Review of Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

This dystopian novella is a finalist for the 2021 Hugo Award. It was published by Tor.com in February of 2020 and runs 171 pages. Gailey is a Campbell and Hugo Award winner and makes regular appearances in the list of Hugo nominees. This review contains spoilers.

Esther’s domineering father has killed her female lover and means to make her marry the man of his choice, so she has run away to join the traveling Librarians instead. These women bring materials to small towns to loan to residents which have been officially prepared and approved by the Media Review Committee, the Board of Materials Approval or the Textbook Approval and Research Council. Bet and Leda are angry to find Esther stowed away in one of their wagons, but they accept her into their group where she is attracted by the non-binary Cye. The group picks up three people who have asked for an escort to Utah, and suddenly they are battling for their lives against local sheriffs and their posses. Esther goes into a town for supplies and finds that Amity, one of the three, is an assassin for the rebels fighting against the State. Can they make it to Utah safely?

The word “Librarians” seems to have taken on broader connotations just lately, possibly because of the TNT films and TV franchise. It now seems to suggest protectors of knowledge and possibly antiquities and action against evil. In this case, the Librarians are, while ostensibly doing the State’s business, actually operatives of a rebel organization who distribute subversive literature along with the state approved media. This story also makes use of the name “Galahad”, which in the TNT series was the immortal leader of the organization.

The world building here suggests a major disaster of some kind has struck the US, and the current organization is four quadrants separated by a military corridor. The story references an industrialized Northeast that builds weaponry for war, but the local setting for the story is a very repressive, unpopulated Southwestern desert where towns are only about eight or ten buildings and protected by guard checkpoints. The theme seems to be freedom for LGBTQ women and people who fail to meet the cisgender requirements of the society. Esther is fairly well developed as a character and her attraction to Cye is well handled. The story starts with a strong emotional impact as Esther recalls the death of her lover and ends with a warm feeling of inclusion.

On the less positive side, a lot of this seems impossible. Horses appear and disappear as if by magic, and what must be long distances between towns seem to take just a short time to cross. There are no indications of farms or ranches or where water, ammo and food supplies come from. It’s also hard to reconcile a technological, developed Northeast with the barren conditions here. What happened to the ~330M population of the US? Although Esther and Cye are clear as characters, there’s very little to bring any of the others into focus. And why doesn’t the blond Esther totally burn up in the sun? She doesn’t even seem to have a hat.

Regarding the theme: There seems to be a mixture of messages here. The main one, of course, is freedom for LGBTQ women and non-binary people to pursue their lives and loves without interference. After her lover is killed, Esther flees and joins the subversives carrying out a revolution. That’s all okay, but the source of the repression is unclear. This feels something like the Scarlet Letter days, where the patriarchy ruled, but how did these people get from the fairly free society we have now to that condition? Next, all the sheriffs and their posses are men, so are they agents of the repressive state? Is this anti-patriarchy? And last, supposedly the State has wasted all the country’s resources on wars, leaving everyone poor, so is this anti-government? Actually, this political setting sounds like the results of the current “revolution” where anarchists are pushing to remove capitalism, small business and government, leaving people to fend for themselves. It doesn’t quite make sense.

Three and a half stars.

Review of “The Inaccessibility of Heaven” by Aliette de Bodard

This fantasy novelette was published by Uncanny Magazine in the July/August 2020 issue. Aliette de Bodard lives in Paris and is well established as a writer, having won three Nebula Awards, a Locus Award, a European Science Fiction Society award, a British Fantasy Award and four British Science Fiction Association Awards. She is a current Hugo, Locus and Ignyte Award finalist for 2020. This review contains spoilers.

Calariel didn’t like the way humans suffered, and she wanted to throw open the gates of Heaven. As a result of the rebellion, the Fallen now live with humans and something is killing them. Sam is a witch who runs a shelter for the Fallen and is companion to Calariel. She is drawn into the plot when the Fallen Arvedai has her brought to him for a conference. She sees the stripped bones, and goes to visit the Fallen Vazrach, who is dying from an attack out of darkness. Is there a way the Fallen, Sam and Arvedai’s man O’Connor can find out what’s happening and stop it?

