"Atheism and Flight" by Dominica Phetteplace :: Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week

So I've been homebound for a while, recovering from a spot of surgery, and taking the chance to catch up on some of the recently published short fiction in the field. Which is to say, Story Recommendation of the Week is officially a thing again!

My first 2016 Story Recommendation of the Week is for "Atheism and Flight," a novelette by Dominica Phetteplace, from the January 2016 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction.

In the near future, our first-person protagonist Bos is despondent over the loss of an arm in an accident. He moves in with his best friend Jimeo and his girlfriend Cleo, who soon moves out. ("I felt like a child of divorce.") Bos determines he's not merely going to overcome his injury, he is going to transcend it.

He begins to plan joining up with a group of mystical canyon-leaping daredevils. His body seems to share his fierce ambitions, as before long his arm begins to regenerate.

This is a nicely constructed piece, with an elegant style and wonderful interactions between the characters throughout. I love how Bos's search for transcendence plays out through the end of the piece.

I confess I don't know much about Dominica Phetteplace, other than she is a Clarion grad, whose fiction has been popping up in Asimov's, Clarkesworld, Flytrap, and other places in the past five years. Here's looking forward to much more of her work!

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: "Run," Bakri Says by Ferrett Steinmetz

My Story Recommendation of the Week is for "'Run,' Bakri Says" by Ferrett Steinmetz, from the December 2011 issue of Asimov's. This is Steinmetz's second SROTW.

Authors have been writing stories inspired by video games since I first began reading science fiction in the 1970's, and for far longer than that they've been writing fiction to illustrate the dehumanizing effects of war. Yet in "'Run,' Bakri Says," Ferrett Steinmetz manages to do both in an original and powerful way.

In an unnamed battlefield in the War on Terror, Irena is desperate to rescue her brother, captured by American soldiers, before he reveals to them what he has invented. She uses the invention to try to save him, but its effects are not predictable. The inexorable progression of the rescue attempt is both poignant and disturbing.

I don't want to reveal the way the brother's invention works, for fear of spoiling how the story unfolds, but I will say it involves a subtle form of time travel. And so I'm most annoyed the story came out at the same time as my story Random Fire, thus entirely overshadowing my own attempt at writing a fresh time travel story.

"'Run,' Bakri Says" is not a pleasant story to read, but you'll be glad you did.

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: The Man Who Bridged the Mist by Kij Johnson

My story recommendation of the week is for "The Man Who Bridged the Mist" by Kij Johnson, cover story of the October/November issue of Asimov's Science Fiction (cover by Paul Youll).

The past few years, Kij Johnson has been winning awards with short parables, such as the delightful "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss," the disturbing "Spar," and the delightful-but-then-disturbing "Ponies." "The Man Who Bridged the Mist" is quite different from those pieces -- longer and more deliberate, less flashy -- but similarly rewarding.

Kit Meinem is in charge of building a massive bridge over the great river bisecting the empire that employs him. This has never been done, because the river is covered in "mist." Mist is a misnomer; this layer is lighter than water, but still dense enough to support boats on its shifting surface and strange varieties of "fish" beneath. The "fish" are poorly understood, especially the largest and most dangerous, which the locals unimaginatively call "Big Ones."

The huge undertaking will demand all Kit's skills both as engineer and politician, as he tries to maintain the support of the locals. Kit becomes fascinated with the ambivalent reactions of the local ferry operators, the beautiful Rasali Ferry and her brother Valo. The bridge will put them out of work (compelling them to change last names), but then again it may save them from their profession's customary early death -- each ferry crossing is a hazardous trip.

The huge bridge symbolizes Kit's desire for meaningful interpersonal connections, but Johnson employs the metaphor delicately enough that it's never annoying. At novella length, Johnson is able to coax the relationships between her characters along gently, in a way that proves most satisfying. For example, halfway into the story, Kit and Rasali have spent a fair bit of time together but it's not clear how close they have become. Then, while Rasali is on the opposite bank, Kit sees one of his bridge workers killed. Kit first worries how the townspeople will react, then flashes back to a university instructor talking about how Kit relates to people:

You're good with people, I've seen it. You like them. . . . But inside the framework of a project. Right now it's your studies. Later it'll be roads and bridges. But people around you -- their lives go on outside the framework. They're not just tools to your hand, even likable tools. Your life should go on, too. You should have more than roads to live for. Because if something does go wrong, you'll need what you're feeling to matter, to someone somewhere, anyway.

