Steph, the 2011 Hugo Voter, Reviews: The Short Story Ballot

So -- I've signed up as a supporting member of this year's World Con. It didn't take a lot of arm twisting. All Larry Correia had to say was "You get lots of reading material in your membership packet!" and I was sold.

At any rate, as a supporting member of World Con, I get to vote in this year's Hugo Awards. Woot! But I'm not going to hog all the fun. So that you folks may join in, I will be posting capsule reviews and my personal selections for each fiction-related short list.

Today, I sat down and got the short stories out of the way. Here are my thoughts:

“Amaryllis”, Carrie Vaughn (Lightspeed, June 2010)

Premise: Set in a post-apocalyptic future in which resources and births are both tightly controlled, "Amaryllis" tells the story of a family leader, Marie, who hasn't quite shaken off the stigma of her past. You see, Marie's mother decided to give birth to her daughter illicitly, which resulted in the break-up of Marie's original family group. Since then, Marie has had to contend with a faint whiff of local prejudice as she works to keep her new family alive. And what is the central conflict here? Marie's adopted daughter, Nina, would like to have a baby, but this requires council approval.

Steph's Comments: There's a lot of potential in Vaughn's basic idea. Unfortunately, Marie's past isn't really the terrible burden it should have been, and that bleeds a lot of the tension out of the story. The crooked and bigoted scale minder (who weighs the daily catches for each fishing boat) is dealt with a little too handily; similarly, Nina gets what she wants with minimum fuss.

More importantly: Any author who takes on population control, I feel, should always remain mindful of such a policy's devastating real world effects. It is a well known fact, for example, that China's "One Child" program resulted in the loss of thousands of baby girls. It also required a curtailment of personal liberty that was frankly obscene. On these matters, however, Vaughn remains silent, and that is another weakness in this story. Is it theoretically possible that a cataclysm of some sort might render population control an absolute necessity? I suppose, but Vaughn doesn't establish that the world in her short story really is that strapped for natural resources, and consequently, I feel unsatisfied with the characters' basic unwillingness to challenge their traditions.

Steph's Rating: 6.5

*****

“For Want of a Nail”, Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s, September 2010)

Premise: In many ways, the premise of this story is similar to the premise of the above-discussed "Amaryllis" -- but in this case, the setting is resource-limited because the characters are apparently traveling aboard a generation ship. The principal conflict in "For Want of a Nail" revolves around Rava, an AI wrangler, and her attempts to repair Cordelia, the sentient AI who has kept track of her family's records during their long (presumably interstellar) journey. What do we eventually discover? That Cordelia has been hiding one family member's dementia for two years in order to prevent the euthanization and recycling of said family member. Youch.

Steph's Comments: Alas, this story is plagued by some of the same moral passivity which hampers "Amaryllis." While I can more readily accept the need to conserve resources in this particular context, I still find it deeply, deeply disturbing that Rava's family callously ignores Uncle Georgo's clear wishes and fails to challenge the law. I don't care how stringent the rules are or how necessary it is to "recycle." Euthanizing a relative should be portrayed as a tragedy. There should've been more agonizing. There should have been more arguing. Absent this, the family's decision feels distinctly inhuman.

On the other hand, the subsequent deactivation of Cordelia does carry with it the sense of grief and injustice that should accompany the deliberate disposal of a sentient being, so on this score, "For Want of a Nail" barely surpasses "Amaryllis." Could this have been a "feature-worthy" story? Yes, but only if Kowal had given Uncle Georgo and Cordelia equal consideration.

Steph's Rating: 6.8

*****

“Ponies”, Kij Johnson (Tor.com, November 17, 2010)

Premise: Barbara and her pony, Sunny, have been invited to a party with TheOtherGirls, but popularity comes with a cost: Sunny must give up her horn, her wings, and her voice. When Sunny takes a stand on the matter of her voice at the end of this vignette, she is killed, and Barbara is ostracized.

Steph's Comments: This story seriously won the Nebula? I don't understand that at all. Johnson's message is one only an aggrieved feminist could love, and it is delivered with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Yes -- middle school sucked for me too, but I eventually got over it.

Steph's Rating: 3.0

*****

“The Things”, Peter Watts (Clarkesworld, January 2010)

Premise: This story is written from the perspective of a shape-shifting alien and details the alien's struggle to understand humanity.

Steph's Comments: I hear that this story was intended to be Watts' riff on The Thing, but as I don't really know anything about that particular B-movie classic, I tackled "The Things" on its own terms. My impression? Watts does a credible job portraying his main character as truly alien in its thoughts and behaviors, and that's a definite plus. On the whole, though, this story fails to pack a genuine punch. It's mildly interesting, but it doesn't really offer, for me, any flash-bang philosophical or psychological insights.

Steph's Rating: 6.7

*****

Steph's General Impressions of the Ballot:

If I were to judge the state of modern literary science fiction based on this ballot alone, I would conclude that the genre is both tired and morally suspect. There are no truly new ideas to be found here, and even the best story of the lot offends me when it comes to its thematic particulars.

Steph's Personal Selection: "For Want of a Nail," reluctantly.