Tag: Hugo awards

Some Hugo-related Balisebooks

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I’m not writing much about books anymore, but I’m taking the excuse of “I just read all of the Hugo-nominated novels for this year” to talk a bit about, well, books. The selection for the Hugo Awards for Best Novel 2025 had the interesting property of having two books by the same author, Adrian Tchaikovsky. I had heard from him but hadn’t read any of his work, so that was a good opportunity for an introduction.

I had read only one book from the selection before the nominations were announced, so I was fairly excited to see a lot of stuff that had escaped my radar so far! I was a bit less excited to realize that it looked like a fairly heavily body-horror-skewed list, but I also realized during this reading adventure that it was less of a deal-breaker than I thought it was.

I have not made final decisions on my ballot yet, apart from knowing what’s lower half, what’s upper half, and what will probably be on top of my ballot, but I don’t have the exact ranking yet. So, instead of going by rank, I’m just going to do like the WorldCon announcement and go by title alphabetical order.

Alien Clay – Adrian Tchaikovsky

Alien Clay is told from the perspective of Professor Daghdev, an academic whose dream of visiting alien worlds just got granted. But, in the vast “be careful what you wish for” tradition, it’s been granted by his exile to a penal colony on a very unhospitable planet, Kiln. Kiln has a very enthusiastic ecosystem, which tends to combine together and with everything, including alien-to-them life forms. It does not help with the planet hospitality, and the authoritarian penal colony conditions do not help either.

I was not super convinced by Alien Clay, maybe because I expected more of it. The world-building is honestly great, the whole biology stuff is very cool (albeit very creepy)… but the rest fell somewhat flat for me. My general impression was one of “you fell in love with your setting and the plot fell a bit short”. This is lower half of my ballot.

The Ministry of Time – Kaliane Bradley

The Ministry of Time is the only novel I had read before the nominations. It’s a story that stems from the question “what if we could extract people from their time just before their death, and bring them to our contemporary era?”. It follow an unnamed character who becomes a civil servant tasked with helping these extracted people integrate into society, and it devolves from there into a time travel romance and a spy novel.

I remember highly enjoying this when I read it back in November. I liked the premise of extracting people from their time rather than traveling through time, and I found the idea of having that handled by British civil servants tickling. I was not super convinced by the ending, which felt rushed, but not obnoxiously so either. But, to me, it does not read as genre/SFF fiction. It reads as literary fiction with some time travel sprinkled on top. Because of that, this will be lower half of my ballot – I believe that the Hugos should award a novel that’s more firmly inside the genre.

Service Model – Adrian Tchaikovsky

Service Model follows Charles (it’s complicated), a robot valet who suddenly found himself out of a job because of the unfortunate demise of his human owner. And it turns out that it’s getting very, very difficult to find another human in need of a robot valet. Thankfully, he encounters The Wonk, who will endeavor to convince him that he shouldn’t feel constrained by his programming, and that probably he already already isn’t anymore.

I enjoyed the characters and the situations, it was a very funny book, but somehow I do not remember the ending – I think it may have been quicker-paced than the rest of the novel and that it kind of confused me. It does end on the lower half of my ballot, but only because the other three books are stronger, as far as I’m concerned 🙂

Someone You Can Build A Nest In – John Wiswell

Someone You Can Build A Nest In was maybe the best surprise of this round of nominations. It is described by the publisher as a “creepy, charming monster-slaying fantasy romance—from the perspective of the monster”, and it is indeed exactly that. I was expecting to bounce off that one hard, especially since the monster, Shesheshen, is a blob that steals pieces from her human meals to build her own body in order to pass as human when needed. Charming indeed. Definitely HEAVILY full of body horror, that one.

And yet, I enjoyed it a lot. It’s funny, it’s queer, Shesheshen is oddly relatable apart from the people-eating issue, the romance is sweet, and it worked very well. I read it before it won the Nebula, and I’m very happy it got that award; definitely first half of my ballot.

A Sorceress Comes to Call – T. Kingfisher

A Sorceress Comes to Call is told from the point of view of Cordelia, 14 years old, who lives with her controlling mother, who is determined to remarry and have Cordelia find a rich spouse too. And by “controlling”, I mean “literally magically mind-controlling”. One night, Cordelia’s mother wakes her up and they flee to the estate of the Squire, a man that she has set in her sights as acceptable. The Squire is a nice man, his sister Hester even more so, and it becomes Cordelia’s goal to prevent her mother to wreck havoc on that family. Oh, and of course, there’s a horse.

