Let's kickstart this year's Hugo reading by jumping into the short story category. It reflects last year's Worldcon membership well, in that there are two Chinese language finalists. We will see how the translations work for me. Last year definitely showed how important human translators are (my god, so important). The AI-translated works were just... Let's say their translations did them a great disservice.
You can find my tentative ballots and thoughts on the other finalists here:
As is "tradition", I had read zero finalists before they were announced, but I do at least know three of the nominated authors. Naomi Kritzer is pretty much always a win, so I was happy to see her name here. P. Djèlí Clark writes fantastic novellas, although I haven't been as in love with his short stories so far. And Aliette de Bodard is more miss than hit with me, but I'm always willing to try out something new by her, hoping this will be the one story/novella/novel that turns me into a fangirl.
The Finalists for Best Short Story
- Naomi Kritzer - Better Living Through Algorithms
- P. Djèlí Clark - How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub
- Aliette de Bodard - The Mausoleum's Children
- Han Song (transl. Alex Woodend) - Answerless Journey
- Rachael K. Jones - The Sound of Children Screaming
- Baoshu (transl. Xueting C. Ni)- Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times
I was going to treat myself by starting with P. Djèlí Clark's story How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub because, honestly, the title makes it sound like so much fun. It turned out to be alright, but sadly not much more.
A young, and self-described man of ambition who generally has a very good lot in life, has ordered a mysterious egg through the mail that will supposedly hatch into a kraken in his bathtub. The time period is not given exactly, but Britain seems to be busy, busy, busy colonizing whatever places in the world they feel like. And this being fantasy, they also have recently won a war against Merpeople. Oh yes, and the kraken grows sliiiightly beyond what the bathtub can contain.
I honestly wasn't very taken with the plot or the writing of this story, although I did love the ending. It's impossible to tell you more without spoiling it, but it made me go "ha! you get yours" and kind of celebrate on the inside. I did, however, not find it to be a particularly good SFF story.
I was all the more taken with the second story I read. Naomi Kritzer's Better Living Through Algorithms did not go the way I expected from the title. It does start with a "livestyle app" that essentially tells you what to do to improve your life. These tips are fairly obvious things like go outside more, doomscroll less, pursue a long-forgotten hobby, and so on. But where I was expecing nefarious doings or an evil AI or something like that, the app pretty much delivers what it promised - it makes people happier.
Of course, capitalism has a thing or two to say about that, which is where the conflict of the story comes from. It's not a huge conflict, mind you, and everything resolves itself fairly quickly, this being only a few pages long. But Kritzer crams so many feelings and so much subtext into her work that I was utterly delighted. Sure, it shows us how shitty capitalism and the internet can be (or rather, how shitty they are) but it also shows how humanity - just one person connecting with another - can make everything worthwile. I adored this feelgood story!
Maybe it was a bad idea to read the stories in this particular order, because whoever followed Naomi Kritzer would have one hell of a hard time. Aliette de Bodard's The Mausoleum's Children did no work for me at all, and I honestly suspect it wouldn't have worked, had I read it first, either.
De Bodard throws us into a situation that feels more like the climax of a novel, rather than a standalone short story, and that is the source of all its problems. Nothing is explained, although numerous things can be gleaned from context. Like the protagonist Thun Lc used to be a child worker in this Mausoleum, and now (as an adult) she's come back to save two of her friends that had to stay behind. They presumably still work on the ship parts floating around this Mausoleum, hiding from something called the Hunt and are afraid of something else called Architects. I don't know who or what these are, exactly, because the author chose not to explain that. Maybe if you've read more Xuya stories it will make sense?
The story is clearly meant to have a big emotional impact, what with its very dramatic dialogue and supposedly hard-hitting events. But my problem is I don't know these characters or their backstories, so I don't really care. I don't know their history, I haven't seen their friendship, they are just names on a page, so when they start spewing soap opera style melodramatic lines, I simply switch off my brain and wait until it's over.
So yeah, I really did not like this story. It goes to the very bottom of the ballot and that's me being nice, as I think it actually shouldn't even be on it.
Next up, I chose the horror short story, The Sound of Children Screaming by Rachael K. Jones. This one stood out mostly thorugh its unique structure, being separated into tiny mini-chapters from various POVs, starting with "The Gun". Its subject matter - an ongoing school shooting - is nightmare fuel enough, but with the added magic portal that leads to a fantasy land where children are raised up to kings and queens, there is plenty more to intrigue readers. Although somewhat predictable in its plot, this was a great story with a very obvious message.
The absurdity of what is going on in the US in terms of gun laws and school safety (or very clear and obvious lack thereof) is made so painfully obvious when put in slightly fantastical terms, when making the Gun a character. I live in a country where most people don't have guns and - surprise, surprise - there are no school shootings. Like, at all. But that's surely just a coincidence, right?
Anyway, taking things back to the world of science fiction, I then read one of the two Chinese language entries on the ballot, Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times by Baoshu, and was pleasantly surprised by several things. So much so that the story made it into the top half of my ballot!
First of all, the translation is really, really good. Props to Xueting C. Ni. There are some sentences where she must have changed things and forgotten to delete the previous version, and maybe a couple of instances of strange phrasing, but overall, this was wonderfully readable and vivid in its expression. Kudos!
The story itself is told in three parts, each separated by several years. It follows a new and upcoming technology that lets you experience someone else's sensations while eating. A device - originally a helmet - stimulates your brain in such a way that you think you're eating a medium rare steak when, in reality, you've got a slab of rubbery meat on your fork. I don't want to say much more about what unfolds because it's a lot of fun watchint this Black Mirror-esque story take its turns. I found it occasionally surprising, always intriguing, and altogether great.
That left the second Chinese language story for last, the aptly named Answerless Journey by Han Song, translated by Alex Woodend. In this, we follow a Creature who doesn't know who or what it is, but soon figures out it's probably a human on a spaceship with one other of its kind, called Same Kind. These two then try to figure out their past and the use of their space voyage, watching their food supply dwindle in the meantime.
As nice as the premise of this story is, I was both annoyed with the writing style which is stark and not nearly as nicely flowing as in the Baoshu story, but most of all I hated that nothing gets answered. I mean, I suppose the title warned me in advance, but I was hoping for at least some hint or a revelation for us, the readers, if not for the characters, at the end. We don't get that (spoiler, maybe?), the story simply ends. It wasn't bad, but it also left deeply unsatisfied, so I'm ranking it rather low.
My ballot (probably)
- Naomi Kritzer - Better Living Through Algorithms
- Baoshu - Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times
- Rachael K. Jones - The Sound of Children Screaming
- P. Djèlí Clark - How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub
- Han Song - Answerless Journey
- Aliette de Bodard - The Mausoleum's Children
This was... fairly easy to rank, if surprising. I fully expected the Clark story to be one of my favorites, since I like the author's work so much. I also thought the translated works wouldn't work for me because I get annoyed so easily when the language doesn't feel right. That said, I wouldn't begrudge any story the Hugo, even though I really hope Naomi Kritzer wins. Her short story just made me happy in so many levels. Maybe I should start reading her short fiction more, without having to be prompted by a Hugo ballot every time.
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