Hugo homework: short stories and novelettes, Tasmaster NZ
Well, so, I'm going to manage at least one Hugo category in full, even if it's just short stories (ETA: and novelettes!)
"Proof by Induction", Jose Pablo Iriarte -- I enjoyed this one a lot. It happened to have hit a couple of things RTMI -- parents and children (over more than one generation), a story about math and academia (which I may not have first-hand interest in, but having a husband who is a math professor definitely made it relevant), and the actual science fiction angle -- Coda and the ability to talk with a simulacrum of the recently departed is also a sci-fi idea I particularly like (I liked it in Scalzi's Emperox books and the imagos in Teixcalaan, and this isn't quite the same thing, being a lot more circumscribed, but I still like it. Actually, in particular I like that this technology is developed for a mundane and small-scale purpose (where did you leave the will/insurance policy and getting a chance to say good-bye), but Paulie adapts it to a different use and kind of kluges that functionality together -- it feels true to how this stuff would work. And there are some other neat worldbuilding details, like Paulie wondering if the Codas are programmed by the hospital to have the deceased say that there are no grounds for malpractice suites. Anyway, the math-y mumbo jumbo washed pleasantly over me, like when B is telling me about his research to make me fall asleep, but the parent/child relationship stuff worked for me really well -- Paulie's father, estranged and now collegial because he doesn't know how to be a father, so he settles for being a colleague, Paulie wanting more fro him while realizing that he's never going to get it (certainly not now that he's dead) and settling for what he can get, but trying to do better with his own kid (that line about chemistry sets!, and managing to do better while still making mistakes -- none of this is earthshatteringly original, but it felt true and well done, and I like the way the family stuff works with the "proof by induction" title/mathematical concept -- you can build on a small foundation if you set out to do it. Quotes: "Our ethics committee has concerns when it comes to the appearance of attributing personhood to what should be a temporary means of gathering information and comfort." "If it's not a person, then it's data. I'm next of kin, so the data should be my property." Oh, right, and there was an interesting stylistic thing I wanted to remark on -- the story is told in present tense (for the real life) and past tense (for Paulie's Coda visits with his dead father)(, and that tripped me up a couple of times -- not because the tenses were different, but because that felt backwards -- like, I would've expected the out-of-time Coda segments to be in present tense. But maybe that's on purpose, because having it be "backwrds" made the Coda segments feel more jarring, and I do think that's the right effect.
"Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather", Sarah Pinsker -- I was looking forward to this one, because Sarah Pinsker, and a story centered around a ballad, and Sarah Pinsker writing about music 9whcih I enjoyed in "Wind Will Rove" a couple of years ago, though that was a sci-fi take and this is a crepy fantasy one). I had not realized it was a story told in a weird format -- basically, it consists of the text of a ballad (which Pinsker made up), and footnotes/references/citations on a Wiki-like site, plus the interaction between the editors discussing the citations, arguing with each other, and in general being an internet community. And I thought the format worked really well! It made me think of "STET", which also attempts to tell a story in what is essentially marginalia, but unlike "STET", I didn't hate it I thought the "main text" which serves as the frame for the part that tells the actual story and the marginalia were both interesting and worked together well. The ballad itself is very ballad-y and very creepy, in an authentic way where some very simple words used in unexpected-to-a-modern-reader ways conjure up a hard to forget image, like "Tam Lin"'s "I would have taken out they two grey eyes\And put in two eyes of tree". I enjoyed all the versions nerdery around the ballad, the different order of verses, verses that were added later, people who had heard commercially released versions and only knew those -- all that added a lot of layered authenticity to the story. (I took a folklore class at uni, which did a unit on Child ballads, and one of my essays involved researching and comparing multiple versions of a ballad, so this was all stuff I had personal experience with and fond memories of. Although this was in the days before the internet, so this was a solo pursuit. But the internet interaction in the story also felt pretty authentic and added a nice note of humour to the story.) And then, of course, there's the story that unfolds -- not linearly, because the citations are in the order they pertain to the song, but the threaded discussion starts in that order but then proceeds in chronological order, which leads to this very nice interwoven, adrift-in-time feeling that feels just right for a ballad. The other neat thing is, there is actually I think nothing OVERTLY fantastical in the story -- I mean, the ballad is fantastic, but it doesn't have to be real, there are plenty of fantastic ballads that exist in the real world. But being linked to a specific place, the disappearance of Mark Rydell, and the (likely) disappearance of Henry around Gall (what a great name for th etown, btw) was enough to make it feel sufficiently fantastic. I can see why this won the Nebula (over "Proof" and "Mr Death" among others), and this is my vote-to-win for the Hugos as well. Also, this exists.
"The Sin of America", Cat Valente -- this has the common-for-me problem of Cat Valente's writing of having too many words and trying for more profound than it comes across as (to me). (At least it was a lot shorter than Space Opera?) Some of the discriptions were neat enough, but got drowned in Too Many Words. The twist, if that was meant to be a twist, was not shocking, just unpleasant. And if it was going for allegory or parable or something, it did not work for me on that level either. Definitely going at the bottom end of my list, just trying to decide whether above or below No Award...
