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ladybusinessWhile many of us attempt some serious speed-reading/marathon TV sessions to get through the 2023 Hugo Finalists, there’s nerds like me, collecting cool things dropping this year on top of it. In early 2024 I will be fully prepared and have an idea of the media I could nominate, via my rec-hoarding tendencies with the Hugo Recs sheet. My favorite things about the project are that it introduces me to media I haven't heard about yet, media I had forgotten, and new creators. I wanted to take the time throughout the year to highlight things I've discovered.
For the inaugural list, I'm starting with the main short fiction categories and one fan category. That's where I spend most of my time.
As of writing, the short story rec sheet has 58 stories on it. Most of these were not added by me! Always a bonus because in the early days of past years I feel like I added a lot to encourage people. Blank pages are scary!
It was recently announced that the October 2023 issue of Fantasy Magazine will be its last, so of course I bookmarked "The Dead Return in Strange Shapes" by Lowry Poletti, "Shroedinger’s Kitten Falls in Love" by Bidisha Banerjee (incredible title), and "There's Magic in Bread" by Effie Seiberg. I hope everyone gives the stories all the Fantasy Magazine authors and editors love some affection. It must have been so hard to make that decision.
Someone who liked (or had a hand in) Many Worlds, or the Simulacra seems to have added most of the stories to the sheet (whoever it was: thank you for your service). I couldn't find a TOC so it might be all of them. What I did find in my cursory search was a lot of good reviews. This is my favorite thing. I'd love to see more anthologies unpacked onto the sheets. Editors don't tend to put word count in collections which makes that a little harder to sort the stories into their proper categories (come on anthology editors! Help us out!).
I love a catchy title, so the others that caught my eye include "The Narrative Implications of Your Untimely Death" by Isabel J. Kim (Lightspeed), "Spaceship Joyride" by Dominique Dickey (Lightspeed), and "Better Living Through Algorithms" by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld).
There's so many short stories being written even as we stare down the loss of Amazon's digital subscription program as they strive toward more profit at the cost of art (boo). There are more great short stories than I could ever add, so if there's something you've read and love, or you wrote/published something you love, add it! The rec sheet is for everyone who nominates and votes in the Hugo Awards. Most importantly, it's a way to find things that may have never come across our algorithmically generated timelines in this current digital hellscape.
Novelette has it rough. Not long enough to benefit from the rapid rise of novellas going mainstream via Tordotcom, not short enough to be for one reading session (unless you read fanfic and casually starting a 10,000 word fic 15 minutes before bed is a treat). This is one of the main fiction categories with the least recs—11 as of writing—and so here they are.
If you're looking for an accessible place to start with SFF short fiction recs, the novelette sheet is a great place. Its sister categories fill up fast, but novelette remains smaller, because of the weird in-between space the form inhabits. There are more great novelettes out there, but I'm not sure how to find them without trawling through the issues of every SFF/H short fiction magazine that publishes online (and forget about the anthologies). My time on this Earth is finite, but that's where other readers come in! Who knows where the hidden novelette gems are?
The big debate this year is about how Tordotcom swept the category (again). The most compelling point I've seen is that it erases the editorial perspective of other venues in favor of Tordotcom's editors. Not that the things here aren't worthy (don't ask me how I'm choosing between things I'm very stressed about it hahahasob), but the fear seems to be that most people are reading Tordotcom novellas and letting novellas in other venues languish, which hurts the whole field. There's plenty of other places publishing novellas, including Aqueduct Press, Fairwood Press, Gateway Literary Press, Lethe Press, Luna Press Publishing, Neon Hemlock Press, Queen of Swords Press, Stelliform Press, and Tenebrous Press. Most of these I was not familiar with by their publishing content except Aqueduct, Neon Hemlock, and Queen of Swords. As of writing there's 35 recs and Tor is 28.57% of the recs (including all Tor imprints). It's a complicated issue! I don't even go here! I have no authority to talk about the politics of short fiction so please don't come for me! I just collect recs and want the selection to be robust.
I've read two of these novellas already: The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Otomi and The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older. They're both from Tor, but it's early still! I asked on social media for people to add non-Tor novellas they loved and that resulted in me bookmarking some other novellas, including:
I loved "Cat Pictures, Please" by Naomi Kritzer, A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, and the entire Finder series by Suzanne Palmer (which I think way more people should read because it's so much fun). It was exciting to see those authors have new novellas out. I had heard about Rose/House when it was announced but had bookmarked and forgotten it, so it was nice to get the reminder.
I still want to read several of the Tor novellas, and even own some of them, so who knows what my 2024 ballot will look like! But at the very least I will have read more widely! That's a win.
Just as we were getting people to start thinking about writing on Twitter as a critical part of fan writing, a pathetic billionaire came along and ruined everything.
