Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

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I felt that two of these were less good than the other four, but otherwise I found it difficult to rank them. However, you gotta start somewhere.

(Titles link to original publications where available.)

6) “The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video” by Thomas Ha. Second paragraph of third section:

We sat on a bench and watched the East River behind the slow-moving bodies on the walkway. I tried to show her the dead book, and she thumbed the margins before giving up when it wouldn’t brighten. It was clear she had no interest in the thing.

Books and technology and perceptions and truth. Didn’t quite have the emotional punch that I wanted.

5) “By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars” by Premee Mohamed. Second paragraph of third section:

There was plenty of night left; she knew she too could go back to bed. Instead, she wrapped up in her biggest cloak and stomped outside to empty her mailbox. It was almost—almost funny the way it kept coming, like a magic cauldron in a fairytale following a poorly worded command to make porridge, swamping the town. Finally she hauled the bag back inside and spread it out in front of the fire. Outside, the storm grumbled, receded, returned, filled the entire cottage inside the cave with the echoing sound of rain.

Quite short; wizard and her apprentice awkwardly build a relationship and fight evil.

4) “Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou. Second paragraph of third section:

Antonis could not believe it. In fact, he had probably stopped listening to her rant right about when his werewolf neighbor had sent him a new wallpaper pattern. A thank you gift for watering the roses outside the werewolf’s castle. Antonis said that he’d prefer to be paid in teeth, the currency of TinyCastle, but as he had explained to Nefeli, you have to roll with the game, that’s half the fun.

Splendidly creepy story of the protagonist (and eventually others) becoming gradually cut off from the rest of humanity, in parallel timetracks, with good sense of place.

3) “Lake of Souls” by Ann Leckie. (Title story of a collection which you can get here.) Second paragraph of third section:

“A dangerous time,” whispered one mother to the next. “Especially
for the old.” And the whisper scurried through the village.
And close behind it, a day or so later, another whisper, that Darter
Spine’s molt was not going well, and that many had over the years
wondered about Darter Spine’s soul, soul mark or no soul mark.
That elder had always been peculiar, so the mothers and mothers’
mothers had said. “What if ?” the mothers whispered. A good person,
who made beautiful gardens and was kind to all in the village,
but peculiar. “What if ? What if Darter Spine’s soul has died. What
if this elder dies and a soul does not emerge? This elder will be lost!”

This was the first of the novelettes that I read, and I was sure I was going to vote for it, so am slightly surprised to find myself putting it only third. Very well drawn story of a rather merciless alien society, whose first contact with humans brings change, but perhaps not enough.

2) “Signs of Life” by Sarah Pinsker. Second paragraph of third section:

“Hot stuff!” Her truck drifted in my car’s direction as she eyeballed it, then overcorrected. “No wonder you had trouble.”

Tremendous tale which starts off looking like it’s just a matter of a dysfunctional relationship between two sisters finding some common landing point after decades of estrangement, and then turns into something completely different. Loses a quarter of a point for last four paras, which are an unnecessary epilogue.

1) “The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea” by Naomi Kritzer. Second paragraph of third section:

I looked at the lease again and noticed something else: it was the simplest lease I’d signed since that sublet agreement in college that we’d made because everyone’s parents said we needed to “get things in writing.” Leases are usually full of rules and caveats—how to give notice at the end of term, how much you’ll owe if you damage something, whether you’re allowed to have a pet. This lease just said it ran from September through June, how much we were paying per month, and that we’d be paying utilities. The lead-based paint disclosure and the move-in checklist were paperclipped to the back.

Tremendous story of selkies, feminism, toxic relationships and the academic research treadmill. Charming and righteously enraging, with strong sense of the Massachusetts coast. Gets my vote.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/hugo-best-novelette/

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Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/beyond-the-sun-by-matthew-jones/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61507

Second paragraph of third chapter:

I ran a finger down the side of his face and he shuddered and wrinkled his nose as if trying to discourage an insect. And then he turned on to his back and began to snore loudly.

When I first read this in 2009, I wrote:

I only realised after reading this that I had already heard the excellent audio adaptation which includes Sophie Aldred and Anneke Wills. The original book is very good too, and I think would be reasonably penetrable for someone who hadn’t previously followed the Bernice Summerfield stories. Nicely observed emotional politics between and among Benny and her students, and the various aliens with whom Benny’s ex gets them involved. To a certain extent I felt it was the story that Colony In Space should have been. A good one (only the second Benny novel I have read, the first being the equally enjoyable Walking to Babylon).