"Unknown Number", Blue Neustifter -- in situ here on Twitter, but I found that Twitter wouldn't let me keep reading after a while, so here's the Facebook page that has all of it, including the text transcripts of the, well, texts. OK, so, actually, the coolest thing about this story for me is that there's a story told on Twitter on the ballot. I don't think this is the first self-published short story to end up nominated for the Hugo, but it does seem like it might be the first one not put on there by the Puppies, which is pretty cool, too! As for the story itself, I found it worthwhile but a step down from my favorites. The whole "pep talk to your multiverse self" is so zeitgeist XD But, well, closely diveging selves and getting to meet them made me think of Sarah Pinskerr's brilliant "And Then There Were (N-One)" (well, no, I was already thinking about it for unrelated reasons), and next to that this was just very one-note and sparse. And, like, I get that that is a novella and this is a short story told in images of texts on Twitter, but they are still both stories, and this one didn't work for me as well as it seems to have done for other people. I think a big part of that is actually the told-in-texts-unfolding-real-time format, which, for how brief it is, ends up with a lot of filler, because it's going for reproducing the way people text. There are a couple of really good lines (my favorite being, "you know that therapy is easier than proving multiverse theory, right?", but I also liked "being a girl didn't stop climate hange, huh"/"i mean not yet, i'll keep trying", and "I didn't want a timeline where the universe fixed it" was a punch, and I liked the roll the dice/watch someone play analogy and "minimum girl distance") -- but those are kind of buried under many, many lines going "fuck" and "I'm sorry" and "ok". I liked the story quite a bit better when I reread it, skimming the filler and just focusing on the impactful lines, but that's not how it's written.
"Tangles", Seanan McGuire -- why is this nominated for a Hugo? I mean, we all know why, because it was written by Seanan McGuire, and I suspect there is no piece of fiction, nonfiction, or tangentially related object that Seanan McGuire could produce which would not possibly get on the Hugo ballot just because it's Seanan McGuire. But this story is embarrassingly weak when compared to the other nominees, I think -- even "Sin", which did not work for me AT ALL, is at least trying for something profound. This is a Magic the Gathering tie-in? About a dryad and a mage -- I'm not sure if the characters would be recognizable to me if I were more familiar with MtG, which I'm not at all, except as that game my guy friends spent hours playing on the floor in high school and that one "Um, Actually" episode. On its own, it's just a very simple story of a dryad finding another tree (this one with nonbinary pronouns, because tree representation is important, I guess) and a bunch of stilted writing. This honestly feels like amateur hour... And, like, pro authors are allowed to write shallow fanfic about stuff they love, same as anybody, but it's got no business being on the Hugo ballot. This is going below No Award.
"Mr Death", Alix E. Harrow -- OK, so, this is hugely sappy, but I don't care, I enjoyed the hell out of it. The narrative voice is GREAT, and while the ending definitely feels too easy, I don't care, because I'm on board with it. I also particularly enjoyed the mix of corporatese, colloquial, and numinous in the narration -- it's an unusual combination, but very fitting to the story, and blended very well. I'd really liked the first thing by Harrow I read, the Hugo-winning "A Witch's Guide to Escape", and then was bored and disappointed by her novel debut, so wasn't sure what to expect with this one. Happy to see "Witch's Guide" wasn't as much of a fluke, in ters of alignment to my taste, as I'd started to fear it might be.
Now that I've been doing Hugo homework on and off for a while, one thing I'm noticing is that there are fewer stories nominated by authors I haven't read before. Jose Pablo Iriarte and Blue Neustifter were new to me in this category this year. (I've heard both of the names before, but at least don't recall reading anything by them before.)
Hugo roundup: short stories: Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather, Proof by Induction, Mr Death, Unknown Number (those two are close for me; I think 'Number' is more interesting conceptually but 'Death' was a better read, so it kind of balances out), The Sin of America, No Award, Tangles.
Novelettes:
"Unseelie Brothers, Ltd.", Fran Wilde -- like the other Fran Wilde story I read for Hugo homework a few years back, this one is atmospheric and vividly described but doesn't do much of anything for me. Which is a pity, because unlike a dark carnival of freaks or whatever ("Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand"), fey tailors were potentially relevant to my interests. I also thought the vibe of the setting was odd -- the modern setting with smartphones but the old-timey feeling balls and way of referring to people. That might be intentional, given this story, but it didn't feel adrift in time in, like, a productive way, just in a way that made it harder for me to visualize anything. The idea of the dresses is very cool, though. But that really isn't much, for something the length of a novelette, even a short novelette.
"Bots of the Lost Ark", Suzanne Palmer -- I've encountered Palmer's novelettes via Hugo homework before, and I tend to ike her stuff (well, I was actually disappointed by "The Secret Life of Bots" winning in 2018, but that was because I was rooting for a different story, not because I disliked it). Anyway, I appreciate the vibe all of the Palmer stories I've read seem to have of humorous narration against the backdrop of pretty dark stuff (war, suicide missions, etc.) -- it's not like Murderbot, which is funny but bitter, but has this almost fairy-tale-like fatalism which works well for me. This was maybe a little longer than it needed to be, but I found th bots' dialogue and 9's POV of the humans amusing, and it was basically a nice, fun story, not earth-shattering but a good time.
