My Reviews/Rankings of the Nominees for Best Short Story can be found HERE:
The Best Novelette category is both stronger than last year's category - there are clearly no weak links (as opposed to last year), and there are at least five (if not all six) stories that I might be happy with winning the award. It's an incredibly tough category to judge - with all of the stories being from good to excellent, just in very different ways and tones - and with the Nebula winner for this category having not been nominated for the Hugo, it's anyone's guess who the actual winner is going to be.
Still, my attempt at ranking/reviewing the nominees is below:
6. "Small Changes Over Long Periods Of Time" by K.M. Szpara (Uncanny, May/June 2017)
Quick Plot Summary: In a future world where Vampires are out in the open and subject to strict licensing guidelines, a Trans Man on testosterone therapy is bitten by an unlicensed vampire, and struggles to try and deal with the interactions between his trans self and his new vampire biology, both on a biological and emotional level.
Review: Small Changes is one of three nominees that was also nominated for the Nebula. It's also one of two more serious stories involving introspection of a sort on behalf of the main character. And certainly the concept - the interaction of vampirism and being trans - is an interesting idea with some purchase in today's world.
That said, I'm not sure the story executes the concept that well - I kind of think it could've used a few more pages of length, as I'm not sure the story's resolution follows from the body of the story - it seems like an abrupt shift in our protagonist's feelings from 80% of the way through to the ending. As a result, it winds up 6th on my rankings behind the other five stories.
5. "Children of Thorns, Children of Water" by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny, July-August 2017)
Quick Plot Summary: In de Bodard's "Dominion of the Fallen" universe, Thuan and his friend Kim Cuc of the Dragon Kingdom attempt to infiltrate the dangerous House Hawthorne, led by the Fallen Angel Asmodeus, by taking the test to become a "dependent" of the House only to discover a dangerous force has its own interests in the workings of the House which might not only endanger the test, but Thuan and his friend's lives.
Review: Children of Thorns is a prequel to de Bodard's novel, The House of Binding Thorns, which I greatly enjoyed (Review Here). Newcomers to the series - featuring Fallen Angels and a Vietnamese Dragon Kingdom fighting politically and otherwise for control of a devastated early 20th century France - will probably be a little bit lost without any background in the setting. If you have a background, it's a well done story, but it still very much feels like a prequel rather than its own independent story, with its resolution leading into the events of the novel rather than being a pretty satisfying ending in and of itself.
4. "The Secret Life of Bots" by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld, January 2017)
Quick Plot Summary: When a Spaceship AI on an emergency mission discovers a foreign invader (a mouse-like being), it awakens an obsolete bot - Bot 9 - known for instability due to its ability to improvise, which has been removed from more modern bots. Bot 9 is told by the AI to try and catch and eliminate the invader, but to not touch or allow the invader to touch what is kept in a particular room on-board. But as Bot 9 begins to realize the situation on the ship, it begins to improvise beyond what anyone could have expected, with the surprising help of the more modern bots aboard.
Review: The Secret Life of Bots is a pretty fun story that, unlike the above two stories, had a completely satisfying ending. The story of Bot 9 - obsoleted for having its own ability to take initiative and improvise - is especially cute and interesting against the background of this world, and value of improvisation is an excellent theme for the story not usually seen in robot characters as opposed to human ones. I liked this quite a bit.
3. "Extracurricular Activities" by Yoon Ha Lee (Tor.com, February 15, 2017)
Quick Plot Summary: Set in Lee's "Hexarchate/Machineries of Empire" universe, this story features a young Shuos Jedao being sent to infiltrate a foreign space station to recover a former classmate and Hexarchate spy who disappeared on a mission to the space station. But infiltrating a foreign culture with its own unique language isn't easy in the normal course of business, and Jedao soon finds out that things are even more complicated than they appear in this situation.
Review: Like Children of Thorns above, this story is a prequel to Lee's Machineries of Empire trilogy; however, unlike the de Bodard story, this story takes place hundreds of years prior to the trilogy and thus is more independent of the novels - readers of the novels will have a greater understanding of what is going on, but you can do just fine without. The story features, as does the trilogy, a number of LGBTQ characters (including the protagonist) and a really satisfying adventure story that surprises at turns and keeps a general light tone despite existing in a crapsack universe (which isn't explored much here, unlike the novels). Again, I enjoyed this quite a bit, perhaps more so because I have read the novels which are some of my favorite works over the past two years.
2. "A Series of Steaks" by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Clarkesworld, January 2017)
Quick Plot Summary: Helena Li Yuanhui runs a questionably legal business using 3D printers to print out well...steaks, which she sells to customers who may or may not know such steaks aren't from real cows. But when an anonymous customer orders her to fulfill her biggest order ever and threatens to expose Helena's greatest secret if she doesn't comply, Helena knows she needs help. But when she finds an assistant, Lily Yonezawa, she finds that perhaps she might be able to turn the tables on her blackmailer.
Review: A Series of Steaks is a really really cute and well done story and a very worthy nominee (obviously, given that I have it ranked #2) for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. It takes a fun sci-fi premise based upon existing technology, infuses the story with fun characters - Lily is really fun - and the story is bookended wonderfully by two parables about forgeries, so that it really really works out. Anything too in particular will spoil this story, which is short even for a novelette, but this is a wonderful story with two wonderful women as its protagonists in a setting that feels very realistic.
1. "Wind Will Rove" by Sarah Pinsker (Asimov's, September/October 2017)
Quick Plot Summary: On a generation ship on its way to a new world, the older people of the ship try to keep their histories and cultures alive by teaching it to the next generations, having lost much of their digital memory in an act of sabotage shortly into their journey. For Rosie Clay, a history teacher, remembrance of the past is especially important, but she finds herself challenged by one of her newest students on its relevance to their new world. As Rosie attempts to find a way to explain the importance of such, she thinks about the music she has learned to play on her fiddle, particularly a song known as "Wind Will Rove," and what these songs, which may or may not have been played in the same form back on Earth, really mean to her.
Review: The last nominee that also made the Nebula shortlist, Wind Will Rove is also only the second of these six nominees to not be a fun story but instead a more serious introspection - this one about the importance of history, memory, and evolutions of the latter two. It's also my pick for the award. The story takes an idea that a lot of stories I think take for granted - generation ships where the occupants are taught the history of the prior world - and examines on one level what really would happen and whether those occupants of the ship would actually really care about such histories - and whether the simple recitation of those old histories unchanged would have any meaning. But then on another level, it questions the very meaning of those histories, of those past cultures, and how they evolve under new understandings of descendants to come (as seen through the titular music, as well as the state of the generation ship in question). It's a really interesting story of ideas, and well deserving of the award.
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