Another bummer: years ago, when SFF blogs were popular, publishers and corporations got in on the action. I wrote for both the B&N Science Fiction and Fantasy blog and Tordotcom. However, B&N quickly discovered why writing about books stays a hobby project: paying writers costs money; blogs doesn't generate a huge profit immediately, if ever; and the fat cats don't want to pay living wage rates. The B&N blog closed at the end of 2019 with all writers getting the boot. Tordotcom continues and publishes many great essays, but I don't know if they're paying living wage rates.
The shift from interlinking personal blogs with robust comment sections to funneling traffic to corporate-owned spaces bummed me out. It made it hard to discover new voices doing science fiction, fantasy, horror, fandom culture writing, and critique. Twitter became an incredibly important tool for discovering niche projects and writers. But Twitter has always been, noisy, chaotic, and to this day moves at plaid speed. Following a Twitter feed to keep up with a writer and following a blog's RSS feed are drastically different experiences.
On the Fan Writer sheet as I write this, there are ten entries. It's also a very white list. I know that there are so many people out there I don't follow or can't find because they're outside my cursed algorithmic feeds.
Here's the current list of Fan Writers who've published work in 2023 on the rec sheet:
If you know of any fans out there doing writing you love in the categories the Hugo Awards are meant to honor, consider adding them. When there are diverse perspectives, our fandom becomes healthier and more creative.
We have a dedicated page for all the current and past Hugo Rec sheets, which is the best place to bookmark to find future sheets when they're created. As long as Google's spreadsheets remain a thing (I seethe over Google Reader's fate every time it comes to mind), we'll host all the previous year's sheets and encourage people to check them out to see the things that didn't make the short/long lists.
This year's sheet (for the awards to be given in 2024) is available on this Google spreadsheet and via the short URL bit.ly/hugoaward2024. Anyone who nominates or votes for the Hugo Awards can add things to the sheet. I encourage everyone to do so!
For the inaugural list, I'm starting with the main short fiction categories and one fan category. That's where I spend most of my time.
Short Story
As of writing, the short story rec sheet has 58 stories on it. Most of these were not added by me! Always a bonus because in the early days of past years I feel like I added a lot to encourage people. Blank pages are scary!
It was recently announced that the October 2023 issue of Fantasy Magazine will be its last, so of course I bookmarked "The Dead Return in Strange Shapes" by Lowry Poletti, "Shroedinger’s Kitten Falls in Love" by Bidisha Banerjee (incredible title), and "There's Magic in Bread" by Effie Seiberg. I hope everyone gives the stories all the Fantasy Magazine authors and editors love some affection. It must have been so hard to make that decision.
Someone who liked (or had a hand in) Many Worlds, or the Simulacra seems to have added most of the stories to the sheet (whoever it was: thank you for your service). I couldn't find a TOC so it might be all of them. What I did find in my cursory search was a lot of good reviews. This is my favorite thing. I'd love to see more anthologies unpacked onto the sheets. Editors don't tend to put word count in collections which makes that a little harder to sort the stories into their proper categories (come on anthology editors! Help us out!).
I love a catchy title, so the others that caught my eye include "The Narrative Implications of Your Untimely Death" by Isabel J. Kim (Lightspeed), "Spaceship Joyride" by Dominique Dickey (Lightspeed), and "Better Living Through Algorithms" by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld).
There's so many short stories being written even as we stare down the loss of Amazon's digital subscription program as they strive toward more profit at the cost of art (boo). There are more great short stories than I could ever add, so if there's something you've read and love, or you wrote/published something you love, add it! The rec sheet is for everyone who nominates and votes in the Hugo Awards. Most importantly, it's a way to find things that may have never come across our algorithmically generated timelines in this current digital hellscape.
Novelette
Novelette has it rough. Not long enough to benefit from the rapid rise of novellas going mainstream via Tordotcom, not short enough to be for one reading session (unless you read fanfic and casually starting a 10,000 word fic 15 minutes before bed is a treat). This is one of the main fiction categories with the least recs—11 as of writing—and so here they are.
- An Ode to Stardust by R.P. Sand (Clarkesworld)
- Anais Gets a Turn by R.T. Ester (Clarkesworld)
- The Feast of Saint Ottmer by Graham Thomas Wilcox (Old Moon Quarterly)
- Introduction to the 2181 Overture, Second Edition by Gu Shi (Clarkesworld)
- No Spoilers by Ben Murphy (Many Worlds)
- Old Seeds by Owen Leddy (GigaNotoSaurus )
- Saturday's Song by Wole Talabi (Lightspeed)
- Science Facts! by Sarah Pinsker (Small Beer Press)
- A Sin for Freedom by Eboni J. Dunbar (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
- The Weremouse of Millicent Bradley Middle School by Peter S. Beagle (F&SF)
- Your Great Mother Across the Salt Sea by Kelsey Hutton (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
If you're looking for an accessible place to start with SFF short fiction recs, the novelette sheet is a great place. Its sister categories fill up fast, but novelette remains smaller, because of the weird in-between space the form inhabits. There are more great novelettes out there, but I'm not sure how to find them without trawling through the issues of every SFF/H short fiction magazine that publishes online (and forget about the anthologies). My time on this Earth is finite, but that's where other readers come in! Who knows where the hidden novelette gems are?
