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.

Review of “The Eight-Thousanders,” by Jason Sanford

This fantasy short story is a finalist for the 2020 Nebula Award and published by Asimov’s in the 9-10, 2020 issue. Jason Sanford is mainly a short story writer, but has published some longer fiction. He’s had a number of award nominations in the past. Sanford is also an essayist and literary critic, somewhat prone to online controversies where some readers might have encountered him before. This review contains spoilers.

Keller is part of an expedition to climb Everest, led by their venture capitalist and TED speaker boss Ronnie. Among the detritus of fallen climbers, they find a man near death, but Ronnie says they can’t help him. They need to move on if they’re going to make the summit. A woman in a red coat volunteers to stay with the man, and the Sherpa Nyima hurries Keller away. As they leaves, Keller notices her pale skin and fangs and how she holds the dying man in her arms. Ronni and Keller make the summit but they’ve fallen behind, and it turns out a storm was predicted. The hard-driving Ronnie felt they could make the summit in time, but now they’re caught by the storm on the way down. Keller thinks they’re lost, but the woman in red shows them where to go. They find Nyima’s camp where they rest for a few days, but the storm doesn’t abate. Out of supplies and growing weaker, they have to make the descent in the terrible conditions. Nyima ropes Keller and Ronnie together for safety, and Keller starts to consider their relationship with Ronnie. The woman in red is still with them. What should they do?

This is a classic person-against-the-elements plot, framing the abstracts of drive, ambition and obsession. It’s very well set up, with Keller driven by memories of their dead brother who wanted to climb Everest and Ronnie who is so obsessed that he ignores both risks and good sense to prove his dominance over the mountain. Ronnie has dragged his employees along with him like this is a team-building exercise, and the vampire haunts the expedition, recognized by Nyima, and happy to take the weak and fallen. This background is all built into the story gradually. The plot is simple, just getting up to the summit and back down the mountain with the single stop. That means the main body of the story is made up of description and experience. There’s some fairly sharp imagery in the description, and that rope between Keller and Ronnie is symbolic. The decisions about life and death are dramatic and slightly unsettling.

On the less positive side, the vampire didn’t quite click for me. Clearly she is a symbol of death, and preys on the fallen, but her role remains unclear. Does she represent the mountain that gradually sucks the life out of the climbers? Or is she the drive to dominate that gradually sucks life away? Both? This bit of ambiguity has a postmodern feel, and I always prefer a little more certainty about the message, myself. I’ve used “they/their” as pronouns, as this is written in first person without indication of sex or gender, but it feels like a very strongly masculine theme.

Five stars.

Review of “Defending Elysium” by Brandon Sanderson

This novelette is in the same universe as Skyward and Starsight and lays the groundwork for both. The story was originally published by Asimov’s in 2008, and is now available on Sanderson’s website here. This review contains spoilers.

Jason Write is an agent for the Phone Company (PC). In the past, the United World Governments made an embarrassing first contact by shooting down an ambassadorial Tanasi ship, and the PC stepped in to broker relations. Now they have a monopoly on dealing with aliens and are suspected of having the secret to faster than light (FTL) space travel. Jason is blind, but has a well-developed cytonic Sense that gives him transhuman powers. He arrives on the space platform Evensong, expecting to escort Denise Carson, a strangely afflicted scientist, to Jupiter 14 for treatment. But, he finds the situation is more complicated than he expected. The remains of a missing Varvax ambassador have been found in a burner, and Jason takes over the investigation. He finds his communications are being tapped by Coln Abrams, a rogue agent for the United Intelligence Bureau. Jason confronts Abrams and allows him to join the investigation, then rescues him from an assassination attempt with cytonic mindblades. Abrams has followed Jason to Evensong in the hopes of stealing info on what he thinks is a FTL apparatus, and he thinks Jason has arranged for the attempted assassination. Jason picks up Carlson and comes to a conclusion about what’s wrong with her, then asks Abrams to escort her to Jupiter 14 so he can continue his investigations alone. Abrams demands to know about the FTL technology, but before Jason can respond, the three of them are gassed by another agent. Jason wakes with his cytonic Sense disabled and the enemy agent demanding answers. He contacts Abrams, held in a different room, and asks him to disable the power. Abrams complies and Jason explodes the room he’s being held in, along with the cytonic suppressor, and then engages in a mind battle with Edmund, an enemy agent from his past. Jason kills him, but before he dies, Edmund explains what’s going on. The Varvax are infiltrating human populations to steal their technology. Is there anything Jason can do about this?

