Adri and Joe Read the Hugos: Best Novelette

Adri: Time for our fourth category, which is Novelette!

Joe: Let’s do it! 

Should we just start with “Helicopter Story”? It takes up a lot of the oxygen in the category because there’s so much going on with “Helicopter Story” that isn’t really about the story, but is about how the story was published and initial knee-jerk responses to who Isabel Fall might be. Among those were concerns that the story itself was a giant troll job, in part because the original title of the story when Clarkesworld published it back in January 2020 invoked a meme used to attack transgender people (it’s still there as the first line of the story itself). “Helicopter Story” was taken down by Clarkesworld at the request of Fall due to harassment. 

I don’t know how much time we want to spend talking about the background of “Helicopter Story” without talking about the story, but I think the context is pretty important to at least note. I’m also a cisgender heterosexual man and I don’t know what I don’t know about how to frame that particular conversation beyond the barest details of what happened. 

“Helicopter Story” is also a much less provocative title than what it was originally published as, which for the sake of awards conversations may be the best call. But maybe I’m not the right person to say that, either. I did read the story when it was first published. 

Adri: It’s also important to acknowledge that this story, and the reactions to it, caused a lot of pain: to Fall herself, and to trans folk in the community. And it all absolutely sucks, and I’m really sorry. I don’t want to talk further about that, it’s not my place to talk about it, but I do want to talk about the story itself, because it’s on the Hugo ballot and to refuse to engage with Fall’s art would be a massive disservice to her and to everyone who voted for it.

So. This is the story of Barb, a helicopter pilot in a future US army where it is possible to psychologically alter people’s genders into neo-configurations that benefit the military. Barb identifies as an Apache attack helicopter, and her narration switches between her current mission, and how she, as a helicopter-identified person, experiences it; and a lot of musings on how gender can become a weaponised tool and what it means for the military - that hypermasculine institution that seems antithetical to any thought about gender beyond “manliness = good” - to have co-opted it in this way.

Between my first and second readings, I’d forgotten just how confrontational those latter aspects of the story are. Barb’s tone is often accusational, laying charges against the reader (and there are clear internal expecations about who that reader is) about how their experiences form a continuum with hers, no matter how distasteful we might find hers to be. Before she was an attack helicopter, Barb was a woman, and the way her current gender informs her take on femininity is particularly challenging to the reader. In other circumstances, I’d want to call this a surgical strike of a story, because I think it’s very targeted and deliberate in who it is addressed to (not me!) and the experiences it draws on. Obviously, its impact was not that of a surgical strike, and therein lies the rub. But in terms of craft, I think this is an excellent piece of writing and it deserves to be on the ballot on its own merits.

Joe: I agree. “Helicopter Story” is an impressive and notable story and is the sort of thing we should see recognized at the Hugo Awards. There have been a number of stories exploring gender and identity, and I don’t want to make any kind of sweeping statements about the particular uniqueness of “Helicopter Story” because I haven’t read nearly enough to speak with any sense of authority - but “Helicopter Story” is both very good and was significant because of the conversation around the story. 

As you said, some of the reactions of the story (and the story itself because of how it was positioned without context - see Neil Clarke’s editorial after pulling the story) caused a lot of pain and that should not at all be discounted. 

In terms of awards, the notoriety of “Helicopter Story” probably helped it break through - which is not to say that anyone from Fall to Clarkesworld to anyone else wanted the particular whiplash of a reaction that it received. But in the end it probably did help what is also a very good story to be remembered when it came to nominating for awards after a year of pandemic. 

I think that’s all that I’m going to say about or around “Helicopter Story” before I say something incredibly stupid or insensitive without intending to do so. It’s a very good story and it absolutely deserves its place on this ballot. 

Adri: Let’s move on! Funnily enough, there’s another novelette from the same issue of Clarkesworld here, which is “Monster” by Naomi Kritzer. This one is about a woman tracking down an old friend and former research partner in Guizhou, China, interspersed with stories of their earlier relationship. It doesn’t take long for red flags to start appearing over Andrew’s behaviour, and the way the story handles the past and present reveals is great. It was one of the stories on my nomination list and it’s fantastic to see it here.

Joe: I’m not sure I’ve read a story from Naomi Kritzer that I haven’t liked. “Monster” is no exception. Kritzer is just so smooth in her storytelling. You know where it’s going, this isn’t the sort of story that’s a huge surprise, but it’s moving. It’s good. It’s really good. 

Also good, and not at all a surprise to me is Sarah Pinsker’s “Two Truths and a Lie” which features exceptionally good description of cleaning the house of a hoarder (which honestly gives me the shivers to think about) and the mind fuckery of remembering and not remembering a really creepy and disturbing children’s television show that has more than a little tinge of the supernatural to it. 

The “Uncle Bob” show within the story has really strong echoes of something Stephen King would cook up and I mean that in the best possible way. I don’t think of Sarah Pinsker as a horror writer, and she’s not, but damn does she do a fantastic job of introducing a seeping horror with Uncle Bob. It’s not okay. 

