psocoptera

... goes to Nicola Griffith! Her blog post here.

I did not have Griffith on my list of likelies, but sure! I like that! Especially if the goal is to move toward awarding people who are current "masters" as in their career is still going strong/they are still producing interesting work.

Don't know who the Infinity is yet.

(My list of likely or potential recipients, edited for 2025: [John Crowley (1942)], John Varley (1947), Nancy Kress (1948), Kim Stanley Robinson (1952), Greg Egan (1961), Martha Wells (1964), Ted Chiang (1967), John Scalzi (1969), NK Jemisin (1972), Ursula Vernon (1977), Seanan McGuire (1978). Griffith was born in 1960 and is thus plausibly "ahead" of many of these people (and also has MS which might be a factor in trying to guess how close we are to losing her vs anyone else, which I know is morbid, but I think will always be a consideration after the Butler failure.))

(My Infinity list, while we're here: Diana Wynne Jones (still and always my #1 guess until they finally pick her), Terry Pratchett, Zelazny, Joanna Russ, Philip K Dick, Theodore Sturgeon, Iain M Banks, Vernor Vinge. [ETA: last time I made this list some friends made some good suggestions in the comments, of whom CL Moore, Frank Herbert, James Tiptree, and Zenna Henderson fit my (suspected) criterion of having died after they started giving out the Grand Master award. And I added Crowley above who is still alive.] Plus people who are still alive but could be Grand Master candidates on the basis of their careers, but maybe not their personalities, and thus might be Infinity candidates once they're not around in person, although honestly I think nobody is going to bother when there are other candidates who would be more exciting to current SFWA membership: Orson Scott Card, David Brin.)

Here, or below the cut with my comments!

It looks like they didn't name a Grandmaster or an Infinity yet - maybe they're saving those announcements for the ceremony this year?

( Read more... )

I wasn't going to attempt to nominate poems, but then a friend mentioned a hope of going through the spreadsheet poems, and I was like, self, why am *I* not even looking at the spreadsheet poems, and I had a weird little moment of, wait, am I intimidated by poetry? Do I feel unqualified to read poetry? That seemed incorrect - I keep a file of favorite poems. I occasionally write poems. Maybe I feel like I don't know what to make of *speculative* poetry? That also didn't sound quite right, I have no problem thinking about, say, Le Guin's poetry. Strange Horizons publishes poetry so I tried checking out some of their 2024 pieces and possibly part of the problem is that I just don't *like* a lot of poetry. (Although... I also don't like a lot of stories. Not actually sure if the proportion is different.)

Anyways here's some poems from the spreadsheet I liked.

The Last Voyage: Island Relocation Program, Steve Wheat.

sunday in atlanta, Kelsey Day. I'm not sure this is speculative. Also I'm not sure it's a poem and not a comic. Powerful piece, though.

Gaia Sings the Body Electric, Jie Venus Cohen.

there are no taxis for the dead, Angela Liu.

The Sail, Ian Li.

The Quickening Rachel Pittman. Is *this* speculative?

the office//the after, Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey. How about this, is this speculative? Maybe I don't know what makes poetry speculative or not.

The Lost Dead World Thing, Mari Ness.

Dodging the Bullet, Lisa M. Bradley.

Change Your Mind, Gwendolyn Maia Hicks.

A War of Words, Marie Brennan.

There were 62 things on the list, although some of them weren't available online, so I probably read more like... 55? ish? And ended up liking about one in five?

I have tentatively picked some that I think I'll nominate although I would like to revisit this list in a day or two and see which ones I still remember, or which ones still grab me on rereading.

