2017 Hugo Nominations

Herein I continue my tradition of pointing at stories that I think are really good, and will be getting my Hugo Nominations this year. Remember, you only have until March 17th to nominate, so don’t tarry too long!

Sadly, I only have so much time to read, and I know there are tons of things I haven’t read yet, many of which I would very likely enjoy quite a bit. This has been proven to me every year so far, and I don’t doubt this year will be the same. So these are the things I liked most out of what I read this year, which is a limited pool.

 

Novelettes:

This year I didn’t read enough novelettes to feel like I can make any sort of recommendations. :/

 

Short Stories:

Mika Model, by Paolo Bacigalupi – I’ve loved Paolo’s work for a long time, and he delivers again with this fantastic story about Super Stimulus, and rights for Turing-Passing Beings who aren’t provably sapient. It does a fantastic job of really making both sides in the conflict emotionally and intellectually compelling, so at the end you don’t know which side you want to win. This is a thing I really love in the fiction I consume, and one of the things that I like most about RatFic. Plus, you know, sexbots, who doesn’t like those?

What You Need, by Van Aaron Hughes – A fairy-tale/fable about scrupulosity, which I don’t see written about very often. More importantly, it’s written well, and tells a fantastic little story. Very tidy, and short enough that I believe it qualifies as flash fiction. It’s one of those fast,  high-impact tales that just comes out of nowhere and lands a great blow.

Fall To Her, by Alexis A. Hunter – Another Super Stimulus story, because I apparently really like those. And I suppose this reveals what stimulus I find most interesting IRL as well? In 2015 I couldn’t stop telling everyone I knew about how great Kenneth: A User’s Manual was, so I suppose this has been a thing for a while. Anyway, gorgeous story, with good Other-Minds for aliens, and just soooo pretty to read. Also pretty darn short!

Daughter of the Drifting, by Jason Heller (not available online) – This story appeared in Swords v. Cthulhu with me, and I think it was my favorite from that collection (although I admit I haven’t finished reading it all yet, cuz I suck). You know how Lovecraftian Gods are supposed to be incomprehensible, in a universe that if one were to try to actually understand it would drive one insane? Yeah, Heller actually did that, and it’s fantastic. His universe is incomprehensible, and you shouldn’t try to make sense of it, because you will only fail. Our heroine serves as a living sheath for a sword, and is yanked back and forth through time-space whenever the Elder God who owns the sword needs to draw it and use it, which must be sorta a metaphor because what the fuck, but only partly, because you get the sense there’s actual cutting involved on some multi-dimensional quasi-physical time-rending level. Anyway, as the poor damned human stuck as a tool of a god beyond reckoning, our heroine’s understanding is neither needed nor bothered with. It is one of the first times I’ve truly felt a sense of Lovecraftian Otherness and Alien Incomprehensibility that I think Lovecraft himself was often shooting for but never really (for me) achieved. I believe this story will be my standard for Unknowable Nihilistic Universe for a long time.

Everyone Is Todd, by Marmoulman – Because I can’t go a year without a shout out to RatFic of some kind. :) A great little piece about slightly-imperfect alignment leading to a missed utopia. Probably should come with a content warning about legit existential horror. However not so bad that I couldn’t read it.

 

Novels:

I won’t go into these in depth here, because I’ve already talked about them at some length in my reviews. But I’ll be nom’ing:

The Library at Mount Char, by Scott Hawkins (my review)

Too Like The Lightning, by Ada Palmer (my review)

All The Birds In The Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders (my review)

Crystal Society, by Max Harms (my review)

And despite how much I love the Broken Earth trilogy, I’m really on the fence about nominated Obelisk Gate. Not because it isn’t great (it is!), but because I’m not sure I should be going around nominating every book in a trilogy, and honestly, it’d probably be best to stick with nom’ing the ground-breaking first book, and (if it deserves it) the holy-shit-that-was-awesome last book, and leaving any Middle Books out of the process entirely.

 

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My Eligibility

As one does, I’ll also mention my eligibility this year.

Of All Possible Worlds is eligible for Best Short Story

I (Eneasz Brodski) am eligible for the Joseph Campbell Award for Best New Writer (in my second and final year of eligibility)

The Methods of Rationality Podcast is eligible for Best Podcast.