2025 Hugos: Goodreads / Librarything stats | Novel | Novella | Novelette | Short Story | Graphic Story or Comic | Related Work | Dramatic Presentation, Long and Short | Fancast | Poem | Lodestar | Astounding

6) “Three Faces of a Beheading” by Arkady Martine. Second paragraph of third section:

Okay okay okay, let me explain.

I just didn’t get this. I liked all the others.

5) “We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read” by Caroline M. Yoachim. Second paragraph(s) of third section:

You have a game with pictures, trying to spot the differences, your eyes darting back and forth between them. It is harder with text. Don’t focus on individual words in each line, but look at the space between them. Know what both sides say. Hold it all in your head. Perhaps don’t even quite focus your vision.

This is our story, simplified: Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration.

I did understand this, but found it quite difficult to follow.

4) “Five Views of the Planet Tartarus” by Rachael K. Jones. Second (and final) paragraph of third section:

The last injection severs their voluntary motor pathways so nothing moves but their eyes. Before the final step, the prisoners feel young again, for a moment.

A very short, vicious, vivid portrayal of a prison planet.

3) “Stitched to Skin Like Family Is” by Nghi Vo. Second paragraph of third section:

“It was better before they put in the big road. The old road ran right by us, and we’d get people all the time. Now it’s just folks who already know we’re here. Or ones that get unlucky. It’s catch as catch can these days, I guess.”

Short story of a family quest and revenge.

2) “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim. Third paragraph (no internal sections):

So they (the first “they”) killed the kid again. They stormed the hole and broke the kid out and slit the kid’s throat on public television (as all television in Omelas was publicly funded), and they said, “Look at what sort of shit your beautiful city is built on!” and the kid bled out and it was extremely graphic to the point of being censored in later broadcasts. And one of the tracks of the free public transit system twisted loose, and a bunch of commuters were killed in a freak accident, and the stock market started shuddering downward, and a house collapsed on the south side of Omelas.

Update of the classic Ursula Le Guin story for today, including communications technology and general societal decay.

1) “Marginalia” by Mary Robinette Kowal. Second paragraph of third section:

Margery resettled the bag on her shoulder and the hammering of her heart got louder and harder against the walls of her ribs. Off to the side of the path, something gleamed in the sunlight. Too much sunlight, as if trees were missing.

Fairy tale involving giant homicidal snails. What’s not to love?