Adri: With a title like that, it’s hardly surprising that “Two Truths and a Lie” messes around with the reliability of its narrator, and its story within a story narrator, and, well, the whole fabric of reality. Uncle Bob’s show isn’t the kind of horror I’d usually go for, but I can’t deny how creepy and effective the whole thing is. It perfectly captures that feeling of having an important childhood memory that, upon interrogation, starts to make less and less sense, and combined with all the other stuff going on here… well, it’s a good story.

I said in our short story conversation that - probably by an accident of ballot rather than any difference in the form -  short story and novelette have quite different vibes this year. There’s a lot of lightness and kindness and happy endings in short story, whereas in this category… well, we’re halfway through the ballot  and we haven’t gotten out of the grim horror woods yet, because oh look, Meg Elison’s “The Pill” is here too!

The Pill in “The Pill” is a miracle weight loss drug. People take it, they lose almost all of their fat cells within a matter of weeks (How? Well, the story goes into it so I won’t), and they then get to enjoy life with a body of the perfect size and fat distribution for all of their clothes, chairs and societal perception of health and sex appeal. The catch is that the Pill has a mortality rate: ten percent (double check) of people who take it die in the process of losing all their weight. The protagonist of the story doesn’t see the appeal, but her family all do, and as she deals with their individual decisions and increasing social pressure for fat people to take the pill, she finds her options increasingly restricted.

I have a lot that I could say about this story, and the different themes and conversations around fat that it twists and draws attention to as the story progresses. As a fat person with a lot of fat family members, those elements of the storytelling hit especially hard - in fact, in some ways identifying with a lot of the protagonist’s choices in The Pill was a drawback that threw off my appreciation of the story’s ending, where things took a turn faaar away from the relatable for me. Still, though, what Elison does in this story is make a chilling and utterly believable way in which a huge chunk of humanity might be persuaded to play Russian Roulette, all in the name of health and convenience promises that just don’t add up.

Joe: Novelette is a much harsher category than Short Story, and I do agree that it’s just happenstance that the two categories fell that way. The one in ten chance of death because of the pill is dark as hell and yet, I do think there’s a really good chance if such a pill really did exist that people would end up lining around the block for their chance to take one and some of them would be the same people yelling about how unsafe and untested the vaccinations are for the coronavirus because how else can you prove that you’re a real alpha of society if you don’t have that perfect body? I angrily digress.

The way Elison describes the societal pressure building as taking the pill becomes more and more commonplace felt really, well, real. In a way it reminds me of Sarah Pinsker’s second novel We Are Satellites, which is much more about technology and those get left behind for various reasons. The novel and novelette aren’t focused on the same thing, and “The Pill” is far more condensed, but the idea of damn the consequences because this is how you fit in and feel better about yourself - it makes a lot of sense. 

The ending of the story is a bit out there in relation to the rest of “The Pill” but I could make an argument, if needed, how it would / could fit into that same sort of world where being physically different is only valued as a commodity to the ultra rich and not as an actual person. It’s a stretch of an offshoot, but it definitely gave the ending a different feel from the rest of the story.

Moving on to Aliette de Bodard’s “The Inaccessibility of Heaven”, which is part of the Dominion of the Fallen series of novels and stories featuring the consequences of fallen angels on Earth (and usually Paris, but I’m not sure this one is set there). “The Inaccessibilty of Heaven” is dark and full of murder, which fits in quite nicely in this category. It’s a solid murder mystery where the pain of the Fall echoes through. 

Adri: I don’t think The Inaccessibility of Heaven is actually part of Dominion of the Fallen, but it has a lot of similar worldbuilding elements - both are about fallen angels! - and a lot of the same vibes. And de Bodard does those vibes really well, and the character dynamics in this are excellent. I actually nominated it, but it's fallen off my radar a bit while considering the full ballot compared to the other stories here. But it's a great gothic-y mystery with lots going on, so definitely happy to see it here.

Joe: To be fair, a novelette about fallen angels from a writer who has a series about fallen angels is suggestive of being part of that same series about fallen angels.

Adri: Says the Seanan McGuire fan! (Not a criticism - I just think there’s lots of ways for authors to do the same stuff differently).

Joe: I don’t know, I think Seanan keeps her series pretty distinct. One has faeries, the other has all the other mythical creatures. The others have plagues. Besides, if she writes a short story in a universe she’s featuring known characters from that universe. 

Wait - we’ll talk about Seanan McGuire later when we get to Best Series. Let’s talk about A.T. Greenblatt’s “Burn, or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super”, which is absolutely not a superhero story written by Seanan McGuire though I’d be willing to discuss how McGuire uses the concept of superheroes in her Velveteen series. 

It’s not that “Burn” is a light story because it’s not and there is all sorts of emotional pain to deal with, but it is lighter in comparison to the rest of this category. It’s not my favorite and that’s okay. 

Adri: I feel the same. “Burn” is the story of a character with superpowers in a world where they’re relatively common but frequently looked down upon, learning that it’s hard to find your place in the world when you’re prone to becoming a human torch and trying to fit in with a team of supers who are trying to maintain their own precarious reputations. The episodic format delivers exactly what it promises: snapshots of Sam joining the team (as admin staff), dealing with the ways, big and small, that his powers have changed him, working to become stronger and more in control of his gift, and hanging out in a nice bar. It’s a fun story, one about finding a place in a world where the consequences for mistakes are immense, but it’s further down the list for me.

