HUGO REVIEW: Novelette Finalists

written by David Steffen

Science fiction award season is here again, and the Hugo final ballot was announced for WorldCon 76 in San Jose.

On to the novelette category, my favorite category of all the Hugo categories, covering stories between 7500 and 17500 words. This review covers all six finalists.

1. “Wind Will Rove,” by Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s, September/October 2017)

This story is told by a musician several generations into a trip on a generation ship. The pristinely preserved historic records of entertainment media have been erased by a hacker a long time ago, and people are divided about whether to try to reproduce exactly the art from memory or to try to make something wholly original.

This story took a little bit to really reel me in–I was interested, but not fully invested until I picked up what it was doing with the discussion of generations of adapted music. The story shows how the new and the old are not necessarily as disparate ideas as they might seem in live music, where new trends are the gradual course of change from old trends as musicians put something new into the familiar. Much like the setting with the futuristic setting and the instruments that haven’t changed in a long time.

2. “A Series of Steaks,” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Clarkesworld, January 2017)

“All known forgeries are tales of failure”, the story begins. Helena of Splendid Beef Enterprises is a forger, not of money, not of art, but of beef, writing patterns for 3-D printers to print beef from raw materials that can’t be told from the real thing–getting the marbling just right, the red of the meat, the white of the fat and bone. If the government catches wind of what she’s doing, she’ll be in a lot of trouble, but she has a good business going with her established clients. But when a new prospect calls to arrange her services on a much larger scale than usual with threats, she’s not sure she can afford to refuse.

Riveting story, between the part of the story about the forgery itself and the attempts to make it look real in all its detail, and the other part dealing with the conflict with the anonymous coercing client. Great use of near-future SF ideas and extrapolating from current trends and technology.

3. “The Secret Life of Bots,” by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld, September 2017)

The bot is woken by the Ship and assigned maintenance task 944 in the queue, which is to deal with an “Incidental”, an unspecified biological pest that has gotten loose aboard the ship. The task turns out to be a much bigger ordeal than it first sounds like; this isn’t just a rat or a cockroach, this one threatens the very integrity of the ship and if it’s going to have any chance at succeeding it has to use all of the resources at hand.

Action-packed fun story, not a dull moment as this bot that’s really not designed for the task at hand does its darnedest to do it anyway. Interesting discussion on the strength of intuition vs logic.

4. “Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time,” by K.M. Szpara (Uncanny, May/June 2017)

Finley, a trans man, is attacked by a vampire while taking a piss in an alley, even though vampires are supposed to go to blood banks instead of attacking people unless those people have applied to become vampires. Finley couldn’t apply to become a vampire even if he wanted to, because one of the restrictions is that “people who have taken steps to medically transition” are not allowed. He can’t register because of that, and unregistered vampires, if discovered, are hunted and killed. So he is stuck with this situation and will be the first to enter the unknown territory of what happens to a trans body as it changes from human to vampire body.

Vampires can be a hard sell for me, but this one at least took a new angle in that I don’t think I’ve seen another story with a trans vampire. The logical consequences of stereotypical vampire traits extended to Finley’s body made for some new revelations in this area. I appreciated how the vampire that turned him, after the initial act, was actually generally supportive in helping Finley figure out how to cope and even thrive in this new and unprecedented life beginning for him.

5. “Children of Thorns, Children of Water,” by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny, July-August 2017)

Thuan and Kim Cuc are descendants of dragons who live beneath the Seine, whose mission is to infiltrate the house of a Fallen angel who claims to rule over much of Paris by applying for entrance into the house, posing as a poor unfortunate houseless. Hawthorn house has shown an unusual interest in the Seine lately and the dragons want to know why, so they need eyes in the house. They don’t know what the test is going to be, and they’ll need to avoid revealing their dragon magic in any way that might be noticed. But something else is going on here besides just the test itself.

This was a very interesting setting, and the mission of infiltration set it up for a lot of tension, especially with the nature of the test unknown and new oddities appearing alongside the test. This was my first exposure to de Bodard’s world here, and I felt like I was playing catch-up–a magical ability would be revealed at a crucial moment and I hadn’t known that was possible. This isn’t necessarily bad, but I felt like I had to revise my understanding of the situation pretty often–this might be because de Bodard has released a couple novels in this world already and the story might be written with readers of the books in mind?

