{"id":13023,"date":"2020-07-19T13:16:54","date_gmt":"2020-07-19T13:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=13023"},"modified":"2022-06-28T12:12:41","modified_gmt":"2022-06-28T12:12:41","slug":"the-2020-hugo-award-novelette-finalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=13023","title":{"rendered":"The 2020 Hugo Award Novelette Finalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Summary: The 2020 Hugo Award novelettes are another mixed bag, but are better than the short story finalists. There is one worthy finalist from Ted Chiang, a pretty good fantasy from Siobhan Carroll, and a solid enough story from Caroline M. Yoachim. The remaining three stories have their moments, but don\u2019t entirely work.<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editors, John Joseph Adams, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas (x2), Blake Crouch, Ellen Datlow, unknown.<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nThe Archronology of Love<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Caroline M. Yoachim \u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nAway With the Wolves<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Sarah Gailey \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Blur in the Corner of Your Eye<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Sarah Pinsker \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nEmergency Skin<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by N.K. Jemisin \u2217<\/strong>
\nFor He Can Creep<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Siobhan Carroll \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nOmphalos <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 novelette by Ted Chiang \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nArtwork<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 Reiko Murakami, Julie Dillon (x2), Will Staehle, Red Nose Studio, Betty Lew<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

When I reviewed the finalists in the short story category last month I found that they were mostly poor quality. The novelettes are better but are still a mixed bag. I note that (a) there is only one man among the finalists (the same as the short story category) (b) these are short novelettes, mostly around the 8,000-10,000 word mark (although the Chiang stretches to 11,000).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The first of the novelette finalists is The Archronology of Love<\/em><\/strong> by Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed<\/em> April 2019), which opens with the narrator, Saki Jones, viewing New Mars from the viewport window of an interstellar spaceship. The colony there has collapsed, and she has been sent there to investigate\u2014but the situation is complicated by the fact that her partner (\u201clifelove\u201d) M. J. died there along with everyone else. However, she hopes to see him again by viewing \u201cThe Chronicle,\u201d a time stream of previous events.
\nIn the next section, a departmental meeting, we learn more about the temporal projector that enables viewing of the past and, after some debate, the team agree that they will start at the xenobiology warehouse, which stores the recently recovered remains of alien life.
\nWhen Saki and Hyun-sik (one of her assistants and also her son\u2019s boyfriend) travel to the warehouse\u2019s past we see that, while the temporal projector provides a form of time-travel, it only gives the users a non-physical presence in the past (they float in zero gee and cannot touch anything). Their movements also leave trails of white\u2014visual indications of permanently destroyed timestream data.
\nDuring the visit Saki notices that the ovoid alien artefacts appear different to the descriptions in M. J.\u2019s messages to her, and then she sees another time-traveller above them:<\/p>\n

She studied the ceiling of the warehouse. A maintenance walkway wrapped around the building, a platform of silvery mesh suspended from the lighter silver metal of the ceiling. The walkway was higher than the two-story ceiling of the containment cylinder, outside of their priority area. On the walkway, near one of the bright ceiling lights, something looked odd. \u201cI don\u2019t think we were the first ones here.\u201d
\nHyun-sik followed her gaze. \u201cDisplacement cloud?\u201d
\n\u201cThere, by the lights.\u201d Saki studied the shape on the walkway. It was hard to tell at this distance, but the displacement cloud was roughly the right size to be human. \u201cUnfortunately we have no way to get up there for a closer look.\u201d
\n\u201cI can reprogram a few of the bees\u2014\u201d
\n\u201cYes.\u201d It was not ideal. Drones were good at recording physical objects, but had difficulty picking up the outlines of distortion clouds and other anomalies. Moving through the Chronicle was difficult, though not impossible. It was similar to free fall in open space. Things you brought with you were solid, but everything else was basically a projection.
\n[. . .]
\nThere was nothing else that merited a more thorough investigation, so they released the recording drones, a flying army of bee-sized cameras that recorded every object from multiple angles. Seventeen drones flew to the ceiling and recorded the region of the walkway that had the distortion. Saki hoped the recording would be detailed enough to be useful. The disruption to the Chronicle was like ripples in a pond, spreading from the present into the past and future record, tiny trails of white blurring together into a jumbled cloud.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The change in the alien artefacts and the mysterious visitor are the mysteries around which the rest of the story revolves.
\nAfter (spoiler) a visit to the hospital site (where there are no bodies or any other organic material), and one to an excavation site (where they see what the artefacts initially looked like), the ship\u2019s captain sends non-organic probes down to the surface (where they discover alien nanites). All the threads are drawn together when Saki travels into the future after finding temporal co-ordinates in an old video message. There she meets M. J., and learns that all the colonists were incorporated into the artefacts by the aliens (their way of \u201cunderstanding\u201d other species).
\nIf you concentrate on the love story thread in this novelette, it isn\u2019t a bad piece, but there is too much going on here. The temporal projector and its implications (especially when you can view the future as well as the past) is a story in itself and, when you add a planetary colonization\/first contact story as well, there is too much going on (and that\u2019s before you shoe-horn in the family soap opera of Saki\u2019s assistant\u2019s relationship with her son).
\nThis isn\u2019t bad but it is a bit of a mixed bag, and not something I\u2019d expect to see as a Hugo finalist.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Away With the Wolves<\/em><\/strong> by Sarah Gailey (Uncanny,<\/em> September-October 2019) starts with Suss, its disabled female narrator, waking up in a potato patch after werewolfing for several days:<\/p>\n