"Colors of the Immortal Palette", Caroline M. Yoachim -- Yoachim is another author I discovered via Hugo homework and have liked some pieces by, so I was looking forward to this one. And I didn't love it, but it's an elegant story, intricately told, if a little overly didactic for my taste in places. I'm generally bored by vampires, but this is a neat take on vampire-adjacent immortality (which maybe seems closer to Aaronovitch's jazz vampires than to the conventional ones), lovely and melancholy, and I like that they are immortal but not eternal. The pigments as an organizing scheme for the scenes over time worked well for me, especially when the same color was connoting different things, like spoilers in the section with Mari and Joshua's wedding and the atomic bomb. Some of the ruminations on art, immortality, one's place in the world did feel didactic (though they are in POV, so not necessarily meant to be the Authorial Truth -- although the interview included with the story in the voter packet had Yoachim talking about how Mariko, as a creator herself, is a sort of self-insert, to the point of that being the M in her middle name; on that note, I thought it was neat that this was the reason she had chosen to skip over the timeframe in which she is alive). I did like Mariko having doubts about whether her lack of success in getting her art across was because she had barriers to overcome as a mixed-race woman vs not being skilled/talented enough, and I like the rumination on how time is the value of everything, at root. There are some memorable period details, like the wartime cardboard wedding cake and parachute dress and, on a much more sobering note, the Tanforan Assembly Center (I know Tanforan as a mall and didn't realize it had been a Japanese detention center during WWII), and just lovely personal details like Mari coming to Joshua's grave to read a book he would have liked rather than leave flowers, and feeling like she could finally get to know Japan for her adopted Japanese daughter, without the conflicted feelings of getting to know it for herself, and neat worldbuilding details, like the Mari of the last section creating a painting with pigments that will shift over time, meant to be viewed in full over multiple human lifetimes. There's a lot going on in this story, and it's integrated into an elegant package, impressively coherent. Quotes: "I do not want to die into being forever young." "Each successive painting contains something of the time that went in the previous canvasses." "Being immortal, it is so easy to put off the work, to drift aimlessly because there is urgency without the ultimate deadline of death." "'They're the only ones who start with a blank white page. Their story is the default, invisible, a crisp new canvas. Our stories, our history, our pain -- that's color already on the page and we have to work around that, we have to explain why there of crimson seeping through where our people bled, why there's a vermillion rage underneath the calm surface of white.' 'And then they'll tell you hat they don't want your explanations because it complicates the story, sullies the art.'" "Even we immortals paint in stolen bme, for the demands of the world expand to fill whatever time there is, no matter how vast."
"That Story Isn't the Story", John Wiswell -- I read Wiswell's Nebula-winning short story last year and found it reasonably cute but very twee. This one's a different tone, but I can't say I enjoyed it very much -- the ominous vibe was unpleasant to immerse myself in even though spoiler there's a happy ending. I do appreciate the thing he mentions in the interview he's doing, where Anton doesn't get a traditionally heroic arc or a revenge arc or anything like that -- he gets to survive and recognize what is trauma vs reality and start to heal and move on -- and presumably his fellow familiars do, too, though we never see more than glimpses of their story. I also like the negative-space way the vampire master is depicted, never shown except for being hinted at in shadows, his nearness inferred from the bleeding of the bites. But overall this is too creepy and dark for my taste. Also, the names were very disorienting to me. I think of Anton as a Russian name (although it can be a bunch of other things, apparently), and Grigorii (which is a weird way to spell it) I think is only a Russian name? But Caravaggio sure isn't, and so I was very confused by these people's backgrounds, which don't matter at all, but the names jumped out at me.
"L'Esprit de L'Escalier", Catherynne M Valente -- this one actually worked better for me than I expected considering it was by Cat Valente XD I think in general Valente writing deconstructions tends to work better for me, because the one thing of hers I've genuinely enjoyed was The Refrigerator Monologues. This wasn't at that level, but it kept my attention and I liked some details and turns of phrase, and I mostly did not want to take a machete/flamethrower to the prose, which is my usual reaction to Cat Valente's writing. I like "Greek myth but make it modern" retellings, so even though the myth of Orpheus is not one of my favorites, I had some up front interest in this. I do not ENJOY this exploration of zombie Eurydice -- the whole animated dead body, gross mold stuff, etc. was not something I needed in my life -- but there was enough going on that kept my interest. spoilers? The idea that this Orpheus succeeds in bringing Eurydice back not because he is a hero but because he takes it for granted that she'll follow him was a neat touch. I liked the way both Apollo and Calliope were represented here (he as a legendary rock star, she as a quirky author type with pencils in her hair), and it took me a while to twig onto what was going on with the marble, but Sisyphus rolling his "rock" across his kuckles was an unexpectedly cute detail. I also liked the way Orpheus feeds Euridyce lamb's blood, heated in the microwave, to keep her from forgetting. The other level on which this worked for me is, a lot of the story does feel like marriage after a life-changing tragedy, dealing with a spouse who's become seriously disabled in some other way, and I found that to be an interesting take on the story.
