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Hugo musings
This is the first year I’ve actually voted for the Hugos, although I did attend Worldcon in 2000. Naturally my intentions to be super organised and read everything have fallen over due to various other events. However, as of today this is where I am on the fiction lists, two days before deadline. Comments, arguments, things I should try to read etc. welcome.
Novels
The Light Brigade, Kameron Hurley
Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir
I enjoyed both of these but not unconditionally. Gideon has a super rocky start – it took me nine chapters to get involved – an excellent, very strong middle, and an ending that didn’t really work for me. I liked Light Brigade’s structure and its take on mil sf, but the ending worked better in its original short form and it still doesn’t beat out volume 3 of Halo Jones for my favourite mil sf story. I can’t decide yet between the two of them.
A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine
Liked it but didn’t love it. While I enjoyed the writing and the characters, it felt to me like a young book; there’s a lack of complexity in how the empire actually works and the solutions. Also one of those books about a galaxy-spanning empire inhabited by about twenty people.
Middlegame, Seanan McGuire
The City in the Middle of the Night, Charlie Jane Anders
The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow
I have read the first few chapters of all of these and put them down again as they either weren’t grabbing me or were irritating. Am going to give them all another go.
Novellas
The Haunting of Tram Car 015, P. Djèlí Clark.
Two investigators from the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities attempt to deal with the titular tram car in a version of Cairo where a mystic punched a hole through into the supernatural in the 19th century. Great city-building – there’s a real sense of Cairo as a place where multitudes of people live and work – and the backdrop of the suffragette campaign weaves neatly in and out of the main story.
“Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom”, Ted Chiang. Prisms allow people to contact their paraselves in alternate timelines; they also allow for the unethical to run various scams. This feels more focussed on working through implications than his also nominated short, and there are some really nice moments.
The Deep, Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes. The unborn children of pregnant slaves tossed over the side of ships taking the middle passage grow into sea creatures who depend on only one of them to remember all the weight of their history, but the current historian – Yetu – is about to break under the strain. There’s a lot going on here and I didn’t always feel it was focussed; I also was unclear on the timelines. I did like the romance.
To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Becky Chambers. Lovely scientific descriptions of the four worlds a team of scientist astronauts travel to, their bodies modified for each world while they are in coldsleep. Lacking in tension and conflict despite its diverse characters (this would totally be a feature for people who like to read about reasonable people getting on with each other) and the lady-or-the-tiger style ending didn’t work for me.
In an Absent Dream, Seanan McGuire. In her Every Heart a Doorway series; Katherine Lundy visits the Goblin Market, where fair value is all. This is very readable but it’s not particularly new, and the bit where Katherine decides to stay in the real world as well as trying to cheat the Market felt necessary for the story but not fair for the character – why doesn’t she try to take her younger sister in?
This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone. Glittering prose as two rival immortal spy operatives range up and down timelines, and fall in love. Naturally they kill and manipulate thousands along the way, and it all just serves as a backdrop to their emotions; this is not a story I like.
Novelettes
“For He Can Creep”, Siobhan Carroll
Really liked this story of a cat, his poet, and the devil, loosely based on Christopher Smart’s Cat Jeoffrey; great voice, excellent story, full of joy.
“The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye”, Sarah Pinsker
Mystery writer & her assistant book a cabin for their regular writing retreat, which proceeds as these things tend to do. I really liked the first half of this but the resolution, in which the cycle goes round again, was a bit underbaked emotionally.
“Omphalos”, Ted Chiang
Set in a world where all the fossil evidence shows that the Earth was created several thousand years earlier; then new astronomical findings challenge the inhabitants’ comfortable certainty that they are the centre of the universe. The bit where this is basically our world in the early 1900s with some minor name changes (Arisona, Chicagou) put me off a bit and there is rather a lot of monologuing.
“Emergency Skin”, N.K. Jemisin
Soldier from a far-off planet colonised by all the rich (white) billionaires who left Earth when it was failing returns for supplies; gimmick is that skin has become the sought-after resource, and the solider is issued with a composite with the promise of a real one if the mission is successful. It’s told by the AI in their head and while I admire the writing, spending a whole novella with a deeply unpleasant AI is why I don’t rate this higher. Also, while I like the ideas about skin and about how society would develop, the basic idea of someone returning to Earth only to find their ideas about it wrong is a very old sf trope.
“Away with the Wolves”, Sarah Gailey. Werewolf girl whose human form suffers unbearable pain decides to live as a wolf. The bit where the village is aware of her identity and she has to make up for things is interesting, but there’s no tension in her decision.
“The Archronology of Love”, Caroline M. Yoachim. Scientist arrives at a failed Martian colony where her lifelove was among those lost; their group try to find out what happened by studying the time record, but in observing they will render it impossible to use again. I liked the image of the time record being steadily replaced by white blurs but otherwise this felt too contrived.
