation, though, it comes across as one of those episodes that's more noteworthy for what happens than how. Big events, but outside of that, there was little that grabbed me here other than the chance to see one of my less-favorite books in one of my favorite series on screen.

5. Star Wars: The Mandalorian, chapter 13: "The Jedi", written and directed by Dave Filoni

I am sure this is quite exciting if you've been following both The Mandalorian in particular and Star Wars on tv more broadly: we learn key information about baby Yoda, and a character from the Clone Wars cartoon appeares in live action. I've been doing none of these things, so it's all kind of wasted on me. Still, it works well enough as a piece of standalone tv, just without the bigger emotional/dramatic hook one might want. I do quite like Ludwig Göransson's score.

4. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power 5x12/13: "Heart", written by Josie Campbell and Noelle Stevenson, directed by Jen Bennett and Kiki Manrique

This is the series finale to a five-season show. It seems like the kind of show I would like very much, along the lines of some of the favorites of my youth (and adulthood): big battles of good and evil, colorful characters, angsty side-switching, epic confrontations. But watching the series finale on its own is difficult to appreciate. I feel as though I am watching something that could be quite interesting, but I don't have the ability to appreciate it.

3. Star Wars: The Mandalorian, chapter 16: "The Rescue", written by Jon Favreau, directed by Peyton Reed

Despite this being only my third episode of The Mandalorian, I was quickly able to grasp the mechanics of what was going on here and why I should care. Despite me knowing what the big surprise was going to be, I still got chills. I did have to pause at one point and look up who all the returning characters were at the beginning, but on the other hand, the emotion of the ending succeeded entirely on its own terms. Maybe someday I will watch this show, but I have been enjoying these dribs and drabs of it.

2. Doctor Who 12x05: "Fugitive of the Judoon", written by Vinay Patel and Chris Chibnall, directed by Nida Manzoor

This wasn't the episode I nominated, but it was one of the better episodes of series 12 of Doctor Who, with some dramatic reveals, cracking direction, and sharp scenes featuring Jodie Whittaker's Doctor and the mysterious Ruth. (What brings it down for me are the weirdly shot and pointless scenes with Captain Jack; one assumes they couldn't get Barrowman on the same day as any of the rest of the cast.) This has an impact, but it's also an enjoyable and entertaining episode on top of that.

1. The Good Place: The Final Chapter: "Whenever You're Ready", written and directed by Michael Schur

At last our long national nightmare is over. In honor of that, I give The Good Place my vote.

In all seriousness... I really liked this? My only previous episodes of The Good Place have been those five nominated as Hugo finalists, which long-time readers know I have found more miss than hit, but this seemed to me—based on that weird sampling anyway—to be a charming, effective, and occasionally moving finale. All the characters get good final moments... plus lots of great jokes (of course I was a sucker for the Radiolab one) and a cameo from Nick Offerman playing Nick Offerman teaching someone how to make a chair. This gave me the purest enjoyment of anything on this list.

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Overall Thoughts

Long Form was a more interesting category than usual this year; I suspect this is down to the pandemic delaying any blockbuster originally scheduled for March 2020 or later to 2021. No Marvel movies; the closest we get to a big franchise film is Birds of Prey. This allows for some more offbeat stuff to rise to the top, which is one of the things I like about this category. Seems unlike I ever would have even heard of Palm Springs without the Hugos, much less seen it.

Short Form is tougher than normal. It usually has a few things that work reasonably well as standalones, but this year literally every finalist is a pivotal moment in an ongoing story! This makes them hard to assess as an outsider; I feel like if I'd seen any other She-Ra, for example, I might have ranked "Heart" at the top, but I'll never know. I am loathe to add more Hugo categories, but I do wonder if Short Form and Long Form need to be split yet again: I don't know what I would call the categories, but with spans of something like 0-90 minutes, 90-180, and 180+, so you get individual episodes, films, and seasons each evaluated on their own terms. Though, if all of these seasons make it into the 180+ category, will there be anything left for the 0-90 one given how serialized televised sf&f is at the moment?

I feel fairly comfortable in saying that The Good Place will take home its fourth and final Hugo. The long-form category is much less obvious to me. None of them strike me as having the "it factor" that will win over (after a number of rounds) the majority of Hugo voters. I don't think it will be The Story of Fire Saga—too weird—nor Tenet—not good enough—nor Birds of Prey—too over-the-top—nor Old Guard—too boring—nor Palm Springs—too comedic. Which I guess means Soul? Pixar films have won twice before, The Incredibles and WALL-E, though both of those seem closer to the sf fan's sensibilities. So who knows.

I might be unsure about this year, but I will go out on a limb and tell you right now that the 2022 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) is going to go to Dune.