As usual with de Bodard, what stands out about this story is the quality of the imaginings. The author uses the Biblical story of fallen angels as a vehicle for a fantasy murder mystery that’s rich with details and involves a complicated magical ritual. Her best imagery is in the description of the Fallen, their beauty and the darkness that is attacking. The shelter has the feel of a homeless shelter where the Fallen can find beds and a meal in a foreign city.

On the less positive side, it’s pretty late in the story when we find out Sam is one of witches that have bonded with the Fallen. The place where they live also ends up being extremely vague, apparently an urban environment, but there are few details of how it’s laid out or what the shelter looks like that Sam and Calariel apparently run to protect the Fallen. And last, the relationship between Sam and Calariel remains unclear. Are they lovers?

Four and a half stars.

Review of “Monster” by Naomi Kritzer

This science fiction novelette is a finalist for the 2021 Hugo Award. It was published by Clarkesworld in January 2020. Kritzer is well established as a novelist and short story writer and her short story “Cat Pictures Please” won a Locus and a Hugo Award. This review contains spoilers.

Cecily is on winter break from her job as a faculty member and gene editing researcher. She’s also in the Chinese town of Guiyang looking for her childhood best-friend Andrew, who has been doing illegal research on a serum that will give people superpowers. His research has killed a number of people that he has suckered into being test subjects, and now the FBI and the CIA are hoping Cecily will find and betray him because they want the formula for his serum. Cecily meets an annoying Englishman named Tom at her hotel, who dies suspiciously in a way that looks like he’s found Andrew and ingested his serum. She’s getting close. What will she do when she finds Andrew?

The narrative for this story switches back and forth between Cecily’s memories of her high school friend and her experience in China looking for him. The theme is monsters, of course. Andrew is one example, an unethical researcher who uses people for his own ends. There are others, mostly boys, who persecute Cecily because she’s bookish and nerdy as a child. The subtheme is how different children are ostracized and either choose an ethical or unethical path in response to persecution. The plot emerges gradually, and the ending comes off as something of a surprising twist. Cecily’s struggles with the Chinese language and Tom’s explanation of why her translation app isn’t working are an extra bonus in the story.

On the less positive side, I think there is a bit too much emphasis on boys harassing Cecily as a child. Mean girls are often worse for girls that don’t conform, which makes this feel like something of an attack on the male sex. There’s a certain amount of exploration of Andrew’s character from the flashbacks, but I’d have liked to have had more of this. It’s not completely clear why he’s chosen this path. Is the genetic research a clue? Maybe it’s genetic? I know this was written some time ago, but Andrew is of Chinese ancestry. Given the current attacks on Asians in the US, this seems like a questionable suggestion.

Five stars.

Review of “Little Free Library” by Naomi Kritzer

This fantasy short story is a finalist for the 2021 Hugo Award. It was published by Tor.com. Kritzer is well established as a novelist and short story writer and her short story “Cat Pictures Please” won a Locus and a Hugo Award. This review contains spoilers.

Meigan has recently moved to St. Paul and gotten a house, so she installs a Little Free Library where she can put books for people to borrow or trade. She goes to some effort to decorate it, adds books and then waits to see which ones disappear and what appears in return. At first it seems like normally borrowing traffic, but then someone takes all the books. She leaves a note about sharing, and after that, whoever is taking the books leaves her gifts like carvings, drawings, a leaf. They leave a note asking for more of the Lord of the Rings story, and after a little while, they’re leaving gold coins that the jeweler says are real. Eventually the notes talk about a conflict, and then a final note that “all is lost” and the gift of an egg.

So, this is absorbing and really entertaining. Most of the story is made up of Meigan’s loving preparation and stocking of the library (attractive for book lovers), and the increasingly strange results as her books disappear and the odd gifts and correspondence begin to appear in their place. The fact that the reader likes Lord of the Rings and the coins turn out to be real gold are both telling, and we’re left to wonder what’s going to hatch out of that egg after “all is lost.” It’s sort of a twist ending, but highly effective.

