All novellas were pretty good. Two of them went for extremely flowery and literary writing style. As I am more a plot driven reader, there were not my favorites, even though they might be in high positions at final voting. The order of the stories was clear this time: the best was the best by a wide margin. Also, the second was such a fun story that it was easy to put on a high position. The worst wasn’t bad, but it felt so ”mundane” that I put it in the last place. The others were also pretty easy to put in order, also.
To Be Taught, If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers (Harper Voyager; Hodder & Stoughton)
Four explorers wake up from a suspended animation near a star they are supposed to study. There are several planets orbiting the same star, and they spend time on each of them. They are so concentrated on their studies that it takes weeks to notice Earth hasn’t sent any messages for months.
They find life on planets and spend time to explore them. They have some fairly minor setbacks and eventually must decide what they are going to do: shall they return to Earth or travel to the next star with no chance to ever to return to Earth. They take a very strange and not logical choice. The story consists mainly of lecturing about exobiology and is badly too long with little action and few solutions.
“Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom”, by Ted Chiang (Exhalation (Borzoi/Alfred A. Knopf; Picador)
It is possible to buy a ”prismn”, which is a device that splits realities when it is activated. It enables you to change information, and even communicate through video with your alternate self. As time goes on, the probabilities diverge and changes cumulate. There is a limit to how much information can pass through before the prismn becomes useless. A con artist uses prismns for nefarious purposes with the help of a woman who has a troubled past. There is a prismn which they want, as it is a possibility for a great profit. The concept of the story is very interesting, and the story takes its time to evolve - it is done very well. The conclusion is moving and very well done. An excellent story, but I don't really see why you would want to discuss with your alternate self - what good would come from that? If you do worse than your ”alternate”, you feel bad, if you do better, you feel bad for your alternate version...so, whatever happens, you don’t feel good.
This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (Saga Press; Jo Fletcher Books)
Two sides are caught in a time war, trying to destroy each other. Two agents representing each side, Red and Blue, start messaging and fall in love. They send messages through poetic yet impractical mediums, for instance, encoding them in the yearly growth of trees. Their love spans eons while they destroy the world the other has tried to create. A very poetically written story, with beautiful language, but the plot was scarse and we were supposed to feel deep sympathy for characters who destroy cultures and cause uncountable deaths with reckless abandon.
The Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com Publishing)
Supernatural creatures are commonplace in alternative Egypt. Certain types of djinn are used as guiding intelligence and power sources for half-automatic tram cars. One of the trams apparently is haunted, and a spirit has been attacking women traveling on it. Two members of a government bureau dealing with such things come to investigate. A very imaginative world, with interesting characters. At times, it felt very much like a Supernatural fan fiction with a modified setting - the feel of the storytelling was very similar. A fun and entertaining story in any case.
In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
The story belongs to the author's Wayward Children series. A serious and smart girl, who is good at following rules, leaves the real world for a place where everything is traded at fair value. The Market itself enforces that - if the trade isn’t fair, there are severe consequences. The girl likes it there, she makes friends, but then returns home. She travels between worlds several times but is eventually faced with a choice: which world does she want to live in? A well-written story with beautiful language, but there were several faults. I don’t believe that the protagonist got a ”fair value” at least two times at any stretch. Also, I don’t understand why the ultimate choice was so hard - the lure of the fantasy world seemed very trivial compared to what she had in the real world.
The Deep, by Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes (Saga Press/Gallery)
The pregnant slaves who were thrown out of the slave ship gave birth to children who magically turned to mermaids. Their descendants have forgotten their past, but there are ”historians'' among them who can relive those events and give those memories for others to experience. For one historian the stress is too much and she flees. After being hurt she encounters ”two feets” and makes a connection with them. The story is written with flowery poetic language, but it is pretty slow moving and at end turns even somewhat surreal. In spite of language I wasn’t a great fan, some condensing may have helped. Also, I am not a fan of stories where magic happens just because it happens - not to say anything about a very irritating main character.
My voting order will be:
1. “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom”, by Ted Chiang
2. The Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P. Djèlí Clark
3. In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire
4. This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
5. The Deep, by Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes
6. To Be Taught, If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers
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