Novella
The big debate this year is about how Tordotcom swept the category (again). The most compelling point I've seen is that it erases the editorial perspective of other venues in favor of Tordotcom's editors. Not that the things here aren't worthy (don't ask me how I'm choosing between things I'm very stressed about it hahahasob), but the fear seems to be that most people are reading Tordotcom novellas and letting novellas in other venues languish, which hurts the whole field. There's plenty of other places publishing novellas, including Aqueduct Press, Fairwood Press, Gateway Literary Press, Lethe Press, Luna Press Publishing, Neon Hemlock Press, Queen of Swords Press, Stelliform Press, and Tenebrous Press. Most of these I was not familiar with by their publishing content except Aqueduct, Neon Hemlock, and Queen of Swords. As of writing there's 35 recs and Tor is 28.57% of the recs (including all Tor imprints). It's a complicated issue! I don't even go here! I have no authority to talk about the politics of short fiction so please don't come for me! I just collect recs and want the selection to be robust.
I've read two of these novellas already: The Lies of the Ajungo by Moses Ose Otomi and The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older. They're both from Tor, but it's early still! I asked on social media for people to add non-Tor novellas they loved and that resulted in me bookmarking some other novellas, including:
- The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar by Indrapramit Das (Subterranean Press)
- Liberty's Daughter by Naomi Kritzer (Fairwood Press)
- The Lies We Tell Ourselves by LK Kitney (Luna Press Publishing)
- Rose/House by Arkady Martine (Subterranean Press)
- To Sail Beyond the Botnet by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld)
- Virgin Land by Chloe Smith (Luna Press Publishing)
I loved "Cat Pictures, Please" by Naomi Kritzer, A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, and the entire Finder series by Suzanne Palmer (which I think way more people should read because it's so much fun). It was exciting to see those authors have new novellas out. I had heard about Rose/House when it was announced but had bookmarked and forgotten it, so it was nice to get the reminder.
I still want to read several of the Tor novellas, and even own some of them, so who knows what my 2024 ballot will look like! But at the very least I will have read more widely! That's a win.
Fan Writer
Just as we were getting people to start thinking about writing on Twitter as a critical part of fan writing, a pathetic billionaire came along and ruined everything.
Another bummer: years ago, when SFF blogs were popular, publishers and corporations got in on the action. I wrote for both the B&N Science Fiction and Fantasy blog and Tordotcom. However, B&N quickly discovered why writing about books stays a hobby project: paying writers costs money; blogs doesn't generate a huge profit immediately, if ever; and the fat cats don't want to pay living wage rates. The B&N blog closed at the end of 2019 with all writers getting the boot. Tordotcom continues and publishes many great essays, but I don't know if they're paying living wage rates.
The shift from interlinking personal blogs with robust comment sections to funneling traffic to corporate-owned spaces bummed me out. It made it hard to discover new voices doing science fiction, fantasy, horror, fandom culture writing, and critique. Twitter became an incredibly important tool for discovering niche projects and writers. But Twitter has always been, noisy, chaotic, and to this day moves at plaid speed. Following a Twitter feed to keep up with a writer and following a blog's RSS feed are drastically different experiences.
On the Fan Writer sheet as I write this, there are ten entries. It's also a very white list. I know that there are so many people out there I don't follow or can't find because they're outside my cursed algorithmic feeds.
Here's the current list of Fan Writers who've published work in 2023 on the rec sheet:
- Adri Joy
- Alex Brown
- Ann Michelle Harris
- Arturo Serrano
- Dina
- forestofglory
- Jenny Hamilton
- Matt "Womble"
- Maya Gittelman
- Paul Weimer
If you know of any fans out there doing writing you love in the categories the Hugo Awards are meant to honor, consider adding them. When there are diverse perspectives, our fandom becomes healthier and more creative.
We have a dedicated page for all the current and past Hugo Rec sheets, which is the best place to bookmark to find future sheets when they're created. As long as Google's spreadsheets remain a thing (I seethe over Google Reader's fate every time it comes to mind), we'll host all the previous year's sheets and encourage people to check them out to see the things that didn't make the short/long lists.
This year's sheet (for the awards to be given in 2024) is available on this Google spreadsheet and via the short URL bit.ly/hugoaward2024. Anyone who nominates or votes for the Hugo Awards can add things to the sheet. I encourage everyone to do so!
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Date: 2023-08-08 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-08-08 05:52 pm (UTC)