More pondering about nominations. Hugos feel pretty weird to be doing, tbh - how many of the non-USian authors can safely come to Seattle? I assume none of the Canadians will? Can USian trans authors even safely take domestic flights (like, without having their drivers licenses confiscated)? By this time next year, are all my favorite trans authors going to be hiding in attics so they don't get deported to a concentration camp in Panama, a weirdly specific yet terrifyingly reality-based scenario now that we have a concentration camp in Panama, and will that perhaps cut into their fiction output, and should we try extra hard to give them awards now? I've read Solzhenitsyn (well, I've read Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich), am I supposed to have some thoughts about Literary Awards And The Gulag? My thoughts are mostly "how the fuck did we end up in a timeline where we might be going to have a gulag?" Also, how many of Musk's minions were Sad Puppies voters in 2015? I guess probably none of them because they're all like twenty years old?

Anyways, I promise no more crushing doom in the rest of this post, just sometimes it's hard to find the balance between "still trying to enjoy things" and "it feels gross to just pretend everything is normal". Onwards.

Novels:

Every 2024 sff novel I've read so far: The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles, Malka Older; The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Katherine Arden; A Sorceress Comes to Call, T Kingfisher; Lady Eve's Last Con, Rebecca Fraimow; Rakesfall, Vajra Chandrasekera; The Forbidden Book, Sacha Lamb; The City in Glass, Nghi Vo; Long Live Evil, Sarah Rees Brennan; Glass Houses, Madeline Ashby; The Sapling Cage, Margaret Killjoy; The Last Dragon of the East, Katrina Kwan. (Also I'm partway through Swordcrossed, Freya Marske, Sheine Lende, Darcie Little Badger, and I've read the first few pages of The Wings Upon Her Back, Samantha Mills. And even further away I'm still in hold queues for Remember You Will Die, Eden Robins and The West Passage, Jared Pechaček.)

Some of these I didn't like at all. Warm Hands of Ghosts and City in Glass jump out at me as "best written", in some sense. Sorceress Comes to Call and Glass Houses were gripping; Long Live Evil was a fun ride. Sapling Cage I'm probably nominating as YA for the Lodestar even if nobody else thinks so.

Novellas:

Every 2024 sff novella I've read so far: What Feasts At Night, T Kingfisher; The Tusks of Extinction, Ray Nayler; The Brides of High Hill, Nghi Vo; The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, P Djèlí Clark; Haunt Sweet Home, Sarah Pinsker; The Butcher of the Forest, Premee Mohamed; The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, Sofia Samatar; It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over, Anne de Marcken; North Continent Ribbon, Ursula Whitcher. (Also I have Yoke of Stars, R.B. Lemberg sitting on the table. And I'm still in hold queues for Transitive Properties of Cheese, Ann LeBlanc and In the Shadow of the Fall, Tobi Ogundiran.)

North Continent Ribbon and It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over for sure; maybe also The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, and can I possibly read enough Yoke of Stars to form an opinion about it.

Novelettes:

See previous post, except maybe I *should* nominate "Fisher of Stars" as a secondary outlet for my North Continent Ribbon feelings, because I'm kind of having a premonition about being less than thrilled by the novella ballot. (What Feasts At Night and Brides of High Hill and Haunt Sweet Home were all fine but two of them are sequels to things that were better and one is not Pinsker's most exciting work and I can totally see them all making the ballot on familiarity, bah.) I could ditch the Thomas Ha riff on Fahrenheit 451, I guess.

Short Story:

See previous post.

Series:

Has Singing Hills hit 240k words yet? If they're all novellas and there's five of them, then no, right? What else is even out there? I guess the third one of those Roanhorse books came out, I should queue for that, but I don't think I want to nominate the series without having read it.

Related Work:

It's always sort of interesting to see what turns up here, but I have nothing to contribute.

Graphic Story:

I'm nominating My Favorite Thing Is Monsters 2 despite its problems. And Ver's Sacred Bodies despite its obscurity.

Dramatic Long:

"Will I attempt to watch the Hugo Dramatic Long nominees" is a very open question but I'm leaning towards "no" on the grounds that they're going to be, like, Dune and Deadpool and Wicked and I already didn't want to see them when they were just movies. Anyways, no nominees.

Dramatic Short:

Someone wake me up if it turns out clipping did another SF album or something.