On the positive side, this features a strong plot, mysterious powers and layers of competing agents moving through the shadows. Sanderson skims over the world-building, as the details of how the space platforms, cytonic suppressors, alien societies and the United World Governments work remains vague. His characters are fairly well-developed and believable, with the cytonic ability introduced matter-of-factly and the matter of apparent Varvax transmigration into human bodies left understated.

On the not so positive side, the story has a lot of moving parts, and the plot seems a little underdeveloped. Maybe it would have worked a little better for a novella or a full length novel. The main thing I’m missing here is conflict. The tale is complex and moves right along, but there should have been more conflict between Jason and Abrams, for example. Abrams is way out of line, and Jason just accepts him as harmless. It seems like the ambassador’s remains should have caused a bigger stir. I would have also expected Lanna, Jason’s wife and com contact, to check in with more opinions as this gets into increasingly more dangerous territory. One possible inconsistency: when Jason is being held prisoner, why can he contact Abrams and not Lanna?

Four stars.

Wrap up of the 2018 Hugo Reviews

Now that I’ve reviewed all the works, it’s time to take a look at the Hugo finalists, and how they fell out this year. Most notable is the absence of Vox Day’s Rabid Puppy inputs, which in the past couple or three award cycles has provided the male diversity. That means ordinary cis men were totally shut out of three of the four Hugo fiction categories for 2018, with Best Short Story, Best Novelette and Best Novella featuring only women, trans and non-binary authors. The Best Novel category also featured two finalists who are possibly political appointees meant as a slap-in-the-face to Vox Day, these being his nemeses N.K. Jemisin and John Scalzi. That leaves the white-male-masterful-crusader Kim Stanley Robinson as the really big wild card in the whole thing.

The next notable feature was the high rate of correspondence between the finalists for the Hugo and the Nebula Award. For the Best Short Story category the only difference was that two men nominated for the Nebula were replaced by women or trans writers. In the Best Novelette category, the same thing happened, but one additional woman was nominated. The most significant difference was in the Best Novel category, where only two of the finalists were the same. This strongly suggests how the same limited system produces both sets of nominees.

Next, the Hugo Awards drew from the same restricted number of publishers as the Nebula. In the novel category, this included: 4 from Orbit, 1 from Tor and 1 from Solaris. In the novella category: 5 from Tor.com and 1 from Uncanny. The novelette and short story categories showed slightly more diversity, drawing from Uncanny, Clarkesworld, Tor.com, Asimov’s, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Apex. Looking at these results, it’s clear why Rocket Stack Rank only reviews particular magazines. This is pretty much the list of shorter-than-novel publishers with inputs into the Nebula and Hugo Awards. Print magazines are doing so poorly, RSR can probably leave Asimov’s, Analog and F&SF off pretty soon without missing anything important.

Looking at what’s normally counted for diversity, the Hugo has done reasonably well. Best Novel includes 3 women, 2 men, 1 trans, 1 Asian and 1 African American writer. Best Novella includes 5 women, 0 men, 1 non-binary, 1 Asian and 1 African American writer. Best Novelette category includes 4 women, 0 men, 2 trans and 3 Asian writers. Best Short Story includes 6 women, 0 men, 3 Asian and 1 Native American writer. Those who recall my comments from last year will know I’m glad to see a Native American writer appear in the finalists, but we’re still short of Hispanics. These figures work out to be 75% women, 12.5% trans, 8% men and 4% non-binary. Looking at the counted racial categories, it works out to be 55% whites, 33% Asian, 8% African American and 4% Native American. Clearly the preferred finalists are young white and Asian women, while men, African Americans and Hispanics are all hugely underrepresented based on their population demographics. The one finalist works out okay for Native Americans, who are about 2% of the US population.

A couple of things stood out in the themes. First, the list included several repeat appearances from previous years, and also followed the Nebula tendency to nominate the same author in multiple categories. These included Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Sarah Pinsker and Yoon Ha Lee. The list of Hugo finalists avoided the tendency the Nebula finalists showed for editors, publishers and other industry insiders, but included at least a couple of short works written by popular novelists within the universe of their novels. I took this as unduly promotional. Like the Nebulas, there seemed to be a strong preference for stories with non-binary or trans characters.

