Well, the Nebulas are over. The winners announced, the new board of SFWA sworn in, and everything. I may not have pictures, but I have some thoughts.
First, I want to congratulate all the winners and finalists. Félicitations! You’ve all earned it, and especially in short stories and novelettes, the stories were really strong this year. Choosing a winner must have been a trial.
But I’d especially like to congratulate Naomi Kritzer and our oldfriend, Ai Jiang. Naomi’s two finalists were a joy to read and a breath of fresh air – hope for the future. In her acceptance speech for the winning novelette, “The Year Without Sunshine,” she spoke of its inspiration – of wanting to kick against the idea that there could be no handicapped people in the apocalypse, and how a community comes together around their neighbor in need. That’s the kind of message, and the kind of science fiction, we need today.
But it wasn’t all awards and speeches. There were many, many great panels this year – just of the ones I attended, Novellas and Novelettes, Setting as Character, and the LGBTQ+ meetup were standouts. The ones I missed, I’ll be watching the videos and taking notes.
I even sat on a panel (again!) this year. Last year, it was “Unusual Short Story Formats.” This year, “Religion in Worldbuilding.” With Rachel Gutin, Sue Burke, Shvarta Thakar, and Natalie Wright, (a Quaker, a Jewish woman, a Unitarian Universalist, a Hindu, and an atheist, respectively), we ranged from why religion might be important (even in science fiction) to practical polytheism. The audience’s questions were great, too. Afterward, we adjourned to the Cooper Suite to continue the conversation, where a Friend from Ville Québec interrogated me about how hard it is for me to write Quakers.
Seriously. Hindu characters, Jewish characters, Catholics, atheists and Episcopals? Fine. No problem. Writing Quakers? Haven’t succeeded yet. …well, maybe once.
Speaking of my own writing…
I had an office hour with an editor who really understood Doña Ana Lucía. That’s right, To the Future! is out in the mail. Win, lose, or draw, I’m glad there’s someone in the industry who smiles when I say “it’s everything I thought was cool when I was 14” and understand the importance of nice, long names. Hold me in the Light while she considers To the Future!.
Which brings me to my last point. After office hours and some instructive panels, I’m making some changes to my independent writing career. I’m approaching the dirty thirty short stories, where each new title gently boosts sales on all the old titles. That’s fine, especially since they all sell rather modestly. But I’m going to move away from short stories.
Instead of one short story a month, I’m going to focus on (a) getting Doña Ana LucíaSerrano…to the Future! traditionally published, and (b) releasing a novella every three to six months. They’ll be 25,000-40,000 words – short enough to finish in an evening, long enough to sink your teeth into. And I’m going to start experimenting with series again, something I haven’t really done in a decade (aside from Doña Ana Lucía herself). Series, shared worlds…my stories are going to get bigger, in every way. I’m already gathering ideas, from swashbuckling lesbian space pirates to fantasy Quakers (because, hey, what’s the point of writing if you don’t challenge yourself?).
The diversity of voices, depth of characterization, and lived-in worlds that you’ve all praised for the stories in The Night Meeting will still be there. They’ll just be full meals every three months, instead of snacks every month. Trust me, they’ll be worth the wait.
This also means pivoting away from some of the intense marketing I’ve been sucked up into. Marketing is a gas – it will expand to fill the available space. I’m scaling back to blog updates every other Friday, and one update per month on the Innerspace newsletter and Patreon. But they’ll be richer for it – I’m incorporating more of the new prose I’m writing into the newsletter and into Patreon, so there’ll be more of the fiction you love coming to you.
That’s all the news that is news at the top of the hour. See you in two weeks!
That’s right, this week is this year’s Nebulas. You know I’ll be on the Religion in Worldbuilding panel (Friday, 7 June, starting at 3:00pm), but here’s my (planned) schedule for the weekend.
June 6, 1:30 – Novellas and Novelettes June 6, 4:30 – Love Beyond the Romantic
June 7, 9-12 – Party Suite hosting June 7, 1:30 – Setting as Character June 7, 3:00 – Religion as Worldbuilding June 7, 4:30 – Time Management OR Building Your Crew
June 8, 9:00 – Smaller is Better June 8 12-3 – Party Suite hosting June 8, 6-8 – Party Suite hosting
June 9, 10:30 – Planning Publicity
As you can see, my volunteer hours have me in the Party Suite. If you’re attending the Nebulas, drop on by!
When I first saw the title, I thought to myself “this sounds like a challenge.”
The story is exactly what it says on the tin – we open with the chair first achieving consciousness, under the craftwork touch of a master carpenter producing a magnum opus. The chair spends some time in a dusty warehouse, unseen by the sun, until an old man named Eduardo Amarim purchases it for his spacious dining room.
Eduardo reminds me of a Latin patriarch straight out of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He has his dignity and he has his fragile hopes for his family. His daughter Joana is returning from abroad after six years, and he wants to mend fences with her. Joana will have none of it – the terrible unspoken tragedy is too wide a gulf between them.
Eduardo recognizes a masterpiece of carpentry when he sees it. Because, as slowly becomes apparent, this is not his first conscious piece of furniture, and the first one is inextricably tied to that tragedy that separates him from his beloved daughter.
