My Hugo award votes 2018 part 1: novelettes

This was the first category I finished this year.
All of the nominated novelettes were very nice and almost all of them could be award-worthy. As I was deciding on the voting order, I had to use a reverse strategy: which story did I like least? Even so, the order of the first three stories was very hard to decide - I considered them all to be practically as good and satisfying. There were no puppy nominees this year in this category – or in fact in any category.



“Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time,” by K.M. Szpara (Uncanny, May/June 2017)
A female to male transsexual who is in middle of treatments is bitten by a vampire. Vampires in this world have come out and drink their blood from blood bags gotten from blood banks. It is forbidden for them to bite unwilling humans, but sometimes the temptation is too great. The victim will most likely die if she/he isn’t turned into a vampire. But the sex change treatment doesn’t go too well, with being changed into a vampire. A pretty good story, with perhaps a tad too much very explicit sex; the writing was very good.

“Children of Thorns, Children of Water,” by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny, July-August 2017)
When I started to read this story, I thought it belonged to the series where the descendants of Imperial China ruled space. There were mentions of “houses” like in those stories. I was slightly surprised when there suddenly was magic, alchemy, and dragons. This belongs to another series that I am unfamiliar with. It was pretty hard to get into, as the backstory wasn’t familiar at all. There was some kind of test, which the protagonists were supposed to take. I haven’t been the greatest fan of this author, and this story didn’t change that. I found the story overlong, well, but too heavily, written, and fairly boring.

“Extracurricular Activities,” by Yoon Ha Lee (Tor.com, February 15, 2017)
A ship has been captured by enemy forces. A very skilled military commander must go undercover the retrieve the crew which is led by his old friend. He has some problems with the relaxed life of the undercover agents, but eventually, he accomplishes what he set out to do. A fairly simple adventure, in which it isn’t easy to say which side was “the better guys.” The main character, who apparently was meant to be sympathetic, was fairly irritating. I was expecting that he would eventually have been made to look like a fool, but unfortunately, I had to be disappointed. There were some structural problems; for example, there was a totally unnecessary flashback which stopped the flow of the story, but otherwise, the writing was well done.

“The Secret Life of Bots,” by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld, September 2017)
A bot wakes up. Apparently, it has been a very long time since the last time he was awakened. There appears to be an extremely long queue of things that should be done, but the Ship has one thing for him to do: to hunt an incidental, a pest which is roaming on the ship. It turns out that humans are fighting against aliens and losing. Their ship is the last human ship, pulled from a scrap heap, and readying for the final battle. A nice story about a brave and extremely smart bot. One very stupid mistake, though. Nitrogen ice is several hundred Kelvins too warm for the intended purpose? Not possible. NOTHING is “several hundred Kelvins colder” than nitrogen ice.

“Wind Will Rove,” by Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s, September/October 2017)
A teacher who lives on a generation ship loves music; she plays old songs and keeps them in memory for her own part. The ship has lost all of its archives some decades into its journey, and people have recreated what they have been able to from memory - plays, music, books and even movies. Some of the younger generation doesn’t really see why the old things from Earth should be studied in school or even preserved. A well written, wistful story, but the main premise is too stupid to believe. A generation spaceship that stores all of its important archives to a volatile memory!? Who would be idiotic enough to plan things like that?

“A Series of Steaks,” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Clarkesworld, January 2017)
A woman lives more or less underground, after she has some disagreements with some very shady individuals. She is a forger; she forges foods using a bioprinter and selling them as real. A well designed bioprinted food is practically indistinguishable from the real thing, but it is a lot less prestigious and cheaper. Then, she gets an offer that she is not allowed to refuse: a large number of prime cut steaks for an important dinner; more than her apparatus is really capable of. Another good, amusingly told story with a nice revenge twist at the end.

My voting order will be:

1. “The Secret Life of Bots,” by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld, September 2017)
2. “A Series of Steaks,” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Clarkesworld, January 2017)
3. “Wind Will Rove,” by Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s, September/October 2017)
4. “Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time,” by K.M. Szpara (Uncanny, May/June 2017)
5. “Extracurricular Activities,” by Yoon Ha Lee (Tor.com, February 15, 2017)
6. “Children of Thorns, Children of Water,” by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny, July-August 2017)