If you're interested in the full shortlist, you can of course find it here.
But for now, here are the run downs in some selected categories, along with some initial thoughts:
First up, we have Outstanding Novel: Adult
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Honestly, this is just an out and out banger of a shortlist. At this point in the awards season, it would be weirder to see a novel shortlist without Vajra Chandrasekera's (excellent) The Saint of Bright Doors, about which many words have already been said across the internet (and previously here by Adri). It's great. This is, I believe, its eighth nomination.
Of the rest, I have read both To Shape a Dragon's Breath, which is a fantastic and fresh approach to the classic magical school trope, with some wonderful characters and captivating worldbuilding, and The Water Outlaws (Paul's has review here), which feels like a pure distillation of a martial arts film into a book, with a clear love on the page for the intricacies of action sequence and the physical. Both are books with a very clear individuality to their storytelling - you could open a page and immediately know it wasn't any other book - and those distinct voices to the prose make both stand out in the memory.
For the remaining two, though I have not read We Are The Crisis (Phoebe's review here) , I have read No Gods, No Monsters (Adri's review here), to which it is the sequel. If it is anything like as good as its predecessor? Well, there's a reason I have just now gone and ordered a copy. No Gods, No Monsters was utterly gripping, beautifully structured and just generally captivating the whole way through as it explores a vividly realised take on an urban fantasy world where magical creatures exist, in all the complexity that would truly mean, alongside some much more real-world concerns. Which leaves Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi. This one I have not read at all, but the plot - a nightmare god and a sort-of succubus are tasked with one last job to allow them to leave the Orisha Spirit Company... the catch? It's stealing back an artefact from the British Museum - is instantly interesting. If it's anything like his previous short story, "A Dream of Electric Mothers", the prose will be pretty top tier too.
On the whole, this is a really strong and varied shortlist, and one I'm going to really struggle voting in.
Next up, Outstanding Novella
For speculative works ranging from 17,500-39,999 words
The first thing that strikes me about this shortlist is that two of my favourite small presses are getting some rep - Off-Time Jive by A.Z. Louise is one of Neon Hemlock's 2023 offering, and we've got two entries from Stelliform. Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris got a review in our novella project earlier this year from Phoebe, and they likewise covered Sordidez by E.G. Condé back last September. Both, quite rightly, glowing reviews for fundamentally interesting novellas, both of which tackle climate change, colonisation and family in ways that really grab the heart as well as the mind.
While I've not read Off-Time Jive yet, in my experience so far, Neon Hemlock simply do not miss, and this has been sat in my queue to read for a while now - the combination of magic, detectives and yearning promised here are hard to resist.
Which leaves us with the two Tordotcom offerings. Tor, in their various forms, have been dominating the novella ballots in awards across the board, and while it's great to see their hegemony being broken a little, I am also forced to admit that there's a reason they've been raking them in - they really do put out some good stuff.
The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Utomi manages to capture the mythical tone of an authentic fable, without compromising the human heart at the centre of the story. I absolutely consumed it in reading, and was really struck by how well it tackled its themes of empire, propaganda and control in so small a space.
The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older, by contrast, was an absolute snack of a book - the sort of thing that soothes the soul and warms the heart, and can be consumed in a single, hungry sitting. A Holmesian murder mystery with a gentle, tentative and touching romance as two old friends rekindle their relationship, it could not be tonally further from the others, and yet no less compelling for it.
And onto Outstanding Novelette
for speculative works ranging from 7,500-17,499 words
Short fiction is great for the space it has to play around with ideas, contexts and perspectives, and so I'm really glad to see Renan Bernado's A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair here, because it's exactly the sort of cool, strange thing I love to see recognised on shortlists.
It's also a place to let ideas and settings sing, without the need to be tied too tightly to a full-length plot, and its in that creation of a fully realised backdrop that Imagine: Purple-Haired Girl Shooting Down the Moon really sings - in brief strokes and deftness showing us a corner of a world that stands in for the whole.
Or maybe it's a space to play out emotion, as C L Polk does in Ivy, Angelica, Bay, weaving together themes of family, legacy and personhood to create something that touches the heart and moves the feelings in the life of a neighbourhood witch in the aftermath of the death of her mother, finding a small girl who may go on to be her daughter and successor.
In those three, we get a real feeling for the span of what novelettes can do, and so I can only imagine the remaining two on the shortlist, Spell for Grief and Longing by Eboni J. Dunbar and Zhuangzi’s Dream by Cao Baiyu, translated by Stella Jiayue Zhu, take us on similar journeys. I'm particularly pleased to see the latter here, because SFF really needs to get in on translated fiction.
Then we come to Outstanding Short Story
for speculative works ranging from 2,000-7,499 words
Oluwatomiwa Ajeigbe gives us some stunning prose in A Witch's Transition in the City of Ghosts - a thing I yearn for in all my stories, and am often disappointed to find wanting. But not here. The story has a dreamlike quality at times, but it is in the moments focussing on the love of the protagonist for the forest spirit that the craft is really on show, and there are some scenes beautifully told that linger in the mind long after finishing reading.
Thomas Ha's Window Boy also has that quality, although achieved far more through lingering creepiness than touching the heart. It focusses in on the small scale, on the experience in a short time of a single person, and yet gives us so much beyond that in the background, almost without noticing.
Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200 by R.S.A. Garcia is funny. We don't get enough funny in our short SFF - and where else is such a good place for it as this? There is a simple joy to a story of a robot trying to outsmart a belligerent goat, but it's told with such a clear narrative voice, and with such well-articulated underlying sadness, that it is easy to be charmed even as you're amused. And it never strays into schmaltz, even as it manages sweet, which is a difficult line to tread.
Kemi Ashing-Giwa's Thin Ice may be only 2110 words, but it manages to cram into a short space a powerful punch of themes, feeling a vibes that makes it feel weightier than the space it takes up. Why bother with plot when you can achieve so much more with a set of vignettes, each slowly adding to the feeling of the story, like a mosaic novel's shorter cousin.
Cynthia Gomez's Lips Like Sugar is apparently a funny and raunchy bisexual vampire urban fantasy tale, and as soon as I can get my hands on it, I will be reading it.
This is a shortlist full of things distilled to their perfect essence, crafted to brilliance, just as short stories shine best at being.
Next it's The Critics Award
for reviews and analysis of the field of speculative literature
This is one close to our hearts, and not for our own win last year, but for the rare joy of seeing an award that celebrates criticism in all its forms. Every single nominee is an absolute standout, and if you can spend some time to seek out their words and opinions, your experience of SFF will be the richer for it.
It is particularly good to see critics here who do occupy a wider variety of spaces and media, whether it's writing in magazines, podcasting, tiktok or instagram, and it's great to see those being treated with equal weight, when a lot of the genre struggles to recognise audio-visual media particularly. I think this is genuinely the first time I've seen someone with a tiktok as their main platform like bookbaddiebri make it onto a shortlist like this, and I am so entirely here for it. There are so many brilliant reviewers like bri on tiktok, and their craft deserves the same respect as the more traditional media.
Then we're onto The Ember Award
for unsung contributions to genre
And here likewise, it's a banger of a list. Sheree Renée Thomas could have a whole essay just on her work. You may remember her for her collaboration with Janelle Monáe on The Memory Librarian? Her work on Black Panther? Her co-editing of Africa Risen, which gave us a plethora of top tier short fiction in 2022, perhaps? Editors are often the underappreciated part of the genre, their work hidden behind the authors, and it is always great to see them appreciated
DaVaun Sanders, as executive editor for FIYAH, deserves nothing less than our great respect. FIYAH is such a brilliant magazine, an endless source of fantastic short fiction, we can only salute those who make it happen, and doubly so when they manage it alongside publishing middle grade fantasy.
I haven't spoken about the middle grade category of the awards, because it's not a category I read in, so the sum total of my appreciation for every entry would be "that sounds cool", but I do note that there are two finalists in the Ember whose work includes children's fiction, the second being Kwame Mbalia. Where YA has its own spaces in SFF, though not the full appreciation it deserves among more traditional readers, middle grade is even less in the spotlight, and so it's great to see authors from that category being recognised here.
I'm only aware of Kate Elliott and A. C. Wise through their novels - particularly Unconquerable Sun and Wendy, Darling respectively - so I'm looking forward to dipping more into their work prompted by their inclusion on this shortlist. And hey, what is a good shortlist for if not bringing to light those whose work needs more appreciation?
for Outstanding Efforts in Service of Inclusion and Equitable Practice in Genre
Khōréō is a stunner of a magazine, and one whose stories I always look forward to reading. They have a great team who do great work and they absolutely deserve all the love. A story that appeared in a 2022 issue - This Excessive Use of Pickled Foods by Leora Spitzer - still sticks with me two years later for the way it evokes the most personal of memories through taste, even while placing the story off in the space future. It was this that prompted me to start subscribing to them, and every issue since has only confirmed this as a great decision.
Sarah Gailey's Stone Soup likewise uses the medium of food to tell stories, varying widely across spectra of time, space and emotion through the different authors and how they each choose to tell their stories through their recipes. Favourites that have stuck with me include Naseem Jamnia's Khoresht-e Bademjoon and Shing Yin Khor's Congee, but there are so many different moods and modes here, as well as Gailey's own thoughtful sections, that there's something that would appeal to everyone. I very much enjoy getting each entry showing up in my inbox as they're released, and wondering what it will be this time.
I spoke above about the need for a place and respect for translated fiction, and so it is great to see Samovar, a quarterly special edition of the great Strange Horizons that focuses on translated speculative works here, getting exactly that, especially as they showcase the translators alongside the original authors, another unsung and overlooked but critical piece in the larger puzzle of the SFF space.
As above, a great awards shortlist gives you new things to discover, and I'll be diving into some of the podcasts at Awesome Black media imminently. I have likewise from this learned about the great work Voodoonauts do in creating a space for Black SFF writers. With one of their alumni appearing on the novelette shortlist right here, clearly what they're doing is amazing.
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And that's our run through. It isn't every category and every nominee, but what I know about the ones I have encountered tells me that the rest can only be fantastic.
Voting is open now, and you can do so via the link here up until August 31st, 2024 at 11:59PM EDT, and while you're there, dip into the other categories, explore the finalists and their work, and make sure to support one of the best awards in the SFF space at the moment.
POSTED BY: Roseanna Pendlebury, the humble servant of a very loud cat. @chloroformtea.bsky.social