"O2 Arena", Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki -- This is the only author on the slate I haven't read before. I knew this story had won the Nebula (over a slate that included the Wiswell and Yoachim stories, and having read all three now, I'm frankly mystified as to HOW it ended up winning over "Palette"... I just didn't think it was anything special? The writing did not work for me -- it was a slog; that very well could be writing from a different cultural tradition, but the fact remains that this was the story I most had to force myself to actually finish (even though I think it's one of the shorter ones). The worldbuilding was grim but really not that original, except for the Nigeria setting. The writing got in the way of me being able to appreciate the characters on any level. And thematically or plot-wise it didn't do anything for me either. I did enjoy the dialogue/banter between the narrator and his peers, but there is very little of it compared to everything else.
Hugo roundup: novelettes: Colors of the Immortal Palette, Bots of the Lost Ark, L'Esprit de L'Escalier / That Story Isn't the Story (not sure yet of the order between these two; I was mixed on both of them), Unseelie Brothers Ltd, O2 Arena
*
I watched Ms Marvel episode 4, but have very little to say about it. I enjoyed the look at Karachi, but I guess the show is a lot less compelling to me when it's not on the Jersey City home turf. The family scenes worked less well for me here than they did in the past. I'm amused by Kamala picking up a new potential love interest in nearly every episode. And the only other thing I noted down was Kamala's Karachi cousin calling her an "ABCD" (which I know from CM-my-buddy, who is American-born Desi herself). It seems like I'm liking the odd episodes more than the even ones, which hopefully means I'll find next week's episode more fun, but doesn't bode well for the finale (but that's generally been the way of these Marvel shows anyway).
**
shermarama's comment on my CoC2 post reminded me that I'd meant to check out some NZ Taskmaster once I ran out of the original show, and then I was listening to the return of the series 6 retrospective podcast, and the special guest was Laura from the NZ show, and she and her shenanigans on series 2 sounded fun, so that was clearly fate and I decided to give it a shot. First impressions (after two episodes):
- Jeremy (the Taskmaster) and Paul (the assistant) have a very different vibe from Greg and Alex, both individually and especially together. Which I knew would be the ase from podcast discussions with NZ guests, but it's really very striking. I do find Paul adorable, but he just kind of stands there with a gormless look while the contestants do things to him or runs around doing their bidding (Jeremy compared him to a working dog in episode 1, and yeah XD) but the vibe is very different from Alex in a way I'm not sure I could articulate, but, like, less conducive to writing kinky fic about I would guess? Like, a naive, helpful, a tad overly literal person who is caught up in the weirdness (I just flashed to Piranesi from Susanna Clarke book, lol). And Jeremy is stern but without Greg's imposing air. And I'm not sensing any separation of roles between them on, like, a character level -- Jeremy grades the subjective tasks, but they just seem like coworkers on fairly even footing. There isn't that vibe that's the core of the persona relationship between Alex and Greg. Not that I need that vibe -- it would probably be weird to try and duplicate, but there's no specific chemistry I'm picking up on, either. And Jeremy's scoring is just very matter-of-fact, no back-and-forth with the contestants, except for a little bit of ribbing of Matt. Greg is a core part of the show's entertainment value for me, but at this point at least, Jeremy is just kind of there.
- The contestants are fairly fun. David Correos had been a special guest on Ed's podcast for some earlier series, and I didn't find him especially funny in that venue, he quickly became my favorite on the actual show -- his efforts seem to have this combination of clever out-of-the-box thinking, bad luck, and hilarious reactions, both on the filmed tasks themselves and at the studio playback, and also he just generally seems nuts, in a way that lends itself to surprising and funny moments on Taskmaster. So far the David Correos highlights have been him climbing up in the rafters to retrieve his helium balloons for the "fly" task, chugging diluted sunblock and not only not getting to use it on the slip-n'-slide he'd constructed but also unwittingly ending Guy's "float this Brussels sprout" streak, and -- this part made me laugh so hard for so long O asked me if I was OK -- the "transform this room" challenge, in which the lights went off prematurely, so he had no time to prepare, and he got naked in 12 seconds -- I feel he definitely deserved way more than 1 point for that task. I also like his shirts.
- Of the others, so far I mostly like Guy Montgomery's progression of T-shirts with childhood photos of Paul Williams (I knew they were a thing from the podcast, so was looking forward to seeing them), and Laura's pink outfit and general attitude/reactions to things. Matt has some nice moments in the first episode. Urzila has been the least interesting to me, but she's had a couple of nice moments, too, like just bashing the sunscreen bottle (as opposed to the others doing various levels of preparation) and winning by a long shot.
