Short stories 11 to 17 are late and disorderly

This batch of stories is an unusual number because I feel bad for posting them so late. I had plans to do a proper Hugo round-up post as I did for novellas, but for various reasons that didn't happen. So here are some of the short stories and novelettes that were shortlisted for Hugo awards.

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The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye by Sarah Pinsker — An enjoyable mystery-ish story about a mystery writing a in cabin in the woods. Things inevitably go wrong, but it wasn’t quite the horror scenario I was expecting. I enjoyed it. Source: https://uncannymagazine.com/article/the-blur-in-the-corner-of-your-eye

The Archronology of Love by Caroline M. Yoachim — A long story about interesting far-future alien tech which records history. People interacting with said tech while trying to work out what happened to a failed colony planet. Also a sad love story. It was OK, but it didn’t really grab me. Source: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-archronology-of-love/

Omphalos by Ted Chiang — An unexpected story told in an unusual way. Almost an epistolary story, but told through prayers rather than letters. Set in a world a bit less technologically developed than ours, and following a scientist who knows exactly how long ago the world was created. And that it was created by a divine being. I enjoyed it more than I expected. Source: Exhalation by Ted Chiang

Emergency Skin by NK Jemisin — An entertaining read partially depicting a society sitting somewhere between Athos (Bujold, Ethan of Athos) and the alt-right. It’s also told in an unusual way, which works very efficiently to tell the story and highlight the horrors of that particular society. We actually only get half the story, but it’s more than enough. Source: Amazon Forward Collection

As the Last I May Know by SL Huang — An intriguing premise: weapons of mass destruction can only be set off if the president first murders a little girl. I enjoyed the story and was quite taken by both the power play and the moral questions raised. Source: https://www.tor.com/2019/10/23/as-the-last-i-may-know-s-l-huang/

For He Can Creep by Siobhan Carroll — An amusing story about a cat fighting Satan for a poet’s soul. It was not what I expected from the title, and was certainly entertaining enough. Source: https://www.tor.com/2019/07/10/for-he-can-creep-siobhan-carroll/

Blood is Another Word for Hunger by Rivers Solomon — A very weird story. Not sure what to make of it, to be honest. I didn’t hate it, but I also didn’t love it. I'm sorry that I have failed to adequately describe the weirdness of murder resulting in spontaneous births. Source: https://www.tor.com/2019/07/24/blood-is-another-word-for-hunger-rivers-solomon/

Hugo Novella Round-up, 2020

I'm a bit late in posting this, even though I finished reading all the Hugo novellas weeks ago. As for many people, I'm sure, life has been a bit exhausting lately.

Anyway, below are brief summaries links to my full reviews of the Hugo novellas. The only exception is for the Ted Chiang because that's in a collection that I haven't finished reading, so I've included my full (not especially long) review in this post. Order is that used by  , out of laziness.

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Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom, Ted Chiang (Exhalation)

I really enjoyed this novella. It is possibly my favourite take on the manyworlds hypothesis/parallel timelines. The story follows a few different people as they interact with a new technology that allows them to communicate (via digital information only) with parallel timelines. The character driven story is interspersed with explanations of the technology, which I thought worked well and were not at all boring infodumps (though others might disagree). Overall, a very interesting and enjoyable read.

The Deep, Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes

A key idea explored in The Deep is that if societal memory and specifically memory of trauma. The situation when the story opens is like this: one member of the wajinru people is the historian and only that person holds all the memories of past wajinru and events. ... As well as exploring how intergenerational trauma should be remembered, and by whom, The Deep questions whether it should be remembered at all, as Yetu grapples with some of these issues.

The Deep was a good read, though I found it was a little slow to start and not the sort of book I could read quickly. I recommend it to people interested in the premise and, perhaps, to fans of merpeople.

The Haunting of Tram Car 015, P. Djèlí Clark

In this story, a couple of public servants are tasked with fixing the problem of a haunted tram car in an alternate-world Cairo. Hijinks ensue. In this world, djinn exist and have helped cement Cairo and Egypt's significance on the world stage, including from a technological standpoint. (The steampunky cover is a pretty good representation of the setting, in my opinion.) Our put-upon agents have to contend with identifying the possibly dangerous being possessing the tram and then have to safely remove it. And all this is set against the backdrop of a Cairo-centred campaign to give women the vote.

In an Absent Dream, Seanan McGuire

Lundy was a mildly unhappy child before she found her door and her particular fairyland wasn't everyone's idea of a good time. But she liked it and she made friends and she felt like she belonged. She even made several trips between the two worlds, which isn't something we've seen close up before. The story spans years as Lundy goes back and forth and is more the story of her transitions than the story of adventures had on the other side of a door. It's the story of choices made, of fair value — because that's what the Goblin Market is all about — and of family.

