Continuing my posts on this year's BSFA shortlists (and again, this isn’t a set of recommendations, it’s confessing my personal quirks). Here I got two of my nominations on the ballot; the other two that I nominated unsuccessfully were “Rocket Man” by Louis Evans (Interzone, March 2020) and “A Voyage to Queensthroat” by Anya Johanna DeNiro (Strange Horizons, August 2020)

It's quite a diverse bag. One of these nominees, at 154 pages, must be nudging up against the 40,000 word limit (and was also on the Best Novel long list); another is less than 2,200 words long. I'm defensive of the Hugos' three different categories for short fiction, which I think make it easier to compare like with like, though of course I am also very familiar with the constraints under which the BSFA Awards function and which would make it impossible to operate the Hugo system. It's a diverse list in another way as well; the first writer of colour to win the BSFA award in this category was Aliette de Bodard in 2010 (she was also the fifth woman to win it, out of 32 awards to that date); in the following nine years it has gone to non-white writers twice (de Bodard for a second time, and Amal el-Mohtar last year) and to women six times. This year there is no white male writer on the short-list; a historic wrong is being righted.

I confess that my own nominations this year were guided by ease of access to the stories on the long list, and I basically read everything that I didn't have to pay for (there were over 50 nominees on a very long long-list). This meant that I missed the standalone and anthology stories which ended up on the short-list, which was definitely my mistake. My sense is that anthologies are rather losing out from the changes currently happening in the published fiction markets; yet last year's BSFA long list pointed me to two anthologies which were among the best sf books I read all year (this one and this one). So do go and get the two anthologies with stories on this year's short list, here and here (and that is a recommendation, not a confession).

These are all good stories, and ranking them was hard. But you have to start somewhere. So:

6) Dilman Dila, ‘Red_Bati’ (Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction From Africa and the African Diaspora, eds. Zelda Knight and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki). Third paragraph:

He could not recharge her. He had to save power, but he did not want to shut her down because he had no one else to talk to. He did not get lonely, not the way she had been: so lonely that she would hug him and her tears would drip onto his body, making him flinch at the thought of rust. She would hug him even though she complained that his body was too hard, not soft and warm like that of Akili. He did not get lonely like that, but Akili had written a code to make him want to talk to someone all the time, and he had not had a chance for a conversation since the accident, twelve hours ago.

Story of a space accident after which a canine-analogue AI is reflecting on its own existence. A little too close to cute robotry to really tick my boxes.

5) Tobi Ogundiran, ‘Isn’t Your Daughter Such a Doll’ (Shoreline of Infinity June 2020) – available here. Second paragraph of third section:

Her father still brought her sweets and cookies every day from work, but now that Ralia was not here to share them with her, Celine had absolutely no appetite for them. Once, as she walked down the street with her mother, she caught sight of Ralia dancing and skipping merrily to the tunes of a street saxophonist. Celine let go of her mother’s hand and raced to her friend, sweeping her up in a crushing hug.

This was one of my two nominees that made it to the short-list, but I slighty cooled on it on re-reading and in comparison with the others. It's a horror story about two young girls in Paris, a straightforward and gripping tale which gets from A to B without much distraction.

4) Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, ‘Ife-Iyoku, the Tale of Imadeyunuagbon’ (also Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction From Africa and the African Diaspora, eds. Zelda Knight and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki), also available here. Second paragraph of third section:

She whispered in his ear, “Why does a warrior like you tremble at my simple touch?”

A post-apocalyptic, African speculative fiction novella; the survivors in the tribe find that their patriarchal structures are not up to scratch in the face of the new challenges of their world.

3) Eugen Bacon, Ivory’s Story. Second paragraph of third chapter:

He lived in the land of the Great Chief Goanna who studied the white man’s language and took to wearing his hair in a bob cut. The same Chief Goanna who paid for his education by working in overalls as a cleaner in the big city infirmary of the white man, who was best renowned for returning to his people and bringing greatness to their land. There, in native land, Chief Goanna shaved his head, discarded his overalls, wore bark loin and lifted a club to go to Parliament and save his country with eloquence from the greed of a white settler who wanted to put a mall, a restaurant and a spa in the burial grounds of the forefathers inside the Valley of Dreams.

The urban fantasy police story is becoming a subgenre all of its own these days – thinking of C.E. Murphy, Ben Aaronovitch, and so on – but this one is set in Sydney, and the heroine must unpack many layers of myth and narrative before finding resolution both for the crime she is investigating and for herself. I found it a bit too dense in places, but enjoyed the ride. The longest story of the shortlist.

2) Anne Charnock, ‘All I Asked For’ (Fictions, Healthcare and Care Re-Imagined, ed. Keith Brookes) – available here. Second paragraph of third section:

We overlapped with another parent last time, and I felt uncomfortable sharing the space. I always feel self-conscious when other parents are around even though we’re all in the same boat. It’s obvious that I’m an older mother, and so it’s clear that I had little choice. But the young mother I met last time seemed eager to tell me she had no choice either—cancer treatment. Questions otherwise hang in the air, and I’m sure we’re all aware of them. Is your baby-bag strictly necessary? Did you fake a phobia about childbirth? Did you want a baby-bag to protect your career?

Extra-uterine pregnancy is a side topic in a number of sf worlds – thinking especially here of Bujold's superb Vorkosigan series – but this short story (the shortest on the shortlist) looks at it very closely and directly from the perspective of an expectant mother who is regretting not bearing her child herself. There are not always easy answers for parenting, and that starts very early in the process. This was my other nomination.

1) Ida Keogh, ‘Infinite Tea in the Demara Cafe’ (London Centric: Tales of Future London, ed. Ian Whates). Second paragraph of third section:

Finally, he saw Liara, taking an order with quick flicks of shorthand. He had to speak to her. If he could start to pin down differences between one universe and the next he might find a focus to return him to his own world, to his simple, ordered life.

I'm a sucker for time-travel romance stories, and was swept away by this story of an older man who finds himself tumbling through parallel versions of the same London cafe, looking for a reality in which his wife is still alive. Short and sweet, and gets my top vote.

However these are all good stories and I could understand any of them winning.