When Rasali returns to Kit's side of the river, she immediately helps him to express his own grief over those who have died under his command, and we realize, even if he does not, that Kit now has someone to whom what he's feeling matters.

The science fictional aspects of this story mostly stay in the background, and some readers may find the tale lacking in drama, but I don't think it would benefit from extra explosions or action sequences. This a story of believable characters, who experience real confusion and pain, and I grew to like them very much.

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: Movement by Nancy Fulda

The story recommendation of the week goes to "Movement" by Nancy Fulda, our second SROTW from the March 2011 issue of Asimov's.

This is a short but very powerful piece, the first-person narrative of Hannah, a young woman with "temporal autism," experiencing the passage of time differently from most humans:

[My parents] are not calm and quiet like my brother. They are sweaty from the night air and speak in tense sentences that all jumble on top of each other. If they would bother to wait I might find words to soothe their frantic babble. But they do not know how to speak on my time scale. Their conversations are paced in seconds, sometimes in minutes. It is like the buzzing of mosquitoes in my ears. I need days, sometimes weeks to sort my thoughts and find the perfect answer.

Hannah's condition prevents her from having "normal" interpersonal relationships, but it also allows her a unique perspective on the fast-changing world around her and contributes to her exceptional dancing and cognitive skills. Her parents are considering a medical procedure to undo Hannah's condition. Her mother asks her if she wants this done, but of course Hannah cannot answer right away.

This tale has a strong set-up, raising difficult questions about what is most important in life. Reminiscent of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Fulda's narrative does a wonderful job of getting us inside the mind of her unusual protagonist. The story is also spiced with interesting speculations about the implications of new communications technology.

But what makes "Movement" especially memorable is the outstanding ending. In just a few paragraphs, we learn Hannah's decision, we understand why it is so important to her, and we are heartbroken to realize it is unlikely she will be able to make her wishes understood.

"Movement" is an award-caliber story, and clearly a major breakthrough in the career of Nancy Fulda.

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: "I Was Nearly Your Mother" by Ian Creasey

My story recommendation of the week is for "I Was Nearly Your Mother" by Ian Creasey, from the March 2011 issue of Asimov's.

Here is a 10,000-word story in which the main character never much does anything but talk, yet I found it fascinating reading. The protagonist of "I Was Nearly Your Mother" is Marian, a teenage girl living with her grandparents, because her mother died four years earlier and her father is in prison. She has come through these trying circumstances with admirable composure, but there are hints that her mental state remains fragile.

Then arrives on her doorstep an unfamiliar version of her late mother. This woman (who refers to herself as Della) has traveled from an alternate universe, where she aborted her pregnancy then came to regret the decision. Della assumes that Marian will instantly accept her as her lost mother, even though it is obvious from her behavior that she knows nothing at all about parenting, but of course Marian's reactions are far more complicated than that.

Marian is a flawed character and her para-Mother is deeply flawed (she pays for her alternate universe excursions through multiversal drug deals), but Creasey presents their flaws with sympathy. For instance, Marian is well on her way to an eating disorder, but Creasey shows this as a believable manifestation of her distrust of a world that has betrayed her: "She hated being told that weight didn't matter, when it so obviously did. It was just another way that adults lied, pretending the world was different, pretending that the fake surfaces didn't eclipse anything real that might lie underneath."

Creasey nicely develops alternate universes as a metaphor for how we all have choices to regret, we've all strayed from the path that would have worked out best for us:

Marian thought about the world Della came from, just one of an infinite range of worlds where things had happened differently -- mostly gone wrong in various ways. It felt like there was one real universe, a shining summit where everything happened as it should: a needle-thin pinnacle, surrounded by endless swampy lowlands full of bad decisions, unlucky accidents, and damaged people. As you slogged through the mire, could you clamber up to some better state? But how, when you couldn't see the landscape of probability? You'd find yourself flailing inevitably downward to your doom, confronted with far more wrong options than right. And everyone else in the world plummeted down too, dragging you with them. Even if you did the right thing, you had no control over other people's mistakes, their car crashes and jail sentences. Every time you slept, the world fell a little further during the night.