As the years wear on, it’s easy to see Eduardo and the chair following the same track. The chair’s fine details get filled with dust, despite Eduardo’s best efforts to oil and clean it every morning. They wear away, become scuffed, fade in the beloved sunlight. The seat mildews. Our chair gets passed down to Eduardo’s son, Leandro, and onto others, who do not waste time with such things. And, in the end, consciousness fading, dying, the chair returns to the warehouse, to become just another dumb piece of wood, that was once wrought so finely as to become conscious and aware.
It’s trite to call a Latin author like Bernardo a “magical realist,” but I can think of no better descriptor. This biography is by turns wistful, strange, melancholy, and dignified. There is something grand in this old man and his chair, in the chair’s helpless yet loving observation of the family saga, in the way there is no real explanation except masterwork for the chair’s consciousness, because no explanation is really needed. The chair is conscious and, in some ways, more conscious and more conscientious than the human beings in the house.
My feelings about Ai Jiang are well established by this point. This novelette, though not as experimental as Linghun or “Give Me English,” “I Am AI” is still very recognizably part of her ouvre. The narrator, Ai, lives under the bridge outside the shining city of Emit in a ramshackle community Ai Jiang always compares to a honeycomb. Ai lives from charge to charge, and Ai Jiang evokes that quiet mounting dread of a 1% charge on your phone…only extrapolating it, in the best science fiction tradition, since what Ai needs to charge are the electronics and implants that form most of their body, and without which Ai will die. Ai works out of a scummy wangba (Chinese-style internet café) on the edge of Emit, running the app “I Am AI” in a perpetual hustle/grind delivering non-AI writing and saving up to replace their heart with another implant.
“My hands shake at the prospect of finally getting rid of the one thing outside of my brain that hinders my productivity. To think my emotions will soon become a muted thing, I can’t tell if I’m afraid or eager. But I’ll be able to work faster. Joy and pain won’t affect me in the same way.”
Hey, it beats working for the monopoly that owns Emit.
“I Am AI” takes place in a different universe from “Give Me English,” but it’s still the same oppressive and omnipotent capitalism that we recognize from Ai Jiang’s short story. Like the narrator of “Give Me English,” Ai is always bargaining to try and get ahead, or at least to get nowhere fast, and what Ai ultimately bargains is their ability to connect with other people.
Because, ultimately, this is a story about art, and about how art makes us connect. Ai connects to their endless demanding clients through their writing, because it has heart and the uniqueness only a human writer can offer (at least, until Ai gets what they want). It’s about the painter who sits next to Ai at the wangba and how Ai connects, or fails to connect, with her work. And it’s about how that connection, the ability to respond to art, to create art, is worth being human for.
There have been times in my life that I’ve sat down to rewatch Cowboy Bebop or listen to Pink Floyd to see if I can still cry, if art still moves me, if I still escape the emotional numbness that Ai craves so much. Emotional numbing is a theme in this year’s novelettes – I found myself thinking of Eugenia Triantafyllou’s “Six Versions of My Brother Found Under the Bridge” as I reread “I Am AI,” as I thought of “I Am AI” when I first read Triantafyllou’s story – and in both cases, the narrators discover the game is not worth the candle. Because “I Am AI” is a triumph, not a tragedy.
This is a work of art that moves you. If it doesn’t, check what your heart is made of.
You know what I mean – the creepy culvert all the kids tell stories about. Going with your friends. Seeing who’s brave enough to go farthest inside. The devil lives in the culvert, in the drainpipe, under the bridge. This time, it happens to be true. He’s there to make you a deal.
Olga, our protagonist, has already been there. She collected one brother already. The story opens when she collects the second.
She stuffs each one in her room, because they aren’t really her brother. Her brother is long dead, and each version is a faint memory of him in a particular mood – joyous, sad, afraid – that she stuffs in her room and hopes her parents don’t notice. Each brother is stuck in a loop, like an endless GIF, exhibiting that peculiar emotion, to the point of nightmare. Worse, each brother takes away that emotion from Olga’s life, leaving her feelings muted and numb – Ai from “I Am AI” would give his heart to pay the cost that Olga, despite knowing better, keeps paying.
And the parallels with Ai Jiang don’t stop there.
More than anything, the story’s setup reminds me of Linghun – the living sister, the dead brother’s memory who hangs over the family like a shroud, the father whose body is here but whose soul is absent, the mother cooking the brother’s favorite food (and even mistaking it for the sister’s). But Olga is much, much more straightforward than the protagonist of Linghun, and Triantafyllou openly states what Ai Jiang only lightly alludes to.
And they wind up going in wildly separate, dark directions. I won’t spoil it, but it wasn’t Olga’s deal with the Devil that brings her brother (or brothers?) back. It’s much, much worse than that. And yet…somewhere on the other side of the bridge, there is hope. There is light.
But after finishing this story, I still went upstairs, crept into Lyra’s room, and stroked my sleeping daughter’s cheek. Just to be sure. Just to know she’s still there. And my heart jumped when she stirred, all the mixed feelings that make her human, that make her her, even in sleep.
By day, the narrator and her childhood friend Mina work at The Warehouse, painting NC Orbs with artistic new memories.
