I found that the novellas were worse than last year. The central theme of all of them was very “woke”, which isn’t a bad thing at all, but when it isn’t easy to find any cis-person in any of the stories it might have gone a bit far. That doesn’t matter much but it IS a minor irritant. None of the stories were nearly as good as Ted Chiang’s story from the last year. On the other hand, all were better than my two least favorite stories from 2020. None of the stories was a clear winner, but as Seanan McGuire’s series has been constantly pretty good I decided to put it in the first place. Sarah Gailey’s and Nghi Vo’s stories were both fairly good, but they seemed to lack the most interesting parts of their backstories and worlds. In spite of that, I will put Gailey’s story in second place.
The last place was hard to decide, as all the rest of the stories were about as good. None were excellent but none were bad, either. After some thought, Nghi Vo’s story went into the last place as it really wasn’t fantasy at all.
Upright Women Wanted, Sarah Gailey (Tor.com)
The story happens in a future where an apparently totalitarian government rules most of the USA. All entertainment and even factual books and films must be pre-approved with strict censorship rules and patriotic statements added to everything. The state of technology is somewhere very early 20th-century level, but the military has some modern tech. Some states, most importantly, Utah, are insurrectionist and don’t belong to a totalitarian government. There are ”librarians”, women, who transport approved materials from village to village. A young girl escapes her village and hides on the wagon of the librarians. Her girlfriend has been hanged for having unapproved materials. It slowly turns out that they were more than friends, and that the librarians aren’t just innocently transferring propaganda from one village to another. A fairly good story, where the main emphasis is on character development and interpersonal relations. That part is good, but the world felt very interesting but very underdeveloped. How have things got this way? Where is the war being waged? What is happening in other countries? How does the system work? Those very interesting questions remain completely unanswered - personally, those would have been more interesting than the anguish of interpersonal relationships.
Riot Baby, Tochi Onyebuchi (Tor.com)
A tale of two black siblings. The brother was born during riots and encounters racial hatred, discrimination, and brutality. The sister has extraordinary powers, she can see the future, especially the bad things, and she can travel in time and space, and has powerful destructive powers that she barely keeps in check. The brother apparently has some powers of his own. He spends much of the novel in prison for attempted burglary. Eventually, the brother is released from the prison to some sort of utopic controlled environment where his biological responses are monitored and controlled. The storytelling is fairly fragmentary and consists mostly of separate scenes. The world isn’t ours: it is some sort of an alternate reality with bionic limbs and implanted devices. I am not sure why that story device was needed. I felt that the story was ok, but a slightly shorter and stricter form would have made it better.
The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Nghi Vo (Tor.com)
A story that happens apparently in some sort of alternate (?) historic China. A pair of a cleric and a talking bird come to an old historic site, which turns out not to be as abandoned as it was thought to be. There is an old woman living there, and she has a story to tell. She was a peasant who was sent to the imperial court as part payment of taxes. She worked as a cleaning maid and more or less by chance befriended a new empress who was sent to court to mend relationships between kings and to produce an heir. After she did that she was exiled to the small manor where the old woman is now living. As an exile, she can’t do much or she will lose her life. Or will she? Apparently, she was able to do something, as she is the current empress and the founder of a new dynasty. A fairly good story that is written in a flowery, slightly fairytale-ish language. There is little fantasy in it, though. The aforementioned talking bird and a mention of ghosts (which might very well have been allegorical), that’s all I noticed. I really would be hard-pressed to classify it as fantasy. The story is beautiful and well told, but I wouldn’t give a speculation fiction prize (or nomination), which is spe-fi, only because it happens in an imaginary version of a real country.
Finna, Nino Cipri (Tor.com)
A young woman is working in an Ikea-like store. She has just broken up with her partner who is trans, and apparently wants the pronoun “they” to be used when speaking of “them”. That is always extremely irritating especially for a foreign reader - why not use some other, NON-PRONOUN, non-confusing word for that purpose - it shouldn’t be so hard to make one up. Luckily my native language (a non-gendered one) does not have that problem. The work at the store is boring and the company is greedy. One shopper drops to an alternate reality. That apparently has happened before, so often that the company has a training video for that eventuality. Two employees must go through the portal and get the lost customer. As they are the newest employees, the former partners are forced to do that. There is no choice in the matter or they would face termination. After that, there are travels through a few extremely unlikely alternate realities. If the realities would have been something other than unlikely surreal scenarios, the story would have been so much better. Now the story went a little bit everywhere, there was irony, surrealism, romance, action, and general weirdness. The writing was ok, but the content itself was also just ok, not great.
Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com)
The story happens in an alternate reality, where the movie The Birth of a Nation worked as some sort of spell, which turned some of the Ku Klux Klan members into zombie-like totally evil creatures called Ku Kluxes. When the story starts a new release of that movie is coming close, and the blacks who have been fighting against Ku Kluxes are afraid that a new, even worse manifestation of those devils is imminent. It turns out that the supernatural creatures who infest the Ku Kluxes are feeding on hate. But there is something which is more powerful and pure hate than that fed by ignorance and prejudice…. A pretty good and well-written story, but there were some slower parts that might have been tightened a bit. The end was pretty intense, but with a shade of deus ex machina.
Come Tumbling Down, Seanan McGuire (Tor.com)
Continues “Wayward Children” series, where all major installments have received nominations earlier. The stories have not been published in chronological order and this story more or less continues the storyline which was started in the second part, “Down Among the Sticks and Bones”. Jack and Jill are identical twins whose “world” has been reminiscent of early horror films. Jill has been living at the manor of a vampire and dreams of becoming a vampire herself. Jack has lived in the mansion of a mad scientist and is able to harness the power of lighting to reanimate dead people and more. Jack and Jill are not on friendly terms after events in the earlier story. Jill has managed to change bodies with Jack and Jack really, really wants her own body back. And she’ll get help from other wayward children - and from some inhabitants of her own world who don’t like that the balance of power is disturbed. An excellent and well-written story like its predecessors.
My voting order will be:
1. Come Tumbling Down, Seanan McGuire (Tor.com)
2. Upright Women Wanted, Sarah Gailey (Tor.com)
3. Riot Baby, Tochi Onyebuchi (Tor.com)
4. Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com)
5. Finna, Nino Cipri (Tor.com)
6. The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Nghi Vo (Tor.com)
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