6. “Extracurricular Activities,” by Yoon Ha Lee (Tor.com, February 15, 2017)

Shuos Jedao, a heptarchate commando, is sent on a secret mission to infiltrate Du Station in the Gwa Reality to find out what happened to their former classmate and captain of a warmoth whose last distress call came from there. To enact this plan, Jedao is put in command of a merchant troop.

I’m not sure why, but I didn’t end up feeling particularly invested in the outcome of Jedao’s mission–I didn’t have anything against Jedao, but I didn’t feel the tension of the mission outcome–I’m not sure if these are characters from novels and so I might be missing background information? It could also be that I never really felt like the outcome was in question–I felt like Jedao had everything under control from pretty much start to finish; I never felt like there was a point where the outcome hung in the balance.

HUGO REVIEW: Short Story Finalists

written by David Steffen

Science fiction award season is here again, and the Hugo final ballot was announced for WorldCon 76 in San Jose.

On to the short story category, my favorite category of all the Hugo categories, covering stories less than 7500 words. This review covers all six finalists.

1. “Carnival Nine,” by Caroline M. Yoachim (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, May 2017)

In a clockwork world, each person only gets as many turns as the Maker gives them each day, but never more than their mainspring can handle. Every action you take winds down your spring and that will be all you get to do until the Maker winds you again the next day. Zee is lucky enough to have an extra capable mainspring, so she has the ability on an especially good day to see more and do more. Her parents always tell her to do her work first so she has turns left to play. One day a carnival train comes nearby the closet where their town is located, and Zee decides to sneak off to see it, and everything changes.

This is a beautiful, heart-wrenching story with so many powerful moments and themes, but especially in terms of the effort of being a caretaker, and also in terms of how we choose to spend our time. I take the view that time is the most universal currency, we spend our time no matter what we do but what we spend our time doing defines us and our connection to those around us, the turns of clockwork people was a great metaphor for that. This was my top nomination pick for this year of the hundreds of stories that I read, and I am absolutely delighted to see it on the final ballot for both the Nebula and Hugo.

2. “The Martian Obelisk,” by Linda Nagata (Tor.com, July 19, 2017)

Susannah lives in what seem to be the waning days of human civilization, a time when the consequences of generations of short-sighted decisions come to their consequences for the survival of humanity. An attempted Mars colony has failed catastrophically, so humanity’s only attempt to find somewhere else didn’t fare any better. But instead of dwelling on the gloom and doom of the dismal future, she is determined to remotely build an obelisk on Mars that will serve as a monument to humanity that will survive for thousands of years, long after she expects humanity to be dead and gone. AI-driven equipment constructs tiles from local materials and use them to construct an impressive tower for any future visitors to our solar system to find. But when a transport is spotted approaching the obelisk, she has to decide how to direct her AIs, and then wait for the significant communication delay in both directions to find out how it turned out. Did someone survive the failed colony? Is the transpot being driven by AI? Is this a petty attempt to sabotage the obelisk project?

I really enjoyed this story both for the interesting and novel construction project which was ambitious in the face of apparently certain doom of humanity, something that would stand the test of time when Earth has scoured its surface of evidence of human existence. The arrival of the transport tests Susannah’s resolve–is the monument the only goal she has left, or is there still something else to strive for?

3. “Sun, Moon, Dust” by Ursula Vernon, (Uncanny, May/June 2017)

Allpa inherits a magical sword from his dying grandmother that carries three warrior spirits in it named Sun, Moon, and Dust. The sword is the inheritance of a hero, and the spirits want Allpa to go out and do heroic things, but there is no war to fight and Allpa has his potatoes to grow.

I tend to enjoy the Chosen One trope, and never more so when it’s turned on its head. Allpa is arguably the Chosen One here, but he is lucky enough to live in a generation where nothing more is needed of him than to grow crops to feed people. This subverted Chosen One story is fun and enjoyable.