Even if we could travel between universes, that wouldn't relieve the need to come to terms with our own mistakes or the mistakes of those around us.

Clearly a new writer to watch, in the past five years Ian Creasey has had ten stories in Asimov's -- including "Erosion," which was chosen for multiple year's best collections for 2009 -- and has appeared in other top-notch magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, and Postscripts.

To my tastes, Asimov's has been a bit uneven for the past few years, but the March 2011 issue is excellent, reaffirming the magazine's position as the premier source of short fiction in the field. I'll recommend another story from the March issue next week.

Aaron's Take on the 2010 Hugo Nominees :: SHORT STORIES

Short stories are often my least favorite of the Hugo fiction categories, but this year's slate has a good ratio of two excellent stories (one that I nominated and one I would have if I had read it in time), two good ones, and one lousy one.

My top choice is "Spar" by Kij Johnson, about a woman who escapes a spacewreck in a lifeboat shared by an amoeboid alien, with whom she cannot communicate except to engage in sexual intercourse. The opening line is, "In the tiny lifeboat, she and the alien fuck endlessly, relentlessly." Kij Johnson is usually an elegant writer, but this story is deliberately harsh. "Spar" is not an enjoyable reading experience, but it is a powerful, memorable story. It has important things to say about gender issues and sexual politics, concepts Johnson could not convey without the SFnal premise. I suspect I will still have strong recollections of "Spar" decades from now, that it will still be coming up in conversation. That is the kind of story I like to see win a Hugo Award.

I read most of the January 2009 issue of Asimov's when it came out, but I skipped "Bridesicle" by Will McIntosh, because the story idea sounded unpromising: young women who have died are kept frozen, in hopes that a rich man will come along to pay for the expensive procedure to revive them, in the future's version of mail-order brides. But McIntosh adds a crucial additional element, that another option for a dying person is to preserve his or her identity in the mind of a survivor. Our protagonist Mira is a frozen potential bride, who previously held her mother's personality, but it was lost when Mira died, to her guilty relief. To be resurrected, Mira must hope to marry a rich older man, even though she is gay, which makes the whole set-up a metaphor for societal barriers against gays. These different elements combine together nicely into a very strong story.

In "The Bride of Frankenstein," Mike Resnick similarly writes of a bride in unusual circumstances. The story is a humorous take on the Frankenstein story, told from the point of view of Victor Frankenstein's bitchy, modern wife, who doesn't understand why he's squandering her stock portfolio for experiments on a hideous creature. Resnick takes the tale in a romantic direction I found quite charming.

N.K. Jemisin's "Non-Zero Probabilities" is a well-crafted story, which finds an optimistic take on a daunting premise, basically that Murphy's Law has taken utter control of Manhattan. When the Hugo nominations came out, I started to read this, was quite enjoying it, and got well into the story before realizing that I already read it last year. So this is an enjoyable but not at all memorable story, completely the reverse of "Spar." The good news for Jemisin is now I recall why I picked up that copy of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms sitting in my to-read pile.

Last and by far least is "The Moment" by Lawrence M. Schoen, a dreadful piece that has no business on a Hugo ballot. The story is about aliens visiting Neil Armstrong's footprint on the moon, but you can't give Schoen credit for that mildly clever idea -- it was written for a theme anthology of stories about aliens visiting the astronauts' footprints on the moon. "The Moment" is a hopeless jumble of sentences like, "The generation ship of Krenn frantically dumped velocity as it splooched from the fuel-efficient but mind-numbing slowness of intramolecular phasetransit back into the normal time-space continuum, less than a cubit above the moon." Perhaps this is meant as a tongue-in-cheek send-up of really bad pulp-era skiffy, but it is that only in the sense that "The Moment" is itself really bad pulp-style skiffy. I actually wrote a long rant for this blog chastising whoever stuffed this turkey onto the ballot, but I think I won't publish it. I googled around and while I can't find much praise for this story, I also don't see that others have disliked it as much as I did. Rich Horton has called it "interesting" and "worth reading," so maybe I missed some redeeming quality.