This list leans heavily to fantasy and soft science fiction, with a serious lack of ideas and/or hard science fiction. I don’t think Nagata’s work qualifies, regardless that it’s set on Mars. The real stand-out, different work here, again, was Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140, which actually attempted to deal with hard science, real politics and real threats to humanity’s future. This is the kind of important work I’d prefer to see appear on the awards ballots.

Review of “Wind Will Rove” by Sarah Pinsker

This novelette is a finalist for the 2017 Nebula Award. It’s science fiction and was published in Asimov’s September/October 2017 issue. This review contains spoilers.

Rosie Clay is a resident on a generation ship who teaches history and plays traditional fiddle in a weekly OldTime gathering. Rosie is third generation and never saw Earth, but she tries hard to maintain the history the ship has left. A few years out, a disgruntled programmer erased the databases of art, literature and history the ship carried, leaving the residents with nothing but memory to use in recreating them. Now the younger generations are starting to question why they’re required to learn and maintain this history when it is in no way useful to their own way of life. One group totally withdraws to form an artistic enclave and produce only new works. Is there any reason to save the past?

This isn’t just a question that people on a generation ship are asking. When should people expend resources trying to preserve the past and when should it all go in the trashcan? It’s a conflict between conservatives who want to preserve tradition and progressives who want to create a totally new future, all of it framed in music within this story. When Rosie accidentally creates a new song, she decides to document it carefully, creating a middle path. In the current political climate, this is a radical statement.

The music and efforts to recreate the past become the major players in the work. The story rambles, with Rosie’s narration moving from memories of her Grandmother Windy to music to events on the ship to encounters with students in her classroom. The author’s love of music comes through clearly, and anyone who has played in this kind of traditional group will share in her experience.

Not so good points: Because the narration centers so heavily around the music, generally the world building and the characters are poorly developed. We hear a lot about Windy and how she became a legend to the ship’s musicians, but know almost nothing about Rosie’s current family, the organization of the ship, the technology that runs it, etc. The conflict here is weak, too. The programmer’s act and the effort at recreation are both in the past, and at the point of the story, there’s nothing for Rosie to fight against except a minor rebellion in her classroom.

Three and a half stars.

Congrats to the 2018 Hugo Finalists!

Here’s what I got for the diversity count: Short stories – 6 women, 0 men, 3 Asian, 1 mixed race African/Native American. Novelettes – 5 women, 1 trans, 3 Asian. Novellas – 5 women, 1 trans, 1 Asian, 1 African American, 1 bipolar. Novels – 4 women, 2 men, 1 Asian, 1 African American.

Three short stories, 2 novelettes and 1 novella (6 of 24) are from Uncanny; 1 short story, 1 novelette, 5 novellas and 1 novel (8 of 24) are from Tor and Orbit published 4 of the 6 novels. The pro print magazines scored poorly, as Asimov’s squeaked in with one entry, but F&SF and Analog were totally shut out this year.

As usual, there’s quite a bit of overlap between these finalists and those of the Nebula Award, including 4 of 6 short stories, 3 of 6 novelettes, 4 of 6 novellas and 2 of 6 novels. Like the Nebulas, there is also repetition of names, as Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Sarah Pinsker and Yoon Ha Lee appear in more than one category. There’s also overlap with last years’ Hugo finalist list: N.K. Jemisin, Yoon Ha Lee, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and Ursula Vernon were all finalists in 2017. Ann Leckie, N.K. Jemisin and Nnedi Okorifor were finalists in 2016.

Best Novel

The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi (Tor)
New York 2140, by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)
Provenance, by Ann Leckie (Orbit)
Raven Stratagem, by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris)
Six Wakes, by Mur Lafferty (Orbit)
The Stone Sky, by N. K. Jemisin (Orbit)

Best Novella

All Systems Red, by Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing)
And Then There Were (N-One), by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny, Mar-Apr 2017)
Binti: Home, by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com Publishing)
The Black Tides of Heaven, by JY Yang (Tor.com Publishing)
Down Among the Sticks and Bones, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
River of Teeth, by Sarah Gailey (Tor.com Publishing)

Best Novelette

“Children of Thorns, Children of Water“, by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny, Jul-Aug 2017)
“Extracurricular Activities“, by Yoon Ha Lee (Tor.com, February 15, 2017)
“The Secret Life of Bots“, by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld, Sep 2017)
“A Series of Steaks“, by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Clarkesworld, Jan 2017)
“Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time“, by K.M. Szpara (Uncanny, May-Jun 2017)
“Wind Will Rove“, by Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s, Sep-Oct 2017)