Now that we’ve been through all that, what’s at the top of your list?

Joe: I don’t know if I have super strong feelings about the top of my Novelette ballot, but I’d say “Two Truths and a Lie”, “The Pill”, and “Monster” in no particular order. “Helicopter Story” is just off that trio, I think, though I make no promises about going back into my ballot and making changes. What about you?

Adri: I think I’m voting “Helicopter Story” first. It took me two readings and a lot of thinking to really understand what it’s trying to do, but the more I consider it, the more I appreciate the artistry in it. The history is hard to decouple from the art - it always is - but I really do think this stands as an excellent piece of work.

The other stories that are up in the top three for me are “The Pill” and “Monster”. I’m really glad that I got to read “The Pill” as part of this category, as its publication in a PM Press volume might have led me to miss it otherwise and it’s exactly the kind of gem I love reading award nominations for. And Naomi Kritzer just knows how to spin a tale, and “Monster” was already one of my favourites for the year.

Joe: I absolutely can’t argue “Helicopter Story” at all, I’m just a sucker for a Sarah Pinsker story. 

Adri: And with that, I think we’re done with our fourth category - see you next time for Best Series!

Adri and Joe Read the Hugos: Short Story

Adri: Our next Hugo category is short story! Four returning Hugo-favourite authors and two with their first (I think) nominations, stories ranging from heartwarming haunted houses to robot mentorship. How are you feeling about this year’s ballot?

Joe: I hate to admit it, but I’m just not up on my short fiction this year. If I’m being frank (and I’m not frank, I’m Joe), I haven’t been up on my short fiction for a couple of years now. I read a small handful of select anthologies and then the Nebula and Hugo Award finalists.

I mention this because I don’t have quite the breadth of knowledge of comparison to the rest of the field as I do with novels. Here, I’m coming in relatively cold and can only really talk about the stories in relation with each other and not also with the field. That’s the point, I suppose, but for a change I’m not internally bemoaning that story X was my favorite and didn’t make the ballot.

ANYWAY, I ramble because I care.

As a whole, I really like this year’s ballot. There’s one story that doesn’t quite work for me (and that story is just fine), but the other five are quite good.

Adri: I’m on the other side of things, where I did read a lot of short fiction again last year (although not as much as 2019) and that means that inevitably I have feelings about favourite stories that didn’t make it. Nothing from my nomination ballot is here; I’m not going to share those specific five stories, but they all make an appearance in our recommended reading list so I’ll let you extrapolate from there, dear reader.

But, objectively, this ballot is just as good as my favourite stories. There are such a wealth of good short stories that come out every year and if one spends a significant amount of time reading short fiction, then by definition one reads a lot of good individual stories. I read a couple of hundred stories a year and that barely dents the surface of what’s being published!

The other thing I want to note is how different the tone is between the novelette and short story ballots this year, which is not something I’ve ever noticed before! This short story list isn’t exactly fluffy, but it’s overall got more lightness and hope than the six stories in Best Novelette, many of which are… well, we’ll get to that. I don’t think it’s anything more than coincidence, but it’s an interesting one.

Joe: I think I’d like to start with “Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse” because it’s a kick in the gut and it’s great and it is tonally unlike most of the stories on this ballot, which are otherwise quite charming.

Adri: Yes! Rae Carson’s story of childbirth and survival, set ten years into a zombie apocalypse (clue’s in the title) is excellent for how it turns the hypermasculine-hero survival narrative on its head, focusing on a fundamental aspect of human survival - childbirth - that becomes a nearly insurmountable task in the circumstances, and then putting a group of women at the centre of the story and (again, clue’s in the title) letting them be badasses, and mutually supportive badasses at that, even in the most dire of situations. Most importantly, it’s narrated from the perspective of Brit, the woman giving birth, making her the active centre of the experience, rather than a passive presence whose need for protection reduces her to immobilised, screaming victimhood. I like it.

Joe: Spoilers for the zombie apocalypse!

But - yeah, it’s a super cool story and it’s the sort of story I don’t see all that often and it’s absolutely fantastic.

Fantastic in a completely different way is John Wiswell’s “Open House on Haunted Hill”, a story which is, for lack of a better word, absolutely charming. That’s a word I want to use quite a bit in this category because that hint of lightness is all over the Short Story ballot and it’s frankly refreshing right now.

This is the story of a house that is on the market to be sold and doesn’t want to be alone. It wants a family. It wonders if it could haunt the glue on its own wallpaper to make itself more appealing to a potential buyer. “Open House on Haunted Hill” is just lovely and reads like a quiet exhale that blows the stress out of your body.

Adri: It’s definitely a story that brings a new meaning to the term “found family”! I love how it builds a sympathetic story around a set of people who don’t often get sympathetic portrayals, especially in this kind of genre: the sceptical podcaster trying to raise a boisterous kid, the estate agent (sorry, “realtor”), and of course the house itself would all be two dimensional villains or joke punchlines in another story, but here they’re people all trying to do their best.