- I had heard on the podcast that the TP roll tower + show bowling live task from series 13 was reprised/stolen from NZ Taskmaster, but was not expecting it to show up in the very first episode I watched. This bunch were even more inept at hitting towers with shoes -- I guess shoes are just very non-aerodynamic? I was also intrigued by David Correos's approach to tower building, which was to unwind the TP roll and sort of pile up the paper ribbon. It was a useless strategy, but definitely out-of-the-box thinking XD
"Proof by Induction", Jose Pablo Iriarte -- I enjoyed this one a lot. It happened to have hit a couple of things RTMI -- parents and children (over more than one generation), a story about math and academia (which I may not have first-hand interest in, but having a husband who is a math professor definitely made it relevant), and the actual science fiction angle -- Coda and the ability to talk with a simulacrum of the recently departed is also a sci-fi idea I particularly like (I liked it in Scalzi's Emperox books and the imagos in Teixcalaan, and this isn't quite the same thing, being a lot more circumscribed, but I still like it. Actually, in particular I like that this technology is developed for a mundane and small-scale purpose (where did you leave the will/insurance policy and getting a chance to say good-bye), but Paulie adapts it to a different use and kind of kluges that functionality together -- it feels true to how this stuff would work. And there are some other neat worldbuilding details, like Paulie wondering if the Codas are programmed by the hospital to have the deceased say that there are no grounds for malpractice suites. Anyway, the math-y mumbo jumbo washed pleasantly over me, like when B is telling me about his research to make me fall asleep, but the parent/child relationship stuff worked for me really well -- Paulie's father, estranged and now collegial because he doesn't know how to be a father, so he settles for being a colleague, Paulie wanting more fro him while realizing that he's never going to get it (certainly not now that he's dead) and settling for what he can get, but trying to do better with his own kid (that line about chemistry sets!, and managing to do better while still making mistakes -- none of this is earthshatteringly original, but it felt true and well done, and I like the way the family stuff works with the "proof by induction" title/mathematical concept -- you can build on a small foundation if you set out to do it. Quotes: "Our ethics committee has concerns when it comes to the appearance of attributing personhood to what should be a temporary means of gathering information and comfort." "If it's not a person, then it's data. I'm next of kin, so the data should be my property." Oh, right, and there was an interesting stylistic thing I wanted to remark on -- the story is told in present tense (for the real life) and past tense (for Paulie's Coda visits with his dead father)(, and that tripped me up a couple of times -- not because the tenses were different, but because that felt backwards -- like, I would've expected the out-of-time Coda segments to be in present tense. But maybe that's on purpose, because having it be "backwrds" made the Coda segments feel more jarring, and I do think that's the right effect.
"Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather", Sarah Pinsker -- I was looking forward to this one, because Sarah Pinsker, and a story centered around a ballad, and Sarah Pinsker writing about music 9whcih I enjoyed in "Wind Will Rove" a couple of years ago, though that was a sci-fi take and this is a crepy fantasy one). I had not realized it was a story told in a weird format -- basically, it consists of the text of a ballad (which Pinsker made up), and footnotes/references/citations on a Wiki-like site, plus the interaction between the editors discussing the citations, arguing with each other, and in general being an internet community. And I thought the format worked really well! It made me think of "STET", which also attempts to tell a story in what is essentially marginalia, but unlike "STET", I didn't hate it I thought the "main text" which serves as the frame for the part that tells the actual story and the marginalia were both interesting and worked together well. The ballad itself is very ballad-y and very creepy, in an authentic way where some very simple words used in unexpected-to-a-modern-reader ways conjure up a hard to forget image, like "Tam Lin"'s "I would have taken out they two grey eyes\And put in two eyes of tree". I enjoyed all the versions nerdery around the ballad, the different order of verses, verses that were added later, people who had heard commercially released versions and only knew those -- all that added a lot of layered authenticity to the story. (I took a folklore class at uni, which did a unit on Child ballads, and one of my essays involved researching and comparing multiple versions of a ballad, so this was all stuff I had personal experience with and fond memories of. Although this was in the days before the internet, so this was a solo pursuit. But the internet interaction in the story also felt pretty authentic and added a nice note of humour to the story.) And then, of course, there's the story that unfolds -- not linearly, because the citations are in the order they pertain to the song, but the threaded discussion starts in that order but then proceeds in chronological order, which leads to this very nice interwoven, adrift-in-time feeling that feels just right for a ballad. The other neat thing is, there is actually I think nothing OVERTLY fantastical in the story -- I mean, the ballad is fantastic, but it doesn't have to be real, there are plenty of fantastic ballads that exist in the real world. But being linked to a specific place, the disappearance of Mark Rydell, and the (likely) disappearance of Henry around Gall (what a great name for th etown, btw) was enough to make it feel sufficiently fantastic. I can see why this won the Nebula (over "Proof" and "Mr Death" among others), and this is my vote-to-win for the Hugos as well. Also, this exists.
"The Sin of America", Cat Valente -- this has the common-for-me problem of Cat Valente's writing of having too many words and trying for more profound than it comes across as (to me). (At least it was a lot shorter than Space Opera?) Some of the discriptions were neat enough, but got drowned in Too Many Words. The twist, if that was meant to be a twist, was not shocking, just unpleasant. And if it was going for allegory or parable or something, it did not work for me on that level either. Definitely going at the bottom end of my list, just trying to decide whether above or below No Award...