Best Short Story

“Carnival Nine“, by Caroline M. Yoachim (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, May 2017)
“Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand“, by Fran Wilde (Uncanny, Sep-Oct 2017)
“Fandom for Robots“, by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Uncanny, Sep-Oct 2017)
“The Martian Obelisk“, by Linda Nagata (Tor.com, July 19, 2017)
“Sun, Moon, Dust“, by Ursula Vernon (Uncanny, May-Jun 2017)
“Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™“, by Rebecca Roanhorse (Apex, Aug 2017)

Review of Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

This book was a finalist for the World Fantasy Awards. It’s a collection of novellas based on the different characters, but it can also be read as a novel. It’s published by HarperCollins and runs 382 pages.

The year is 1954, and African American war veteran Atticus Turner is traveling north to Chicago. His dad Montrose has disappeared somewhere in New England, and with his Uncle George and his friend Letitia, Atticus sets out to find him. They end up at Samuel Braithwhite’s manor, where they learn interesting things about Atticus’ maternal ancestry and encounter Samuel’s son Caleb, who wants to control that legacy. Atticus and his friends soon find themselves dealing with ghosts, warlocks and various arcane events as they’re caught up in the machinations of an ancient cult. Can they save themselves and return to normal lives?

This is an entertaining read, as the characters are all resourceful and end up accomplishing what they need to do through the application of determination and common sense. Regardless of the Jim Crow setting, the characters feel contemporary, as if Ruff has set characters with modern sensibilities into the Lovecraft milieu.

I’ve read some other reviews that promote this book by saying racism is the real horror in the story. I didn’t really see that. If you’re unfamiliar with the facts of Jim Crow segregation and the kind of discrimination African Americans faced in the 1950s, then I suppose this could be a surprise. Presumably Ruff set his story in this period at least partly to display the racial issues, but actually he skims over it as fairly matter-of-fact. Everybody deals and nobody gets lynched.

What really stood out for me instead was the message that these black characters read and treasure the SFF classics of the day by Lovecraft, Burroughs, Bradbury, Asimov, etc., without any disconnect because of their race. Is that so? Currently these writers are all considered to be both racist and sexist because they reflect the attitudes of their era. So, do readers of all races normally transcend racism and sexism to place themselves in a romantic character and a romantic setting? Or is this just an irony that Ruff has inserted in his story? I’d like to hear from people with an opinion.

Four and a half stars.

Award Winners that Don’t Hold Up over Time

In her 2014 article on literary awards, Barbara Cohen notes: “Cultural prizes notoriously reward the wrong works for the wrong reasons: On the long list of worthies deprived of the Nobel for literature are Tolstoy, Proust, and Joyce.” I’ve been discussing influences on the awards over the last few blogs, and of course these issues are likely to result in some winners that don’t hold up over time.

Checking around, I found The Hugo Award Book Club (HABC), which has a page discussing the issue of poor choices. The group awards the “Worst Hugo Award” title to 1973, when Isaac Asimov won his first Hugo for a novel with The Gods Themselves. Here was the lineup of finalists that year. As was standard in those times, there were no concerns about diversity, so the finalists are all white men.

• The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov [Galaxy Mar/Apr,May/Jun 1972; If Mar/Apr 1972]
• When Harlie Was One by David Gerrold [Ballantine, 1972]
• There Will Be Time by Poul Anderson [Signet, 1972]
• The Book of Skulls by Robert Silverberg [Scribner’s, 1972]
• Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg [Galaxy Jul/Aug,Sep/Oct 1972; Scribner’s, 1972]
• A Choice of Gods by Clifford D. Simak [Putnam, 1972]

The HABC briefly reviews all these works, along with some other worthy contenders that year. Asimov’s winner was a three-part series published in Galaxy Magazine where aliens in a different dimension steal energy from ours, causing the sun to go nova. The HABC notes that the physics is interesting, but that the end result was dull and boring and the book has not aged well in comparison to the other contenders that year. In the comments Steve Davidson mentions that the work was recognized at the time for its risks with sexual content, but that isn’t anything exceptional these days, so the novel’s shortcomings are what stand out.

So what affected the WorldCon membership that year to make this choice? Asimov’s reputation as a short story writer? Frederik Pohl’s reputation as the editor of Galaxy? The ascendancy of hard SF? Promotion? Some kind of groupthink issue? Whatever it was, the vision affected the Nebula and Locus voters, too. The novel also won the Nebula in 1972 and the Locus Award in 1973.

