My thoughts on what is missing, or at least, what there is not enough of, in the fiction categories (excluding Novel).

Adventure! Suspense!

More adventure and suspense, please! Especially suspense. I’m a Hitchcock lover for the simple reason that, wow, could that man keep me hanging on what was going to happen next. Stories that did stand out in this respect: “Ray of Light,” “Kiss Me Twice,” and “The Copenhagen Interpretation.”

Fantasy

There’s an abundance of particle physics and advanced technology driving the events and problems in the stories. Not much of the fantastic, though. The exception: “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees.”

Humor

We don’t always have to be so serious… And even a serious story can have humor, witness “Silently and Very Fast,” when the A.I., Elefsis, takes on song. Some nice touches in “Cartographer Wasps” and “Copenhagen Interpretation,” too. Or, there is Total Humor, as in “Shadow War of the Night Dragons.”

Those three wishes reflect my own literary leanings, of course. It’s interesting to look at the ballot and think about the different types of readers who nominated these very diverse stories. Isn’t it great to see a collection such as this, together on one ballot?