Hugo Awards 2024: Best Novelette

The 2024 Hugo Award ceremony is about to start, and I am watching the livestream, so this post is nothing if not timely. Maybe even by the time I have finished it, I will know how my choices compared with those of the other voters. Here are briefish notes on each finalist, in ascending order of my preference.

“Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition,” Gu Shi /〈2181序曲〉再版导言, 顾适 translated by Emily Jin. In the next few decades, humanity learns how to master cryosleep, a method of hibernation that effectively allows some people to skip forward decades in time. The technology was originally used for people with terminal diseases; they were placed into hibernation in the hope that advancing medical knowledge would allow their illness to be cured at some point in the future. That changed quickly, and “cryosleep became a common mode of transportation—across time, rather than space.” (p. 4) The story explores some of the ramifications of mass migration through suspended animation, not least as a means for shoving problems onto other people. The “Introduction” is structured as just that, an introduction to another literary work the 2181 Overture, featuring excerpts and analysis but without going to the trouble of telling the story directly. The stories are alluded to, gestured toward; as a reader, I would like to experience them in full, rather than just get the academic notes. I felt too distanced from the matter to care very much.

“I AM AI” by Ai Jiang. The first-person narrator is a gig worker, who is hard pressed by clients in a rough combination of turbocapitalism and influencer-like fickleness. She is artificially enhanced in various ways, but that also means that she has to charge her battery or she dies. The story is a mix of her efforts to stay ahead of business, to lend power from her battery to various people she is helping, her desire for more augmentation, and the consequences of some of those choices. There are also perspectives on New Era, a generalized monopoly that is her competitor and an overwhelming power in the city where she lives. It was fast-paced, but also easy to see where the story was going.

“One Man’s Treasure” by Sarah Pinsker. Who takes out the garbage in a city full of magic, and how dangerous is that likely to be? This story follows a crew that cleans up in Three Rivers. One day, while taking care of business in a rich neighborhood, a crew member hears a statue out in the trash whisper, “Help me.” They call it in to dispatch, who just say that trash is trash and they should get on with it. The two experienced members of the team decide not to dump the statue but instead to take it home and see if they can find a way to unhex whoever has been turned to stone. The story establishes a setting quickly, and concentrates on what matters: the question of haves and have-nots in a magical city. Halfway through, the crew figures out who was behind the hex, and the story turns into a quest for justice. There were funny bits, there were lovely everyday bits, and in the end the bad guys get their comeuppance.

“The Year Without Sunshine” by Naomi Kritzer. Disasters cascade in America, and presumably the world, and civilization totters. Kritzer shows the effects in one neighborhood in Minneapolis. The disasters are not detailed, because that’s not what Kritzer is interested in. She wants to show how people react to adversity, and more specifically, how communities respond. An early crisis in the neighborhood arises when local organizers discover someone needs supplemental oxygen, which depends on a concentrator that requires electricity, something that has come into short supply as the disasters have piled up. Solving that problem brings the people of the neighborhood closer together. From there, it’s not just the disasters that cascade, it’s also cooperation. Kritzer shows people being people, but mostly showing their better selves, despite the uncertainty and the trying circumstances. Not everyone reacts well, though if I remember correctly, the dangers come from people outside the neighborhood. Ultimately, the story asserts the truth of something often said by the late Paul Wellstone, a senator from the state where Kritzer’s novelette is set: We all do better when we all do better.

“On the Fox Roads” by Nghi Vo. Cops and robbers in the 1920s, bootleggers, stick-ups, crime sprees across the American Midwest, Chinese Jack and Tonkin Jill and an unexpected third member of the little gang. I haven’t read Vo’s spin on The Great Gatsby, so this was my first encounter with her approach to the era, and I have to say it was a lot of fun. Some of the characters are fast-talking, some are fast-shooting, and all of them are in such a hurry that you know it won’t end well for everyone, maybe not for anyone. Vo adds a level of myth and mystery by having her characters make their getaway on the fox roads. “The fox roads take you through October, before they cut down the corn and before the trees undress for winter, and they can take you anywhere.” (p. 7) Vo’s writing is terrific, she catches the moments and the momentum of the crimes, the charm and the seediness of the criminals, the despair turned to action. And the extras of things that are not as they seem.

“Ivy, Angelica, Bay” by C. L. Polk. Like Kritzer’s story, this novelette tells of a community facing disaster, and what needs to be done to keep it at bay. This time, though, it’s a New York City neighborhood facing the encroachment of money and investors, people willing to undo a web of lives and obligations for the sake of money and power. Both sides call on magic within the city, but this is not a tale of gee-whiz wizardry, it’s a tale of commitments made and prices exacted. It has people trying to become their best selves, it has betrayals that hurt, it has characters who find themselves in over their heads because of things they didn’t even realize they were doing. All of these elements carried me along to a conclusion that was as tough as it was right.