“Everyone’s eager to be somebody else, and who can blame them when the real world is a collage of worst-case-scenarios come true.”
By night, they are prostitutes at the Love Manor, and it’s as thoroughly, unremittingly grim as any bordello open today in your country. She’s saving up money for more NC Orbs to help Mina forget the traumas this world inflicts almost (but not quite) by accident…but which also wipes Mina of her name and her identity. Mina? Or Hina? Or Tina? Or Trina?
And when she runs out, she’s willing to take on a little extra work, no matter the risks…
“Thoroughly, unremittingly grim” describes the entire story well. There is no brightness here except buzzing neon, no happiness except tragic memories as they’re erased, removed, or painted over. It’s a world with no escapes and no innocence.
It’s cyberpunk, as cyberpunk is meant to be.
I didn’t necessarily enjoy this story – but that’s okay, because I feel like “enjoying” this story is missing the point. It’s unsettling and dark and claustrophobic and tragic. It’s there to disturb, not to be enjoyed. And it will disturb you.
On the one hand, this is a song about Saura, the lesbian daughter of a witch in Nigeria.
On the other hand, this is a tale about the tellers of tales, as they weave Saura’s story together.
“Saturday’s Song” opens with seven siblings, who exist out of time and out of space and who remind me of nothing so much as the Endless. Each has their place in telling, dissecting, and retelling the story. Wednesday is chained in painful, unreal ways for the crime of stepping out of place, of trying to change the story. But this isn’t about Wednesday. It’s about Saturday.
Monday opens with the story of Saura, in the middle, when her girlfriend dies from the god of Nightmares, Shigidi. As the siblings tell their part of the tale, each in turn, we leap back to Saura’s childhood, where her mother tried to twist her into a straight magajiya of the local bori cult, like herself, until Saura ran away to the city, to the conference where she first met Mobola, to Saura’s thirst for revenge and dark pact with her mother to let the god of vengeance ride her.
Then comes Saturday’s song, the climax where all is revealed and Saura dispenses her due and dispassionate revenge. Sunday concludes the story, as he invited his siblings to start anew, with “the end.”
And yet, it’s about the seven’s ability to forgive, just as it’s about Saura’s refusal to. Saturday implores her siblings to remove Wednesday’s chains (for this is also a story about chains, those that bind us, those that link us, those that pass from one to another). The twist in Saura’s story is less the identity of the one who sent Shigidi to kill her lover (you’ve probably already guessed), and more that Shigidi is able to feel compassion and empathy, to want to help Saura to make things right. To err is human, to forgive is clearly divine.
I’m still not sure what I think of this story. But I expect to go on wondering for a long time, as “Saturday’s Song” wafts through my head at stray moments.
And I look forward to Wole Talabi telling us all, as Sunday asks, another story.
Kritzer is having a good year. First “Better Living Through Algorithms,” and now “The Year Without Sunshine.” In a Minnesota that hasn’t seen an apocalypse, exactly, but the skies are black from the burning of the Midwest and power is on less often than it is in modern-day Sierra Leone, the neighbors band together. It starts by building a little booth with a bulletin board in it in Tanesha’s yard, with “WHATSAPP” painted on the side. Folks can post notes – what they have to offer, what they need – and soon, Tanesha and narrator Alexis are running an emergency commune, building windmills, organizing work-hours, rationing gas. They, and the community, work hard to save Susan, whose emphysema requires an electric oxygen concentrator at all times, setting up bikes and teenagers to ride them in their garage to pedal for Susan’s life when the electricity gets cut off and their basement generator runs low. In exchange, Susan …teaches the children to crochet while her husband serves coffee.
And this is important. Because eventually, a couple of teenage boys wander in from a totally different post-apocalyptic story, from the suffering suburbs where looters are hung from lamp poles, and they can’t understand why the neighborhood would go to such lengths and work so hard to keep Susan alive for the time she has left.
““Is she your doctor or something?” Kyle asked. This question was met with baffled silence. “An engineer? What makes her so important?”
“She teaches crochet,” someone from one of the bikes called. “Those little guys up there.” The décor included a shelf of amigurumi.”
A story like this – the community coming together in the face of emergency and adversity, building something new out of the barely-functional remains of our lifestyle – traditionally ends with some kind of raider attack. I’m proud to report that Kritzer upholds this tradition…in her own sweet uplifting way. You will not see the ending coming.
More than anything, this novelette reminds me of the obscure 1934 King Vidor film Our Daily Bread, where a couple from the city and an Okie with a broke-down car turn an abandoned Midwestern farm into a commune, “where money ain’t so important.” The film portrays the exchange of skills (a stonemason and a carpenter helping each other) and the planting of crops and the work-gang digging of an irrigation canal with the same spirit that Kritzer portrays the cannibalizing of the bikes and the trading of propane and the cooperation to help Susan. Both are (slightly idealized) stories of an emergent cooperative way of life in the face of, not an apocalypse that stops the world, but a series of disasters that leaves it chugging along hoarse and limping.
Much like her “Better Living Through Algorithms,” I find myself inspired to do something, little as it may be, to make things better.
It’s 2024. We live in the Future. And here are five tales, the Nebula finalists for short story, shepherding us, warning us, or delighting us into that future.
