stormsewer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stormsewer) wrote2019-05-20 11:38 pm
stormsewer) wrote2019-05-20 11:38 pm
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2019 Hugo Picks: Novelettes
This is a strong set, perhaps my favorite set of nominees ever [1]. I enjoyed reading all of them, and I'm sad I have to rank any of them lower than #1.
6. “If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again” by Zen Cho
An imugi (a mythological giant Korean snake-like creature) keeps trying and failing to become a dragon.
I thought this a little cutesy at first, but the ending did manage a few tugs on the ol’ strings.
5. “The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections” by Tina Connolly
The pastry taster for a despot, whose husband is the pastry chef, must navigate a special course of pastries with the power to recall old memories.
A wonderful piece taking Proustian themes to their magical conclusion. A quote I liked- “Even the sweetest memory has an edge, for it is something that is lost and will not come again.”
4. The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander
An alternate history where elephants are sentient and get tangled up with the Radium Girls and the question of how to leave long-term warnings about nuclear waste storage.
I wasn't sure about this initially; the first half struck me as a little scattered, a little coy, a little obscurantist. The second half brought the bang for me, though; I was hungry to see how things would resolve, and the little hints dropped only made me more ravenous. "The downtrodden take their revenge" is a recurrent theme in Bolander's work, but this is perhaps my favorite iteration on it. She lays the groundwork carefully to make you want to cheer when the denouement arrives, depressing (and true to life) as the story as a whole is. (I do wish Kat's thread got a little more resolution, though.) This won the Nebula.
3. "The Thing About Ghost Stories" by Naomi Kritzer
An academic studying ghost stories finds herself in one of her own.
This story felt so real and so personal it was hard not to read it as a legitimate personal account. I love how meta it ends up, but without beating you over the head with it, and I love the MC's failed attempts to balance scholarly objectivity with her strange personal experiences.
2. "When We Were Starless" by Simone Heller
A sentient creature in a post-apocalyptic world helps her nomadic tribe by exorcising what they call "ghosts."
This turns out to be a pretty classic SF premise, but it was beautifully executed. The author does a great job instantiating creatures quite different from humans while still managing to imbue them with an outlook and experience of the world that feels authentic. The ending made me feel a combination of hope and anxiety about what the future holds for these creatures; I don't know if that was intentional, but I like it.
1. “Nine Last Days on Planet Earth” by Daryl Gregory
Accounts of nine different days from a life spent dealing with invasive plant species seeded onto the earth from space.
Wonderful. Emotionally urgent, and one of the rare science fiction stories I've read that actually evinces a fairly sophisticated understanding of biology. I also love how the title suggests one thing on its own and something else once you've finished the piece.
[1] I was a little nervous about the changes in the nomination process they made to stop the Puppy shenanigans, but I'm starting to think it was a good thing.
See also:
Short stories
6. “If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again” by Zen Cho
An imugi (a mythological giant Korean snake-like creature) keeps trying and failing to become a dragon.
I thought this a little cutesy at first, but the ending did manage a few tugs on the ol’ strings.
5. “The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections” by Tina Connolly
The pastry taster for a despot, whose husband is the pastry chef, must navigate a special course of pastries with the power to recall old memories.
A wonderful piece taking Proustian themes to their magical conclusion. A quote I liked- “Even the sweetest memory has an edge, for it is something that is lost and will not come again.”
4. The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander
An alternate history where elephants are sentient and get tangled up with the Radium Girls and the question of how to leave long-term warnings about nuclear waste storage.
I wasn't sure about this initially; the first half struck me as a little scattered, a little coy, a little obscurantist. The second half brought the bang for me, though; I was hungry to see how things would resolve, and the little hints dropped only made me more ravenous. "The downtrodden take their revenge" is a recurrent theme in Bolander's work, but this is perhaps my favorite iteration on it. She lays the groundwork carefully to make you want to cheer when the denouement arrives, depressing (and true to life) as the story as a whole is. (I do wish Kat's thread got a little more resolution, though.) This won the Nebula.
3. "The Thing About Ghost Stories" by Naomi Kritzer
An academic studying ghost stories finds herself in one of her own.
This story felt so real and so personal it was hard not to read it as a legitimate personal account. I love how meta it ends up, but without beating you over the head with it, and I love the MC's failed attempts to balance scholarly objectivity with her strange personal experiences.
2. "When We Were Starless" by Simone Heller
A sentient creature in a post-apocalyptic world helps her nomadic tribe by exorcising what they call "ghosts."
This turns out to be a pretty classic SF premise, but it was beautifully executed. The author does a great job instantiating creatures quite different from humans while still managing to imbue them with an outlook and experience of the world that feels authentic. The ending made me feel a combination of hope and anxiety about what the future holds for these creatures; I don't know if that was intentional, but I like it.
1. “Nine Last Days on Planet Earth” by Daryl Gregory
Accounts of nine different days from a life spent dealing with invasive plant species seeded onto the earth from space.
Wonderful. Emotionally urgent, and one of the rare science fiction stories I've read that actually evinces a fairly sophisticated understanding of biology. I also love how the title suggests one thing on its own and something else once you've finished the piece.
[1] I was a little nervous about the changes in the nomination process they made to stop the Puppy shenanigans, but I'm starting to think it was a good thing.
See also:
Short stories