2012 Hugo Nominees for Best Novelette

Here's a list of this year's five Hugo nominees for best novelette, with some links to the stories, and in the case of "Ray of Light", an excerpt.

"Six Months, Three Days", Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com 6/8/11)

"The Copenhagen Interpretation", Paul Cornell (Asimov’s 7/11)

"What We Found", Geoff Ryman (F&SF 9-10/11)

"Fields of Gold", Rachel Swirsky (Eclipse Four)

"Ray of Light", Brad R. Torgersen (Analog 12/11)
(This story was featured in an earlier post, Aaron's recommendation of "Ray of Light", and was one of Aaron's Hugo nomination picks)

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 :: 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 nominees for best novelette

Here are the nominees for this year's Hugo Award for Best Novelette

BEST NOVELETTE
"The Cambist and Lord Iron: a Fairytale of Economics", Daniel Abraham
"The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", Ted Chiang
"Dark Integers", Greg Egan
"Glory", Greg Egan
"Finisterra", David Moles

Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Fantasy & Science Fiction Oct/Nov 2005

The Magazine of the Week is the October/November 2005 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, cover art by Cory & Catska Ench. The cover story, "Two Hearts" by Peter S. Beagle, last week won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette of 2005.

I was happy to see "Two Hearts" win the Hugo, even though it was my #2 choice in this category (oddly enough my #1 choice, "The Calorie Man" by Paolo Bacigalupi, also appears in the Magazine of the Week), because it is an honor for which Peter S. Beagle was long overdue. Peter Beagle has been an outstanding contributor to the fantasy field for nearly 50 years. He is perhaps best known as the author of the classic novel The Last Unicorn (1968), to which "Two Hearts" is something of a sequel. A young girl desperate to save her village from a fierce griffin enlists the aid of characters from The Last Unicorn, including a king who is too proud to refuse her, but may be too weakened by age to be of much help.

Incidentally, the Hugo Awards for fiction are presented in four categories: novel, novella, novelette, and short story. A novelette is longer than a short story but not as long as a novel, while a novella is even a bit longer but still not quite as long as a novel. If you find this confusing, you might like the suggestion of James Patrick Kelly, this year's presenter of the Best Novelette Hugo, who proposed that the Hugos go decimal and give awards for Best Novel, Decinovel, Centinovel, and Millinovel. Next week's Magazine of the Week will contain this year's winner for Best Decinovel, er, Novella.