I wouldn’t call this book “a delightful read” because the amount of family abuse and trauma around Cordelia is heart-wrenching and it does hurt. But the cast of secondary characters is fantastic, the book was hard to put down, and it fits solidly in the first half of my ballot too.

The Tainted Cup – Robert Jackson Bennett

I almost didn’t read The Tainted Cup, because it was provided in the Hugo voting package as watermarked PDF, but I sighed and bought another copy and I’m very glad that I did. In The Tainted Cup, we follow Din, the young assistant to Ana, a brilliant and eccentric detective. Din is an engraver: he got augmented to be able to have perfect recall of the memories he anchors by smell. It comes handy as Ana mostly refuses to go outside of her home and wears a blindfold most of the time to avoid over-stimulation. For their latest case, they investigate the death of an Imperial officer, who apparently died when a tree spontaneously sprouted out of him. Not an uncommon occurrence in Din and Ana’s world, where plant contagion does happen (and where plants and people can be manipulated to fulfill certain tasks), but still somewhat suspicious.

I loved The Tainted Cup and it has a high chance to finish on top of my ballot. I was faulting Alien Clay for “having a cool setting but lacking on the plot”; The Tainted Cup also has tremendous world-building (one that I’ll be happy to revisit in later books of the series) and I found the plot and story far more engaging. I’m definitely happy I read that book.

There, these were my thoughts on the Novel finalists. The Hugo Awards have many more categories, and I do try to vote on as many categories as I can, so I still have some reading to do before July 23rd 🙂

#balisebooks – Hugo 2021 Short Stories

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I haven’t talked about books much (… if at all…) this year. Part of the reason is that I do not commute at all anymore, and my book-reading time got slashed in the process. Part of the reason is that I’m still struggling with committing to write longer pieces and, while my posts don’t go into much detail, they still take a significant amount of time that I’m having a hard time making, now that I’m back to working full-time.

And that’s how I end up on the day before the closing of the Hugo ballots going “argh, I haven’t read the short stories yet!” and doing that in a single evening, despite having had significantly more time than last year between the opening and the closing of the vote (In all fairness, this year I did rank all the Best Novel candidates!). And, since I thoroughly enjoyed all of them, I felt it would be a nice small, contained thing to blog about. So here we go! And you get my ballot order at the same time… and since they’re also available on their respective publisher’s websites, you also get some short reads if you feel so inclined 🙂

6. Metal Like Blood in the Dark, T. Kingfisher

“What if Hansel and Gretel were robots, and in space?” It was quite a lot of adventures for Sister-the-mining-robot and Brother-the-flying-robot, and I particularly enjoyed the existential discussion about lying and its consequences.

5. Open House on Haunted Hill, John Wiswell

“What if the only goal of the haunted house was to find new inhabitants?” This is a story told from the perspective of such a haunted house, and it’s quite heartwarming.

4. Little Free Library, Naomi Kritzer

“What if there was a mysterious but friendly borrower in a Little Free Library?” (you know these book boxes that spawn in various places? 🙂 ). This was quite cute, a bit sad, and it was a story about a library and the people that put and borrows books in it – what’s not to like?

3. Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse, Rae Carson

“What if zombies were attracted to birth giving?” I was prepared to not like this one at all, due to not liking zombie stories in general. It turns out that the take, the relationships between the characters, and the general action and feminist badassery was enough to make me give my first enthusiastic 5* on GoodReads for this Hugo ballot of short stories (with the comment “I don’t even like zombie stories!”). Quite a feat.

2. The Mermaid Astronaut, Yoon Ha Lee

“What if the Little Mermaid wanted to go to space instead of marrying a prince?” That’s it, that’s the story. It has a strong “Becky Chambers” feeling, and I was pretty convinced until the last minute that it would be the top of my ballot.

1. A Guide for Working Breeds, Vina Jie-Min Prasad

“What if indentured robots had a fondness for dogs?”, I guess. I also do have a strong fondness for epistolary or epistolary-like narrative styles, so that helps. The voices of the robots are very distinct and I laughed out loud for the whole time I read this short story. This was absolutely fantastic, and the top of my ballot this year, even if the ballot itself is very, very strong.

All in all, I think the short story ballot has been my favorite this year. I couldn’t help but notice that all the stories were essentially happy or hopeful or both, with possibly less conflict and shock than one would typically expect from the genre. And, to me, this was very enjoyable: I finished the evening of “reading all the things and ranking them” happier than I started it, and that’s worth a lot in my book.

