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

As with Best Fancast, I’m going to start at the top.

1) Tia Tashiro

Represented just by five short stories in the Hugo Voter Packet, but I found them all very refreshing and a bit subversive. Second paragraph of third story (“Every Hopeless Thing“):

Elodie carefully tucks the opera glasses into an inside pocket of her scavenging pack. She stands and dusts her gloves off on her thick, shielded pants. The gauge on the inside of her soft plastic helmet is reading at acceptable levels of ambient pollution, nothing that would breach her suit; it would alarm if she hit unsafe levels, and she’d hotfoot it back to Skip and let the medical system give her a once-over if it did.

2) Angela Liu

Also has five short stories in the Hugo Voter Packet, plus two poems. Again I enjoyed them all, I just enjoyed Tashiro’s work more. Second paragraph of third story (“You Will Be You Again“):

‘How do you feel?’ the doctor asks, three assistants hovering behind him like angels of death.

3) Moniquill Blackgoose

Wrote To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, which won the Lodestar last year and is represented by an excerpt here. Second paragraph of third chapter:

But then Crow, who came flying to Masquapaug from the lands west of the sunset, taught the first people how to dance. Nampeshiwe’s Mother came to watch their dances. Nampeshiwe’s Mother said to the people, “Your dancing is beautiful. You must teach me your dancing. I would know how it is done.”

4) Jared Pechaček

Represented by a novel, The West Passage, which is a nicely worked out secondary world with some odd dynastic quirks. Second paragraph of third chapter:

Pell had always liked the refectory, with the quiet, half- conscious liking one feels for something one has known since childhood. A clerestory of tiny square windows ran along the eastern wall, letting in morning sunlight and evening breezes. Vast old tapestries covered the stone walls. Their rich colors had dimmed, many were moth- eaten, and some had fallen, but the stories and strange figures they held made her feel as if she were a creature of legend herself. Bats roosted in the south rafters, pigeons flew in and out, and ivy curled in at the windows, but even in its state of decay the refectory held some clear beauty quite separate from the ancient chaos of the rest of the palace.

5) Hannah Kaner

Represented in the Packet by two novels, Godkiller (submitted last year) and its sequel Sunbringer. Second paragraph of third chapter of Sunbringer:

Everything hurt. The cut on her shoulder, the burns on her right leg where her half-melted prosthesis had seared her skin. The nicks, scratches, and aches of long weeks of fitful nights and being hunted through the wild lands. Her body was keeping score of its battles.

Another secondary world, interesting enough but after reading the first hundred pages of Sunbringer I knew where I would rank it.

6) Bethany Jacobs

Represented in the packet by extracts from novels These Burning Stars and On Vicious Worlds. Second paragraphs of third chapters respectively:

Jun takes a grimacing drink of her coffee, cold and sickly sweet with condensed milk. Her appointment with the captain of The Swimming Fox is half an hour away, but she’s been nursing the same cup for two hours, and this is hardly a pleasant place to spend the afternoon. The Grum Bowl’s half-stocked shelves boast evaporated soups, snack packs, and candy bars, none of which are less than a standard year old. The floors are grimy, and the lights are eye-stabbingly fluorescent. Patrons glare at her when they see her gun, flashing their own sidearms like a dare she ignores. On one wall there’s a crude mural of Terotonteris, god of revelry and risks, his round body jutting with arms and legs, his mouth open to swallow from a pitcher while some of his hands play a game of tiles and others clasp at shiny things.

and

It’s tedious. They invited the Kindom here; their docks are open and their weapons are cold. There’s no need for histrionics.

Odd mix of fantasy and sf which didn’t quite draw me in enough to want to track down the full books.

All of these writers are good, I just happened to like some more than others; the future of the genre is safe.