These are my thoughts on the Hugo-nominated novelettes. If you're
planning to vote, you may wish not to read these notes until you have
done so.
Alien Stripper Boned From Behind By The T-Rex, by Stix Hiscock:
vaguely SF porn of the sort that might have been published by a girlie
mag in the 1980s. The plot is summed up in the title (and she has
laser nipples). This feels like a joke that I'm not getting.
The Art of Space Travel, by Nina Allan: the head of housekeeping at
a Heathrow hotel waits for some of the astronauts going on the second
Mars mission to pass through, and wonders about her missing father.
The emotional part is resolved in a very obvious way; the
science-fictional part isn't resolved at all, and ends up being just
pretty but irrelevant background.
The Jewel and Her Lapidary, by Fran Wilde: gruesome fantasy as a
small society comes apart. There's an interesting idea in the gems
that whisper horrors but can be usefully magical if cut and set, and
another in the relationship between gemcutters and rulers, but I never
felt engaged.
The Tomato Thief, by Ursula Vernon: fantasy Western that takes a
sudden turn into the strange ("Salt, flour, coffee, and sugar were the
only things Grandma Harken bought at the store, and the store could
only get them in because Father Gutierrez was on good terms with the
train-priests"); the plot is straightforward but the world and people
are fascinating.
Touring with the Alien, by Carolyn Ives Gilman: enigmatic aliens are
the excuse for a meditation on the nature and necessity of
consciousness, something I've seen done before but which still works
pretty well. Less good on the characterisation, but the plot mostly
makes up for it.
You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay, by Alyssa Wong: fantasy
Western with cosmic powers that don't really help much, written in
distancing second-person present.
Most of these do not strike me as good enough to be "Hugo-quality" (I
can't define it but I know it when I read it, and it's there in other
categories). I don't know what else was published last year, and these
may well be the best of the bunch, but while a Hugo is inevitably a
best-of-the-year award that doesn't mean that everything nominated is
good enough that I'm happy to vote for it. Still, two solid entries
here.
Voting order:
- The Tomato Thief, by Ursula Vernon
- Touring with the Alien, by Carolyn Ives Gilman
- The Jewel and Her Lapidary, by Fran Wilde
- (No Award)
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