I reread it in 2015, but in the midst of Clarke and other obligations didn’t write it up that time. My original plan was only to revisit the Bernice Summerfield novels that I have never written up at all, but then I thought, I actually enjoyed this and I wonder if a return visit will work? And it did; as well as the nicely judged emotional and physical perils of Benny and her students, there’s a particularly wacky alien reproduction process which often results in hot-looking humanoids, and a deceptive Ancient Weapon. One of the good ones. You can (probably) get it here.

I had written of the audio in 2007:

Beyond the Sun is another archaeological dig-goes-wrong story but introduces the character of Jason, Benny’s ex-husband, and lots of emotional angst as well as the actual plot. I was completely absorbed in it, and yet failed to spot the voices of Sophie Aldred and Anneke Wills until I read the sleeve notes afterwards.

I spotted Anneke Wills this time, but failed to spot Sophie Aldred, who is actually a very versatile actor. But the star is Lisa Bowerman, really getting into her stride here as Bernice, with sarcasm and emotion, helping us through what’s actually a rather convoluted plot. The only one of the first season audios not adapted by Jac Rayner but by Matt Jones, the original author. You can get it here.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/beyond-the-sun-by-matthew-jones/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61507

Posted by fromtheheartofeurope

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/hugo-best-related-work-2025/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61307

6) The 2023 Hugo Awards: A Report on Censorship and Exclusion, by Chris Barkley and Jason Sandford

What? I hear you exclaim. Given my own record on speaking out against the abuses of the Hugo process carried out by the organisers of Chengdu Worldcon, how can I possibly be ranking the Barkley and Sandford Report, which blew the bloody doors off the whole affair in February 2024, last on my Hugo ballot this year?

There are several reasons, which I will go into at greater length in due course. Most important, I don’t think one year’s awards should commemorate the previous year’s failures. But also, this Report misses a couple of vitally important issues revealed in its own detail and compensates with rhetoric. So I’m not voting for it, but it may well win the award anyway.

5) The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel, by Jenny Nicholson.

This is a four hour long video report on a bad investment decision by Disney, to create a Star Wars hotel in Walt Disney World in Florida. It looks nice, but I honestly think that the story is not worth four hours of vidding, let alone watching.

4) r/Fantasy’s 2024 Bingo Reading Challenge

I think it’s brilliant that Reddit users got together to challenge each other to read more broadly, and the enthusiasm for this project is great. I just prefer my Best Related Works to be written commentary.

3) Charting the Cliff: An Investigation into the 2023 Hugo Nomination Statistics, by Camestros Felapton and Heather Rose Jones

Now this is more like it, cold hard numbers demonstrating why the published statistics from the 2023 Hugos simply cannot be trusted. I was relieved but not surprised to see that the statistics from the years that I myself was involved generally do pass the mathematical smell test. Lots of beautiful numerical details here, which I’ve been chewing on occasionally ever since it was published.

As noted above, though, I don’t think one year’s awards should commemorate the previous year’s failures, so it’s not in my top two in this category.

2) Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right by Jordan S. Carroll

Second paragraph of third chapter (actually Chapter 2, “Whitey on the Moon”, counting the introduction as the first chapter):

[Richard B.] Spencer expounded upon this idea at length in an early podcast that explicated Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) with alt-right essayist Roman Bernard. Interstellar caused a big stir among alt-right intellectuals because it expressed the widespread reactionary sentiment that the United States had undergone a serious social and technological decline. The country’s malaise, they suggested, could only be reversed by intrepid white explorers taking up where the Apollo missions left off. In the film, the United States has shifted all resources away from technological innovation and into food production after an environmental catastrophe reduces the planet to a dustbowl. Even as the government denies the possibility of spaceflight—they claim the moon landing was an expensive hoax—a secret NASA program strives to save humanity by sending settlers to colonize another planet.

A short, fascinating analysis of the extent to which the alt-right has drawn inspiration from science fiction, often from authors and works who would have been horrified that they were being used for these purposes. Alas, a very timely book given what has been happening in the USA of late. You can get it here.

1) Track Changes, by Abigail Nussbaum.

As its title suggests, 2312 is a novel driven less by story or characters, and more by the desire to capture a certain (fictional, futuristic) moment of human history. Robinson accomplishes this by trotting out all the best-known (and often-derided) tools of science-fictional worldbuilding, but also by referencing much of the work that has come before him. So 2312 often seems as much a commentary on visions of the future as one of its own.

Tremendous assembly of a body of work by the excellent Abigail Nussbaum, whose thoughtful dissection of form and substance is always a delight, and she is usually right about the books as well (ie often agrees with me). Gets my vote with enthusiasm. You can get it here.

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/hugo-best-related-work-2025/

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/?p=61307