My reading choices and nominations were not in synch with the 2025 Hugo ballot. Before receiving the packet, I had only read 1 of the novellas and one of the best series. A couple of the items were on my TBR, such a A Sorceress Comes to Call and Sheine Lende.
Needless to say, I did not read everything on the ballot. I did not even try to read all of the items nominated for Best Novel, Best Novella, Astounding, and Lodestar.
Today, I finished reading all of the short stories. Most of them were about communicating history through stories, which I love. Here are my rankings:
- “We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read” by Caroline M. Yoachim
- “Stitched to Skin Like Family Is” by Nghi Vo
- “Five Views of the Planet Tartarus” by Rachael K. Jones
- “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim
- “Three Faces of a Beheading” by Arkady Martine
- “Marginalia” by Mary Robinette Kowal
I loved shaped poetry and linguistics and playing around with form, so the Yoachim story felt like it was made for me. It felt like reading a vocal composition that starts with 1 voice and slowly adds in more. To me, it reads as a poem, but it’s not category fraud since the author intended it to be a short story.
Vo’s story is much more conventional. A woman who can read the history of clothes through touch is hitchhiking through the Midwest during the Great Depression, searching for her brother, She paints each scene using few but so very evocative words. It left me satisfied and wanting more.
The flash fiction by Jones is a gut punch.
I really wanted to like the other three stories. They sounded like they would be my jam. I didn’t vibe with the casual narration of the Omelas story. On the other hand, Martine’s was too formal. But it has footnotes. Footnotes!
And I have loved most of Kowal’s other work, but this short story made the fatal mistake of stopping not ending. I stopped reading short stories on a regular basis because so many of them lacked conclusions. Especially when the character or plot stops abruptly, followed by a lyrical paragraph or flourish that rarely illuminates any themes of motifs or actions.
I loved this world with giant marauding snails. But a big event happens, the main character does not get to react or make a decision or action. And suddenly there is a paragraph about the snails. Nope. Also, the title of the story did not make any sense to me, other than being a play on the main character’s name, Margery. Double nope. With the title word “marginalia” I expected something either with manuscripts or writing or annotations. Honestly it would be a good alternate title for Martine’s story,
So, yeah, I get annoyed when a writer I really like commits this sin.