On the less positive side, there’s not much in the way of a theme, or universality in this story, which is normally a requirement for literary awards. Also, we get no information on what Meigan does other than monitor the library. Does she work? Have a family? And last, she seem a little naïve. Is she going to be prepared if a baby dragon hatches out of that egg?

Four stars.

Review of “The Mermaid Astronaut” by Yoon Ha Lee

This science fiction short story is a finalist for the 2021 Hugo Award. It was published by Beneath Ceaseless Skies in February 2020, and Lee has dedicated it to his sister. Yoon Ha Lee is an award-winning writer of both short stories and novels, and is likely best known for the Machineries of Empire trilogy. This review contains spoilers.

Essarala is a mermaid who wants to visit the stars. She sits on the rocks by the sea with her beloved sister Kiovasa and talks of her dreams, with little hope that anything will come of it. But one day traders come from the stars. Essarala at first hides from them, as the idea that she can’t go with them hurts, but her sister encourages her to go listen to them. The two mermaids visit the sea witch and Essarala makes a bargain for legs that will allow her to go on the ship to the stars. The charm the witch gives her works, and she is accepted onboard the ship as a crewmember. She lives her dream, working her way up to greater responsibilities and learning about the ship and about science. Then she discovers time-dilation. Horrified, she realizes her sister may already be dead while Essarala is still young. She implores the ship’s captain to take her home. Will she be in time?

This is a highly imaginative retelling of the Little Mermaid story where Essarala gives up her tail for legs. It’s fairly long and most of the space is used for world-building. We get a detailed description of the sea world, the ship, the diverse crew and Essarala’s journey, including some fair imagery. Essarala and Kiovasa are pretty well developed as characters, but there is no internal dialog, so they end up feeling secondary to the flow of the narrative. The theme seems to be sisterly love, and the story ends up feeling very heart-warming.

On the less positive side, there are some inconsistencies. Why does Essarala want to visit the stars? She lives in the ocean, and there’s no information on how she knows there are people out there and that the stars are really suns. Also, the Mers appear to be very materialistic, as they collect riches from shipwrecks. This means there’s really a whole world around them that isn’t included in the world-building, and you wonder why the starship crew came to visit the Mers instead of other races on that particular world. And one other inconsistency, the witch’s legs charm seems to last only as long as Essarala stays out of her home world’s waters. When she returns to the sea, her tail magically reappears. But, Essarala had to run through the water to reach the ship early in the story, so why didn’t her legs change then?

Three and a half stars.

Review of “Metal Like Blood in the Dark” by T. Kingfisher

The list of Hugo nominees dropped while I was working on the Nebula reviews, so I’ll move on to reviewing it. This science fiction short story is a finalist for the 2021 Hugo Award, published by Uncanny Magazine in the September/October 2020 issue. T. Kingfisher is the pen name of Ursula Vernon that she normally uses when she writes for adults. Vernon is well established as a short story writer and is a prior Hugo winner. This review contains spoilers.

Once there was an old man living by himself that built two machines. He calls them Brother and Sister and lets them be free in the place where they live. Eventually the old man has a problem with his heart, and he calls for people to come from another place to get him. He says that he might return, and before he leaves, he frees Brother and Sister even more, allowing them to go into space. Brother has wings and Sister is a digger after metal, and they harvest asteroids for repairs and drink starlight for energy. They find what seems to be an abandoned ship of metal, but it is inhabited after all by a machine called Third Drone that captures them and makes them work for it. Third Drone wants wings like Brother’s to fly into the gas giant Chrysale, and it holds Brother captive while Sister harvests metal to make the wings. As she is working, she locates a concept growing within herself about what it means to lie. Is Third Drone lying to them? And more important, can she lie to it?

This feels very much like the Genesis Creation Story, with the Father who makes male and female and leaves them in the garden where they are approached by a fallen angel that teaches Eve to lie. It’s a long story, but written in an engaging style that allows the reader to bond with the two innocents going about their business in a universe far away. There are some subtleties here. If there was any question about Third Drone being a snake, it hisses a bit when it speaks. Sister disposes of it in a gratifying way, turning its own desire for revenge against it, and then goes back to rescue her Brother.