4. “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™,” by Rebecca Roanhorse (Apex, August 2017)

Jesse Turnblatt works for Sedona Sweats with other Native Americans providing virtual Authentic Indian Experiences, virtual reality tours of the general public’s stereotypes of Indians. His girlfriend thinks the job is demeaning, but Jesse doesn’t think it’s too bad. Most of the tourists just want the same thing, a vision quest, usually having to do with a wolf, and they’re happy as anything. But a man comes in who’s different, who asks thoughtful questions and doesn’t seem impressed by Jesse’s usual theatrics. The two become friends, and things take a darker turn.

This story was solid, based around the incredibly creepy commoditization of an oppressed culture for marketing purposes that was all the more cringeworthy knowing that it is just the logical science fiction extension of how it actually works. Despite the irony in the title with the trademark in it and everything, it felt real. I’m not sure I understood what was intended by the ending, or maybe it was meant to be ambiguous?

5. “Fandom for Robots,” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Uncanny, September/October 2017)

Computron is decades old, the only known sentient robot, a fluke experiment no one else has been able to reproduce. It resides in the Simak Robotics Museum where it hosts Q&A sessions with the general public. One day, a teenager asks about an anime show titled Hyperdimension Warp Record which has a robotic character that she suggests Computron might relate to. Before the next session, Computron watches episodes of the show and discovers fandom, begins contributing to fanfiction on online forums dedicated to the show.

This was cute, sort of a love note to fandom from a sentient robot.

6. “Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand,” by Fran Wilde (Uncanny, September 2017)

This is an sideshow of dark and curious things. There’s something odd about the host of the tour, but curiosity wins out over caution, as it must.

This is quite a short one, so it’s hard to give it in-depth discussion without spoiling it. I’m afraid I don’t think I understood this one. I think it’s an analogy for medical facilities? I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it, it had a dark and haunting lyrical quality to it, I’m just not sure I understood it.

The Best of Clarkesworld 2017

written by David Steffen

Another great year for Clarkesworld, lots of great stories by authors both familiar and new. Clarkesworld remains the most prolific of the podcasts I listen to, clocking in at 82 stories for the year of 2017, and with a much higher wordcount limit than most of the others, that comes to significantly more words. Neil Clarke continues as editor, and Kate Baker continues to produce, host, and narrate most of the episodes of the podcast.

They continue to publish monthly stories published from Chinese through a relationship with StoryCom, which have been among many of my favorites.

Every short story that is eligible for Hugo nominations this year which were first published by Clarkesworld are marked with an asterisk (*), novelettes are marked with a double-asterisk (**).

The List

1. “The Secret Life of Bots” by Suzanne Palmer**
A maintenance bot is given the major task of dealing with a major invading bioform on a ship, and is forced to consider the utility of improvisation.

2. “Who Won the Battle of Arsia Mons?” by Sue Burke **
Battlebots on Mars become a major reality program.

3. “A Series of Steaks” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad**
A 3-D printer forger is coerced under dire threat into forging a banquet of fine steaks for a major wedding.

4. “Some Remarks on the Reproductive Strategy of the Common Octopus” by Bogi Takács*
Octopus hive minds overcome the obstacles to octopus higher learning.

5. “Second Person, Present Tense” by Daryl Gregory
Science has shown that our lower brain functions “decide” what we’re going to do a fraction of a second before we have made the “conscious” decision. A new drug lengthens that delay indefinitely, making us question our definition of consciousness.

6. “The Bridgegroom” by Bo Balder**
A new caretaker of an intelligent bridge is tempted by its seductive words to betray those who employed him for that purpose.

7. “The Blood of a Martian” by Allen M. Steele
A hired guide on Mars takes a researcher to take DNA samples of the native Martians to determine how closely related they are to humans.

8. “The Waiting Stars” by Aliette de Bodard
Heartfelt explorations of the effects of imposing someone’s culture onto a person from another culture. This is one from de Bodard’s Xuya universe.

Honorable Mentions

“Shiomah’s Land” by Nisi Shawl

“Bonding With Morry” by Tom Purdom

“The Psychology Game” by Xia Jia, translated by Emily Jin and Ken Liu*