The other story that made my cold heart melt is “A Guide for Working Breeds” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad, which continues Prasad’s track record of telling robot self-actualisation stories with wonderful wit and heart. It’s also told through a really great - if simple - text device, where the story is within a chat log between a newly freed robot and its automatically assigned mentor, so there’s lots of light-touch things going on in the “meta” text (e.g. screen names) that really adds to our understanding of the characters. I actually missed the anthology this was in, so I’m glad enough other readers saw it (the tor.com reprint can’t have hurt) and put it on their ballots so I could enjoy it.

Joe: Made to Order was a good anthology, but I tend do well with Jonathan Strahan’s anthologies even if I’m usually a couple of years behind when they are published (sorry, Book of Dragons).

We’ve definitely seen the story format for “A Guide for Working Breeds Before” and in some ways it reminds me of Naomi Kritzer’s “Cat Pictures Please”, though Prasad is doing something different here, but it’s another really pleasant story despite presence of a killer robot.

Speaking of Naomi Kritzer, I also enjoyed her story “Little Free Library” which is partially told through notes left in, well, little free libraries. I think we have all the story that we actually need in “Little Free Library” but I wanted just a bit more from it. There’s something so much bigger lurking around the outside and I have questions, but I suspect we have as much as we need for the story to work. But I have questions!

Adri: I really like “Little Free Library” but its the story that “sparks” the least for me out of these six, if that makes sense. It’s cute, watching a fae(?) revolution through scraps of documentation left for a girl in her Little Free Library box, but I don’t have much to say about it beyond “that was cute”. Cute is good, but cute plus thought provoking is my bar for Hugo cuteness.

The two stories we haven’t discussed yet are both spacefaring riffs on fairytales: The Little Mermaid for "The Mermaid Astronaut", and Hansel and Gretel for "Metal Like Blood in the Dark". Both end up pretty far from their sources in different ways: “The Mermaid Astronaut” removes the need for the mermaid to specifically yearn over a love interest (good), and in place of either the Disney or Andersen endings, creates a story where growth and change can involve coming full circle. Metal Like Blood in the Dark sticks in some ways to its original plot, but it shifts the moral weight of the story, making it about the sacrifices that Sister makes to keep her Brother safe in the outside world. By the way, they’re both robots.

Joe: I have a lot less to say about either of those stories. I liked “The Mermaid Astronaut” and appreciated what Yoon Ha Lee was doing in telling that story and the arc of the mermaid in question. The T. Kingfisher story didn’t work as well for me as the rest of the ballot did - which is unusual for me with a story from Kingfisher or Ursula Vernon, especially with how much I loved Kingfisher’s novel A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking - which we’ll talk about when we discuss the Lodestar finalists.

Adri: I feel similarly. For fairytale retellings particularly, I’m learning that what makes the overall Hugo audience excited for a new version of a story is… kinda different to what I want? Like, we will never run out of space for retellings, especially ones that come from the margins and re-examine our dominant tropes through that lens. But I want an outstanding retelling to smack me over the head with something - whether that’s bringing in a radical kindness or another perspective or something that makes it obvious what the original story was missing, or pushes a big contradiction to the fore, or whatever. “The Mermaid Astronaut” gets close to that, “Metal Like Blood in the Dark” goes off more in its own direction (and doesn’t do anything terribly interesting with that direction), and it’s all objectively good - and two authors that I love - but they don’t get to that magical nebulous “best story of 2020” point.

Anyway. Now that we’ve covered it all, what’s at the top of your list?

Joe: This would be a really good time to actually put together my ballot and vote, but I’d say I have a very solid top three of “Open House on Haunted Hill”, “Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse” and “A Guide for Working Breeds”. I *think* that would be my ballot order but I could also change the order a dozen times between now and when I actually submit the ballot.

What does your ballot look like?

Adri: I’m still sad about Fandom for Robots not winning a couple of years ago, and “A Guide for Working Breeds” did similar mushy things to my heart, so it’s going to take top spot for me. We have the same top three overall, but I don’t know how I’ll go between Open House on Haunted Hill and Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse. Coin flip, maybe? I’ll work something out.

Joe: Well, that’s a category and it’s another strong one. It’s been fun reading through the ballot this year.

Next up: Novelette!

Reading the Hugos: Lodestar

Welcome to what is likely the final entry in Reading the Hugos this year. As I noted last year, from the perspective of a reader who is not plugged in the YA scene and isn't a YA reader, the Hugo nominators did a good job again this year.

I do always wonder about visibility and this award. How widely are Hugo voters reading in YA? I tend not to nominate much for the Lodestar for that reason (this year I nominated Catfishing on Catnet and Anne Ursu's excellent The Lost Girl), but that is also an argument that can be made for Graphic Story or, if we're feeling nitpicky, the entire ballot. The Hugo Award (and the technically not a Hugo Lodestar Award) is representative of the tastes and opinions of those Worldcon members who take the time to nominate and vote. That's part and parcel of the process, which I suppose makes this paragraph somewhat excessive.

This year I was only able to read five of the six finalists. I missed out on Deeplight, which is the second time I've missed reading Frances Hardinge for the Lodestar. This year I have a good excuse - I was reading all of Seanan McGuire's Incryptid stories included in the Voter Packet (oh, my heart after reading the last of the Johnny and Fran stories).

Let's look at the finalists, shall we?

