I’m keeping up with my four year-old tradition of reading and ranking every Hugo Award finalist in the categories of Short Story, Novelette, Novella, and Novel. Yesterday’s post was a downer about a Short Story shortlist that I did not care for at all, but today’s tone will be much different, as the Best Novelette ballot is extremely strong. So let’s get to it! 

Tier Three

Sixth Place: I AM AI by Ai Jiang 

This is a long novelette set on the outskirts of a far-future company town where even acquiring the basic necessities of life requires working beyond ordinary human capacity. And so the lead has slowly replaced flesh with robotic parts, becoming a cyborg better prepared to churn out enough writing to scrape by a living. 

The eye-catcher here is the horrifying vision of a future controlled by an unfeeling tech company, but it has plenty to say about community and holding onto your humanity as well. And it does deliver some truly tense and thrilling scenes about the dangers of life on the margins, but the themes of community and humanity don’t come out quite so consistently. There’s an admirable attempt at building a messy, complicated found family, but for me, it veers into creating frustratingly unlikable side characters, and the tale’s internal logic on the distinction between human and non-human seems to shift as the story progresses. 

Almost invariably, I like stories driven by dystopian worldbuilding much less than the average sci-fi fan, so I’m not surprised to see others rating this one higher than I have, but while there were enough excellent scenes to give me an overall positive impression, my feelings about this story are decidedly mixed. It’s alone in my bottom tier, though that ranking is an indication of a very strong overall shortlist. 

Tier Two

Fifth Place: One Man’s Treasure by Sarah Pinsker

Pinsker has written my favorite story of the year (relative to length category) twice now, so I expected to like this one, and I did. That I’ve ranked it fifth—and have done so without any real hesitation—just shows how strong this category is this year. “One Man’s Treasure” features a truly tremendous premise, with garbage collectors dealing with bulk collection in a world where a significant chunk of garbage is magical in nature, and the almost slice-of-life opening is fascinating on its own. 

As the story progresses, it takes on more of an overarching story, heavily featuring both injustice and organized labor, but the major arc feels rushed compared to the day-in-the-life setup, leading to a conclusion that feels a bit too neat and too quick. The writing is as good as always, and it still makes for a great read, but not enough to finish in the top half of a very strong group. 

Fourth Place: Ivy, Angelica, Bay by C.L. Polk

“Ivy, Angelica, Bay” immediately stands out for its gorgeous prose, and it tells a tender family story that could have easily jumped the border into Tier One. The ultimate conflict with the gentrifier villains feels a little bit over-the-top, but the tight-knit community on display is a true delight. Readers who are willing to put up with an average plot in exchange for excellent prose and interpersonal relationships are in for a real treat here. This doesn’t feel like a bottom-half-of-the-ballot story, but…well, I keep saying it’s a very strong shortlist, and you can’t put four stories in the top half. 

Tier One

Third Place: The Year Without Sunshine by Naomi Kritzer 

I voted an aspirational near-future sci-fi by Naomi Kritzer first place—in a landslide—in the Short Story category, and this one is just as good. It’s just that in the Novelette category, there’s a lot more competition. “The Year Without Sunshine” is a tale about a community coming together to survive a long-term crisis, as prolonged environmental interference takes down Internet and cellular communications and seriously interferes with the electrical grid, the supply chain, and social services. 

With Kritzer, there’s no question about the writing style being engaging, and “The Year Without Sunshine” does a wonderful job of digging into the little day-to-day struggles that may arise in such a situation. The way the community pulls together is heartwarming, but they face enough challenges that it doesn’t feel naive. I really loved this story. I could’ve easily voted it first, and if I had to guess the winner of Best Novelette, it would probably be this one. And yet, there are two others I liked better. 

Second Place: Introduction to the 2181 Overture, Second Edition by Gu Shi, translated by Emily Jin. 

This is a truly fascinating piece of conceptual sci-fi, with enough of a focus on the people and relationships tangled up in it to give it a real emotional core. It’s styled as the introduction to an in-universe piece of non-fiction, detailing the history of cryosleep and the ethical and political controversies surrounding its use. 

Cryosleep is a fairly common sci-fi trope, but I’ve rarely seen it explored in any context other than long-haul space travel, and “Introduction to the 2181 Overture, Second Edition” did an absolutely tremendous job exploring plausible quandaries and controversies that may arise if the technology were made available to the public. It’s not often in my book reviewing that I trot out my graduate degree in Philosophy, but there were times that I saw real-life academic debates in bioethics playing out all over in this hypothetical sci-fi scenario. It was impressive, and extremely thought-provoking. I wasn’t totally convinced by the framing as a book introduction, but that’s in part because of how good a job it did zeroing in on real people and the ways in which their lives were affected by the technology. Many of the Chinese-language finalists in other categories are older stories eligible only because of recent translations, but this one feels fresh and cutting-edge. While it isn’t my top vote, I’d be ecstatic to see it win. 

First Place: On the Fox Roads by Nghi Vo

Vo can write a stunner of a period piece, and this lush tale immediately draws the reader into the Jazz Age Midwest, where a stowaway follows a pair of bank robbers across the countryside, and across a few trails that aren’t part of any countryside the lead had ever seen before. Thrilling escapes provide little bursts of excitement to punctuate what is otherwise a primarily character-driven tale. There’s a messy and touching three-way friendship, but the heart of the story is how two of the three are trying to do right by friends and family in the here and now, all the while chafing against their lives and yearning for something different. It’s atmospheric and beautiful, magical and profound—truly Nghi Vo at the height of her powers. There are several good choices for Best Novelette this year, but this one is the best of good options.