Sanjay's Super Team (and The Good Dinosaur)

I think in the tumult of Christmas I never posted about this. Sanjay's Super Team is the best Pixar short ever. I have probably said this before (Day & Night, Boundin') but, no, really, this time, I *mean* it, it is an entirely different kind of thing than a neat visual gimmick or an inspirational poem, it's simultaneously epic cosmic high fantasy, and amazing character work, all in this teeny-tiny space of, like, seven minutes. I would watch a full-length feature trilogy expansion of it though, it's just - stylistically SO COOL, and the backstory (with the photos at the end) took my breath away. I don't think it can be purchased online at this time which is unfortunate because I want to tell everyone in the world to a) watch it, because it is so good, you want it in your eyeballs if you do visual media at all, and b) nominate it for the Hugo Dramatic Short-form (I usually try to stay away from "you should nominate this" language, but I just want everyone to get to know about it!).

The Good Dinosaur, the movie it screened with, is not so exciting. Phenomenal photorealistic nature animation but the story was pretty by-the-numbers. Which is fine - "some cute moments and nothing really obnoxious" is not a bad kids-movie experience - but it's too bad that Sanjay's Super Team might not have gotten as many in-theater views because it got paired with a less-enticing feature.

2015 Online Short Science Fiction and Fantasy - Lightspeed

Short stories from Lightspeed.

He Came From a Place of Openness and Truth, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam. Odd little playing around with alien and YA tropes.

Things You Can Buy for a Penny, Will Kaufman. A neatly-built fairy tale.

The Way Home, Linda Nagata. Ye olde American-soldiers-through-a-portal fantasy, this one to a particularly hellacious world.

Quiet Town, Jason Gurley. You know, in 10 or 20 years this kind of thing might seem like nothing special at all, but right now, it's topical and I'm a sucker for it.

Time Bomb Time, C.C. Finlay. Very gimmicky but it's an amusing enough gimmick.

Goodnight Earth, Annie Bellet. Supersoldiers in a post apocalyptic future kind of deal.

Influence Isolated, Make Peace, John Chu. Had me at cyborg boyfriends, what can I say.

Bucket List Found in the Locker of Maddie Price, Age 14, Written Two Weeks Before the Great Uplifting of All Mankind, Erica L Satifka. This is 736 words long and almost made me cry. I didn't rec this on Twitter because the title is so long, but it's worthwhile.

Madeleine, Amal El-Mohtar. Memories, time travel, and girlfriends.

Given the Advantage of the Blade, Genevieve Valentine. Princess fights! But more than that!

And We Were Left Darkling, Sarah Pinsker. Dream children. Beautiful and shivery.

Ghosts of Home, Sam J. Miller. The foreclosure crisis personified, clever and sharp.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Love, Death, Caroline M. Yoachim. I feel like when I write tropey fanfic (universe-swapping, mysterious duplicates, shrinking, etc) my characters tend to be much more focused on solving the problem than in some other similar fic. I liked the problem-solving focus in this time-travel story.

The Light Brigade, Kameron Hurley. Starts like military SF, ends like something more.

Beacon 23: Little Noises, Hugh Howey. Ye olde fixing-shit-in-space story.

Not Hugo eligible (there are always a few reprints I can't resist reading):

Water Rights, An Owomoyela. Near-space human expansion sf. From 2012.

The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees, John Barnes. Close encounters, the abyss, etc. From 2010.