On the less positive side, the narration is very matter-of-fact. The story is heart-warming, but it doesn’t generate much in the way of drama, and if readers don’t recognize the allegory, then they may not see much in the story. Looking at just the surface storyline, it’s unclear why Father makes the machines in the first place, why he thinks he’s coming back and why he thinks they might be misused by the people coming to get him. Brother and Sister are confident that he’s coming back, but what is he going to think about Sister’s new talent for lying?

I’m just starting to read for the Hugo, but looking through the nominees, this is the third work I recognize with a theme of lying. Two mentions might be coincidence, but three suggests it’s a pattern. I’ll come back this in the wrap up of the Hugo reviews.

Four stars for the allegory.

Fugitive Telemetry: Do popular writers hire ghostwriters?

I posted reviews on Amazon and Goodreads for Fugitive Telemetry, and went on to read some of the comments other readers had left. This is always interesting reading. Skip past all the glowing, emotive 5 star ratings that sound like kids hyperventilating and you’ll find some comments by people who were looking for something they didn’t get. There were some complaints about this installment not having the “heart” that the other novellas did, some confusion about the timeline, a couple of comments about missing the adventure factor, and one comment that Wells had lost interest and this book reads like a ghostwriter has written it. Hm.

So, the first two are interesting comments that suggest why this is such a profitable series. It’s been appealing to adventure fiction readers, suggesting a broad readership. Murderbot has had some bad experiences so is shy of humans, but it’s clearly attracted, especially to people who need protecting. In past installments of the story, it bonds with a person or group of people that it’s hired to protect, and really goes the extra mile because it likes them. This is the “heart” the reviewer was referring to, and I agree that it’s not very present in Fugitive Telemetry. We know it likes Mensah, but it didn’t really bond with the security people here or the refugees, either one. Instead, a lot of the space in the story is taken up with background, as we started with the dead human and had to be filled in on things that had happened before that since MB got to Preservation Station.

The adventure fiction readers put their finger right on the missing factor for them, which is that we normally get to ride along with MB as it navigates through dangerous environments and fights off wild fauna, evil humans and crazy bots, making tight escapes and eluding capture by pretending to be a human. I’m an adventure fan, so I missed this, too. MB is fairly safe at Preservation, but there are still threats and challenges, and these were definitely soft pedaled in favor of a somewhat forced plot. Interestingly, none of these adventure readers complained about the somewhat “woke” politics that Wells has been offering, which suggests nobody cares as long as the readers’ other requirements are met.

There’s not much to be said about the timeline confusion. This novella takes place before the novel Network Effect, and as a reader, I was careful to look for when it took place, but apparently some people didn’t and expected this to pick up where Network Effect left off. Since there were loose ends here, I expect that Wells plans to write more about MB on Preservation before the events of Network Effect and avoid having to deal with where she left things with the novel.

So I was sort of surprised by the comment about a ghost writer. Sudden quality drop-offs in a series aren’t unusual in my experience, as writers get distracted, lose touch with their characters over time, or get caught in deadlines so they can’t develop the story like they need to. Actually, this novella sounded like Wells’ style to me, but I actually wondered something like this about Network Effect because it was such a huge departure from her technique in the novellas. I thought the difference was most likely due to having a different editor, but I checked, and the Tor.com editor for both All Systems Red and Network Effect is the same, so that’s not a workable theory. What else could make a difference? The resource persons she calls on to help with advice and the beta readers? She does credit some of those for Network Effect.

But finally, I wondered if there is such a thing as hiring ghost writers to continue a popular series. It’s clear that the Star Wars series uses different authors, as they’re credited. However, I read a young adult novel for the Dragons last year that pretty clearly used uncredited writers, likely as work-for-hire. So I checked. Surprise, surprise, here’s a source that says up to 50% of bestseller books use the services of a ghostwriter. Who would have thought?

Review of Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

This science fiction novella is part of the Murderbot Diaries series and falls between Exit Strategy and Network Effect. It was published in April of 2021 by Tor.com and runs 172 pages. Wells has been very successful with this series and is currently in the list of nominations for both the Nebula and Hugo Awards for Network Effect. Wells has signed a contract with for 3 more Murderbot books, plus three from a new series. This review contains spoilers.

