Luckily the deadline for Hugo voting has been extended to July 22. I'm still working on the novels, but I have read the short stories! You can see what I thought about the novellas here and the novelettes here.
Here are this year's nominees for Best Short Story (defined as a story under 7,500 words).
- “And Now His Lordship Is Laughing”, by Shiv Ramdas (Strange Horizons, 9 September 2019)
- “As the Last I May Know”, by S.L. Huang (Tor.com, 23 October 2019)
- “Blood Is Another Word for Hunger”, by Rivers Solomon (Tor.com, 24 July 2019)
- “A Catalog of Storms”, by Fran Wilde (Uncanny Magazine, January/February 2019)
- “Do Not Look Back, My Lion”, by Alix E. Harrow (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, January 2019)
- “Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island”, by Nibedita Sen (Nightmare Magazine, May 2019)
This is an excellent group of stories. It's going to be a tough choice. I'm still thinking about how I'll vote (I have an extra week, remember?), so I'll just place my reviews in the order given above.
“And Now His Lordship Is Laughing”, by Shiv Ramdas
Set during the 1943 famine in Bengal, which has been shown to have been caused by the British, this is a biting postcolonial story about a doll maker finding a unique way to get even with her colonial tyrants. The speculative element is well done, but the feel of living through the famine from the Bengali side is what haunts me the most. And that's the part that really happened. This might be a good thing to read for anyone who thinks the British Empire was on the whole a good thing. (Goodreads). PS: I met the author at Worldcon in 2016 and follow him on Facebook, so it's really cool to say that I kind of know a Hugo nominee.
“As the Last I May Know”, by S.L. Huang
Others have compared this to Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas," which makes sense. Another touchstone might be the arguments made by contemporary philosopher Peter Singer that there's no relevant moral difference between letting a child die right in front of you and letting children die in another part of the world. Singer uses this to argue that we in wealthy countries should do more to prevent famine and starvation, but Huang is getting at a similar idea from another direction: what if leaders had to brutally kill a child by hand in order to use weapons of mass destruction? And what if we spent several thousand words from that child's perspective? The story didn't quite come together as well as I hoped, but I applaud it for leaving readers with these deep and haunting questions. (Goodreads)
“Blood Is Another Word for Hunger”, by Rivers Solomon
The prose is beautiful and there's something profound and emotional happening here. I'm not sure I totally get what that is, but the author is obviously skilled. I really loved her Hugo-nominated novella The Deep, but this short story didn't work as well for me. (Goodreads)
“A Catalog of Storms”, by Fran Wilde
The story is amusing enough, and I like the idea of "weathermen," but the sort of neo-fairy tale style isn't really my thing. (Goodreads)
“Do Not Look Back, My Lion”, by Alix E. Harrow
A "warrior-culture" fantasy story with a twist that it is the women who tend to go to war, although one woman wants something different for her daughter. Only it's more complicated than I made it sound--and better written. An interesting critique of militarism uncoupled from its gender associations here on Earth. (Goodreads)
“Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island”, by Nibedita Sen
A short story as annotated bibliography? Cool! I feel like my fellow academics will particularly appreciate this one, but people who are fans of Lovecraftian tropes without Lovecraftian racism may also appreciate the academic angle. And it's a surprisingly complex story that leaves plenty of intriguing questions all in a four pages. (Goodreads) PS: I read this again from the Hugo packet, but I first heard it on the Nightmare Magazine podcast last year, which I recommend.
So, there you have it! Luckily I've seen most of the movie and TV nominees, so I just need to see if I can read at least one more of the novels (I'm working on Kameron Hurley's The Light Brigade) and maybe take a peek at the related works. Then I'll be ready to finish my ballot. Stay tuned!
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