• Catfishing on CatNet, by Naomi Kritzer (Tor Teen)
• Deeplight, by Frances Hardinge (Macmillan)
• Dragon Pearl, by Yoon Ha Lee (Disney/Hyperion)
• Minor Mage, by T. Kingfisher (Argyll)
• Riverland, by Fran Wilde (Amulet)
• The Wicked King, by Holly Black (Little, Brown; Hot Key)

Riverland: I haven't read much of Fran Wilde's fiction, far less than I would have expected given how well regarded her Bone Universe novels are (start with Updraft), but I have fairly consistently bounced off each story of hers that I have read. Whether it is The Jewel and Her Lapidary, "Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand" or The Fire Opal Mechanism, I have a growing suspicion that I'm just not a Fran Wilde reader. That, no matter how good or how well regarded, these aren't the stories for me. It also means that I am unlikely to give Updraft a go, but that is a different point.

I had hoped that Riverland would be the book to buck that trend. It is completely unrelated to her Gem novellas, it's YA rather than strictly written for adults, it's a portal fantasy novel dealing with domestic violence. Riverland is beautifully written for those readers able to dive in and work their way through Wilde's storytelling. I know Adri gave Riverland 5 Stars on Goodreads, so there's at least one editor here who strongly disagrees with me on Riverland (this is not likely to be our only disagreement in this category) - but Riverland really locked down the idea that unless Fran Wilde is on an awards ballot I am actively reading for, I probably won't be reading more of her work. It is worth noting that this is written before I read any of the Short Story finalists, which does include a selection from Fran Wilde, so there's one more chance for me to connect with Wilde's fiction this year.

Dragon Pearl: Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire trilogy of novels are simply excellent. Each book was a finalist for the Hugo Award (as was the series as a whole), and justifiably so. I thought the series got better as it progressed, and it was pretty darn good from the start. I could not wait to see what Yoon Ha Lee would write next and what was next was Dragon Pearl, a YA novel from Rick Riordan's publishing line. A bit of space opera and adventure.

I absolutely love the idea of Dragon Pearl, of the novel's set up of a girl with hidden magic desperate to find and clear the name of her brother who is accused of desertion from the Space Forces. I loved how Min used her magic, how she cons her way into getting to the heart of what happened to her brother. So much of Dragon Pearl was absolutely delightful and weeks after finishing the novel I'm still thinking about the relationships Min made. Dragon Pearl is a wonderful novel of friendship.

That's what makes it so difficult to put my finger on why I didn't love Dragon Pearl as much as I expected. The individual parts are so excellent, but they somehow don't coalesce (for me) into a novel that reached the heights it should have. All the ingredients were there, the meal just didn't quite come together.

Minor Mage: I have much less to say about T. Kingfisher's Minor Mage, but it was an absolutely charming story of a boy who was training to be a magician but has far too much responsibility for his village compared to his age and training. Minor Mage is a quest story and I would have loved to have another hundred pages of it (Minor Mage is more a novella than full length novel). I look forward to reading it to my kids when they are older.

The Wicked King: When I wrote about The Cruel Prince as part of last year's Lodestar ballot it was my runner up, behind only the superb Dread Nation (The Cruel Prince placed fourth, Dread Nation was the runner up). Where The Cruel Prince was the first book in a series related to other books it did not require any familiarity with Tithe and the other Modern Tales of Faerie. The Wicked King, on the other hand, is the direct sequel to The Cruel Prince and if readers who don't remember the relationships in that first book will be at least half lost in this book, though Holly Black is a skillful enough writer that new readers will be able to keep up, just without some of the nuance.

I wrote last year that Holly Black is a master storyteller and that remains the case. The Wicked King is exactly the continuation of The Cruel Prince one might hope for, though this is not a series for the faint of heart or those who don't want bad things to happen to good people. Black does not pull punches.

Catfishing on Catnet: When Naomi Kritzer won a Hugo Award in 2016 for her story "Cat Pictures Please" (also a Nebula Award finalist) I assumed it was a one-off. "Cat Pictures Please" was a delightful story of an A.I. (artificial intelligence) who wants to help people and look at pictures of cats. Catfishing on Catnet is more than an expansion of that story, it's a complete reworking using that same central premise. Most impressively, it's seamless. Kritzer is not expanding a smaller idea into a shape it doesn't fit, she has a big idea that is bigger than just the one novel (good thing there's a sequel coming next year).

Catfishing on Catnet is a smart and warm hearted thriller that deals with internet privacy, personal identity and rights, friendship, stalking, and social networks - it is an absolute delight. In a category where some of the finalists don't quite work for me - Catfishing on Catnet is a favorite. This is as good as it gets.


My Vote 
1. Catfishing on Catnet
2. The Wicked King
3. Minor Mage
4. Dragon Pearl
5. Riverland



POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 4x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him.

WE RANK 'EM: Robot Pals in Recent SFF

Many words have been expended through the years on the distinction between science fiction and fantasy, with a recent iteration of the conversation bringing a few great (and a lot of awful) contributions to the table. In partial honour of sci fi month, I'd like to throw my hat into the ring at this super late stage, with a simple yet irrefutable assertion that I think will bring all sides together in these troubled sides:

Is science fiction really science fiction unless someone becomes friends with a robot?