After rescuing its owner Dr. Mensah from GrayCris, Murderbot ends up stuck on Preservation Station. The events on TranRollinHyfa have stirred up a legal hornet’s nest, and Dr. Mensah is concerned about safety while the various lawsuits are working out. At first it seems okay to be on the station, but Mensah tells the council that MB is actually a rogue SecUnit, which causes a lot of outcry and some uncomfortable restrictions. Then someone posts a current photo of it to the newsfeed, which is also very annoying, as MB has tried really hard to keep that from happening. Meanwhile, there’s a dead human on Preservation station, clearly murdered, which is something that rarely happens there. Mensah suggests MB help with the investigation as a way to get on better terms with Station Security. It’s prevented from searching through the station databases, but there are other ways to investigate. It seems the man was involved with human smuggling of some kind. Can MB solve the mystery and rescue the people the man was trying to help?

This story includes Wells’ trademark style and Murderbot’s entertaining, cynical narrative. This universe is pretty well established by now, and the story moves right along. Security is MB’s thing, after all, and after rough start with the abrasive Security people, it goes off on its own to investigate the murder, touching base with the station’s bots and the bot pilots docked in the port. It’s the long way around, but it ferrets out the plot and, with Security’s help, moves to rescue the refugees. We never find out who leaked the photo, so maybe that will turn up in another novella.

On the less positive side, this seems short and has pacing issues. The plot feels forced, with some unexplained events and no visible bad guys, so we end up with an anticlimax at the end. Plus there are some spots where people don’t necessarily react as they should. It’s late to be a beta reader, but because I really like MB, I’m going to pick it apart. Definite spoilers ahead.

1) MB has to rescue Security Officer Aylan and Port Authority Rep Gamila from a ship with five armed smugglers. This is the first time they have seen it in action. Given the hype that’s been going around, this performance should cause concerns, but everyone seems to take it for granted—except the smugglers, of course, who complain about being manhandled by a SecUnit.

2) Then the smugglers explain their operation: labor contracts run so long that the contractees have children who become slaves. Okay, so that’s a loaded word, but how does this work? Are they forced into labor contracts? Forced to work without a contract? Sold to someone else? Isn’t human slavery against the law without a contract? Do kids stay in the barracks with their moms? Does anyone provide school or training? Why doesn’t the contracting company force contraceptives to prevent this burden on their labor force? And why is BreharWallHan, in this case, paying bounty hunters to bring them back? Why not just consider it a loss?

3) Why doesn’t the issue of human trafficking go right to the station council? Station security should be more alarmed about this than they are. Sure, maybe they support helping slaves escape, but allowing the station to be used as a nexus point for smugglers encourages the kind of operation we’re seeing here. Someone got murdered, a bunch of people got kidnapped and there are a bunch of armed smugglers waving their guns around in the port. Is this a forecast of what’s coming if they let this continue?

4) MB has located the smugglers and goes on to identify the bounty hunters who kidnapped the refugees because their ships use jammers to garble their feeds. Why is this necessary? It’s a sure sign something is wrong, and it seems like the Port Authority would have picked up the problem way before now.

5) When Security starts to search the port, MB gets into an argument about whether it will do any manual work like moving heavy objects around. Presumably it means to establish boundaries, but the argument gets cut off and we never learn whether it moves the shipping containers or not.

6) MB goes to a lot of trouble to rescue the refugees from the ship where they’re being held captive, and once they’re on the station, one of the refugees grabs a weapon and shoots MB because they’ve recognized it as a SecUnit. Who was that careless with their weapon? And how did the captives identify MB? If they’ve worked on a labor contract, they’ve never seen a SecUnit out of armor, and MB doesn’t have the standard behavior patterns. Then everybody just lets this drop, too. MB doesn’t even complain about stupid humans and how erratic they are. The smugglers identified it as a SecUnit, too, but even with MB’s unusual effectiveness, it shouldn’t be that obvious. It’s in low key mode here. Have they seen the photo on the newsfeed? What?

