Wednesday, June 6, 2018

Reviewing the 2018 Hugo Nominees: Best Short Story

Reviewing the 2018 Hugo Award Nominees: Best Short Story

Hugo Award voting opened last month and continues through the end of July.  For those of you new to the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre, the Hugo Award is one of the most prominent awards for works in the genre, with the Award being given based upon voting by those who have paid for at least a Supporting Membership in this year's WorldCon.  As I did last year, I'm going to be posting reviews/my-picks for the award in the various categories I feel qualified in, but feel free to chime in with your own thoughts in the comments.  As I mentioned in my Hugo Packet post, all of the short fiction nominees are available in the Hugo Packet, though many of these pieces are also available for free online already - if they are, I will link those stories in the post.

For the second straight year, the Best Short Story category is very very strong.  Three or Four stories I thought were worthy of the award for sure, and the final two nominees in the category are definitely worth picking over "No Award."  You have a stories that are hopeful, stories that are light and amusing, stories that are angry, and stories that are very bittersweet.  What you vote for may depend upon which of those you prefer - it's very hard to look at this list and necessarily say that something is better, but that's the job of the voter.  So, let's take a look:






6th place.  "Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand" by Fran Wilde (Uncanny, September 2017)

Quick Summary:  A really short story (9 kindle pages) featuring on its surface a tour through a weird living grotesque.  Naturally it's more than that: an angry metaphor for the treatment and reactions of those different.

Review:  This is the second year in a row with a Fran Wilde story on the ballot (last year for Novelette).  This is a more metaphoric story than last year's story but It just didn't work that well for me - it's almost too metaphoric, with the direction of its focus/anger being a bit too dilute to my reading.  Broad metaphoric anger just doesn't compare to the other works for me, though others may disagree.

5th place.  "Sun, Moon, and Dust" by Ursula Vernon (Uncanny, May/June, 2017)

Quick Summary:  A farmer's grandmother leaves him on her deathbed with a magic sword possessed by three spirits named Sun, Moon, and Dust.  But he has no intention of using setting aside his farmer's life for that of a warrior, a fact that each of the three spirits take very differently.

Review:  A very light story by Ursula Vernon, with a sort of predictable result pretty quickly, it still manages to be amusing and quaint.  Definitely enjoyable and worth the nomination, but I don't think it does anything particularly special enough to measure up to the stories above it on my list. 

4. "Fandom for Robots" by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Uncanny, September/October 2017)

Quick Summary:  Exactly what it sounds like - an old robot with artificial intelligence, stored in a robot museum, discovers an anime and through it, the world of fandom and fanfiction, and tries its hand in it.

Review:  The first of four stories that I would be very happy to see win the award, this story is a really fun combination of the idea of a supposedly unemotional robot turning to fanfiction of a story with a similar-looking robot and the reactions that entail from that.  Think the Murderbot stories, but if Murderbot decided to not just consume the stories, but to actually try to write them and work with others who are interested in the same.  Utterly delightful.

3.  "Carnival Nine" by Caroline M. Yoachim (Beneath Ceaseless Skies May 2017)

Quick Summary:  In a world where days in a life are determined by clockwork springs wound each night by the "Maker", a young girl finds herself with more turns on average per day than most people, and goes to a Carnival to take advantage of her extra time, in a move that will affect the rest of her life, as she finds love and more.

Review:  I don't want to spoil anything in the above summary, because this is a story that deserves to be read in its entirety.  The result is at times bittersweet, at times heartwarming, and altogether beautiful.  The obvious allegory to real life works really well, and I teared up a little at times.

2.  "The Martian Obelisk" by Linda Nagata (Tor.com, July 19, 2017)

Quick Summary:  In a future where ecological and other disasters has led to an Earth which is on the road to annihilation, a woman with nothing left uses robots on Mars to try and build a gigantic obelisk/tower that will last for ages after humanity is dead, only to be interrupted by a mysterious rover from a seemingly dead colony on Mars approaching the construction.

Review:  I really struggled between this story and the below story as my pick for this award, it's really that good.  The setting is way too believable - although perhaps the main character in real life would be a lot more vain than the one here - and the story still provides a total surprise.  The final ending is one of a triumph of hope over cynicism, in the face of plenty to be absolutely cynical about, and this story really needs to be read especially in this dark time.  I'm spoiling already too much to say that, although obviously it's not a long story.

Must Read.

1.  "Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™" by Rebecca Roanhorse (Apex, August 2017)

Quick Summary:  A Native American who works in a VR setting giving customers "authentic" native experiences - such as "vision quests" - finds himself confronted with a strange White customer who seems to want more from him....the experience itself.

Review:  Again, I tried not to spoil in the above summary - as a short story it's hard not to spoil when summarizing, and this really deserves to be experienced as blind as possible.  Unlike the last three stories, this one is not optimistic at all - a scifi/fantasy story featuring appropriation of Native identity and life on multiple different levels obviously can't be.  An example of the genre at its very finest, using scifi/fantasy trappings to illustrate a real word problem of utter seriousness in a way that should horrify even the most ignorant individual and get them thinking.

Must Read, and as this story was the one that won the Nebula, probably the favorite to win the Hugo as well.  Deservedly so.

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