If I had to pick a common theme for the first three Hugo-nominated novelettes this year, it would be discovery. There’s something for each character to find in these, whether it’s a new identity, a fading memory, or a self that was left behind years ago for what turns out to be very bad reasons.
“The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video” – Thomas Ha
“Not everyone appreciates these things the way the Brotherhood does. Materials that can’t be modified, adjusted, or updated. Some enjoy true things like that. Some can’t stand them.”
I’ve seen quite a lot of near-dystopian settings where society is so terminally online that literally everything is hooked up to a smart-watch, bombarded with virtual ads, and hidden behind carefully-designed avatars of how people want to be seen. Thomas Ha’s take on this is much quieter. And lonelier. Our nameless narrator is dealing with the recent death of his mother, so he’s taking time off of work to comb through her possessions, and having the occasional meet-up with his girlfriend who he’s still never seen un-augmented because taking off your VR glasses without your partner’s permission is just rude. The combination of loss and isolation makes everything feel very grey and quiet, like the snow-covered city he walks through on his way to take another load of old VCR tapes to the Brotherhood on Montague St. video store.
Purely by chance, the narrator stumbles across a “dead” book; a printed novel with no way for it to be updated to match current trends. Because in a society where everything is connected, everything can be tweaked. Smoothed out. Given a beige happy ending that’s easily digested and easily forgotten. The narrator even has to be careful when getting his mother’s old VCR tapes converted to a better format, because most places will remove anything that might be upsetting, like the very complicated relationship he had with his mother, whom he misses in a way that’s hard for him to describe.
There are definitely shades of Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 here, especially when the narrator starts being pursued by an organization who wants his dead book, possibly to destroy it. But this is a much calmer, contemplative story, looking at all the reasons why constantly updating art to make it “perfect” is actually taking all of the meaning out of it. Especially since our real, imperfect memories are guaranteed to disappear. Stumbling across the unchanged book, or movie, or music from years ago is one way to actually remember who we were at the time we first experienced it.
The Four Sisters Overlooking The Sea – Naomi Kritzer
We start Naomi Kritzer’s story with a family’s relocation to a seaside town. I thought for a moment that we were beginning a story where young Cordelia learns to make new friends at her new school, overcome bullies, and have confidence in herself. But right away Cordie and her mother Morgan are having a raucous sing-along with two of her new classmates in the drive back from seeing Heathers – the Musical, and that’s literally the only mention of any Mean Girls in the entire story.
So everything seems to be fine for Cordie. It’s her mother’s life that’s starting to develop some problems.
I’ll be honest, this one was hard to get through. It’s a great story, but there’s this stormy, gnawing, growing discontent that Morgan is feeling as she realizes none of the sacrifices she’s made in her life are appreciated. Or even acknowledged, since they were just what was obviously the “best” course for everyone. And of course she’s the problem for being “difficult” or “ridiculous” about things. The reader can see the shape of the betrayal almost from the very beginning, although it’s still a nasty surprise when it’s finally revealed.
What ended up being a nice surprise was Morgan’s gradual rediscovery of herself. I also liked the tie-in to a certain fairytale. This was definitely a daydream of a story, one with a very sharp edge as Morgan is helped by several friendly townsfolk who have opinions about people who steal things.
Lake of Souls – Ann Leckie
Ann Leckie’s story is told from two viewpoints. There’s Spawn, which isn’t a name so much as a designation since they’re still young and haven’t had their first molt. Spawn is very worried that their stone-age village is going to reject and/or exile them if they don’t grow up into the “right” kind of adult, ie: one that has a soul. A lot of the townspeople are already worried that Spawn is “different”, and you get the sense that concern would quickly switch over to something much darker if Spawn doesn’t meet expectations.
And then there’s another nameless narrator, who crawls their way out of a cryo chamber aboard a spaceship to find…nothing. There’s no help with the tedious waking-up procedure, no messages, and no people, just some ominous smears of blood and wrecked equipment. First order of business is to get down to the strange planet below to find a stolen communications unit and call for help, all while combing through the digital records of the ship to figure out who sabotaged the mission. Second order of business: try to not get eaten by one or more of what feels like an entire planet of carnivorous lifeforms.
Spawn is inquisitive and contemplative, and on a mission to find the fabled Lake of Souls. The ship survivor is impatient, trying not to be terrified, and is determined to find out what happened. Oh, and they’re fleeing some unnamed criminal past that made it worth their while to lose years in cryosleep and sign on as an anthropologist on a terraforming mission for a company that never needs an anthropologist, because that would mean admitting that the planets they’re terraforming already have sentient species in residence.
You’d think the two of them would make for a great buddy-adventure. And it does, kind of. But their respective quests almost fade into the background as they realize that what’s more important than getting answers is being allowed to choose which questions to ask in the first place.