2023 Hugo short stories
Sep. 19th, 2023 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraI am very disconnected from the Hugos this year - I have a whole stack of books kindly lent to me and I haven't been able to get myself to touch them. I guess I'm going to see if I can get myself to at least tackle the short fiction categories. To which end, the Short Stories!
I had already read "Rabbit Test" and "D.I.Y.". The other four are in the packet, "Zhurong on Mars" translated by S. Qiouyi Lu, "Resurrection" translated by Blake Stone-Banks, "On the Razor's Edge" machine-translated, and "White Cliff" not specified but my guess would be also a machine translation because of pronoun inconsistencies (or maybe there's a character who uses both he and she pronouns).
“D.I.Y.”, by John Wiswell (Tordotcom, August 2022) "This one absolutely reeks of ballot. A fine little story about not getting into magic school, and monopolies, and collective action. I don't know that I personally am nominating it, but I fully expect to be seeing it."
“On the Razor’s Edge”, by Jiang Bo (Science Fiction World, January 2022) A Daring Space Rescue (TM). Being a machine translation, it's hard to say how much of the sometime tonal weirdness was in the original and how much was introduced in the translation. "This was a tragedy, have some kung pao chicken!"
“Rabbit Test”, by Samantha Mills (Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2022) "The past and future history of abortion as an endless, depressing cycle of freedom and oppression. Nebula nominee."
“Resurrection”, by Ren Qing (Future Fiction/Science Fiction World, December 2022) A soldier gets a brief second chance at life . This one I felt like I was missing something, or wasn't quite getting what it was getting at or why things were happening the way they were.
“The White Cliff”, by Lu Ban (Science Fiction World, May 2022) Virtual reality as a sort of staging area for the dying - not extending life, but creating a calmer space to prepare for death. Interesting idea. I had trouble following the imagery though, like, were they at the top or bottom of the cliff.
“Zhurong on Mars”, by Regina Kanyu Wang (Frontiers, September 2022) An AI left behind after the Singularity contemplates the meaning/purpose/nature of its existence, which (eventually) leads to the recapitulation of some mythology.
Ranking! I definitely enjoyed D.I.Y more but I think Rabbit Test is likely to win and *should* win and will vote accordingly. Unless of course one of the Chinese stories wins because there are more Chinese voters. But my guess is that none of the Chinese stories can beat either English story among Anglophone voters.
1 - Rabbit Test
2 - D.I.Y.
3 - White Cliff
4 - Zhurong on Mars
5 - On the Razor's Edge
6 - Resurrection
I had already read "Rabbit Test" and "D.I.Y.". The other four are in the packet, "Zhurong on Mars" translated by S. Qiouyi Lu, "Resurrection" translated by Blake Stone-Banks, "On the Razor's Edge" machine-translated, and "White Cliff" not specified but my guess would be also a machine translation because of pronoun inconsistencies (or maybe there's a character who uses both he and she pronouns).
“D.I.Y.”, by John Wiswell (Tordotcom, August 2022) "This one absolutely reeks of ballot. A fine little story about not getting into magic school, and monopolies, and collective action. I don't know that I personally am nominating it, but I fully expect to be seeing it."
“On the Razor’s Edge”, by Jiang Bo (Science Fiction World, January 2022) A Daring Space Rescue (TM). Being a machine translation, it's hard to say how much of the sometime tonal weirdness was in the original and how much was introduced in the translation. "This was a tragedy, have some kung pao chicken!"
“Rabbit Test”, by Samantha Mills (Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2022) "The past and future history of abortion as an endless, depressing cycle of freedom and oppression. Nebula nominee."
“Resurrection”, by Ren Qing (Future Fiction/Science Fiction World, December 2022) A soldier gets a brief second chance at life . This one I felt like I was missing something, or wasn't quite getting what it was getting at or why things were happening the way they were.
“The White Cliff”, by Lu Ban (Science Fiction World, May 2022) Virtual reality as a sort of staging area for the dying - not extending life, but creating a calmer space to prepare for death. Interesting idea. I had trouble following the imagery though, like, were they at the top or bottom of the cliff.
“Zhurong on Mars”, by Regina Kanyu Wang (Frontiers, September 2022) An AI left behind after the Singularity contemplates the meaning/purpose/nature of its existence, which (eventually) leads to the recapitulation of some mythology.
Ranking! I definitely enjoyed D.I.Y more but I think Rabbit Test is likely to win and *should* win and will vote accordingly. Unless of course one of the Chinese stories wins because there are more Chinese voters. But my guess is that none of the Chinese stories can beat either English story among Anglophone voters.
1 - Rabbit Test
2 - D.I.Y.
3 - White Cliff
4 - Zhurong on Mars
5 - On the Razor's Edge
6 - Resurrection