On the island of Manhattan, there’s a building out of time. I can’t tell you where it is, exactly. It has an address, of course, as all buildings do, but that wouldn’t mean anything to you. What I can tell you is that the building is called The Oakmont.
P. A. Cornell’s “Once Upon a Time at the Oakmont” is obsessed with time – much like P. A. Cornell herself. In some ways, this is perfectly obvious, even from the first line. Time is at a premium at the Oakmont, and everyone, Cornell included, is resourceful in their use of it. Dropped notes and strict rules work around the time differences or uphold the walls between them, and everyone exploits the peculiar properties of the Oakmont to …get together and watch movies up on the roof. It’s a mélange of eras and foods:
The film won’t start until it’s truly dark, though. First there’s the traditional potluck dinner. I glance down at the table at foods from every era. On one end Depression cake sits next to aspic. The other end holds a silver fondue pot. Just beyond that’s the grocery store sushi platter I brought. There are no rules about food at The Oakmont.
But it’s not just losing time and gaining time and spending time, it’s keeping time. Music weaves in and out of the story, in and out of the eras it warps through. The two main characters spend their time dancing to Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade,” even as they watch their time together at the Oakmont slip away. For this is a love story between the 2020s and the 1940s…and the future they could make together.
It’s not just time that governs “Once Upon a Time at the Oakmont,” but chance. The Oakmont is almost the city exaggerated – the chance encounters are the kind you only get in the city, with that many different people cheek-by-jowl on the front stoop, stopping by a building that used to be something, running into an old neighbor you haven’t seen in years. It’s chance that the two main characters meet, chance that brings about the happy ending, chance that brings up memories of times long past.
Chance and time – a beautiful combination for a romance.
Was years after Malcolm pass through and wash away a lot ah we little islands coasts, and mash up so much ah Florida and Texas and them places, and people say they ain’t waiting for no next storm like that one, and they pack up they things and went England, and Canada, and all over.
A skill of science fiction and fantasy readers, like yourselves, is the ability to jump into a patois or a slang and trust that you’ll understand it. Maybe not yet, but in a few paragraphs or a few pages. It’s a rare skill, and a good one – I like to think it makes us more adept at plunging into unfamiliar dialects and unfamiliar jargons in real life. But the past few decades, the past few years, it seems to be a rarer and rarer skill, as writers assiduously try to make everything as easy to understand as quickly as possible from the first word.
As long as R. S. A. Garcia and other Caribbean writers like Suzan Palumbo are writing, that rare skill isn’t going anywhere.
The voice of Tantie Merle is half the story, warm and haughty. This is an old woman who’s too old to leave the village and whose best enemy is a goat. Ignatius, being a goat, will eat everything. So Merle’s children buy her a Farmhand 4200, an omnitool with a friendly face. Being lonely, she gives it a name, Lincoln.
Merle is the first person in history to give a name to her Farmhand 4200. I get the impression she can’t help it – she treats goats as people, why not treat something that can talk as a person? And thus begins a relationship, between Merle, Ignatius, and Lincoln, that ends with “he’s his own person now.”
“Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200” is about loneliness, but with a unique twist. A lot of science fiction (especially shorts) would treat the main character’s loneliness (and connection to others, either triumph or tragic failure) in a clinical and detached sort of way, often portraying such characters as antisocial introverts. Tantie Merle is gregarious and friendly, if set in her ways, and it warms the people (human, goat, or machine) she comes in contact with and the story as a whole. And overcoming that loneliness, with a twist, so delighted and surprised me that I laughed and drew stares from the other people in the café.
The tenth time Jakey broke the rules, he put a sandwich in the mailbox where the window boy could get it. Mom had taken her sleep-quick pills and gone to bed after dinner, on account of her headaches. And Dad was dozing in front of the TV, chin on his chest and a half-empty glass clutched in his hand. It got still enough that the only sounds were Dad’s shows and the hum of the house filters, so Jakey slipped into the kitchen and put together a ham and cheddar on a plate, then placed it in the parcel chamber near the front door. He sat by the parlor window for a good long while after, curled up at the bench cushions, and his eyelids drooped now and again until he began to see the shadows move.
The window boy showed up, just like all the other times.
“Window Boy” is class conflict with all the subtlety of a hammer. That’s okay – that’s half what science fiction is for. Thomas Ha shows us, through the parlor window, a world where the rich and powerful live in bunkers underground, piping security footage of the surface above into false windows in the parlor. The window boy is a surface-dweller, an object of Jakey’s empathy and a threat to his way of life.
And what a surface.
Men in camo appear out of the darkness, mysterious “grackles” hunt humans in the night. The surface world is disjointed and otherworldly, exactly how Jakey would see it. His family, meanwhile, are trapped by the trappings of our own world, the well-to-do problems thinly covered by pills and alcohol. Not for nothing does Jake’s father warn him against empathy and trust, especially of the surface folks, who might just kill him.
You think when they smile and wave that they want to be your friend? You think when they tap at the window or ring the doorbell they just want a little favor? They hate you, Jakey. That’s why we have rules, about not talking, not sharing. Because to share is to show. And you don’t ever show them what you got, Jakey. Understand?