Well, uh, yes, you say. Absolutely. Look at near future SF, and hard science fiction novels like The Expanse, and space operas which focus on cool aliens instead of cool robots, and, and, so many other things! Surely, Adri, you are not disputing the credentials of all this stuff? It's obviously science fiction!

To which, I can only offer the following response, in the almighty words of Thor:

Now that this is settled to our collective satisfaction, all that remains it to celebrate some of the best artificial intelligences in recent media, and particularly those whose relationships with humans. Of course, this isn't supposed to be an exhaustive list - Paladin from Autonomous, Lovelace from The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Singer from Ancestral Night, Justice of Toren and many more are are of course all worthy of canonisation in the annals of robot pal-dom. But, at the end of the day, I've got to write about the things that won't take more research to write than I have time for, and then stand by my practically-motivated opinions until the heat death of the universe.

6. Robot (Gunnerkrigg Court). The robots of Tom Siddell's long-running science fiction and fantasy webcomic are deeply embedded in the dense and mysterious history of the titular court, an institution founded to impose scientific principles on various forms of magic and opposed by the neighbouring forest. Robot, a character who has been in the comic since its first days, has come a very long way since then, both in design and in its relationship with comic protagonists Annie and Kat, and with its buddy Shadow, a two-dimensional forest creature who has also been transformed during its time in the court. Although its overall motives are not always entirely clear, making it the lowest ranked in this list, its support to its community and willingness to go to great personal lengths to protect and further their agendas makes it a clear contender in this list, and the only one, as of recent chapters, that is likely to give you an actual smile.

5. Emily the Robot (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Seasons 1-4). Entrapta's robot pals in She-ra are pretty interchangeable from an audience standpoint, serving as less complicated surrogates for human friendship and occasional creators of tiny food (at least in the weird events of Season 3). Emily, the reprogrammed Horde robot who indirectly brings about her split from the Princess Alliance at the end of season 1, is a different story. Through her interactions with Entrapta and the wider cast, it becomes clear that Emily is more than just another piece of autonomous spherical weaponry, like the rest of the horde robots, but an active party to teaching those around her about friendship and self-worth, and her contributions to Season 4 in particular are simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking.

4. Servitor Hemiola (Raven Stratagem and "Glass Cannon", Yoon Ha Lee). Kel Cheris' relationship with the servitors in the Machineries of Empire series is one of its hidden treasures - a narrative device that provides rare moments of quiet and humanity in a series that is otherwise jammed with a lot of militaristic misery, as well as being an important angle to Cheris' character in general. In Raven Stratagem, the third book in the trilogy, we finally get see Cheris and the society of the servitors themselves through their own eyes, and specifically the character of Hemiola, who goes from being a criminally underutilised servitor on a secret Nirai base, unable to get downloads of its favourite TV shows, to a confidante and collaborator and all around fun smol robot badass. Bonus points for a name which is one of my favourite things in music (fitting three beats into a count of two, used to great effect in the Myanmar national anthem among other places), and which was canonically Hemiola's weird choice compared to the majority of servitors who name themselves after maths terms.

3. BB-8 (Star Wars Episodes VII-IX). Obviously there's a lot of different potential robot pals to choose from in Star Wars, but representing them all on this list is the spherical prince of the new trilogy. BB-8 is: sassy, inexplicably good at breaking the laws of physics, not here for your shit, will cover for you when you pretend to be part of the resistance to impress a girl but not without making clear exactly how much the favour will cost you further down the line, does not have a gambling problem, is not about to get upstaged by any sort of weird cutesy bird thingos, and would cross the entire desert for your rebellion and, specifically, for Poe Dameron. Sure, R2-D2 might have been the prototype snark cylinder, and Chopper from the Rebels show deserves credit too, but BB-8 adds to the repertoire with a surprisingly versatile range of gadgetry and also by being indisputably the cutest droid in Star Wars canon. 

2. Murderbot (The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells) Murderbot would be extremely annoyed with me if it knew that I'd included it in a list of robots building meaningful relationships with humans, let alone having it so high up. Because, as we all know, Murderbot does not love you; it just wants to watch its shows. Murderbot is not interested in the difficult, messy nonsense of humans, beyond making sure they are all kept alive and don't do anything stupid that jeapordises its mission. Also, if your name is Dr Mensah and you start to treat it like a person and learn what it's like to have someone else to collaborate with for the first time, then Murderbot might secretly get quite invested in your existence. Same for Asshole Research Transports, and stupid friendly robots that offer you friendship without even knowing how stupid that is, and, well, OK, maybe also if you're part of Mensah's family, then it is possible that Murderbot might not hate you too. In seriousness, Murderbot's journey of self-discovery and the way it balances its fledgling autonomy and expertise with social anxiety in order to pursue its goals in a busy and kind of awful galaxy is a pure delight.

1. CheshireCat/the Cat Pictures AI ("Cat Pictures Please" and Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer) The epitome of a robot pal just trying to do their best, the AI of CatNet has dedicated its existence to figuring out what makes humans tick and trying to get them to make better choices for themselves, while asking for nothing but access to internet animal pictures in return. CheshireCat's full length novel appearance in Catfishing on CatNet lets us see the AI in a slightly different situation to its original secret helper guise in "Cat Pictures Please". Instead, it's forming two-way relationships with the humans who come into its chatroom and particularly bonding with a group of teenagers who continue to look out for it (and each other) once discovering the true identity of their friend. Although CheshireCat's ability to influence the real world is limited to bizarre drone behaviours and USB-induced takeovers of sex education robots, its online exploits and powers more than make up for that, and its helpfulness makes it the most valuable robot pal on this list.