#balisebooks – 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novella

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After making choices for the Short Story award for the Hugo, I started reading the novellas, and ranking as I went as well. So let’s talk about all the Hugo nominated novellas 🙂 As for the short stories, any one of these is absolutely worth reading; I ended up having preferences… not necessarily where I was expecting (I was honestly thinking my #2 would finish #1, and I was expecting #5 to arrive much higher… and yet.), and all the works are very different, which I enjoyed.

6. The Haunting of Tram Car 015, by P. Djèlí Clark

This is a story set in an alternative Cairo at the very beginning of the 20th century. Alternative, because djinns, magic and alchemy have been a thing enough that there exists a Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities. We follow Hamed and Onsi, who have been tasked with understanding the why and the how of The Haunting of Tram Car 015 – as the title helpfully hints 😉 The atmosphere (including some great background about women’s voting rights) and world-building were fascinating, and I liked the character dynamic between Hamed, a fairly senior agent, and Onsi, a wonderfully enthusiastic newbie. For me specifically, it lacked something (I don’t know what!) to make it entirely memorable, which I regret.

5. This Is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

I really, really wanted to love this one. Time travelling Romeo&Juliet? Yes please. Epistolary novel where the protagonists explain in detail their medium of writing, and every single one is more wonderful than the next? YES PLEASE. Absolutely gorgeous writing, to the point of real poetry? Doesn’t hurt, and check. Buuuuuuuuuuut I wasn’t able to connect with that book to the point I feel I should have to enjoy it fully. I think it’s a matter of “it’s not the book, it’s me” – and I think it’ll be high on the list of “things I need to re-read when I think I’ll be able to connect with it more”. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this one gets the Best Novella award, and I’d be happy with it; it was just not my thing this time around (and I’m sad about it.)

4. The Deep, by Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes

The Deep talks about the wajinru, a folk that lives in the depth of the ocean. The wajinru have a historian, who’s chosen in every generation to hold the (traumatic) memory of their people. We follow the story of Yetu, the current historian – who has a very hard time holding that history in herself. The history of the wajinru is haunting, and its description in The Deep is fantastically well-rendered. The story of Yetu is heartbreaking and yet very relatable. And there’s a whole lot of philosophical questions around sacrifice, and around the idea of identity versus history, that I found very interesting too. This was not a fast-paced book, but it was very impactful.

3. Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom, by Ted Chiang

The premise of this is very cool – consider a device, called a prism, that allows SOME communication between two parallel universes that differ from the point of a quantum event shown recorded by the device in question. Now, consider the use that quantum event as a “coin flip” – and boom, you have something that allows you to answer the question of “what if I had made that other choice?”. And since that quantum event has some chaotic consequences, you can find prisms in which things diverge in larger or smaller measures. On top of that setting, add some people who are trying to make profit from these communications with parallel universes, and boom, you get Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom (love that title, by the way). I really liked the exploration of what worked and what didn’t in the setting, and the questions about “what is actually ‘core me'” was fascinating too. All in all, this was a very enthusing read 🙂

2. To Be Taught, If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers

This was the only novella I read before the Hugo nominations were out – because Becky Chambers, if you think I’m going to wait months before reading anything Becky Chambers writes… well. (Yes, I’m fangirling hard. Deal with it.) At the time I read it last year, I was writing: “A chronicle about a long-term space mission – 4 people on a starship, exploring 4 very different planets. It has a solid, competent crew, and science, and feels, and it feels so much longer (in a good way!!) than the small amount of pages, and it’s lovely, and am I fangirling a little bit too hard here? naaaahhh…”. I’ll keep it at that; and since it was the first I read and I loved it so much, that was a very high bar.

1. In an Absent Dream, by Seanan McGuire

My vote for Best Novella will go to In an Absent Dream. It’s about the tale of Katherine Lundy, who finds a door to the Goblin Market, where rules are important and fair value is an absolute rule (what “fair value” means is also discussed and a whole part of the book). I loved the main character, I loved the concept of the Goblin Market, and I profoundly enjoyed the fact that the more “epic” parts of the story were actually not shown but barely mentioned as “events that happened” (and that actually had important consequences!). This was a magical read – and definitely not all rainbows and unicorns, it also had a fair amount of sadness and of bittersweetness – and I loved this novella so much. Seanan McGuire (and the series of which In an Absent Dream is a part of) is definitely on the list of people from whom I want to read more stuff (… as soon as I’m done with reading all I can for the Hugo voting, I mean!)