Aaron's Ballot for Best Short Story
1. Kij Johnson - Spar
2. Will McIntosh - Bridesicle
3. Mike Resnick - The Bride of Frankenstein
4. N.K. Jemisin - Non-Zero Probabilities
5. NO AWARD
6. Lawrence M. Schoen - The Moment

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: Marya and the Pirate by Geoffrey A. Landis

This week's story recommendation is "Marya and the Pirate" by Geoffrey A. Landis, a novelette from the January 2010 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction.

Some readers complain that nobody publishes the kind of fun space adventure that was the bread and butter of science fiction in the 1950's. The trouble is that all those stories were published in the 1950's, and it is awfully difficult to write a story like that today that doesn't feel stale.

Geoffrey Landis pulls it off in "Mary and the Pirate." Like a Murray Leinster story of old, it begins with a space pirate closing in on a transport ship carrying a very valuable cargo into Earth orbit. Later, the pirate and his captive face a problem of inexorable celestial mechanics, reminiscent of Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations." But Landis manages to add enough new twists and details and modern sensibility to keep it all fresh, and not just a pastiche of old-style skiffy.

Among his many awards, Geoffrey A. Landis has garnered two Hugos and a Nebula. His output has declined in quantity the past few years, but not at all in quality.

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: Act One by Nancy Kress

The story recommendation for this week goes to "Act One" by Nancy Kress, a novella from the March 2009 issue of Asimov's.

Late in "Act One," the narrator asks, "Is it wrong to genetically modify human beings?" This is an important question, one about which our society is currently in collective denial, apparently believing we can keep that genie in the bottle. "Act One" is set in the near future, as the technology is becoming available to genetically modify people, either by gene therapy in utero or by delivery of a gene-altering retrovirus. This technology will be developed not far in the future and it will be used, despite any laws we pass against it. "Act One" delves into some of the implications of tinkering with the blueprint for a human.

What's more, these implications are addressed in the context of an absorbing story, involving engaging and complex characters. Particularly compelling is the main protagonist, Barry Tenler, perhaps the best-drawn dwarf character I have seen in science fiction (depending on whether you think Miles Vorkosigan qualifies). He is resentful of his stature and the pain he endures daily but he soldiers on admirably; yet at the same time he is definitely a flawed human being who has made some regrettable decisions in his life -- far more interesting than the traditional plucky little person, a Hollywood stereoptype Barry himself mocks in the story.

As "Act One" begins, Barry is the manager of a beautiful actress whose career is in a tailspin. To prepare her for a role in a film about children who have been genetically altered for increased empathy, they visit a covert group bent on modifyinging mankind for greater compassion, a group prepared to act as ruthlessly as necessary to achieve this end. Is this justifiable? Nancy Kress gives no pat answers, but she asks the question in a fascinating way.

Aaron's Story Recommendation of the Week :: Shoggoths in Bloom by Elizabeth Bear

My story recommendation for this week is "Shoggoths in Bloom" by Elizabeth Bear, a novelette first published in the March 2008 issue of Asimov's, and now available on-line here.

In the past five years, Elizabeth Bear has published fourteen novels and closing on fifty short stories. That would be impressive if she were writing crap, but to be able to write her award-caliber fiction at that pace is simply absurd. I only started reading her stuff last year, and I despair of ever catching up.

As Cthulhu fans will know from the title, "Shoggoths in Bloom" is an homage to H.P. Lovecraft. An earnest professor in the late 1930's studies great, amoeba-like shoggoths found off the coast of Maine and finds more than he bargained for. I know it's sacrilegious, but to my reckoning there is far more of this sort of thing around than we really need. Yes, Lovecraft was ahead of his time, and still worth reading today despite his obvious flaws as a writer. But if you are interested in his work, you can find it pretty easily; there is little need for today's authors to continue adding to the Cthulhu Mythos.