I wish I could just turn back, right now, right away. I wish I could spend all my time as a wolf. But my mother always told me that I mustn\u2019t indulge myself too often. She taught me that escaping into my other self is lazy. It\u2019s selfish, she said, and there\u2019s always a price to pay for selfishness. There\u2019s no such thing as free relief. Every transformation means a day I get to wake up in a body that doesn\u2019t hurt, but the longer I spend Away, the guiltier I feel when I return.
\nIt was a week, this time. A whole week without pain.\u00a0 p. 2<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When Suss returns home she learns of the damage she has done to the village during this particular werewolf episode, and makes amends with the neighbours. Later, she makes a special trip with her friend Yana to Nan Gideon, who claims her goat was killed. Suss can\u2019t remember doing this but agrees to work off the debt.
\nBy the end of the day, Suss is worn out and despondent. When she sleeps she dreams of being a wolf and hears the howl of another\u2014whereupon she wakes up and realises that the howls are real.
\nUp until this point the story is a pretty good one\u2014the idea of a disabled person escaping their condition by becoming a werewolf is an intriguing idea\u2014but we then plough into three pages of Suss soul-searching about changing her life before (spoiler) she does just that. The remainder of the story has her frequenting the village seemingly accepted by everyone before finally meeting the other (female) wolf.
\nThere is no complication in this story other than someone finally deciding to get out of their own way, which makes the build up pointless and the ending anti-climactic. Pity.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye<\/em><\/strong> by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny<\/em>, July-August 2019) starts with a mystery writer called Zanna and her assistant Shar turning up at a rural cabin that has dead wasps, mice, a leak in the roof, and no mobile phone signal. Unperturbed, Zanna settles in for the night at her writing retreat while her assistant Shar leaves for her accommodation nearby.
\nThe next morning Zanna\u2019s breakfast is interrupted by a blown fuse, which she attempts to fix:<\/p>\n

