2020 Hugo nominees: Best Short Story
Jun. 22nd, 2020 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nonelvisWith six novels to read, I figured I'd be lucky to get the four major fiction categories done before the July 15 voting deadline. But it's June 22, and I'm done! Onwards to graphic novels after this.
Each story is available for free online, so I've linked them all.
"Do Not Look Back, My Lion," Alix E. Harrow
Not nearly as strong an entry from Harrow as her Best Novel nominee, but still a good story, if not a great one. Eefa is a healer in an empire that values only warrior women, and her wife – the greatest warrior of them all – is about to bear yet another child Eefa fears will go off to war. A tragic story with a hopeful ending.
"As the Last I May Know," SL Huang
If you're already familiar with the proposal that anyone who wants to use nuclear weapons should have to kill someone with the codes buried in their body, then you know the premise of this story. I can't explain why it felt manipulative, when someone like NK Jemisin can write a novelette with an equally unsubtle theme that worked perfectly for me – except perhaps that Jemisin has the room to explore other messages, and a short story has less space to work with. But it's still possible to do that within the structure's length requirements, and Huang's story just didn't.
"And Now His Lordship is Laughing," Shiv Ramdas
This reads like a long-lost folktale: a story of well-deserved comeuppance visited on arrogant British colonials as revenge for horrifically abusing their Bengali subjects. Possibly I'm just in the mood for revenge stories right now, and this one really fit the bill.
"Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island," Nibedita Sen
I started off wondering whether Sen was going to do anything interesting with the bibliography conceit, had my jaw drop in horror halfway through, and by the end was cackling my head off. It's a short story that does exactly what it says on the tin, so if you too think you might be interested in reading a fictional bibliography of fictional cannibal women, this is the story for you.
"Blood Is Another Word for Hunger," Rivers Solomon
A young Black enslaved woman murders her masters with such uncommon violence that she begins to give birth to other Black folks who died in captivity, revenants who now have a chance to live a better life. It's ultimately a story about recovering from trauma and building a family and safe space of your own, albeit one that's a little too gory for my taste.
"A Catalog of Storms," Fran Wilde
Another story I knew from Uncanny, this one about "weathermen," the people who can name and therefore control different types of storms, and who ultimately become weather themselves. It's poetic but a bit slow-paced.
The rankings:
1. "Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island"
2. "And Now His Lordship is Laughing"
3. "Do Not Look Back, My Lion"
4. "Blood Is Another Word for Hunger"
5. "A Catalog of Storms"
6. "As the Last I May Know"
Each story is available for free online, so I've linked them all.
"Do Not Look Back, My Lion," Alix E. Harrow
Not nearly as strong an entry from Harrow as her Best Novel nominee, but still a good story, if not a great one. Eefa is a healer in an empire that values only warrior women, and her wife – the greatest warrior of them all – is about to bear yet another child Eefa fears will go off to war. A tragic story with a hopeful ending.
"As the Last I May Know," SL Huang
If you're already familiar with the proposal that anyone who wants to use nuclear weapons should have to kill someone with the codes buried in their body, then you know the premise of this story. I can't explain why it felt manipulative, when someone like NK Jemisin can write a novelette with an equally unsubtle theme that worked perfectly for me – except perhaps that Jemisin has the room to explore other messages, and a short story has less space to work with. But it's still possible to do that within the structure's length requirements, and Huang's story just didn't.
"And Now His Lordship is Laughing," Shiv Ramdas
This reads like a long-lost folktale: a story of well-deserved comeuppance visited on arrogant British colonials as revenge for horrifically abusing their Bengali subjects. Possibly I'm just in the mood for revenge stories right now, and this one really fit the bill.
"Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island," Nibedita Sen
I started off wondering whether Sen was going to do anything interesting with the bibliography conceit, had my jaw drop in horror halfway through, and by the end was cackling my head off. It's a short story that does exactly what it says on the tin, so if you too think you might be interested in reading a fictional bibliography of fictional cannibal women, this is the story for you.
"Blood Is Another Word for Hunger," Rivers Solomon
A young Black enslaved woman murders her masters with such uncommon violence that she begins to give birth to other Black folks who died in captivity, revenants who now have a chance to live a better life. It's ultimately a story about recovering from trauma and building a family and safe space of your own, albeit one that's a little too gory for my taste.
"A Catalog of Storms," Fran Wilde
Another story I knew from Uncanny, this one about "weathermen," the people who can name and therefore control different types of storms, and who ultimately become weather themselves. It's poetic but a bit slow-paced.
The rankings:
1. "Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island"
2. "And Now His Lordship is Laughing"
3. "Do Not Look Back, My Lion"
4. "Blood Is Another Word for Hunger"
5. "A Catalog of Storms"
6. "As the Last I May Know"