Hugo Ballot 2023: Short Stories and Novelettes!

 

It's Hugo reading season! The voting deadline is coming up on Sept. 30! There was a bit of a delay in releasing the list of nominees and the Hugo packet, and then summer travels and the beginning of the fall semester happened to me ... so, how am I doing?

I'm almost done with the novels. I may or may not get to all the novellas (sad, I know!). But I have now finished the novelettes and short stories.  Maybe because this year's Worldcon will be taking place in Chengdu, China, there are more finalists from China than usual! Unfortunately I won't get to China this year, but Worldcon will be in Glasgow, Scotland next year, and I'm hoping to attend in person as part of the Science Fiction and Philosophy Society (stay tuned for details).

Anyway, overall I thought there were some great novelettes and short stories this year. The novelettes in particular were really difficult to rank (reading the Hugo nominees in the last several years has taught me that I seem to enjoy the novelette-length short fiction best: enough space to dig in, but it's still not too long). Here are my rankings and what I thought about this year's short stories and novelettes!

Best Short Story

1. “Rabbit Test”, by Samantha Mills (Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2022)

• From Goodreads: "I think the storytelling trend of 'jumping back and forth in time' is getting to be way overdone these days (case in point: the recent Beanie Baby movie... why?), but here it works well to tell a story about issues of pregnancy and abortion throughout, well, most of human history and into the 22nd century. The result is as historically and philosophically interesting as it is emotionally visceral. Why do we keep fighting these battles when lots of people throughout history and (if opinion polls are accurate) even most Americans today have been in favor of bodily autonomy? I hope that the US in 2023 is just in a bad spot where a relatively small minority exploited political vulnerabilities, but "Rabbit Test" makes me fear that these battles may never be over."

2. “Resurrection”, by Ren Qing, translated by Blake Stone-Banks (Future Fiction/Science Fiction World, December 2022)

• The idea of making a synthetic body to prolong a person’s life is not new in science fiction (nor are the fun philosophical questions about personal identity), but the subtlety and heartbreak of this story works well. It reminds me a bit of Frankenstein (Mary Shelley’s original novel, that is), but it also manages to ask some questions of its own about identity, militarism, and human nature. And the English translation is beautiful.

3. “Zhurong on Mars”, by Regina Kanyu Wang (Frontiers, September 2022)

• A lonely robot on Mars is looking for friends after humanity departs the planet and ends up expanding, finding a friend, discovering fungal life, and becoming an origin myth. The translation reads smoothly, and I appreciated the notes about the translation process.

4. “D.I.Y.”, by John Wiswell (Tor.com, August 2022)

• From Goodreads: "I didn't like this as much as some of Wiswell's other work, but it's a somewhat interesting story that combines water-shortage cli-fi with a wizard school: What if spells could go viral on the internet and we could magically crowd-source solutions to our woes?"

5. “The White Cliff”, by Lu Ban (Science Fiction World, May 2022)

• I’m not sure I “get” this story, but I think there are some thoughts on dreams, death, and grief within some sort of Matrix-like simulation.

6. “On the Razor’s Edge”, by Jiang Bo (Science Fiction World, January 2022)

• The English translation begins with a caveat that it was translated by AI, which itself raises fun science fictional issues. The resulting translation is mostly readable, just a bit bland. The story itself is fine, but not terribly interesting (I admit I skimmed the last half of the story). I like the idea that astronauts have a camaraderie beyond the borders of their home nations—an international camaraderie we science fiction fans should emulate!

Best Novelette

1. “Murder By Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness”, by S.L. Huang (Clarkesworld, December 2022)

• From Goodreads: "A deep thought experiment on the ethical issues surrounding AI, bullying, the internet, the power of words written in the style of long form journalism (think The Atlantic). Can a chat-based AI bully someone? Is it really bullying if the AI can't really feel or form intentions? Are the programmers responsible for bullying, racism, sexism, homophobia, antisemitism, etc. that their creations may enact? Why are we so worried about the ethics of these AI scenarios when we do so comparatively little about human bullies? How to best face the real harms and benefits of online interactions of both the human and AI varieties? As with any great philosophical science fiction, there are more questions than answers here, but I love how Huang expands and sharpens the questions we need to be asking."

2. “A Dream of Electric Mothers”, by Wole Talabi (Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, Tordotcom)

• From Goodreads: "I loved this one! In a future West African nation, a leader consults a council of "electric mothers" -- a computer containing the voices of the elders, speaking mostly as one but not quite. Along with this science fictional premise, we also get some interesting Yoruba metaphysics concerning personal identity, according to which a person consists of three parts: ara, emi, and ori (terms I have previously read about in a philosophy article, "Personal Identity in African Metaphysics" by Leke Adeofe, which I highly recommend to the philosophically inclined). We also get an emphasis on consensus decision making. I always love to see philosophical explorations of science fictional premises, and Talabi does a great job here, showing that neither philosophy nor science fiction are limited to "Western" traditions. Great stuff!"

3. “We Built This City”, by Marie Vibbert (Clarkesworld, June 2022)

• From Goodreads: "An interesting and moving story about labor relations on a colony on Venus. The people we (all-to-briefly!) called "essential workers" in 2020 really are, well, essential. And human. Especially on Venus, but here on Earth as well. Solidarity with workers on all planets!"

4. “If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You”, by John Chu (Uncanny Magazine, July-August 2022)

• From Goodreads: "What seems like a fun superhero story becomes a sweet romance and thoughts on anti-Asian racism and the fact that, as much good as individuals can do, not even superheroes can solve deeper more systemic problems alone. That last point is a nice reflection for me on the attraction to and limitations of the superhero genre."

5. “The Difference Between Love and Time”, by Catherynne M. Valente (Someone in Time: Tales of Time-Crossed Romance, Solaris)

• From Goodreads: "Valente usually has interesting prose, and the interesting prose is turned up to 11 on this one. While I enjoyed reading this for the prose style, it went on a bit too long for what feels to me more like an absurdist poem having fun with language than a story per se. I don't mind an experimental story, but this one's not quite for me. I found myself wanting either more "story" or more weird SF ideas, but underneath the super fun prose (which I did really enjoy!) I'm not sure there's enough either story or ideas for my tastes."

Not ranked: “The Space-Time Painter”, by Hai Ya (Galaxy’s Edge, April 2022)

• The Hugo packet only includes a Chinese version of this story, and I am unable to find an English translation. Unfortunately my one semester of Mandarin in the 90’s and a few Daoist and Confucian terms I’ve picked up over the years are not enough for me to be able to read this story, which is totally on me, not the Hugo Awards, of course. I hope those who can read Chinese enjoyed it! 

So there you have it! I wish I could travel to China to attend the Hugo ceremony in person to see how it all turns out, but I will watch/read about it from the US!