Pro Artist:

... if I come up with some artists it's going to be in a separate post.

Game:

Not only have I not managed to play The Ghost and The Golem, I haven't even managed to write my post about why I haven't managed to play The Ghost and The Golem. Gah.

Semiprozine:

Strange Horizons!

Fanwriter:

Bitter Karella is not on the spreadsheet - eligibility problem or just overlooked?

Fan Artist:

After years of exhorting everyone to nominate fan artists I feel like I had better nominate some fan artists. Perhaps in that separate post with the pro artists... definitely...

Poem:

Poem?? I look forward to reading in this category. Actually it would be neat if someone did an ebook anthology of, like, the whole longlist.

Lodestar:

As previously mentioned, I think Sapling Cage is. I'm enjoying Sheine Lende well enough but I don't think I'm excited enough about it to throw it in.

Astounding:

Moniquill Blackgoose is eligible again. Plus I think I'll go with Zohar Jacobs, Nadia Radovich, A.W. Prihandita, and Grant Collier from my short fiction nominees.

Links to their other work:
Zohar Jacobs: a story in each of Asimov's and Analog, plus this.
Nadia Radovich: this in Apex and this in Strange Horizons.
Grant Collier: nothing else
A.W. Prihandita: here, here, here, here.

Here's all the novelettes I recced this year!

Clarkesworld:

The Best Version of Yourself, Grant Collier, Clarkesworld. A particularly unsettling Rapture-of-the-Nerds, and a woman's relationship with her mother. Novelette.

The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video, Thomas Ha, Clarkesworld. This is very reference-rich and I'm probably only catching part of that but I think it's also a strong story entirely on its own without all that? Memory and filters and the work of wrapping up the loose ends of a parent's life. Novelette.

A Brief Oral History of the El Zopilote Dock, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Clarkesworld. Thoughts on what the next Underground Railroad might look like. Novelette.

Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being, A.W. Prihandita, Clarkesworld. Medicine and licensing and helping and listening. Novelette.

Himalia, Carrie Vaughn, Clarkesworld. Growing up on a remote space outpost, and coming home again. Novelette.

Lightspeed:

The Heist for the Soul of Humanity, Filip Hadjar Drnovšek Zorko, Lightspeed. Yet another heist story, this is apparently what I'm in the mood for at this time? Novelette.

Strange Horizons:

By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars, Premee Mohamed, Strange Horizons. An aging wizard, an apprentice, and a problem. Novelette.

Exit Interview, K.W. Onley, Strange Horizons. Portals, but only for Black women. Novelette.

Uncanny:

Signs of Life, Sarah Pinsker, Uncanny. An aging news anchor visits her long-estranged sister. Covers some similar ground as Haunt Sweet Home, like Pinsker was doing variations on a theme. Novelette.

Other:

What Any Dead Thing Wants, Aimee Ogden, Psychopomp. Magical terraforming. Novelette.

I'm Not Disappointed Just Mad AKA The Heaviest Couch in the Known Universe, Daryl Gregory, Reactor. I thought this had big Men In Black energy. Novelette.

"Lake of Souls", Ann Leckie, Lake of Souls collection.

"A Fisher of Stars", Ursula Whitcher, North Continent Ribbon novella/collection.

**

Of the five I've marked here, the Collier and Vaughn stories are on the Locus list; the Ha, Prihandita, and Leckie stories are not. My picks seem to be very Clarkesworld-heavy this year, but I'm pleased that they didn't end up just being all authors I already liked. Relatedly, Grant Collier and A.W. Prihandita are eligible for the Astounding, as is K.W. Onley. I don't think any of them are an Isabel J. Kim-level prolific breakout new talent but I would always like to see more short-fiction Astounding nominees.

The 2024 Locus Recommendations came out. Some quick thoughts: they think Malka Older's Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is a novel not a novella. No Sapling Cage. No Glass Houses. No Forbidden Book. Gosh I should do something about short fiction soon. Hrm.