"Unknown Number", Blue Neustifter -- in situ here on Twitter, but I found that Twitter wouldn't let me keep reading after a while, so here's the Facebook page that has all of it, including the text transcripts of the, well, texts. OK, so, actually, the coolest thing about this story for me is that there's a story told on Twitter on the ballot. I don't think this is the first self-published short story to end up nominated for the Hugo, but it does seem like it might be the first one not put on there by the Puppies, which is pretty cool, too! As for the story itself, I found it worthwhile but a step down from my favorites. The whole "pep talk to your multiverse self" is so zeitgeist XD But, well, closely diveging selves and getting to meet them made me think of Sarah Pinskerr's brilliant "And Then There Were (N-One)" (well, no, I was already thinking about it for unrelated reasons), and next to that this was just very one-note and sparse. And, like, I get that that is a novella and this is a short story told in images of texts on Twitter, but they are still both stories, and this one didn't work for me as well as it seems to have done for other people. I think a big part of that is actually the told-in-texts-unfolding-real-time format, which, for how brief it is, ends up with a lot of filler, because it's going for reproducing the way people text. There are a couple of really good lines (my favorite being, "you know that therapy is easier than proving multiverse theory, right?", but I also liked "being a girl didn't stop climate hange, huh"/"i mean not yet, i'll keep trying", and "I didn't want a timeline where the universe fixed it" was a punch, and I liked the roll the dice/watch someone play analogy and "minimum girl distance") -- but those are kind of buried under many, many lines going "fuck" and "I'm sorry" and "ok". I liked the story quite a bit better when I reread it, skimming the filler and just focusing on the impactful lines, but that's not how it's written.
"Tangles", Seanan McGuire -- why is this nominated for a Hugo? I mean, we all know why, because it was written by Seanan McGuire, and I suspect there is no piece of fiction, nonfiction, or tangentially related object that Seanan McGuire could produce which would not possibly get on the Hugo ballot just because it's Seanan McGuire. But this story is embarrassingly weak when compared to the other nominees, I think -- even "Sin", which did not work for me AT ALL, is at least trying for something profound. This is a Magic the Gathering tie-in? About a dryad and a mage -- I'm not sure if the characters would be recognizable to me if I were more familiar with MtG, which I'm not at all, except as that game my guy friends spent hours playing on the floor in high school and that one "Um, Actually" episode. On its own, it's just a very simple story of a dryad finding another tree (this one with nonbinary pronouns, because tree representation is important, I guess) and a bunch of stilted writing. This honestly feels like amateur hour... And, like, pro authors are allowed to write shallow fanfic about stuff they love, same as anybody, but it's got no business being on the Hugo ballot. This is going below No Award.
"Mr Death", Alix E. Harrow -- OK, so, this is hugely sappy, but I don't care, I enjoyed the hell out of it. The narrative voice is GREAT, and while the ending definitely feels too easy, I don't care, because I'm on board with it. I also particularly enjoyed the mix of corporatese, colloquial, and numinous in the narration -- it's an unusual combination, but very fitting to the story, and blended very well. I'd really liked the first thing by Harrow I read, the Hugo-winning "A Witch's Guide to Escape", and then was bored and disappointed by her novel debut, so wasn't sure what to expect with this one. Happy to see "Witch's Guide" wasn't as much of a fluke, in ters of alignment to my taste, as I'd started to fear it might be.
Now that I've been doing Hugo homework on and off for a while, one thing I'm noticing is that there are fewer stories nominated by authors I haven't read before. Jose Pablo Iriarte and Blue Neustifter were new to me in this category this year. (I've heard both of the names before, but at least don't recall reading anything by them before.)
Hugo roundup: short stories: Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather, Proof by Induction, Mr Death, Unknown Number (those two are close for me; I think 'Number' is more interesting conceptually but 'Death' was a better read, so it kind of balances out), The Sin of America, No Award, Tangles.
Novelettes:
"Unseelie Brothers, Ltd.", Fran Wilde -- like the other Fran Wilde story I read for Hugo homework a few years back, this one is atmospheric and vividly described but doesn't do much of anything for me. Which is a pity, because unlike a dark carnival of freaks or whatever ("Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand"), fey tailors were potentially relevant to my interests. I also thought the vibe of the setting was odd -- the modern setting with smartphones but the old-timey feeling balls and way of referring to people. That might be intentional, given this story, but it didn't feel adrift in time in, like, a productive way, just in a way that made it harder for me to visualize anything. The idea of the dresses is very cool, though. But that really isn't much, for something the length of a novelette, even a short novelette.
"Bots of the Lost Ark", Suzanne Palmer -- I've encountered Palmer's novelettes via Hugo homework before, and I tend to ike her stuff (well, I was actually disappointed by "The Secret Life of Bots" winning in 2018, but that was because I was rooting for a different story, not because I disliked it). Anyway, I appreciate the vibe all of the Palmer stories I've read seem to have of humorous narration against the backdrop of pretty dark stuff (war, suicide missions, etc.) -- it's not like Murderbot, which is funny but bitter, but has this almost fairy-tale-like fatalism which works well for me. This was maybe a little longer than it needed to be, but I found th bots' dialogue and 9's POV of the humans amusing, and it was basically a nice, fun story, not earth-shattering but a good time.
