In each of the last four years, I’ve read through and evaluated the Hugo Awards shortlists for Best Novel, Best Novella, Best Novelette, and Best Short Story. I try to vote in other categories as well, but I realistically don’t have time for everything, and these categories are my primary focus. So this week, it’s time to share my thoughts and my ballots, starting with Best Short Story. 

Unfortunately, we’re starting with a downer, as I really did not like the shortlist for Best Short Story this year. I read more than 300 short stories that were published in 2023, and there was some truly exceptional work being done in sci-fi and fantasy. But most of that exceptional work appears to have flown under the radar, while the stories that floated to the top were half-baked, mediocre, or both. I understand that my tastes aren’t always going to match up with genre fandom writ large, but I can often see the appeal even of stories that don’t necessarily hit for me. Here, I truly have trouble understanding how many of these stories got here. 

Again, I apologize for such a negative intro. I usually find a lot more to like among the Hugo finalists. If you’d like to see me speaking more positively of 2023 short fiction, you can check out my own favorites list, or wait until tomorrow when I post my ballot for Best Novelette. But for now, let’s take a look at my ranking of short stories. 

Tier Four

Seventh Place: Answerless Journey by Han Song, translated by Alex Woodend. 

This story is more than 25 years old, only eligible for this year’s Hugo on the basis of the 2023 English translation. So unlike last year, where a few finalists were Chinese-language stories with no professional translation at the time of nomination, there’s no reason for English-language readers to overlook an awkward translation. And while I don’t have the language skills to compare to the original and judge the faithfulness of the translation, there are some baffling word choices starting from the literal first page that undercut the mood the story appeared to be setting. 

It’s meant to be dark and disorienting, distancing character and reader from the familiar and instilling a sense of foreboding. But the inconsistency of the translation means that the mood only comes through intermittently. Combined with a setup that asks for far too much suspension of disbelief and a conclusion whose power is undercut by a fascination with gender that feels outdated and anticlimactic, and “Answerless Journey” feels like a missed opportunity. It’s a story that feels ambitious, and it often comes close to doing something powerful—close enough that I found myself wanting to appreciate it for what it almost does. But ultimately, I have to judge on what’s here, and I just don’t think any of it truly lands. 

Sixth Place: How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub by P. Djèlí Clark

The popularity of this story—already a BSFA and Locus Award winner—is perhaps the most baffling phenomenon in 2023 genre fiction. It’s a straightforward, paint-by-numbers tale of an English idiot being the unwitting vehicle of anti-colonial comeuppance. I understand that people enjoy anti-colonial themes, and Clark’s prose is perfectly professional, but there’s just no spark of life here. You can see in the opening sentences exactly how the tale will go, with no real attempts to deviate from the formula. Yes, it accomplishes its goals, but its goals are nothing. I can understand reading this and being entertained for 20 minutes, but I can’t understand thinking it’s one of the best stories of the year. 

Fifth Place: Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times by Baoshu

Unlike “Answerless Journey,” the item on the shortlist here is a Chinese-language story, not an English translation. A translation has been made available to aid English-language readers, but I won’t be holding any odd word choices against it (not that I noticed them as much as in “Answerless Journey”). 

And like “Answerless Journey,” this is a story that feels like it’s trying something but doesn’t quite land it, with three segments delivering three vignettes—set at three different times—centered on a technology that simulates exceptional dining experiences. Each vignette builds to its own sobering conclusion, and each on its own works perfectly well as a flash-length cautionary tale with a bit of punch. 

But the interplay between the vignettes muddies the waters in a way that makes the overall story feel less than the sum of its parts. While each piece addresses the same theme, there are moments of potential resonance that don’t work together as well as they should, and the finales of the first and second acts are either dropped or actively undercut in a way that robs some of their power. There are good pieces here, but they’re executed in a way that doesn’t really bring out their full potential. 

Fourth Place: The Mausoleum’s Children by Aliette de Bodard

Much of my criticism of “Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times” applies here too, and deciding between the two for fourth place was one of the most difficult decisions in this category. Ultimately, my first impression of “The Mausoleum’s Children” was a bit more positive, which sent it through to fourth place on my ballot. But this is another story of unfulfilled potential, long on ambition but executed in a way that doesn’t really do that ambition justice. 

Picking up years after a terrifying escape from the place where she’d been raised in captivity and forced into service, the lead is returning to rescue those she’d left behind. It’s a tale of high-stakes adventure that dives into survivor’s guilt, reluctance to leave a toxic situation, non-human sentience, and more. But while any one of those themes would be robust enough to carry a short story, “The Mausoleum’s Children” tries to address all of them in under 6,000 words, which leads to every one feeling a bit half-baked. Despite a disorienting amount of backstory left mostly unsaid, it does generate some dramatic tension and build to a conclusion that’s satisfying in the moment. But this feels like a story that either needed to pick a focus area or commit to a novelette length. It simply tried to do too much in too short a space and was all the worse for it. 

Tier Three

Third Place: The Sound of Children Screaming by Rachael K. Jones

This is one of two entries whose place on the shortlist is easy to understand. It’s a pointed look at gun violence with some truly powerful passages. Part of my low-ranking here just comes down to personal taste, as it’s quite a bit more didactic than I prefer. But the other part is the dark portal fantasy setting that takes up the bulk of the tale and never totally worked for me. I can certainly see elements that could resonate powerfully in a story about the politics of school shootings, but I came away remembering the oblique swipes at Narnia more than anything that really served the main theme. 

This truly is a story with the ingredients of an award-winner, even if my own tastes likely would’ve kept it second on my ballot, but ultimately, I didn’t think the ingredients fully came together. It came much closer to greatness than the bevy of unfulfilled potential in Tier Four, but it didn’t quite work for me. 

Second Place: No Award 

The real most difficult decision in this category was “The Sound of Children Screaming” against No Award. I like to reward ambition, but I don’t like didactic stories. This could’ve gone either way, but in the end, this is the highest I’ve ever ranked No Award [Ed.: Insert ominous “for now…”]

Tier Two

[File Not Found]

Tier One

First Place: Better Living Through Algorithms by Naomi Kritzer

My sixth-favorite short story published by Clarkesworld in 2023 is my pick to win the Hugo. Okay, that sounds harsher than I mean it, the negativity of this post is getting to me. “Better Living Through Algorithms” is excellent, and it being my sixth-favorite in Clarkesworld is a reason (far from the only one!) to rank Neil Clarke atop the Best Editor Short Form list more than it is a complaint about this story. Naomi Kritzer does a tremendous job of writing aspirational near-future stories that manage to be uplifting without feeling naive. “Better Living Through Algorithms” has more than a little shared DNA with the award-winning “Cat Pictures Please,” but it feels more true-to-life after a decade that has seen more than its fair share of grifters poisoning seemingly every wholesome thing online. It’s uplifting, honest, and engaging from start to finish—an extraordinarily easy choice atop the ballot.