7) MB is using a projectile weapon here, but it just sort of appears by magic. Is this the same one from TranRollingHyfa? If so, how did it get here? If not, where did it come from? Security? Given their earlier concerns, souldn’t they be concerned about this?

8) Last, Balin the Port Authority robot is identified as the inside agent responsible for the murder. It turns out to be a refitted Combat Bot, and starts to battle MB, but when faced with an array of other port bots, it backs off and just shuts down instead. So this is the anticlimax, and it doesn’t hold water. The response of the port bots suggests they’re sentient, organized, and look out for their own. There’s been NO hint of this kind of behavior before, and actually MB has taken control of them in previous installations, giving us the impression they’re not that bright. So now suddenly they’re high functioning? And Balin looks like an expensive way to stop the rescues and murder the guy directing the refugee operation, so the slave trade must be worth the cost? And last, why does Balin just shut down? Where are its orders coming from? MB is right that it can’t fight the whole contingent of port bots, but from their previous actions, I’m under the impression Combat Bots don’t really care about that kind of thing. It makes more sense that its operators have shut it down to reduce the amount of trouble they’re in.

Regardless of the nitpicking, this was a fairly entertaining read, though readers will have to decide if it advances the storyline enough to pay the full novel price for a novella. This has been a great series that hopefully will continue for a while.

Three and a half stars.

Activism, or real projections of the future?

One of the more obvious things that stands out from the last few awards cycles is that activist message fiction is popular for awards consideration. As some readers have pointed out, in the current publishing environment, this tends to lean left, and to address issues like race, gender and sex discrimination. Looking through this year’s selection of Nebula nominees, I see a few things that I don’t think would survive a flip test, which is replacing one race with another or one sex or gender with another to see if it’s actually racist or sexist. Because of cultural relativism, this is not only considered okay, but it’s celebrated as activists speaking out about their pain and anger. I’ve discussed this issue in the past in other blogs, so today I want to look at how effective this might be as activism.

First of all, there’s a difference between acting out versus activism. Acting out is a form of performative activism, or activities carried out to increase social capital instead of real concerns about a cause. This is closely related to virtue signaling, where activities are meant to signal to others how devoted one is to a particular cause. The truth is that performative activism and virtue signaling are helpful to call attention to a problem, but these forms of activism never offer a real, in depth look at the options and issues. That means they’re basically noise that never offers a solution to the problem, or worse, fails to evaluate the results of the change they’re advocating.

One common call from activists in recent years has been to “tear everything down” so we can “build back better.” This is mainly aimed at capitalist societies, which always result in inequality, and the alternative for “building back better” isn’t really identified. Presumably this is communism, which is supposed to result in equity, but actually results in a wealthy elite that dictates what everybody else gets as their cut of the equity pie, and often what you as a citizen have to do to support the system. Everyone seems to be expecting that this is going to be a utopia, but communist regimes in the past have ended up with massive economic stagnation, as no one seems willing to work very hard to finance their neighbor’s good life.

Last year the awards nominees were calling for revolution (tearing things down). So, looking at this year’s crop of Nebula nominees, what have we got for building back better? We’ve got Martha Wells Network Effect promoting the utopian communist society where everyone seems unexplainably wealthy and activists forge documents to steal planets (a new colonialism?); Jemisin’s The City We Became which envisions a society that excludes people considered the “ownership class” with their cutthroat business practices and chain franchises, and Tochi Onyebuchi’s Riot Baby that envisions whites as “newly poor,” presumably stripped of their “ownership class” status. On the other side, we’ve got a couple of post-revolution scenarios, including Yoachim’s repressive, totalitarian society in “Shadow Prisons” and P. Djèlí Clark’s Ring Shout that (lo and behold)  actually lays out the choices.

So, which of these are likely to be the effective projections? Are we to believe Martha Wells that communist, money-free societies are a utopia, Jemisin that we’re better off without the chain franchises, or Yoachim that we’re headed for a dystopia? And I want to add another shout out to Clark for laying out those choices to awesomely well.