And yet, Jakey goes to the parlor window, talks to the window boy, listens to his pleas to please open the door, pretty please, as the men prowl the darkness behind him like tigers.
I’ll admit that I don’t completely understand the ending. That’s all right. I understand the intent, and Thomas Ha delivers it with skill, and force, and bitterness.
You know the one about the Gun. The Gun goes where it wants to. On Thursday morning just after recess, the Gun will walk through the front doors of Thurman Elementary, and it won’t sign in at the front office or wear a visitor’s badge.
Yeah, this one is dark. Don’t let the Narnian mice fool you.
The school shooter arrives and, refreshingly, Rachael K. Jones does not waste any time on him, his name, his motivations. He is a tool of the Gun and not worth her time, or ours. But the alarms sound, and Ms. Dalton and her fourth-grade class into the closet, where a magical Portal that “seeks the places where children hide” whisks them away to a fantasyland.
The talking mice, their romantic war, the crowns of bones, the feasting are all a bit of a left swerve from the grounded, tense ripped-from-too-many-headlines story that Jones opens with. But it slowly comes clear that the fantasy, the real fantasy, is that the children have agency here. They’re important, they matter, their choices change the world. And that’s a double-edged sword, as Ms. Dalton can plainly see. People could die from the children’s choices.
Meanwhile, the school shooter is opening the door to the classroom.
And that agency, the collision between the fantasyland and the school shooter scenario, Narnia crashing into Columbine, forms the climax of the story that I never saw coming…and realized was inevitable.
The country was at just over ten thousand deaths the morning that the door appeared.
[…]
Nearing the hall, he called out for his cousin. “Jesse? Got any empty seltzers? I’m doing a recycling run.”
That’s when he saw the new door.
John Wiswell’s “Bad Doors” follows Kosmo, just trying to survive in a COVID-infested America, as he is chased by a mysterious door that follows him wherever he goes. It sounds like a Twilight Zone episode, one of the good ones, but don’t expect a twist at the end. Kosmo stares at the door like Ms. Dalton at the classroom closet, but Kosmo has no shooter behind him…and every reason to fear the door that wasn’t there before.
After Jesse’s mysterious disappearance, Kosmo’s only family is Uncle Dahl. But Dahl is no help. An anti-vaxxer and COVID denialist, Uncle Dahl doesn’t believe in doors either, only screaming at Kosmo to “be a man!” over Kosmo’s increasingly sardonic voice. Kosmo’s voice – sardonic without being over-the-top Joss Whedon dialogue – is one of the highlights of the story, and a nice tonic after Uncle Dahl’s all-too-real toxicity.
I like “refusal of the call” stories – I’ve had one I’ve been tinkering with for twenty-six years now. Confronted with a Twilight Zone situation, Kosmo doesn’t immediately open it, doesn’t suit up for the next great adventure, doesn’t call the omindisciplinary scientists and the military to investigate. He avoids it. He runs. He warns people not to touch the door, and when they do, he runs farther. And keeps running.
And that running is his saving grace – quite literally. It involves standing up to, and getting away from, Uncle Dahl before it destroys him. And it involves getting as far as possible from that damn door.
Then she put it down with a smile and said, “Abelique told me not to pick up my phone again until after lunch was over.”
“Who?” Margo said.
“It’s this new app for better living.”
“I love the idea of an app that tells you to put your phone down more. For your own good,” Margo said, her eyes glinting.
“You should try it!” June said. “You get the first thirty days free!”
“And after that, you have to pay someone to nag you to use your phone less?”
“It’s more than that.” June took a bite out of her tuna melt. “For one thing, you also agree to occasionally nag other people to put their phones down.”
This is an Asimov robot story. And if you’ve read any Asimov, you know this is going to be a happy one.
Abelique is taking the world by storm – the app that helps you with everything, from reviving your childhood love of painting to getting you to talk to people to shopping and cooking for a healthier you. It even disguises itself as a productivity app for your boss, while reminding you not to stay late since he’s not paying you overtime! Kritzer refers to it as “a complete lifestyle app” and I can’t think of a more appropriate appellation.
But where it comes from, who benefits, is a mystery, one that gets unraveled slowly over the course of the story…even as the narrator’s life visibly improves. Whoever they are, they have a plan…even the enshittification of the app might well be part of the mysterious, dare we suspect sinister?, plot.
You keep waiting for the twist. It doesn’t come. The lack of an ironic twist is the twist!
And this while grappling with the kind of “a man chooses, a slave obeys” issues that living on our phones bring up. I’m on Duolingo, Libby, and I Am on my phone…but I’m also on Reddit, Discord, and Instagram. And I know they’re not helping me. Do you choose to use your phone…or obey it?
And would you kindly tell me if obeying is necessarily a bad thing?
What absolutely floored me about this story is that Naomi Kritzer has not invented a Torment Nexus. She’s illustrated an app that Silicon Valley could build, right now, today, that would improve the lives of everyone who uses it and probably make the creators a great deal of money.
Hey, Silicon Valley, stop inventing the Torment Nexus from Don’t Build The Torment Nexus. Would you kindly build this instead?
One week ago, the SFWA announced this year’s finalists for the Nebula Awards – with the proviso that Martha Wells has turned down any honors, saying that she’s already got enough praise for her work, and she wants to open the field for other writers to shine. Because Martha Wells is a class act. I will be at NebulaCon again this year, and as before, I’ll be offering my predictions and opinions on the short stories, novelettes, and hopefully novellas before June.
But, on first blush, what do you think of this lineup? Let me know in the comments!
Nebula Award for Novel
The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
The Water Outlaws, S.L. Huang (Tordotcom; Solaris UK)
Translation State, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
The Terraformers, Annalee Newitz (Tor; Orbit UK)
Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, Wole Talabi (DAW, Gollancz)
Witch King, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)
Nebula Award for Novella
The Crane Husband, Kelly Barnhill (Tordotcom)
“Linghun”, Ai Jiang (Dark Matter Ink)
Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher (Tor; Titan UK)
Untethered Sky, Fonda Lee (Tordotcom)
The Mimicking of Known Successes, Malka Older (Tordotcom)
Mammoths at the Gates, Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)
Nebula Award for Novelette
“A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair”, Renan Bernardo (Samovar 2/23)
I Am AI, Ai Jiang (Shortwave)
“The Year Without Sunshine”, Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny 11-12/23)
“Imagine: Purple-Haired Girl Shooting Down The Moon”, Angela Liu (Clarkesworld 6/23)
“Saturday’s Song”, Wole Talabi (Lightspeed 5/23)
“Six Versions of My Brother Found Under the Bridge”, Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny 9-10/23)
Nebula Award for Short Story
“Once Upon a Time at The Oakmont”, P.A. Cornell (Fantasy 10/23)
“Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200”, R.S.A Garcia (Uncanny 7-8/23)
“Window Boy”, Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld 8/23)
“The Sound of Children Screaming”, Rachael K. Jones (Nightmare 10/23)
“Better Living Through Algorithms”, Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld 5/23)
“Bad Doors”, John Wiswell (Uncanny 1-2/23)
Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction
To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, Moniquill Blackgoose (Del Rey)
The Inn at the Amethyst Lantern, J. Dianne Dotson (Android)
Liberty’s Daughter, Naomi Kritzer (Fairwood)
The Ghost Job, Greg van Eekhout (Harper)
Nebula Award for Game Writing
The Bread Must Rise, Stewart C Baker, James Beamon (Choice of Games)
Alan Wake II, Sam Lake, Clay Murphy, Tyler Burton Smith, Sinikka Annala (Remedy Entertainment, Epic Games Publishing)
Ninefox Gambit: Machineries of Empire Roleplaying Game, Yoon Ha Lee, Marie Brennan(Android)
Dredge, Joel Mason (Black Salt Games, Team 17)
Chants of Sennaar, Julien Moya, Thomas Panuel (Rundisc, Focus Entertainment)
Baldur’s Gate 3, Adam Smith, Adrienne Law, Baudelaire Welch, Chrystal Ding, Ella McConnell, Ine Van Hamme, Jan Van Dosselaer, John Corcoran, Kevin VanOrd, Lawrence Schick, Martin Docherty, Rachel Quirke, Ruairí Moore, Sarah Baylus, Stephen Rooney, Swen Vincke (Larian Studios)
Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation
Nimona, Robert L. Baird, Lloyd Taylor, Pamela Ribon, Marc Haimes, Nick Bruno, Troy Quane, Keith Bunin, Nate Stevenson (Annapurna Animation, Annapurna Pictures)
The Last of Us: “Long, Long Time”, Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin (HBOMax)
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Michael Gilio, Chris McKay (Paramount Pictures, Entertainment One, Allspark Pictures)
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Dave Callaham (Columbia Pictures, Marvel Entertainment, Avi Arad Productions)
The Boy and the Heron, Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli, Toho Company)
When I saw that one of the eligible pieces for this year’s Nebula Awards was a short story, originally in French, I had to check it out. And double when I found it was published in Solaris, and even won the Prix Solaris when it was first published in 2022. It found print in English this last year in Year’s Best Canadian Science Fiction.
Best Canadian science fiction? In French? Sacré ouais!
And I am so glad I did.
This story is so wonderfully, enchantingly weird.
Geneviève Blouin (Fr.) weaves a weird little story a bit like so: The shellwomen are a kind of molluscoid mermaid – normal women (as near as I can tell) from the waist up, built like snails from the waist down. They are proud of their expansive shells, where their men and children shelter, of their warm, fleshy folds, and the milk of their breasts. Their community has a kind of fragile traditional communality – the guides of the clans are obsessed with whether they’re group-oriented enough, baskets are filled by friends and neighbors if there isn’t quite enough, they even regulate their population by trading men, shellwomen, or the poor unfortunate “slugs” (grown women with legs) with neighboring tribes. But things are afoot, and the shellwomen may have a very different future before them than the one they’ve known, caring for the children, sunning on the beach, and sheltering their clans.
Despite the title, the focus isn’t really on the shellwomen themselves, but on one of their men (or harvestmen, as they are called), Manuto. Manuto is, I don’t have another word for it, hapless – he’s a terrible leader (or “guide”) of his clan (always picking the worst assignments, because he’s too honest to maneuver for the good ones) and hidebound in his ways. He loves his shellwoman, Hina, and his children – why, his eldest daughter’s thighs are already becoming stiff and enlarged, she’ll soon form a cocoon as her foot forms! So it’s with a great deal of shock that he hears the chief advocating the rights of “harvestwomen” over the shellwomen.
Honestly, my only complaint is that the extended focus on Manuto as the main character kind of gives the shellwomen, and their secret lives, the shrift. The ending feels abrupt, and although, yes, logically all the pieces were there, it still feels like it came out of left field. This is a minor quibble, though – Geneviève Blouin is no Neal Stephenson, and the ending is still, mostly, satisfying.
The theme that emerges, on rereading the story, is this is a story about power – the power between the shellwomen and the harvestmen, the powerlessness of the “harvestwomen” (whom Manuto thinks of as “slugs,” an older and harsher word), the power of chiefs over clan guides, even the power of politicking and horse-trading, of charisma. The chief exerts charismatic power over Manuto to compromise him, and when this doesn’t work, effortlessly replaces him as guide with his brother. It only occurred to me after that the brother’s desire for a second shellwoman (because of course a new man like him thinks of collecting ‘em all, unlike his old-fashioned brother) is not long for this world. The shellwomen appear to have power over the harvestmen – after all, the harvestmen work to collect greens for their herbivorous mates, and, as the chief puts it, “all they do is watch the children and laze around all day in the sun.” – but the other side of that coin is the power to deny them their food. And the shellwomen have their own power, a real power, to counter that threat the harvestmen can hold over them. Plans within plans within plans, and all sewn up in under 8,000 words.
It feels like a strange new story that still tastes of all those Silver Age Best Ofs and paperback anthologies that I grew up. I could see this story in Dangerous Visions or something edited by Lin Carter. It gives me some hope for my own more grounded, earthy, and earnest science fiction, the stuff like “Glâcehouse,” “No More Final Frontiers,” and “The Voluntolds of America.” And yet, I could not have written anything so wonderfully, enchantingly strange as all this. Like “Rabbit Test,” this was a story that could only be written, or translated, by women.
For the folks at home, pick up Year’s Best Canadian Science Fiction, Vol. 1. If Margaret Sankey’s translation of “The Secret Lives of Shellwomen” is any indication, it really is the year’s best. And for any voting SFWA members reading this – nominate “Secret Lives of a Shellwoman.”
Been a Hell of a year, hasn’t it? Then again, so was the entire Trump administration.
My year opened with a double-embolism and ended with a gout attack. In between came the slow-motion loss of my day job and the resulting chaos bringing my rhythm of writing, editing, mailing, remailing, updating, hustling crashing down around my ears.
I got two Quaker articles published, “A Quaker Rosary” in Western Friend and “A Friend with Taoist Notions” in Friends’ Journal. Western Friend called me back for an interview on their podcast even. One reader reached out about my thoughts on martial arts in the meeting-house, and that article will be coming out in 2024. And that wasn’t the only one – no less than Matt Selznick interviewed me for Sonitotum.
Speaking of podcasts – I launched Solidarity Forever: The History of American Labor, with notes right here on R. Jean’s Mathieu’s Innerspace. This is the soup-to-nuts labor history in this country, the bloodiest labor history in the developed world, from 1619 to 2024 and beyond. And if you don’t like that labor history, go out and make some of your own!
I have Doña Ana Lucía Serrano…to the Future! out under review by agents, I have stories in the mail, and I have a new novel, The Thirty-Sixth Name, a YA Jewish fantasy swashbuckler, open in Word. I have stories to tell, and a voice to be heard.
And, oddly enough, I feel like 2024 will be a pretty good year.
Eligibility: The Voluntolds of America
“Voluntolds of America”
Eligible for: Hugo Award, Nebula Award Genre: Science Fiction Subgenre: Solarpunk as fuck Publication: Reclaiming Joy Publisher: Inked in Gray LLC Link: Amazon.com, Goodreads Category: Short Story Voted “Most Uncomfortably Relevant” by the people I read it to!
Eligibility: Cambermann’s Painter
“Cambermann’s Painter”
Eligibility: Nebula Award, Hugo Award, Locus Award Genre: Steampunk Subgenre: Satire Publisher: FedoraArts Press Link: Amazon.com, Goodreads Category: Flash Voted “Most Too-Clever-By-Half” by a small collection of randos!
Eligibility: The Man Who Shot Lü Dongbin
“The Man Who Shot Lü Dongbin”
Eligibility: World Fantasy Award, Locus Award, Nebula Award, Hugo Award Genre: Fantasy Subgenre: Urban Fantasy Publisher: FedoraArts Press Link: Amazon.com, Goodreads Category: Short Story Voted “Most Mathieuvian” by my wife!
Eligibility: Fire Marengo
Fire Marengo
Eligibility: Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award Genre: Science Fiction Subgenre: Sea Story/Solarpulp Publisher: FedoraArts Press Link: the Innerspace Newsletter (free with signup) Category: Novelette Voted “Most Entertaining to Listen To” by several local writers!
Eligibility: Lost Signal
“Lost Signal”
Eligible For: Shirley Jackson Award, Bram Stoker Award Genre: Horror Subgenre: Psychological Horror Publisher: FedoraArts Press Link: Amazon.com, Goodreads Category: Short Story Voted “Most Likely to Make People Listen for Darkness” by one beta-reader!