Getting back to the present time, which of recent choices in the awards will hold up best over time? It’s an interesting question, eh?

Review of “An Unimaginable Light” by John C. Wright

This story is the Rabid Puppies’ recommendation for the Hugo Best Short Story Award. It was published in the themed anthology God, Robot from Castalia House. The blurb calls it “a collection of intertwined stories from some of the best known names in superversive science fiction. Written in the tradition of Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics and edited by Anthony Marchetta, the book contains stories by John C. Wright, Steve Rzasa, Joshua Young, L. Jagi Lamplighter and others.” The theme is theobots, programmed to love both God and man.

A human and a theobot are in the midst of a questioning session within a glass box, high above the world. The woman is naked and beautiful and the man calls her a whorebot. He is a robopsychologist, tall and florid with a double chin and big belly, known for the number of robots he has maimed or destroyed by flaying. He questions her regarding the Three Laws and about her beliefs. He calls her answers inappropriate, beats her and then demands sex. She refuses. He orders her punished for her heresy.

Pros: John C. Wright is actually an awesome writer. The number of levels this story works on is pretty amazing. 1) It invokes the Inquisition, i.e. the uppity, beautiful woman accused as a witch and the powerful, degenerate man questioning her. 2) It pays homage to the Asimov robot stories, referring to the Three Laws and similar philosophical issues. 3) It outlines questions in the dialog that fall out from the current conflict between conservative and neo-left politics. 4) It’s pretty erotic. Wright doesn’t fall short on the character descriptions, and the BDSM elements are obvious.

Cons: Wright’s big fault is in overdoing his stories. He has a huge command of meaning and subtext, but more isn’t always better—this ends up being very dense and hard to digest. The story could have been improved by thinning it out some, and Wright could have written a couple of other stories (or a novel) instead to expand on the material. There was a twist ending, but it wasn’t hard to predict. I’m not sure if this was because of subtle foreshadowing or clues in the dialog. Regardless, I’m a little surprised that the story ended up being so cynical. Isn’t superversive SF supposed to be upbeat and affirming?

Three and a half stars.

Comments on the Nebula Reading List top five short stories

It takes 10 nominations to make a story a Nebula finalist, so these five stories I’ve just reviewed look to be the ones with the best likelihood to make it.

Since I’m reading down the list, there are a few trends sticking out. As far as I know, only SFWA members can make recommendations. Because the listing has been recommended by professionals in the genre, I’d expect to get good quality on the list. These stories I’ve just reviewed have recommendations in the double digits, but I’m just not finding a lot of what I’d call substance in the content. I’m thinking all those people are clicking the “recommend” button because they want to affirm the message. If I’m looking for quality stories to nominate, does that mean I can put any confidence in the number of recommendations the stories have gotten at all? Hm. Maybe not. Does this mean the trend to sentimental stories has shifted and this year message fiction is the in thing? Hm. Maybe so. Hopefully there’s more substance further down the list.

Next, I’m seeing a lot of repetition in the names. Caroline Yoachim, for example, has 5 stories on the list; A. Merc Rustad has three; José Pablo Iriarte has three, etc. I’m not sure what to make of this, except that these people must be very consistently high quality writers.

Third, I don’t see any real, serious hard SF in the top five. I commented on this trend a couple of years back after the awards cycle, the fact that hard SF is in trouble, being replaced (this year) with somewhat humorous message fiction dressed up in a thin veneer of SF or fantasy. I have to agree that the stories are entertaining and fun and that the messages are progressive, but there are no fully developed short stories in this group of five with, for example, strong character development, great world building, vivid imagery, thoughtful themes and universal questions about the human condition. What’s happened? Is this the influence of “Cat Pictures Please,” last year’s Hugo winner? Or has pressure from the Puppies encouraged the SFWA to promote progressive political messages at the expense of well-developed, serious science fiction and fantasy stories?

One last observation is that just a few magazines seem to be dominating the list. For example, Lightspeed has 20 entries in the current list, Daily Science Fiction has 12, Clarkesworld has 10, F&SF has 10 and Strange Horizons has 10. Glancing at the titles, I don’t think hard SF is the reigning paradigm. This isn’t a new trend, either. Analog did make a better showing this year than it sometimes does, with 5 entries. Where should I look for stronger substance? Is Asimov’s still the indicator there?