I will forgive Elizabeth Bear in this case, however, for two reasons. First, "Shoggoths in Bloom" is such a beautifully crafted story that it would make for excellent reading even if you never heard of H.P. Lovecraft. Second, Bear tells the story convincingly through the eyes of an educated African-American in the 1930's, who must silently endure being called "boy" by the ignorant locals, even as he reads with horror of the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Germany. Bear manages to relate the Cthulhu background to this context, a most fitting reworking of the Cthulhu Mythos, since Lovecraft himself was an intolerable racist and anti-Semite. (Don't bother arguing the point -- the man had a cat named "Nigger-Man," for heaven's sake.) Bear handles her social message very adeptly without ever lecturing her reader.

I'll have another story involving race relations to recommend next week.

Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Asimov's Science Fiction June 2007

The Magazine of the Week is the June 2007 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction, with funky alien cover art by John Allemand. This is the Magazine of the Week because it contains "Tideline" by Elizabeth Bear, this year's Hugo Award winner for Best Short Story.

Elizabeth Bear has recently burst onto the science fiction and fantasy scene. Her first story was published in 2003 and her first novel in 2005, but incredibly she will have released fourteen books by the end of this year, all of which have been well received. "Tideline," her first work to be nominated for a Hugo Award but one suspects not the last, is the moving tale of a derelict but intelligent war machine seeking meaning in its final days of consciousness before its batteries die.

Having now covered all of Denvention's Hugo winners for fiction, next week's Book of the Week will be the most collectible item I acquired in the Denvention dealer room.

Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Asimov's Science Fiction December 2007

The Magazine of the Week is the December 2007 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction (cover art by Michael Carroll) with cover story "All Seated on the Ground" by Connie Willis.

At the World Science Fiction Convention here in Denver earlier this month, "All Seated on the Ground" received the Hugo Award for Best Novella of 2007. This was the tenth Hugo Award for fiction of Connie Willis's illustrious career, making her the Michael Phelps of science fiction and fantasy -- the next highest total of Hugos for fiction is seven, by both Poul Anderson and Harlan Ellison. It was fitting that Connie received her tenth award so close to her Greeley home.

"All Seated on the Ground" was Connie's Christmas story for 2007, in which Christmas music proves the key to establishing contact with a stern alien race. Connie Willis Christmas tales are a fixture of Asimov's December issues. Some of her previous Christmas stories were collected in Miracle and Other Christmas Stories (which I reviewed for Fantastic Reviews - see my review). Next week's Magazine of the Week will contain the Hugo winner in the Best Novelette category.

Amy's bookshelf :: Asimov's Science Fiction March 2006

The March 2006 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction contains four novelettes and three short stories. My initial plan was to read the January 2006 issue, but I couldn't locate that magazine at first.

The colorful cover of the March issue caught my eye. The artwork is by J.K. Potter for the novelette "The Kewlest Thing of All" by David Ira Cleary. This futuristic story features a girl that has a videophone embedded in her palm and browser windows across her skin. She is guerilla marketing "kewlness" to a chubby woman technician. The setting is San Francisco flooded by melt water (global warming). It reads like updated cyberpunk. The ending confounded me somewhat, but I'd recommend this story.

"The Gabble" by Neal Asher is a standout SF novelette set on another world. Scientists on the alien world of Masada study its unusual lifeforms, including the highly dangerous hooders and the frustratingly untranslatable gabbleducks.

Other novelettes are "Dark Eden" by Chris Beckett which is a somewhat humorous but clichéd space adventure, and "Dead Men Walking" by Paul J. McAuley which is set on Uranus’s moon of Ariel and has a dying man telling of his search for a gory assassin.

Short story "46 Directions, None of Them North" by Deborah Coates is a fun, slangy, story told by a sixteen-year old girl who has to go to Alaska to see aliens land. "Companion to Owls" by Chris Roberson is a odd fantasy of a man's mostly solitary life on the Roof of a Cathedral that covers thousands of square miles. Last, but not least, is the powerful short story "Rwanda" by Robert Reed which deals with a cheap colonization of Earth, the enormousness of such an event, and how inhumanely humans can act to one another.

Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Asimov's Science Fiction January 2005

The Magazine of the Week is the January 2005 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction, cover art by Michael Whelan. The magazine is signed by Colorado author Connie Willis, whose cover story "Inside Job" won this year's Hugo Award for Best Novella of 2005. (Also note on the cover the name of Roger Ebert, who contributed an essay to this issue. Mr. Ebert is a lifetime fan who once published his own science fiction fanzine -- there are many more of us out there than you knew.)

