Hugo Award voting is open and will continue through the August 11, 2022. 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 the last five (wow, 5!) years, 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.
This is the second part of this series. You can find all the parts of this series, going over each category of the Hugo Awards HERE.
Today I'm going over the nominees for Best Short Story, which covers works of fewer than 7500 words long. This year, as is frequent, the nominees are all available for free online, so I'll try to link them below as I discuss them. It's a really strong ballot, which makes this one incredibly hard to order, especially as we have a mix of types of stories - one enjoyable tie-in story (to Magic the Gathering), one creepy horror story, a couple of bittersweet stories, and well, others that aren't so easily categorizable: we even have one story that was actually a twitter thread at first.
But after the jump I'll try.
As usual, I'm going to rank these into Tiers. Unlike the Lodestar Ballot I started this series with, all of these stories are award worthy, so I won't be super upset if any of these win, and I could see any of them doing so. You can find each of these stories at the links below, by the way, in case you haven't read them.
Tier Three:
6. “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather”, by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny Magazine, Mar/Apr 2021)
Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather may actually be the favorite to win this award, coming from a well-loved Hugo Winning author in Pinsker and being the winner of the Nebula Award for this same category. The story takes the form of an online, Genius.com-esque, discussion about the lyrics of an old horror-folk-ballad, with a group of commentators discussing what the song means, the variants, and as one commenter who tries to investigate it seems to be discovering...the reality of the horror.
Honestly, this reminds me of Pinsker's winning Novelette from last year, Two Truths and a Lie, in the way its tone gives a slow feeling of dread or creepiness, but like with that novelette, it just didn't hit me that hard as it seems to for others. Something about this format of the work also didn't help. So it goes at the bottom of my rankings, even though It's a very likely winner.
5. “Tangles”, by Seanan McGuire (Magicthegathering.com: Magic Story, Sep 2021)
Tangles is honestly the most straightforward story of the nominees - a Magic the Gathering tie-in story featuring two characters from the cards, longtime Planeswalker Teferi and a newer one Wrenn, as Wrenn attempts to find a new tree to bond with (she's a Druid) and Teferi gets in the way accidentally. As someone who used to play MTG and is vaguely familiar with the story, this worked for me, but I'm not sure how much it would for someone without MTG experience.
Anyhow it's a fun story, well written by McGuire as always, and it worked for me better than Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather, but It doesn't really last with me. So it goes here.
4. “Mr. Death”, by Alix E. Harrow (Apex Magazine, Feb 2021)
Mr. Death is the latest by Alix E. Harrow, who's a perennial Hugo favorite even if her audience doesn't seem to overlap with the people I follow (She's also nominated for Best Novella). The story follows a reaper named Sam, who died and now has the task of reaping those fated to die for the cosmic order and bringing them across the river into the afterlife/beyond. Except this time, Sam is assigned to reap the soul of a two year old child...causing him tremendous stress and memories of his own dead child.
It's a well crafted and heartbreaking story for a while....until it ends on a happy note. Which I suspect is what will make it pleasing to its audience. On the other hand, while it's fine, the story really doesn't say anything, and that happy note ending just comes from nowhere, making it not really land for me. Nor does this story really say anything new or interesting. So it joins Tier Three with the above two stories, even if I can see it winning.
Tier Two:
3. “The Sin of America”, by Catherynne M. Valente (Uncanny Magazine, Mar/Apr 2021)
The first of three nominated works by Valente on this ballot, The Sin of America is one of the two taking direct shot at our current society, particularly in this case American society and scapegoating, using the story of a woman growing up and doing the best she can despite a number of hardships as its protagonist. There's a ton of symbolism here in the wrongness behind America, and the result is very powerful, especially as it becomes clear what exactly is happening (and this is a lot of power in what I think is the shortest of the conventional short stories).
On the other hand, perhaps because it's so short, or perhaps because the symbolism here can only go so far, this is kind of one note once it's point is made, and for a story of power, I'm really looking for something a bit more new than this. A worthy addition to a canon that begs people to take notice and course correct for our people...even if they won't sadly enough.
Tier One:
2. “Proof by Induction”, by José Pablo Iriarte (Uncanny Magazine, May/Jun 2021)
Another story here that may not be wholly original in concept (I swear I've seen this concept in some form or other) but this one is executed so well and combined with other ideas so as to be really really strong and memorable, and one of two stories that I would very much favor to win this category. The story follows a college Math professor Paulie seeking tenure after his math professor father died, a father who didn't ever give him the credit and love that he wanted ever in life. Using a technology that allows Paulie to go into his father's memories and interact with some static version of him, Paulie attempts to solve a famous math problem that will earn him enough fame for tenure....and maybe get him those credos from his father he never got in life.
The result is a really strong novella taking parental emotional trauma, math and academic life, and trying to make a better life and relationship for the next generation and turning it into a worthy full story. I really liked this one quite a bit, as its emotional beats hit home really well, with the sci-fi technology to go into the old memories being something I've seen before, but maybe never quite in this way. An excellent use of sci-fi, and one I would be very happy to see win the award.
1. “Unknown Number”, by Blue Neustifter (Twitter, Jul 2021)
The most unconventional format of story, Unknown Number was originally a twitter thread made up of images of text messages from a conversation: a conversation between a person and an alternate version of themselves...a version desperately searching for validation after suffering from gender dysphoria that they never had the courage to do anything about.
I'm not going to say much more than that here: this story doesn't take long to read but it's really well done, a powerful story from a trans protagonist about how taking action to help oneself is something one can always do, even if one would rather go through extraordinary efforts to do anything else (not something that applies exclusively to those suffering from gender dysphoria, but even so, it definitely does in this context).
Like I read this and thought it wouldn't be number one on my list, but the more I thought about it the more it stuck with me, so here it is.
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