Here's my summaries & opinions of the Hugo finalists for Best Novella (short 100-150 page novels)!

THE BUTCHER OF THE FOREST, by Premee Mohamed, is a dark fantasy. There are two forests in the land: the south forest is an ordinary forest where you can go in and out, hunt, cut trees, or whatever. But the north forest is haunted: people, especially children, who stray in are never seen again, probably taken by the other people of the wood.

Veris is the only living person who went into the forest and came out with a lost child. Early one morning she is summoned to the palace of the Tyrant, and told that the Tyrant's two children have wandered into the north forest. Veris will have to go in and retrieve the children; if she fails, her family and entire village will be eradicated.

This is a dread-filled version of the trope about exploring a shadowy and mysterious forest. The danger is constant, with the usual rules of faerie (don't tell anyone your name; don't eat anything), but there's the additional ticking clock of the Tyrant's threat and Veris's harrowing memories of her previous trip. It's a page-turner that I had to finish the same evening I began reading it.

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#TheHugoAwards #books #bookstodon #fantasy #TheButcherOfTheForest #PremeeMohamed

This year, I thought the Hugo finalist novels & novellas were mostly great, but the entries in Best Novelette (longish short stories, between 7500 and 17500 words) were mostly just OK, and I don't have much to say about them. Check out any that seem interesting to you!

“By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars” by Premee Mohamed: a wizard who's lost her powers is given an apprentice, and has to prepare for an impending dragon-related disaster. http://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/fiction/by-salt-by-sea-by-light-of-stars/

“Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou: one day the protagonist misses a reunion with an old friend; she can't see her friend even though she's sitting at the same bus stop. This then spreads to her family as she slips further into a parallel existence. https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/loneliness-universe/

“Signs of Life” by Sarah Pinsker: the protagonist has a reunion with her estranged sister, and learns a magical family secret. https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/signs-of-life/

“The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea” by Naomi Kritzer: a woman moves to Massachusetts with her family. She was forced to give up her grad-school research on seals, and discovers her seal research subjects are still alive and now living offshore from their new home. Coincidence, or something else? https://asimovs.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/TheFourSisters_Kritzer.pdf

“The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video” by Thomas Ha: a Bradburyesque story about books and videos in a near-future where they're obsolete. The narrator is disposing of his deceased mother's possessions, and stumbles across a Brotherhood that preserves retro technology. https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/ha_05_24/

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Time to post my opinions about the novels that were finalists for the Hugos this year!

In SERVICE MODEL, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, the valet robot Uncharles is responsible for laying out his owner's clothes every morning and helping with his morning ablutions... until one day when Uncharles cuts his owner's throat while shaving him. Uncharles doesn't remember the actual event, or why they did it.

The death brings a detective robot to the house, and after their ineffectual investigation is completed, Uncharles goes out to explore the world. It becomes clear that the system is crumbling: the detective talks for the sake of humans, even if there are no humans present; requests are put into queues that are not being processed; actions are repeated endlessly. I started to wonder, are there any humans left alive at all?

This book was hilarious, in a sardonic and cynical way. The humans built a system of convenience and automation that's smart, but not smart enough to be resilient or to understand its own mistakes. It's a perfect book for the AI-obsessed moment.

Not read by me: ALIEN CLAY, also by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

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Let's get started on the Hugo Awards with the short story category!

I'm really enjoying Nghi Vo's ongoing sequence of stories about Depression-era magic. In "Stitched to Skin Like Family Is", a young Asian woman is searching for her brother in the western US, using her magical ability to keep herself safe; the search takes her somewhere very dark. (This story feels like a sibling to the movie "Sinners", which I recently saw; it's also fantasy/horror set in the 1930s.) https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/stitched-to-skin-like-family-is/

Marginalia, by Mary Robinette Kowal, is a fantasy story in your basic medieval setting of castles and knights, but with the addition of giant acid-secreting snails that ravage the landscape. A woman is living in a small cottage with her mother and younger brother, and faces unexpected danger when the latest snail comes creeping along. The story is made additionally poignant when you know (from acknowledgements in Kowal's other books) that her mother has Parkinson's -- I hope her mom is doing OK. https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/marginalia/

Ursula K. LeGuin's story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" is a touchstone of socially-oriented SF, and various people have written responses to it. Isabel J. Kim's "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole" is a cuttingly sardonic one. https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_02_24/

Five Views of the Planet Tartarus, by Rachael K. Jones, is a tight (only 549 words!) and bleak story of future punishment. https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/five-views-of-the-planet-tartarus/

"We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read", by Caroline M. Yoachim, is an experiment in typography, something like concrete poetry. I found it just mildly interesting – too abstract for me.
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/we-will-teach-you-how-to-read-we-will-teach-you-how-to-read/

Arkady Martine's "Three Faces of a Beheading" is slightly less abstract, but I found it a slog even though it's only 4100 words. https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/three-faces-of-a-beheading/

#books #TheHugoAwards #sf #fantasy #ShortStories

Congrats to all the Finalists!

https://glasgow2024.org/hugo-awards/2024-hugo-award-finalists/

#TheHugoAwards #Fandom #SFF #ScienceFiction #Fantasy #SpeculativeFiction #SciFi #Books #Writers #SFFMedia

1/🧵 You might have heard there's been a #censorship scandal rocking #ScienceFiction literature's biggest award, the #HugoAwards.

The annual ceremony was held in #Chengdu, #China. Although no evidence has been found linking any direct Chinese govt influence on the Award Committee's actions, leaked emails prove that the Hugo Committee DID remove potential nominees before they could be considered, because they were anticipating possible offenses against Chinese govt policies.

(This is how #Fascist governments work-- not only because govt cronies enforce their own authoritarian laws, but because ordinary people join in and support their policies.)

Now, author #SamanthaMills (who won the Hugo for her #ShortStory "RabbitTest," about abortion access) has posted that she has refused her Hugo and removed mentions of her award from her website and books.

#HugoAward #TheHugoAwards #Hugos #SciFi #SciFiFandom #ScienceFictionBooks #Fascism #Censored #HugoAwardsDebacle

https://samtasticbooks.com/2024/02/17/rabbit-test-unwins-the-hugo/

Looks like #TheHugoAwards controversy has some new details: https://file770.com/the-2023-hugo-awards-a-report-on-censorship-and-exclusion/

TLDR is the North American members of WorldCon on their own recognizance were judging nominees as ineligible rather than at the request of the Chinese government.