Wrap Up of the 2020 Nebula Reviews

As usual, I’m going to look back through the nominees and the reviews for interesting patterns. First the diversity analysis. Because there are intersectionalities, some writers will be counted twice. Again, this is from information readily available online, so I apologize if I’ve mischaracterized anyone.

Novel: 6 women, 0 men, 3 black, 2 white, 1 Native American, 1 Hispanic, 1 LGBTQ, 1 disabled

Novella: 0 women, 3 men, 3 nonbinary, 3 white, 3 black, 3 LGBTQ, 1 Jewish

Novelette: 6 women, 0 men, 1 Asian, 5 white, 3 LGBTQ, 2 Jewish

Short Story: 4 women, 2 men, 5 white, 1 Asian, 1 LGBTQ, 1 disabled

There are 24 single-author nominees this year, so overall we get 16/24 (67%) women, 5/24 (21%) men, 3/24 (13%) nonbinary, 6/24 (25%) black, 15/24 (63%) white, 3/24 (13%) Jewish, 1/24 (4%) Hispanic, 1/24 (4%) Native American, 2/24 (8%) Asian, 8/24 (33%) LGBTQ and 2/24 (8%) disabled.

Overall, this is a lot of ethnic diversity, including Canadians and a couple or three Europeans. Women are represented above their US demographic of about 51% and nonbinary and trans well above their demographic, as far as I can tell. I couldn’t find nonbinary reported, and I counted the trans authors under LGBTQ, who are also well above their estimated demographic of about 5% (0.6% trans). This nonbinary gender diversity was at the expense of men this year, who were well below their 49% US demographic, and gay men had 0 representation. Black authors did very well, filling half the slots in the novel and novella categories. Overall, this showing was above the US demographic of about 13%. As usual, Hispanic authors limped along well below their US demographic of about 19%, and Native Americans scored above their 1.7% demographic with just one entry. Asians came in at about their 5% demographic, and as usual, Jewish writers did better than average, scoring well above their US demographic of about 2%. I’m sure the disability count is low here, as about 26% of US resident qualify as disabled.

On the less positive side, there were few new entries in the showing of ethnically diverse nominees. Many of these diverse writers have been previously nominated, and some repeatedly, which means the SFWA readership doesn’t check outside the recommended reading list very much. The group of black nominees did welcome Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald as a new member of the elite club. I wrote a blog a while back asking whether LGBTQ was erasing straight women, so looking at that, all the LGBTQ entries were female, meaning that only 18% of the women authors were cisgender, and the high number of LGBTQ authors came mainly at their expense.

Looking at characters: Four of the novels, three of the novellas, 4 of the novelettes and one of the short stories had prominent LGBTQ characters. Three more of the nominees had non-binary or ungendered characters. This totals out to 15/24 or 63%, and most of these works included trans characters, which suggests a preference for gender diversity among the Nebula voters. This number wasn’t as high as I expected, as sometimes the LGBTQ characters, especially trans characters, seem inserted as an afterthought, presumably because publishers think it will increase the marketability for the work.

Looking at publishers: Tor.com published 5 of the nominees (21%) and Uncanny published 4 (17%). The print magazines scored a couple of entries this year, with one each for Asimov’s and F&SF. Interestingly, although most of the novels were published by well-established publishers, the novellas, novelettes and short stories had more diverse origins, including small independent publishers and magazines. Most of the short stories were fairly long and well-developed, but Daily SF scored a nomination with one of their flash fiction pieces.

The topics leaned heavily to message fiction again this year. Four works had racial topics, five had gender topics and four had other prominent social or political messages. This works out to 13/24 or 54%. In general, these were edgier than last year, as some appeared to call for violence or illegal activities, justified because of the rightness of the cause. Besides these themes, works dealt with lying, promiscuous sex, searching for compatible unions or places, and ambition. Most nominees would be classified as fantasy, with seven entries in the list (29%) having some degree of possible SF content. Wells’ Network Effect is the only one I see that would be considered fairly hard SF. Roanhorse stands out for her classic good versus evil fantasy plot, and Sanford for another classic, a variation on man against the elements.