POSTED BY: Adri is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy.

Microreview [Book]: Catfishing on Catnet by Naomi Kritzer

A YA thriller with a warm fuzzy digital heart

Fresh from stealing our hearts away in various pieces of short fiction, including the Hugo Award winning and highly zeitgeisty "Cat Pictures Please" and this year's Hugo finalist "The Thing About Ghost Stories", Naomi Kritzer is back with her first published novel in some time - and her science fiction debut - the much anticipated Catfishing on Catnet. Although my primary fandom is dogs, I also maintain an ongoing interest in cat-related media, and having been lucky enough to pick up a Catfishing on Catnet fridge magnet (yes, apparently some books have fridge magnets now!) this has been a very highly anticipated release for me, one which I'm pleased to confirm doesn't disappoint.

Catfishing on Catnet follows Steph, a teenager whose life has been defined by her mother constantly moving her to escape an abusive father she knows almost nothing about. Steph's mother claims that her Dad is an arsonist, who tried to burn down the house with them in it and is now hunting them down. Steph has no reason not to believe this (her Mom carries a laminated version of the article with the information in, after all) but is still not enamoured with having to change schools every few months, and the only real life friend she ever made was a girl she hasn't seen or heard from in over ten years. Luckily, Steph has friends that go with her everywhere she moves - the buddies she's made on an online chatroom system called CatNet, which only requires payment in animal pictures to use its services, and organises users into "Clowders" based on what Steph thinks are fancy algorithms, but what is actually the engineering of a benevolent AI trying to make its human users' lives better.

The AI of CatNet is, of course, the same AI from "Cat Pictures Please": a story which deals with the misadventures of an all-seeing intelligence trying to make humans happy while also learning how humans actually work. The kinds of actions taken by the AI in that story are reflected in some early scenes here: a bad teacher at Steph's school, for example, resigns after a delivery drone "accidentally" drops a load of books on how to quit your job and guidebooks for a city where her friend is conveniently hiring for a position in a totally different career. However, most of the time the AI - called CheshireCat by Steph and her Clowder based on its screenname in their group chat - is focused on the more serious issue of Steph's father, and the mystery surrounding both her parents. As CheshireCat becomes more invested in both the mystery of Steph's past and her wellbeing as one of its friends in its "favourite" Clowder, its actions start to increasingly expose its own identity, raising issues about trust and acceptance based on who we choose to be online.

What plays out from this is almost a sort of cosy thriller, starring some great mystery solving internet teens, as Steph's mother comes down with an illness and Steph becomes increasingly involved in piecing together the story of her family. With the support of her Clowder and CheshireCat, Steph also starts befriending a couple of girls at school, notably Rachel, an artistic prodigy who offers a rare note of non-internet friendship in her transient life. At around the halfway mark, the tone switches gears and Steph's "IRL" and "internet" spheres start overlapping, as events converge on the town of New Coburg and the risks to discovering the truth start to increase for everyone involved. Because of the book's mystery elements and the way its structured, there's not much I can say about the plot without starting to give things away, but I will note that despite the book's cover zeroing in on an ominous "how much does the internet know around you" tagline, Steph and the Clowder's suspicions never fall on CheshireCat, and neither are we directed to suspect it as readers (it is after all the first point of view voice we meet in the book). The focus in Catfishing on Catnet is quite definitely on the positive and negative ways in which humans use technology, rather than scaremongering about technology itself, and the focus never wavers from the fact that there are real, human people involved in this at every stage.

The rest of Steph's clowder - especially her best friend Firestar, and regular Clowder members Marvin, Hermione and Icosahedron - are great characters in their own right, with enough characterisation to bring their bonds with each other to life and make the AI's intention in bringing them together clear, without being too saccharine or co-opting the story. Catnet itself is portrayed as a niche app, which goes some way to mitigating the sense of anachronism of a group of near-future teenagers using a chatroom with handles and a complete lack of emojis and gifs. I should be clear that I can't speak to how much Catfishing on Catnet will actually speak to the internet of teenagers now, rather than the inner teenager of a millennial in her 30s, but I'd like to hope that its hitting on something timeless. Subcultures of people forming bonds exclusively online, rather than using the internet to augment connections with their existing friends, is perhaps niche enough anyway that Catfishing on Catnet doesn't need to be about the evolution of AirDrop and TikTok into whatever teens will be using in the era when their sex ed classes are being taught by awkwardly programmed robots and self-driving cars are a real, but not uncontroversial, development.

Overall, Catfishing on Catnet offered a great reading experience, blending together insights on internet culture and use of technology with a thriller-esque plotline that kept me turning the pages without overstaying its welcome. Though I can't speak to how particular cultural elements will land with people actually within the YA age bracket, its characters feel real and sympathetic and their use of an internet chatroom - albeit an extraordinarily well curated one - makes sense within the context of their respective lives.

