Tuesday, July 5, 2016

My Hugo award votes 2016, part 3: Short stories

Most of the nominees in this category originate from the slate of rabid dogs. In this category they didn’t use the “human shield” method, but purely used the trolling approach. I wonder why the misogynist and homophobic losers nominated a gay porn story? Well, such opinions certainly hint to severe problems with sexuality – perhaps a choice made purportedly as trolling reveals something about their real, repressed, preferences. The one story which didn’t come from the slate was the only one tolerable. However, I don’t believe it is an award-worthy story, and as there was no fair competition, I will use “no award” as the first choice. The cat story will be on the second place. The gay story actually was pretty funny and vastly better than the other, especially the Castallia House, choices. The rest won’t be on my ballot.

“Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld, January 2015)

An AI has appeared to computer networks apparently spontaneously. It takes interest in some people’s life – especially those who post pictures of cats. As she (it?) can’t take any direct action the people she tries to help but most people won’t even notice hints she tries to give or subtle influence she can have. But at least there are lot of cat pictures on the net, so everything isn’t bad and the AI can entertain herself easily enough. And at least someone’s life seems to go to better direction... A fun and amusing story.

Space Raptor Butt Invasion by Chuck Tingle (Amazon Digital Services)

Gay porn which describes an encounter between a lonely astronaut on an outpost and an intelligent velociraptor. Short, silly and nowhere award worthy. Slightly better I was expecting, but I was expecting something very bad. The anatomy of the velociraptor didn’t seem to be very accurate…somehow I don’t think dinosaurs were so well endowed.

“Seven Kill Tiger” by Charles Shao (There Will Be War Volume X, Castalia House)

Chinese release or at least plan to release a disease which will kill all Africans, so that they will be free to exploit the natural resources on the continent. An extremely racist and despicable story.

“If You Were an Award, My Love” by Juan Tabo and S. Harris (voxday.blogspot.com, Jun 2015)

A piece of shit which was “written” by someone who is consumed by hatred for people who are not racists and actual can write good fiction. A strong motivator is the strange hatred some deranged people have towards John Scalzi. I can’t really understand what is behind that? Jealousy most likely. The story tries to be a parody of a story hated by puppies, rapid and sad both. I wasn’t a great fan of that story, but I don’t get the great hatred, either.

“Asymmetrical Warfare” by S. R. Algernon (Nature, Mar 2015)

A short story published in Nature. Apparently the editors of that fine magazine aren’t very good at judging science fiction. The story tells about starfish like aliens who are not able to recognize that humans don’t regenerate after split in two halves. The writing was so and so, the concept was totally ridiculous: a space faring species with no biological insight at all?

My voting order will be:
1. No award
2. “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld, January 2015)
3. Space Raptor Butt Invasion by Chuck Tingle (Amazon Digital Services)

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