Other Worlds

Tag: Hugo Awards

  • Hugo Awards: Best Novelette (5th contender)

    Last of the novelettes up for a Hugo is Brad Torgersen’s “Ray of Light,” from Analog. Only a partial extract is free online, but you can buy it for a song (or almost) on Barnes and Noble here, or on Amazon here. On the ocean floor, a few thousand people, perhaps the last remnants of…

  • Hugo Awards: Best Novelette (4th contender)

    We come to Geoff Ryman’s “What We Found” from F&SF (Sept-Oct 2011). It has not been posted online. The story is set in Nigeria, in something like present day. Patrick is the narrator, and he is sleepless at 3:30 AM on the day he is to be married. He is dreading marriage. He is writing…

  • Hugo Awards: Best Novelette (3rd contender)

    Next is Charlie Jane Anders’s “Six Months, Three Days,” from Tor.com. It’s here. The title refers to the length of time from when two clairvoyants meet and fall in love (they have, of course, foreseen this) until they break up (yep, foreseen this, too). Doug can see the future; Judy sees many possible futures. Judy…

  • Hugo Awards: Best Novelette (2nd contender)

    Next in the novelette category is “Fields of Gold” by Rachel Swirsky, published in Eclipse Four (Night Shade Books). Read it here. Imagining an afterlife as a story device has a long — very long — history. What do the dead do, what should they do, what can they do? Simply exist as sad shades? Endure…

  • Hugo Awards: Best Novelette (1st contender)

    Turning to the Novelette category, we come to Paul Cornell’s “The Copenhagen Interpretation,” published in Asimov’s. How do you do, Mr. Bond–er, Mr. Hamilton, isn’t it? There is a cold war on, and secret agents work covertly on behalf of their respective countries, with the aim of maintaining the balance between the great powers.

  • Hugo Awards: My Pick for Best Short Story

    I’ve decided which of the five stories I hope will win. It’s “Movement” by Nancy Fulda, for its beautifully unified character, voice, and story. The protagonist is convincing, and the author’s hand is sure but not too heavy.

  • Hugo Awards: Best Short Story Contenders (5)

    Fifth and last, E. Lily Yu’s “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” from Clarkesworld Magazine. Read it here. A race of wasps common around the village of Yiwei is discovered to construct nests that unfold into beautiful colored maps of the surrounding country. Once this discovery is made, the nests are taken by the villagers…

  • Hugo Awards: Best Short Story Contenders (4)

    Fourth on the ballot for Best Short Story: “The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu. You can read it here. Jack is the son of an American father and a Chinese mother, who was a mail-order bride. The marriage is a successful one, but at age 10 Jack becomes aware of the ethnic differences between himself…

  • Hugo Awards: Best Short Story Contenders (3)

    Hannah, a teenage girl with “temporal autism,” is the narrator. Hannah is highly intelligent and is a talented dancer, but she speaks rarely and is disinclined to make human connection with others. Her parents are considering a new treatment, synaptic grafting, as a cure for her condition.

  • Hugo Awards: Best Short Story Contenders (2)

    In Mike Resnick’s “The Homecoming,” on the Hugo ballot for best short story, a young man has been transformed into insectoid alien creature, to his father’s horror. Philip, we learn, is an exobiologist who undertook the transformation in order to study an alien world. The story follows what happens when Philip returns home to visit…