2024 Hugo short stories
Jun. 9th, 2024 06:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraBehind the cut:
I nominated "Better Living Through Algorithms" and continue to like it best of these. I didn't feel like this was a particularly strong ballot. Admittedly I didn't read a lot of short fiction this year so I don't have a *long* list of everything I thought was better, but, like, other known-to-the-Hugos people like Pinsker and Kim had stories I liked better than these Clark and de Bodard ones.
Anyways, other thoughts: "Answerless Journey" felt pointless, which I guess is only what I should have expected from a story with "Answerless" right in the title. "How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub" was cute but obvious. "The Mausoleum's Children" was fine, but awfully abstract, like, I was going to call it "a nice little character study" but the characters felt more one-note position statements than fleshed-out people? Like we could have used some little memories or personal details? Still, probably my second choice, of these. "The Sound of Children Screaming" was an interesting concept - school shootings crossed with portal fantasies - but didn't quite hang together for me. I was surprised by how much I liked "Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times" - some of it was very dopey but I thought there was something interesting going on with the questions of vicarious experience and parasocial relationships and the intensity of pleasure as an inverse of complexity. Possibly I'm cutting it more slack for the dopeyness than I would give something not in translation, but, enh, it also doesn't matter because Kritzer is going to score the Short Story-Novelette twofer unless more people than I think really liked the Kraken.
1 - “Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld May 2023)
2 - “The Mausoleum’s Children” by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny Magazine, May-June 2023)
3 - 美食三品 (“Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times”), 宝树 / Baoshu (银河边缘013：黑域密室 / Galaxy’s Edge Vol. 13: Secret Room in the Black Domain)
4 - “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” by P. Djèlí Clark (Uncanny Magazine, January-February 2023)
5 - “The Sound of Children Screaming” by Rachael K. Jones (Nightmare Magazine, October 2023)
6 - “Answerless Journey”, Han Song / 没有答案的航程, 韩松, translated by Alex Woodend (Adventures in Space: New Short stories by Chinese & English Science Fiction Writers)
I nominated "Better Living Through Algorithms" and continue to like it best of these. I didn't feel like this was a particularly strong ballot. Admittedly I didn't read a lot of short fiction this year so I don't have a *long* list of everything I thought was better, but, like, other known-to-the-Hugos people like Pinsker and Kim had stories I liked better than these Clark and de Bodard ones.
Anyways, other thoughts: "Answerless Journey" felt pointless, which I guess is only what I should have expected from a story with "Answerless" right in the title. "How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub" was cute but obvious. "The Mausoleum's Children" was fine, but awfully abstract, like, I was going to call it "a nice little character study" but the characters felt more one-note position statements than fleshed-out people? Like we could have used some little memories or personal details? Still, probably my second choice, of these. "The Sound of Children Screaming" was an interesting concept - school shootings crossed with portal fantasies - but didn't quite hang together for me. I was surprised by how much I liked "Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times" - some of it was very dopey but I thought there was something interesting going on with the questions of vicarious experience and parasocial relationships and the intensity of pleasure as an inverse of complexity. Possibly I'm cutting it more slack for the dopeyness than I would give something not in translation, but, enh, it also doesn't matter because Kritzer is going to score the Short Story-Novelette twofer unless more people than I think really liked the Kraken.
1 - “Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld May 2023)
2 - “The Mausoleum’s Children” by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny Magazine, May-June 2023)
3 - 美食三品 (“Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times”), 宝树 / Baoshu (银河边缘013：黑域密室 / Galaxy’s Edge Vol. 13: Secret Room in the Black Domain)
4 - “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” by P. Djèlí Clark (Uncanny Magazine, January-February 2023)
5 - “The Sound of Children Screaming” by Rachael K. Jones (Nightmare Magazine, October 2023)
6 - “Answerless Journey”, Han Song / 没有答案的航程, 韩松, translated by Alex Woodend (Adventures in Space: New Short stories by Chinese & English Science Fiction Writers)