"Colors of the Immortal Palette", Caroline M. Yoachim -- Yoachim is another author I discovered via Hugo homework and have liked some pieces by, so I was looking forward to this one. And I didn't love it, but it's an elegant story, intricately told, if a little overly didactic for my taste in places. I'm generally bored by vampires, but this is a neat take on vampire-adjacent immortality (which maybe seems closer to Aaronovitch's jazz vampires than to the conventional ones), lovely and melancholy, and I like that they are immortal but not eternal. The pigments as an organizing scheme for the scenes over time worked well for me, especially when the same color was connoting different things, like spoilers in the section with Mari and Joshua's wedding and the atomic bomb. Some of the ruminations on art, immortality, one's place in the world did feel didactic (though they are in POV, so not necessarily meant to be the Authorial Truth -- although the interview included with the story in the voter packet had Yoachim talking about how Mariko, as a creator herself, is a sort of self-insert, to the point of that being the M in her middle name; on that note, I thought it was neat that this was the reason she had chosen to skip over the timeframe in which she is alive). I did like Mariko having doubts about whether her lack of success in getting her art across was because she had barriers to overcome as a mixed-race woman vs not being skilled/talented enough, and I like the rumination on how time is the value of everything, at root. There are some memorable period details, like the wartime cardboard wedding cake and parachute dress and, on a much more sobering note, the Tanforan Assembly Center (I know Tanforan as a mall and didn't realize it had been a Japanese detention center during WWII), and just lovely personal details like Mari coming to Joshua's grave to read a book he would have liked rather than leave flowers, and feeling like she could finally get to know Japan for her adopted Japanese daughter, without the conflicted feelings of getting to know it for herself, and neat worldbuilding details, like the Mari of the last section creating a painting with pigments that will shift over time, meant to be viewed in full over multiple human lifetimes. There's a lot going on in this story, and it's integrated into an elegant package, impressively coherent. Quotes: "I do not want to die into being forever young." "Each successive painting contains something of the time that went in the previous canvasses." "Being immortal, it is so easy to put off the work, to drift aimlessly because there is urgency without the ultimate deadline of death." "'They're the only ones who start with a blank white page. Their story is the default, invisible, a crisp new canvas. Our stories, our history, our pain -- that's color already on the page and we have to work around that, we have to explain why there of crimson seeping through where our people bled, why there's a vermillion rage underneath the calm surface of white.' 'And then they'll tell you hat they don't want your explanations because it complicates the story, sullies the art.'" "Even we immortals paint in stolen bme, for the demands of the world expand to fill whatever time there is, no matter how vast."
"That Story Isn't the Story", John Wiswell -- I read Wiswell's Nebula-winning short story last year and found it reasonably cute but very twee. This one's a different tone, but I can't say I enjoyed it very much -- the ominous vibe was unpleasant to immerse myself in even though spoiler there's a happy ending. I do appreciate the thing he mentions in the interview he's doing, where Anton doesn't get a traditionally heroic arc or a revenge arc or anything like that -- he gets to survive and recognize what is trauma vs reality and start to heal and move on -- and presumably his fellow familiars do, too, though we never see more than glimpses of their story. I also like the negative-space way the vampire master is depicted, never shown except for being hinted at in shadows, his nearness inferred from the bleeding of the bites. But overall this is too creepy and dark for my taste. Also, the names were very disorienting to me. I think of Anton as a Russian name (although it can be a bunch of other things, apparently), and Grigorii (which is a weird way to spell it) I think is only a Russian name? But Caravaggio sure isn't, and so I was very confused by these people's backgrounds, which don't matter at all, but the names jumped out at me.
"L'Esprit de L'Escalier", Catherynne M Valente -- this one actually worked better for me than I expected considering it was by Cat Valente XD I think in general Valente writing deconstructions tends to work better for me, because the one thing of hers I've genuinely enjoyed was The Refrigerator Monologues. This wasn't at that level, but it kept my attention and I liked some details and turns of phrase, and I mostly did not want to take a machete/flamethrower to the prose, which is my usual reaction to Cat Valente's writing. I like "Greek myth but make it modern" retellings, so even though the myth of Orpheus is not one of my favorites, I had some up front interest in this. I do not ENJOY this exploration of zombie Eurydice -- the whole animated dead body, gross mold stuff, etc. was not something I needed in my life -- but there was enough going on that kept my interest. spoilers? The idea that this Orpheus succeeds in bringing Eurydice back not because he is a hero but because he takes it for granted that she'll follow him was a neat touch. I liked the way both Apollo and Calliope were represented here (he as a legendary rock star, she as a quirky author type with pencils in her hair), and it took me a while to twig onto what was going on with the marble, but Sisyphus rolling his "rock" across his kuckles was an unexpectedly cute detail. I also liked the way Orpheus feeds Euridyce lamb's blood, heated in the microwave, to keep her from forgetting. The other level on which this worked for me is, a lot of the story does feel like marriage after a life-changing tragedy, dealing with a spouse who's become seriously disabled in some other way, and I found that to be an interesting take on the story.
