The last three Hugo-nominated novelettes for 2023 are something of a mixed bag. You’ve got a real-life problem that’s almost guaranteed to get worse, a future technology that highlights the very best that humanity has to offer to its descendants, and one more that I can’t actually describe because no one knows how to find
I’m actually ahead of the game this year as far as the Hugo-nominated novelettes. By which I mean I’ve read one of them already (it’s the Catherynne Valente one, which I’m sure is no surprise). For the first three Best Novelette nominees, we have stories which all include the theme of needing to be seen,
Just as I was toying with posting a review of several random short stories (in hopes of getting one that might be nominated for a Hugo Award), the Chengdu Worldcon committee today posted the full list of finalists. I didn’t manage to guess more than one nominated work of short fiction (Catherynne Valente’s excellent novelette),
I saved the short stories for last this year, hoping for a little light summer reading to wrap up the Hugo Award reviews. Things didn’t quite work out as planned, because there’s a surprising amount of death in this year’s finalists. Also transformation, and working through grief, and an in-depth study of a folk song,
On its surface, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Hugo-nominated novella Elder Race sounds like a standard coming-of-age fantasy-adventure. Lynesse Fourth Daughter is the only person in her mother’s court who still believes in the old stories, and the only one who doesn’t want to just wait out the strange demon infestation in the Ordwood and hope it goes
“…nothing.” That is what the fortune teller says when the girl gets up the courage to ask “Will you tell me my fate?” Her favored older brother Zhu Chongba is destined for greatness; the only surviving daughter of the Zhu family is destined to starve to death along with most of her village. But then
Next up for the Hugo Award finalists is Aliette de Bodard’s story of political intrigue, familial conflict, and reckless romance in a fantasy version of pre-colonial Vietnam. Imperial Princess Thanh was sent to the country of Ephteria when she was still a child. Being a royal hostage was one of the only things she was
Romantic girls like Beauty and the Beast; vanilla girls like Cinderella; goth girls like Snow White. Only dying girls like Sleeping Beauty. Alix E. Harrow is up for two Hugo awards this year, adding to a long list of nominations for her novels and short stories. In her Hugo-nominated novella this year, young Zinnia Grey
Souls are cheap. The trick is finding the right soul. Katrina Nguyen, a transgender teenager from a very unaccepting family, decides that her latest beating is one beating too many. She climbs out of her family’s apartment and boards a bus to Los Angeles, bringing along not much more than her laptop and her treasured