Aaron's 2011 Hugo Recommendations :: Best Novella

Listing alphabetically by author, the five novellas I'm planning to nominate for the Hugo Award are:

Paolo Bacigalupi, The Alchemist
Ted Chiang, The Lifecycle of Software Objects
Paul Park, Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance
Robert Reed, A History of Terraforming
Rachel Swirsky, The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Window

"The Alchemist" was very recently published in book form by Subterranean (which also boasts the Chiang and Swirsky stories -- a great showing for that small press in this category), but is eligible for a Hugo this year because it was released on audio by Audible in 2010. The same is true for Tobias Buckell's "The Executioness," set in the same universe, which I also strongly considered nominating. Other near-misses for me were "The Mystery Knight" by George R.R. Martin and "The Sultan of the Clouds" by Geoffrey A. Landis.

All of my choices except the Robert Reed piece are current nominees for the Nebula Award. My tastes don't usually align so well with the Nebula voters, and you will see much less overlap in the other categories.

Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Asimov's Science Fiction March 2008

The Magazine of the Week is the March 2008 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction, containing "Shoggoths in Bloom" by Elizabeth Bear, this year's winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novelette. For the details of this story, see my recommendation of "Shoggoths in Bloom" when I came across it last year.

This is Elizabeth Bear's second Hugo; she won Best Short Story in 2008 for "Tideline." This year she swapped places with Ted Chiang, who won Best Novelette in 2008 and Best Short Story this year. I'm not going to do a separate Book of the Week for Chiang's Hugo-winning short story "Exhalation" (believe it or not I don't have a copy of the anthology it appeared in), but for more about him see my Ted Chiang 2008 Hugo post. Next week, the winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Fantasy & Science Fiction September 2007

The Magazine of the Week is the September 2007 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (cover art by Bryn Barnard), in recognition of the cover story "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang, which won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette of 2007, presented earlier this month at a much better behaved Denver convention than the one going on right now.

Ted Chiang's fiction is very low in quantity and very high in quality. He began writing in 1990 and in that time has published only about a dozen pieces of short fiction, but those stories have garnered nearly universal praise and a host of major awards. "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" was Chiang's second Hugo Award winner (the first was his outstanding novelette "Hell Is the Absence of God") to go with three Nebula Awards and many others. "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" is a time travel story, but set in the Middle East of long ago with a nice Arabian Nights flavor.

Next week we will finish paying tribute to the winners of the Hugo Awards for fiction with the Best Short Story winner.

2008 Hugo Award Winners

BEST NOVEL
The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

BEST NOVELLA
"All Seated on the Ground" by Connie Willis

BEST NOVELETTE
"The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang

BEST SHORT STORY
"Tideline" by Elizabeth Bear

Here are the fiction categories Hugo winners, the top awards, not a complete list of Hugos awarded. The Hugo Awards were presented last night, August 9th, at Denvention 3 in Denver, Colorado. We were there!

Aaron's Take on the 2008 Hugo Nominees :: NOVELETTES

As is often the case, the novelette nominees strike me as the best of the short fiction Hugo categories. All five of the stories are very good, and I find three of them particularly strong.

The two I would rate a half-notch below the others are Dark Integers by Greg Egan, which is a sequel to Luminous and to my tastes too much of a retread of the earlier story, and Finisterra by David Moles, which has some terrific SFnal scenery but does not come together quite as well as the top stories in this category.

I only wish the remaining three novelettes could all tie and share the Hugo, for they are all award-caliber tales. Two of the stories are rather similar, The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate by Ted Chiang and The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairytale of Economics by Daniel Abraham, both of which have the feel of fantasy but are so rigorously developed as arguably to qualify as science fiction. Ted Chiang has long been noted as an author who writes very well even if he does not write very much; meanwhile, with his terrific series The Long Price Quartert, Daniel Abraham has emerged as one of the best fantasists in the business. Both tales make for thought-provoking reading, and even if you have a sense where the stories are going it is great fun watching these two outstanding authors get there.

It is a close call, but my favorite of the novelette nominees is Glory by Greg Egan. This is far-future hard SF as only Egan can do it, combining interesting hard science speculations, including a method of interstellar travel I’ve never seen before in the first two pages, with thought-provoking human issues. After several years away from the field, Glory is a wonderful return to form for Greg Egan.

Aaron's Ballot:
1. Greg Egan – Glory
2. Ted Chiang – The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate
3. Daniel Abraham – The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairytale of Economics
4. David Moles – Finisterra
5. Greg Egan – Dark Integers