"O2 Arena", Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki -- This is the only author on the slate I haven't read before. I knew this story had won the Nebula (over a slate that included the Wiswell and Yoachim stories, and having read all three now, I'm frankly mystified as to HOW it ended up winning over "Palette"... I just didn't think it was anything special? The writing did not work for me -- it was a slog; that very well could be writing from a different cultural tradition, but the fact remains that this was the story I most had to force myself to actually finish (even though I think it's one of the shorter ones). The worldbuilding was grim but really not that original, except for the Nigeria setting. The writing got in the way of me being able to appreciate the characters on any level. And thematically or plot-wise it didn't do anything for me either. I did enjoy the dialogue/banter between the narrator and his peers, but there is very little of it compared to everything else.
Hugo roundup: novelettes: Colors of the Immortal Palette, Bots of the Lost Ark, L'Esprit de L'Escalier / That Story Isn't the Story (not sure yet of the order between these two; I was mixed on both of them), Unseelie Brothers Ltd, O2 Arena
*
I watched Ms Marvel episode 4, but have very little to say about it. I enjoyed the look at Karachi, but I guess the show is a lot less compelling to me when it's not on the Jersey City home turf. The family scenes worked less well for me here than they did in the past. I'm amused by Kamala picking up a new potential love interest in nearly every episode. And the only other thing I noted down was Kamala's Karachi cousin calling her an "ABCD" (which I know from CM-my-buddy, who is American-born Desi herself). It seems like I'm liking the odd episodes more than the even ones, which hopefully means I'll find next week's episode more fun, but doesn't bode well for the finale (but that's generally been the way of these Marvel shows anyway).
**
shermarama's comment on my CoC2 post reminded me that I'd meant to check out some NZ Taskmaster once I ran out of the original show, and then I was listening to the return of the series 6 retrospective podcast, and the special guest was Laura from the NZ show, and she and her shenanigans on series 2 sounded fun, so that was clearly fate and I decided to give it a shot. First impressions (after two episodes):
- Jeremy (the Taskmaster) and Paul (the assistant) have a very different vibe from Greg and Alex, both individually and especially together. Which I knew would be the ase from podcast discussions with NZ guests, but it's really very striking. I do find Paul adorable, but he just kind of stands there with a gormless look while the contestants do things to him or runs around doing their bidding (Jeremy compared him to a working dog in episode 1, and yeah XD) but the vibe is very different from Alex in a way I'm not sure I could articulate, but, like, less conducive to writing kinky fic about I would guess? Like, a naive, helpful, a tad overly literal person who is caught up in the weirdness (I just flashed to Piranesi from Susanna Clarke book, lol). And Jeremy is stern but without Greg's imposing air. And I'm not sensing any separation of roles between them on, like, a character level -- Jeremy grades the subjective tasks, but they just seem like coworkers on fairly even footing. There isn't that vibe that's the core of the persona relationship between Alex and Greg. Not that I need that vibe -- it would probably be weird to try and duplicate, but there's no specific chemistry I'm picking up on, either. And Jeremy's scoring is just very matter-of-fact, no back-and-forth with the contestants, except for a little bit of ribbing of Matt. Greg is a core part of the show's entertainment value for me, but at this point at least, Jeremy is just kind of there.
- The contestants are fairly fun. David Correos had been a special guest on Ed's podcast for some earlier series, and I didn't find him especially funny in that venue, he quickly became my favorite on the actual show -- his efforts seem to have this combination of clever out-of-the-box thinking, bad luck, and hilarious reactions, both on the filmed tasks themselves and at the studio playback, and also he just generally seems nuts, in a way that lends itself to surprising and funny moments on Taskmaster. So far the David Correos highlights have been him climbing up in the rafters to retrieve his helium balloons for the "fly" task, chugging diluted sunblock and not only not getting to use it on the slip-n'-slide he'd constructed but also unwittingly ending Guy's "float this Brussels sprout" streak, and -- this part made me laugh so hard for so long O asked me if I was OK -- the "transform this room" challenge, in which the lights went off prematurely, so he had no time to prepare, and he got naked in 12 seconds -- I feel he definitely deserved way more than 1 point for that task. I also like his shirts.
- Of the others, so far I mostly like Guy Montgomery's progression of T-shirts with childhood photos of Paul Williams (I knew they were a thing from the podcast, so was looking forward to seeing them), and Laura's pink outfit and general attitude/reactions to things. Matt has some nice moments in the first episode. Urzila has been the least interesting to me, but she's had a couple of nice moments, too, like just bashing the sunscreen bottle (as opposed to the others doing various levels of preparation) and winning by a long shot.
- I had heard on the podcast that the TP roll tower + show bowling live task from series 13 was reprised/stolen from NZ Taskmaster, but was not expecting it to show up in the very first episode I watched. This bunch were even more inept at hitting towers with shoes -- I guess shoes are just very non-aerodynamic? I was also intrigued by David Correos's approach to tower building, which was to unwind the TP roll and sort of pile up the paper ribbon. It was a useless strategy, but definitely out-of-the-box thinking XD