This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

This is a remarkable book, told in a very poetic style, with chapters alternating between snippets of our characters’ lives and the letters they send each other. Although it is written as prose, one feels as though one is reading poetry. The use of imagery and metaphor is strong and frequent and the relationship between the characters shifts as they become more obsessed with each other as they learn more about the other.

... It is the kind of book that demands your full attention to properly take in its words and worlds.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Becky Chambers

The premise of To Be Taught, If Fortunate is quite straightforward: a small group of scientist-astronauts are on a multi-year mission to investigate four habitable planets and catalogue whatever lifeforms and other interesting things they find. The novella is basically a chronicle of their journey and the main interest in the book is the explanations of science and discovery. ... 

I wouldn't call it fast-paced, by any stretch of the imagination, but it worked for me.

Paper Girls Vol 4 by Brian K Vaughan and Cliff Chiang

Paper Girls Vol 4 written by Brian K Vaughan and illustrated by Cliff Chiang is the fourth collected instalment of Paper Girls comics. This is the kind of comic that tells one continuous story over several volumes, so I don't recommend jumping in at volume 4 if you haven't read the previous three.

The mind-bending, time-warping adventure from BRIAN K. VAUGHAN and CLIFF CHIANG continues, as intrepid newspaper deliverer Tiffany is launched from the prehistoric past into the year 2000! In this harrowing version of our past, Y2K was even more of a cataclysm than experts feared, and the only person who can save the future is a 12-year-old girl from 1988.

This volume continues the story, as expected. This time, the girls find themselves in 1999 on New Year’s Eve when things are a little bit strange. And that’s without the giant robots and other time travellers. To me this volume felt like it was mostly running around and avoiding violence (or not, at times). It did progress the overall story but not quite as much as I would have liked. We did get to meet another future self of one of the girls, which was interesting.

While I wouldn’t say this was my favourite volume, I still enjoyed it and I still intend to read the next volume soon. This is a very sequential series and I don’t recommend staring part way through. New readers are best severed starting with volume 1. For continuing readers still invested in the story, I see no especially compelling reason to skip this issue, so read it if you haven’t already.

4 / 5 stars

First published: 2018, Image Comics
Series: Paper Girls vol 4 of ongoing series, collecting issues 16 to 20
Format read: Trade paperback
Source: Purchased from All Star Comics in Melbourne

Novelettes: three from the 2014 Hugo ballot

Having received the Hugo voter packet, I started reading some of the shorlisted fiction. I'm not sure if I'll end up reviewing everything, but for now I've decided to share my thoughts on three of the shortlisted novelettes. All are really excellent stories that do not make ranking them easy.

“The Lady Astronaut of Mars” by Mary Robinette Kowal 

(maryrobinettekowal.com / Tor.com, 09-2013)

A lovely story. Set in a alternate version of the 80s, on Mars, it was not quite what I expected. The bulk of the story takes place 30 years after the titular character was on the first mission to Mars. She is mostly retired but still dreams of the stars. Her husband is terminally ill and a large part of the story deals with their life choices from her point of view. Most notably, their decision not to have children because of her career. It's nice to see a story dealing with these issues; women "sacrificing" family life for their careers is not often a focus and rarely a positive one, especially when compared with male characters making the same choices. A really great story.

“The Waiting Stars” by Aliette de Bodard 

(The Other Half of the Sky, Candlemark & Gleam)

Another excellent story. It follows two threads of story: salvagers trying to revive a family ship that was relegated to a ship graveyard during a war, and a group of girls who were “rescued” during the way and brought up the Galactic way. At first it was not obvious how the two threads were related — apart from both parties being Dai Viet. Once it was revealed what the connection was, I experienced a “wow” moment as everything slotted together and the thrust of the story changed. What I had been reading as a sort of war-induced Stolen Generation type of story turned into something both completely different and chillingly not.

Cover credits: violscraper on Flickr

“The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling” by Ted Chiang 

(Subterranean, Fall 2013)

I enjoyed this story even though it was a story in a very different sense of the word. It’s told as a piece of futuristic narrative journalism, putting me in mind of #longreads type of journalistic pieces, juxtaposed with a story of the Tiv tribe in Western Africa. Jijingi of the Tiv spends time with a European missionary learning how to write. On the one hand, we have the future journalist writing about the social and personal effects of a new technology can can search ubiquitously recorded personal video logs, and on the other we have Jijingi coming to terms with the concept of writing and learning about its uses and faults as a memory aid. What starts off as an exploration of types of memory (internalised and externalised, organic and technologically assisted), turns into a discussion of the nature of truth, as the title suggests. Honestly the only slight disappointment (and I do mean slight) with this story was that the story of Jijingi was inserted by the journalist, rather than placed next to the journalist’s story by the writer (if that makes sense). I think it’s because it made the journalist seem a little too self-aware in the end. But it was still a good, thoughtful story.