“Hugo Award”, “Worldcon” and The Hugo Award Logo are service marks of the World Science Fiction Society, an unincorporated literary society.

#balisebooks – 2020 Hugo Award for Best Short Story

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I subscribed to the “I want to vote for the Hugo awards” tier of CoNZealand/Worldcon a few months ago, and the voter packets have just arrived! I don’t expect to be able to vote for all the awards, because there is A LOT of content, and not that much time until mid-July; but the Short Story one is definitely a “low-hanging fruit” when it comes to making my mind for the one I want to vote for. So I read all of them, and here’s my personal ranking!

The cool thing about short stories is that most of them are publicly available, so you can go and have a look too 🙂 And the cool thing about Hugo-nominated stories is that they are all worth a read – I have my favorites and the ones I like less, but they are all objectively great works.

6. Do Not Look Back, My Lion – Alix E. Harrow

Eefa is a self-described good husband, but she’s fed up with her wife going to war, again, especially since said wife is pregnant, again. As you can probably see from this short description, there’s a fair amount of playing with/subverting traditional gender role clichés in this short story – which I’m all in favor of. But, while it is very well-written, and while I actually like the characters, I get the impression that this is the main point of the story, and that I’d like a bit more plot. To be honest, and that probably says more about me than about the story… I was somewhat bored.

5. A Catalog of Storms – Fran Wilde

In Sila’s world, the way to weather storms is to name them and yell at them; but the weathermen who have this power end up being taken by the storms. This was for sure very poetic and I thought I would love this – but it ended up being somewhat confusing for me, and it didn’t move me much. Loved the lists of winds, though – these are beautiful. Oh, and the cover of the Uncanny in which this has been published is fantastic.

4. And Now His Lordship Is Laughing – Shiv Ramdas

In India during WWII, Apa, a Bengali old woman, makes jute dolls that caught the eye of the local governor – who won’t take no for an answer when he asks for one. This was the first story I read, and while I liked it a lot, I knew it would probably not get my vote. The story and the context are powerful, and the writing is superb and memorable, but this is not the kind of stories that I personally enjoy. The historical context makes it complicated for me – yes, I’m glad I read it because I suck at world history and anything that makes me aware of historical events and makes me look into them is welcome, and there’s no denying that these stories are important to tell and to read, but it doesn’t make the experience… comfortable. Not that reading should be comfortable, but I’ll admit that my own discomfort makes this short story lower in my rating that it probably deserves.

3. Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island – Nibedita Sen

Literally what the title says – a story of “cannibal women of Ratnabar Island” (and one who’s been brought to England), told as excerpts from an annotated bibliography. I found it very interesting how much story can be told and implied in such a short story. I absolutely loved to see the many sides of the story (that felt fun and quite cheeky), and I’d be very curious about a longer form – although a longer form would probably not deliver the same punch. And I was delighted by the form of this work. All in all, loved it.

2. As the Last I May Know – S.L. Huang

A story from the point of view of Nyma, a young girl who carries the codes for “seres missiles” in her chest: if the President wants to use said missiles, he has to kill her first to access them. It’s definitely a story built on a moral dilemma (which feels like some kind of variation of the trolley dilemma) as a major plot device, but there’s enough flesh given to the characters that it’s more than that. It’s a bleak story, but I’d qualify that as “softly bleak” – with more resignation and acceptance than hate and vengeance. And it was honestly a tough choice between this and the next one for the first place.

1. Blood Is Another Word for Hunger – Rivers Solomon

Sully, a teenage slave, mass-murders the family that owns her, and gives birth to Ziza, already a teenager at the time of her birth too. I feel like I should not have liked this story. For one thing, it’s quite graphical with a LOT of blood, and the premise is way more WTF than I usually like. And, as I mentioned in And Now His Lordship Is Laughing, historical context often makes me uncomfortable. And all in all, this is a strange and uncomfortable story – uncanny may be the right word – and yet haunting and beautiful and a real surprise when it comes to “I… I think I liked this a lot, although I can’t explain it”.

There, that’s all for me. As hinted at the beginning, I will actually be happy with any of these short stories winning the award. This is the first time I read the whole selection and get to have Opinions on this specific award, so I wouldn’t dare to bet on the winner 😉 They’re all very solid choices; the general selection seems to be somewhat bleaker than what I usually enjoy in my fiction, but I can only recommend all of you to have a look at these if you’re in the market for some short bites to read.

“Hugo Award”, “Worldcon” and The Hugo Award Logo are service marks of the World Science Fiction Society, an unincorporated literary society.