The Math

Baseline Score: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 Great interactions between teenagers, AI and adults which takes online friendship seriously

Penalties: -1 Not as many CheshireCat antics as the original short story

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

POSTED BY: Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy.

Reference: Kritzer, Naomi. Catfishing on Catnet (Tor Teen, 2019)

Reading the Hugos: Novelette

Welcome back for another edition of Reading the Hugos, 2019 Edition. Today we're going to take a look at the six finalists for Best Novelette.

Novelette is inherently a weird category. There's not really a substantial difference between a short story and a novelette, except that a novelette is just a little bit longer (but not as long as a novella, which really is a different form).

I would mention that only one work from my nominating ballot made the final ballot, but I only had one work on my nominating ballot - that being The Only Harmless Great Thing, a novelette I admired for how accomplished it was even if I wasn't fully passionate about it.

Last year's ballot had two stories connected to recent novels, but each of this year's stories stands fully alone. Shall we take a look at the stories on the ballot and see how they stand together?


“If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again,” by Zen Cho (B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog, 29 November 2018)
“The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections,” by Tina Connolly (Tor.com, 11 July 2018)
“Nine Last Days on Planet Earth,” by Daryl Gregory (Tor.com, 19 September 2018)
The Only Harmless Great Thing, by Brooke Bolander (Tor.com Publishing)
“The Thing About Ghost Stories,” by Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny Magazine 25, November- December 2018)
“When We Were Starless,” by Simone Heller (Clarkesworld 145, October 2018)


When We Were Starless: This is a somewhat peculiar story, mostly in the set up of a tribe of scavengers on a desolate planet haunted by ghosts. I found that set up far less interesting than the idea of the tribe (eventually) being brave enough to adapt and overcome their superstitions. I also appreciated the touches of gradually revealing this is a post humanity world (whether it is Mars or Earth or something else is unclear) which leads to the reader picking up on what the ghosts are long before Mink (the protagonist) does.

The more I think about "When We Were Starless", the more I appreciate the work Simone Heller does here - I wanted to put the story down very early and move on to something else, but I'm glad I held on.


The Thing About Ghost Stories: I get the feeling that I should read more stories from Naomi Kritzer because every one I have read has been absolutely wonderful. The title here tells the story, "The Thing About Ghost Stories" is a story about ghost stories, but it is also a story about being told ghost stories and about memory and loss. Kritzer builds and builds and by the end, "The Thing About Ghost Stories" is all heart.

This is a lovely story, though I'm not sure its richness really holds up in comparison to the other stories on this ballot.


The Only Harmless Great Thing: I find myself in the minority regarding my lack of appreciation for The Only Harmless Great Thing. There was no question that this was going to one of the year's biggest and most notable stories and which would likely be in contention for all of the awards, but my first reading of the story left me flat. Not that my connection is essential for a story's success, but I didn't get what Bolander was doing with The Only Harmless Great Thing.

It took a second reading, after the announcement of the Hugo Award finalists, for me to engage more with the story Bolander was telling even if I still couldn't love it as much as its more full throated supporters.. For what it is worth, when Shana DuBois reviewed The Only Harmless Great Thing she said "there is not a single wasted word in this treatise of perfection" and that "Bolander's prose is some of the best I've ever read. Period. It is artful and sharp as a razor's edge." The Only Harmless Great Thing won the Nebula Award this year for Best Novelette.  (Shana's review)


If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again: I like to consider myself fairly well informed with the state of the science fiction and fantasy field, but I somehow missed that the Barnes and Nobles blog was also publishing short fiction - though if my math (and their tagging system) is correct, Zen Cho's story is only the fifth they've published and one of only two in 2018.

"If At First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again" features an imugi (a giant serpent) trying and failing over thousands of years to turn itself into a full fledged dragon. It is a delightful and charming story about perseverance, love, and self belief with an absolutely perfect ending. If this is the sort of story the B&N SFF Blog publishes, I'd like to see more from them.


The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections: What a beautifully constructed story. Much of "The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections" is, in fact, told across one meal - but the temporal part of the title is important, because each course brings with it the transportation of memory, allowing Connolly to work flashbacks and a slight episodic format within what is otherwise a traditional narrative flow.

If not for "Nine Last Days on Planet Earth", this would be my clear favorite of the novelette finalists. The blending of food, memory, and vengeance is satisfying and excellent. I have somehow missed Tina Connolly's career up to this point, but I fully intend to catch up with her work.


Nine Last Days on Planet Earth: Told in nine episodes spread across some eighty seven years, Daryl Gregory's "Nine Last Days on Planet Earth" is not the story of a different sort of an alien invasion, though it is also that. Initially, it seems to be dealing more with a boy growing up, but the passage of time means that "Nine Last Days on Planet Earth" is more about life, of loss, of grief, of heartbreak, of change, and really of humanity. And yes, with alien plants invading and gradually taking over the planet with the speed of plants.

"Nine Last Days on Planet Earth" is a beautiful, moving story. Absolutely lovely. More of this, please.


My Vote
1. Nine Last Days of Planet Earth
2. The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections
3. If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again
4. The Only Harmless Great Thing
5. The Thing About Ghost Stories
6. When We Were Starless


Our Previous Coverage
Novel
Novella

Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 3x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan.