Mataglap SF

First-time nominee William Shunn puts forth this intriguing short novella, probably nominated more for its potential than for what it actually ends up with, but still a very readable story in its own right.  In some indeterminate future there exists a massive space station, home to two million workers who’ve been there enough generations to […]

Anyone who has browsed around on this site knows Ian McDonald is one of my least favorite writers, but it’s not necessarily his fault, and of course he has many admirers who think enough of his work to get just about anything nominated that has his name on it.  So here we have this story, […]

Rosenbaum’s story takes place towards the latter end of the universe, where some sort of post-human priest named Matthias is tinkering with a number of individual worlds in various stages of creation. A pilgrim, representing the “old ones” who created him, comes to visit, having heard of his efforts to create a brand new universe, […]

Two previous nominees team up to deliver a story that manages to be way out there and yet deals primarily with a small cast of characters. What these characters are, despite their human names, emotions and speech patterns, isn’t entirely clear, they would seem to be parts of some sort of cloud of replicated intelligences, […]

While a couple of this year’s novella nominees are so sfnal as to be essentially incomprehensible, Finlay gives us a story that is a compelling read and throws around a few questions and ideas worth pondering, but could be accused of not being science fictional enough. Following along from his 2002 Hugo-nominated novella “The Political […]

For those of you who enjoyed Scalzi’s nominee from last year, The Last Colony, here it is again, retold from the viewpoint of the spunky teenage girl who saves her planet and achieves intergalactic peace where zillions of others have failed. It’s hard to imagine the intent behind this, other than as an exercise for […]

All you have to read is the title of this story to know that it must be a cross between Pride and Prejudice and Frankenstein, and that’s exactly the case. The originals were published only 5 years apart, but are very different in composition and tone, never mind the subject matter. I suppose I should […]

Bacigalupi makes a departure from his popular, poetic post-apocalyptic stories to focus on this quiet tale of a young Laotian man named Ong who comes as something of a refugee to a future US to work as a reporter. Rather than a newspaper, Ong’s employer is some kind of umpteenth-generation web site where the news […]

To make up for my lack of anything substantive to say about this story, I have to start by wondering how it got nominated, not because of its quality, which is a separate debate, but only because it was published in an SF Book Club-only edition, which does not sound like it had a very […]

Doctorow’s first novel nomination is a rabblerouser aimed squarely at older teenagers, but must also appeal to your average flaming liberal regular Hugo voter. Hackers rise up against a corrupt government, what more could you ask for? Told from the point of view of 17-year old Marcus, the story is based on the premise that […]