Short Stories
“Do Not Look Back, My Lion”, Alix E. Harrow
“Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island”, by Nibedita Sen.
I can’t quite decide between these two. I nominated the first one and I really like it; I’ve read quite a few warring matriarchy stories and this felt like one of the most solid of them. It squarely addresses parenthood (not necessarily motherhood) in a way I don’t often see in these or in SF in general. The Sen is a deft sliver of a story in a format I have a weakness for.
“And Now His Lordship Is Laughing”, Shiv Ramdas
“Blood Is Another Word for Hunger”, Rivers Solomon
Hard to pick between these two as well; both stories of revenge on oppressors who have committed genocide, the British in Bengal for the first, white slave-owners in the US for the second. Blood moves beyond revenge to grief and rebirth, but I liked the main character more in Laughing.
“As the Last I May Know”, S.L. Huang
The codes to destructive weapons are placed inside a young girl; if the leader of the country wants to activate them, they must first kill her. I liked the writing but this is one of those very engineered set ups that appears to be both widely accepted by society but to never have happened before.
“A Catalog of Storms”, Fran Wilde
In a world beset by terrible climatic phenomenon some people are literally turning into weather. Didn’t work for me.
Best Series
Ahaha. I am not going to be able to vote on these. I’ve read the first of the Winternight series and it was okay, but I didn’t want to read more. Haven’t read any of the others; I’ve read some Ian McDonald short stories (okay), some Seanan McGuire novellas (competent but not my thing), a non SF fairy book by Emma Newman I disliked intensely, and I hadn’t actually heard of Tade Thompson prior to this ballot.
Graphic Story/Comic
I’ve read volume 1 of Die and liked it (I’ve also read volume 1 of Paper Girls and didn’t, but maybe it picks up). Mainly though I am grumpy that in the last ten years no manga has ever been nominated. I may manage to read these but I do think it’s weird to nominate single issues of long running series.
Die, Volume 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker, Kieron Gillen, illustrated by Stephanie Hans (Image)
The Wicked + The Divine, Volume 9: “Okay”, Kieron Gillen, illustrated by Jamie McKelvie & Matt Wilson (Image Comics)
Monstress, Volume 4: The Chosen, Marjorie Liu, illustrated by Sana Takeda (Image)
LaGuardia, Nnedi Okorafor, illustrated by Tana Ford, colours by James Devlin (Berger Books/Dark Horse)
Paper Girls, Volume 6, Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Cliff Chiang & Matt Wilson (Image)
Mooncakes, Wendy Xu & Suzanne Walker (Oni Press; Lion Forge)
Novels
The Light Brigade, Kameron Hurley
Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir
I enjoyed both of these but not unconditionally. Gideon has a super rocky start – it took me nine chapters to get involved – an excellent, very strong middle, and an ending that didn’t really work for me. I liked Light Brigade’s structure and its take on mil sf, but the ending worked better in its original short form and it still doesn’t beat out volume 3 of Halo Jones for my favourite mil sf story. I can’t decide yet between the two of them.
A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine
Liked it but didn’t love it. While I enjoyed the writing and the characters, it felt to me like a young book; there’s a lack of complexity in how the empire actually works and the solutions. Also one of those books about a galaxy-spanning empire inhabited by about twenty people.
Middlegame, Seanan McGuire
The City in the Middle of the Night, Charlie Jane Anders
The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow
I have read the first few chapters of all of these and put them down again as they either weren’t grabbing me or were irritating. Am going to give them all another go.
Novellas
The Haunting of Tram Car 015, P. Djèlí Clark.
Two investigators from the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities attempt to deal with the titular tram car in a version of Cairo where a mystic punched a hole through into the supernatural in the 19th century. Great city-building – there’s a real sense of Cairo as a place where multitudes of people live and work – and the backdrop of the suffragette campaign weaves neatly in and out of the main story.
“Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom”, Ted Chiang. Prisms allow people to contact their paraselves in alternate timelines; they also allow for the unethical to run various scams. This feels more focussed on working through implications than his also nominated short, and there are some really nice moments.
The Deep, Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes. The unborn children of pregnant slaves tossed over the side of ships taking the middle passage grow into sea creatures who depend on only one of them to remember all the weight of their history, but the current historian – Yetu – is about to break under the strain. There’s a lot going on here and I didn’t always feel it was focussed; I also was unclear on the timelines. I did like the romance.
To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Becky Chambers. Lovely scientific descriptions of the four worlds a team of scientist astronauts travel to, their bodies modified for each world while they are in coldsleep. Lacking in tension and conflict despite its diverse characters (this would totally be a feature for people who like to read about reasonable people getting on with each other) and the lady-or-the-tiger style ending didn’t work for me.