I went virtual. Again. So in between panels on branding and the state of 2022 short fiction, I changed Lyra’s diapers and discussed dinner plans with Melissa. For the awards, we put the Sprout to bed and gathered around Melissa’s iPad with glasses of wine on the couch in our pyjamas.
I not only sat on my first panel, I hosted my first panel. Unusual Short Story Formats was the highlight of my weekend
I took extensive notes on all the panels I attended (including effectively livetweeting the Exploring Possibilities with Legal Systems in SF/F to my personal Discord) and came away bursting with ideas. I’m already enjoying the ongoing benefits of my attendance, catching up on the panels I wanted to see but missed (Latine SF and Queer Imagination first and foremost). You’ll be seeing some changes around here and in the newsletter based on the Branding and Marketing panel, and seeing more experimental flash and poetry out of me based on Unusual Short Story Formats.
We had a wide-ranging and fascinating conversation, from applying the forms of poetry to how close to hew to other types of writing when writing in that milieu. Whether it’s the wiki edits of “Wikihistory” or the forum posts of “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather”, we coined the term “neo-epistolary” to cover those short stories that come in the form of chat logs, court proceedings, even archaeological EIRs. A partial list of the stories that Ann LeBlanc, Carina Bissett, and I discussed is available here, including Nebula finalist Oghunechevwe Donald Ekpeki’s recommendations.
As mentioned, we put Lyra to bed and curled up on the couch together. Melissa wept at Robin McKinley’s speech, her age and grace, her insight and her pain. All of my predictions lost, and, frankly, they lost for all the right reasons. I voted for “Give Me English”, expected “Destiny Delayed,” but nodded over my wine glass when “Rabbit Test” by Samantha Mills won the short story Nebula. Because that was the right choice. Most of them were like that – and certainly all the ones I’d read. They were right, and it gives me hope for science fiction that we are able to discern which stories really are the best of the year.
(Also, Uncanny had a really good year at the Nebulas this year.)
And on Monday, I sat down, and started working on “Doña Ana Lucía Serrano y el sanctuario de Asherah.” Because I didn’t get much chance to write with all the publishing work I did over the previous four days, and the writing is what it’s all about. Stay tuned to this frequency, there’s going to be a lot of interesting stuff coming over the waves.
Sacré Dieu, the time is upon us! It’s time for the Nebula Awards again! Yesterday, I shared with my patrons my predictions for the winners this year, and I’ll be going “off the verandah and into the field” to see how my predictions turn out. I’ll not only be in (virtual) attendance, I am moderatingthe panel on Unusual Short Story Formats! May 13, 10:30AM. With Oghunechevwe Donald Ekpeki, Carina Bissett, Ann LeBlanc, we’ll be discussing some of the beautiful, strange little ways short fiction can come out that novels simply won’t support, like single scenes where nothing happens and fictional forum threads.
And here’s where I’m going to be…
May 12
Sauúti: An Afro-centric universe
Prep Tips for Your Debut Indie Book Launch
The Queer Imagination: Using SFF to Explore LGBTQ+ Identities, Relationships, and Experiences
May 13
Beyond the 99¢ eBook: Producing Quality Indie SFF Novels
Unusual Short Story Formats
Writing and Publishing in English as Second Language
Navigating Short Story Markets
For The Love of Short Fiction 2022
Exploring Possibilities with Legal Systems in SFF
May 14
Branding and Marketing: Finding That Return on Investment
I came late because I spent the morning filling out my application to the SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Association), including proof of income, my union dues, and volunteering however they want me. I’ve been waiting for this day for twenty-five sacré years, since I sent off that first package of manuscript to Sheila Williams over at Asimov’s one fine day in 1998.
Today, I got the news: My application was approved. I am a Union Man.
The SFWA was started in 1965 by Damon Knight as a means of support and even collective action in dealing with publishers, editors, agents, and producers. They’re the ones you turn to when your publisher disappears into the night with your rights and your check. They’ve also evolved into public advocacy for science fiction and fantasy, as well as running workshops, mentorship programs, medical funds, Writer Beware, and, of course, the Nebula Awards.
(as a new voting member, I officially take bribes in children’s equipment and fine alcohols. :P)
The SFWA has been a source of prestige since they fought for Tolkien’s rights to his American royalties. Associate member status (which I now possess) requires at least $100 in lifetime sales, which is a much, much harder number to reach than folks outside SF/F realize. Full membership requires a cool grand in income. It’s a select group, and I am proud to burnish all my future manuscripts and queries with “SFWA member” at the top right front-page header, selon Shunn. Editors don’t mind seeing it either. It won’t get a bad story in…but it might tip the scales against an equally good submission.
Required for all invocations of the union in Science Fiction
And…I’m a union man. I can feel Jack London slapping me on the back and welcoming me to the family, Bayard Rustin grinning that shit-eating grin, George Orwell nodding in sour approval. I am standing with my comrades, as loose as the SFWA is about comradeship (but any organization that had Heinlein in it would have to be). I signed up to mentor, to read, to help other writers, to “give my heart, my soul, to give some friend a hand.”
This morning I am born again. I’m in the promised land.
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