“Inside Job” is an excellent example of Connie Willis's renowned wit and irony. The story follows Rob, a professional skeptic dedicated to debunking phony psychics and mystics, who encounters a medium channeling notorious skeptic H.L. Mencken. Each time she does this, Mencken's spirit promptly berates her audience for believing in such nonsense. "Inside Job" first appeared in the Magazine of the Week, and was later published as a stand-alone hardcover book by Subterranean Press.

"Inside Job" was my #2 choice for best novella, behind only Kelly Link's remarkable story "Magic for Beginners," but I was still delighted that it won, because Connie Willis deserves all the accolades we can give her. She is a wonderful writer and an incredibly generous person. (You may recall from an earlier BOTW that she drove from Greeley to Denver just to meet with my son and his fourth- and fifth-grade classmates.) This is her ninth Hugo, the most Hugo Awards for fiction of any author ever. Congratulations to Connie Willis on this well-deserved recognition!

Next week we will see the Hugo winner for Best Novel.

Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Asimov's Science Fiction March 2005

The Magazine of the Week is the March 2005 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction (on the cover, Raphael's "Lady with a Unicorn" from 1506), containing this year's Hugo Award-winning short story "Tk'tk'tk" by David D. Levine. This story cleverly tells of a traveling salesman in the future, sent to an alien world that has no use for his products. "Tk'tk'tk" is the phrase he repeatedly hears from customers, which is untranslatable but carries a clear tone of condescension. Even though I voted for "Tk'tk'tk" I was quite surprised it won, since David D. Levine is a relative newcomer to the field who has yet to develop a great fan following, as evidenced by the fact that Asimov's did not even list his name on the cover of the Magazine of the Week.

The Hugo Award is the most prestigious award in science fiction and fantasy. It is presented at the World Science Fiction Convention, the annual gathering of SF's true believers, and voted on by the fans attending the convention. (Incidentally, "Tk'tk'tk" won even though it did not receive the most first-place votes. The Hugos use a preferential balloting system where voters rank the nominees, and if your first choice is eliminated your vote transfers to your next choice, until someone gains a majority. This system much better reflects voters' actual preferences than ordinary voting. If we used it in the U.S., it would have altered the outcomes of two of the last four presidential elections.)

This year's Worldcon was held last weekend in Anaheim, and I was at the Hugo ceremony Saturday night. I rather doubt that I will make next year's Worldcon in Yokohama, Japan, but I will be there the following year, since I am delighted to report that the fans at this year's Worldcon voted to hold the 2008 convention here in Denver. (This was an upset -- Chicago was considered the front-runner.)

This year's Best Short Story Hugo was presented by Harlan Ellison. At the convention, Ellison was in the irascible form described in recent BOTWs. But his cantankerous shtick is by now completely familiar to and accepted by SF fans. At one panel during the convention he went on a tirade directed toward the audience and when he ended by shouting, "Fuck the lot of you!" the crowd responded with a warm round of applause. For all his bad-boy posing, Ellison showed his true colors when he (i) was very gracious in accepting a surprise special award for his career contributions to SF at the Hugo ceremony, (ii) patiently signed books for fans at a signing scheduled for one hour that ended up running over three hours, and (iii) most importantly, was very friendly to yours truly while signing past Books of the Week Rumble and Ace Double D-413, which signatures I expect will add several hundred dollars to what my children will get for my collection for when I die.

At the Hugo ceremony Ellison read the list of nominees for Best Short Story, but then declared he wasn't going to tell us the winner and started off the stage with the envelope. After he was corralled back to the podium, he shouted at the gallery of nominees, "Levine, you here?" There was a muffled, "Yeah!" and Ellison barked, "Get your ass up here!" Levine was so excited he bounced up to the stage and wrapped the cantankerous Harlan Ellison in a giant bear hug. Congratulations to David D. Levine for surviving that and for winning his first Hugo Award.

Next week's Magazine of the Week will contain the Hugo winner for Best Novelette.