In an Absent Dream, Seanan McGuire. In her Every Heart a Doorway series; Katherine Lundy visits the Goblin Market, where fair value is all. This is very readable but it’s not particularly new, and the bit where Katherine decides to stay in the real world as well as trying to cheat the Market felt necessary for the story but not fair for the character – why doesn’t she try to take her younger sister in?
This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone. Glittering prose as two rival immortal spy operatives range up and down timelines, and fall in love. Naturally they kill and manipulate thousands along the way, and it all just serves as a backdrop to their emotions; this is not a story I like.
Novelettes
“For He Can Creep”, Siobhan Carroll
Really liked this story of a cat, his poet, and the devil, loosely based on Christopher Smart’s Cat Jeoffrey; great voice, excellent story, full of joy.
“The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye”, Sarah Pinsker
Mystery writer & her assistant book a cabin for their regular writing retreat, which proceeds as these things tend to do. I really liked the first half of this but the resolution, in which the cycle goes round again, was a bit underbaked emotionally.
“Omphalos”, Ted Chiang
Set in a world where all the fossil evidence shows that the Earth was created several thousand years earlier; then new astronomical findings challenge the inhabitants’ comfortable certainty that they are the centre of the universe. The bit where this is basically our world in the early 1900s with some minor name changes (Arisona, Chicagou) put me off a bit and there is rather a lot of monologuing.
“Emergency Skin”, N.K. Jemisin
Soldier from a far-off planet colonised by all the rich (white) billionaires who left Earth when it was failing returns for supplies; gimmick is that skin has become the sought-after resource, and the solider is issued with a composite with the promise of a real one if the mission is successful. It’s told by the AI in their head and while I admire the writing, spending a whole novella with a deeply unpleasant AI is why I don’t rate this higher. Also, while I like the ideas about skin and about how society would develop, the basic idea of someone returning to Earth only to find their ideas about it wrong is a very old sf trope.
“Away with the Wolves”, Sarah Gailey. Werewolf girl whose human form suffers unbearable pain decides to live as a wolf. The bit where the village is aware of her identity and she has to make up for things is interesting, but there’s no tension in her decision.
“The Archronology of Love”, Caroline M. Yoachim. Scientist arrives at a failed Martian colony where her lifelove was among those lost; their group try to find out what happened by studying the time record, but in observing they will render it impossible to use again. I liked the image of the time record being steadily replaced by white blurs but otherwise this felt too contrived.
Short Stories
“Do Not Look Back, My Lion”, Alix E. Harrow
“Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island”, by Nibedita Sen.
I can’t quite decide between these two. I nominated the first one and I really like it; I’ve read quite a few warring matriarchy stories and this felt like one of the most solid of them. It squarely addresses parenthood (not necessarily motherhood) in a way I don’t often see in these or in SF in general. The Sen is a deft sliver of a story in a format I have a weakness for.
“And Now His Lordship Is Laughing”, Shiv Ramdas
“Blood Is Another Word for Hunger”, Rivers Solomon
Hard to pick between these two as well; both stories of revenge on oppressors who have committed genocide, the British in Bengal for the first, white slave-owners in the US for the second. Blood moves beyond revenge to grief and rebirth, but I liked the main character more in Laughing.
“As the Last I May Know”, S.L. Huang
The codes to destructive weapons are placed inside a young girl; if the leader of the country wants to activate them, they must first kill her. I liked the writing but this is one of those very engineered set ups that appears to be both widely accepted by society but to never have happened before.
“A Catalog of Storms”, Fran Wilde
In a world beset by terrible climatic phenomenon some people are literally turning into weather. Didn’t work for me.
Best Series
Ahaha. I am not going to be able to vote on these. I’ve read the first of the Winternight series and it was okay, but I didn’t want to read more. Haven’t read any of the others; I’ve read some Ian McDonald short stories (okay), some Seanan McGuire novellas (competent but not my thing), a non SF fairy book by Emma Newman I disliked intensely, and I hadn’t actually heard of Tade Thompson prior to this ballot.
Graphic Story/Comic
I’ve read volume 1 of Die and liked it (I’ve also read volume 1 of Paper Girls and didn’t, but maybe it picks up). Mainly though I am grumpy that in the last ten years no manga has ever been nominated. I may manage to read these but I do think it’s weird to nominate single issues of long running series.
Die, Volume 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker, Kieron Gillen, illustrated by Stephanie Hans (Image)
The Wicked + The Divine, Volume 9: “Okay”, Kieron Gillen, illustrated by Jamie McKelvie & Matt Wilson (Image Comics)
Monstress, Volume 4: The Chosen, Marjorie Liu, illustrated by Sana Takeda (Image)
LaGuardia, Nnedi Okorafor, illustrated by Tana Ford, colours by James Devlin (Berger Books/Dark Horse)
Paper Girls, Volume 6, Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Cliff Chiang & Matt Wilson (Image)
Mooncakes, Wendy Xu & Suzanne Walker (Oni Press; Lion Forge)