[Zanna] checked all the closets and cabinets for a breaker box, but couldn\u2019t find one, which meant it was outside. Two shoes and a jacket later, she stood behind the cabin, swearing to herself. Crawlspace. She didn\u2019t quite remember what had freaked her out in a crawlspace when she was a kid, but she still hated them. Anything might be in there.
\nA baseball bat stood propped against the wall beside the tiny door. It had \u201cSnake Stick\u201d written on it in blue Sharpie. Whoever had labelled it had also drawn a crude cartoon demonstrating its utility. Swing them away, don\u2019t kill them. No bloodstains on the bat.
\nShe could wait for Shar, but she\u2019d lose hours, and her head was already complaining about the lack of ca\ufb00eine. Better to do it herself. The half-sized door creaked when she squeezed the latch and swung it open. She waved the Snake Stick in front of her to clear cobwebs and wake any snakes snoozing inside. When nothing moved, she dug in her jacket pocket and pulled out her phone. It was useless for calls out here, but the \ufb02ashlight still came in handy. She swept it around the space, which looked mostly empty. No use delaying.
\nShe crouched and stepped in. The ceiling was a little higher than she expected, the \ufb02oor a little lower; she could stand if she stooped. Something crunched like paper under her foot, and she swung the light down to find a snakeskin, at least three feet long. She shuddered.\u00a0 p. 7<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There prove to be no snakes in the crawlspace, and no replacement fuse wire either, so Zanna takes a trip down the mountain to see the owner . . . who (spoiler) she finds dead beside his car. As she can just get a mobile signal at the owner\u2019s house she calls the police and then Shar. The latter soon turns up, followed by the police. When one of the cops interviews Zanna, the mystery writer in her points out one or two discrepancies in the crime scene that she thinks he hasn\u2019t noticed (indications of a previous fall in the gravel, odd animal tracks on the car bonnet, etc.). Eventually, both the women go back to the cabin\u2014and then (spoiler) Shar tells Zanna something about the dead man that she couldn\u2019t possibly know.
\nUp until Shar\u2019s revelation, this is an immersive story with convincing characters and a good sense of place\u2014but it then rapidly destroys any suspension of disbelief with a data-dump ending that has Shar explain that the man was killed by a weird lizard that lives inside Zanna. We then find out that the lizard is unkillable, and that Shar has, since she discovered the problem, attempted to ensure minimal loss of life among those it attacks (one in five people that encounter the lizard die). Shar also ensures that no eggs are left in the bodies of the dead to prevent the lizard reproducing. Both of the women conclude this loss of life is better than Zanna ending up incarcerated in some scientific institution.
\nThe first half of this is pretty good but the ending just doesn\u2019t work for a variety of reasons\u2014apart from the unconvincing idea (an unkillable lizard the writer periodically vomits out), it is sprung on the reader too quickly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Emergency Skin<\/em><\/strong> N.K. Jemisin (Emergency Skin<\/em>, 2019) is one of six stories in Amazon\u2019s recently published \u2018Forward\u2019 collection,2<\/sup> and opens with the protagonist (a soldier, I guess) being briefed about a mission that will take him from his colony planet to Earth (Tellus) to obtain vital biomaterial. We also learn that the Earth is a dead world, and that a \u201ccollective consciousness\u201d will be implanted in his mind:<\/p>\n

To ensure success, and your mental health during extended isolation, we have equipped you with ourselves\u2014a dynamic-matrix consensus intelligence encapsulating the ideals and blessed rationality of our Founders. We are implanted in your mind and will travel with you everywhere. We are your companion, and your conscience. We will provide essential data about the planet as a survival aid. Via your composite, we can administer critical first aid as required. And should you suffer a composite breach or similar emergency, we are programmed to authorize adaptive action.
\n[Reference request denied.] You don\u2019t need to know about that yet. Please focus, and limit your curiosity. All that matters is the mission.
\nYou can\u2019t fail. It\u2019s too important. But rest assured: you have the best of us inside you, enveloping you, keeping you safe and true. You are not alone. You will prevail.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The next part of the story plays out as a mordant Robert Sheckley-like farce: the soldier and his consciousness arrive back on Earth and find that it is not as they expect (all the problems that were left behind by the Founding Fathers of the colony have been fixed and the planet is now a paradise supporting billions of people); the soldier is distracted by the natural beauty in the forest they arrive in; the consciousness is disgusted by the fact that the inhabitants seem to be of all colours and ages and apparently do not practise eugenics in their breeding programs. Then, when the consciousness suggests that they change the soldier\u2019s \u201ccomposite\u201d skin covering so he can blend in with the populace and find the biomaterial they require, the soldier decides instead to take a hostage to use as ransom.
\nThis plan doesn\u2019t last long, and the story cuts to the soldier recovering consciousness to find that Earth security tasered him. This information comes from a pleasant woman who speaks to him via a translator attached to his face plate and who also gives him the biomaterial he wants. Then she says he is free to go, and mentions in passing that he is not the first visitor from his planet. She finishes by impressing on him that he should\u2019t take any more hostages.
\nAt this point the story pivots, and it becomes clear (there are earlier hints) that the soldier\u2019s colony planet is an all-male, white, authoritarian society founded by billionaires who had fled Earth and its impending chaos centuries earlier.
\nThe rest of the tale has the soldier generate an \u201cemergency skin\u201d that will make him look like the humans in the vicinity (i.e. black), and he goes native (at which point the consciousness switches off in disgust). He then meets an older man who takes care of him, and who later turns out to be an ex-soldier sent to Earth from the colony. He tells the soldier about Earth\u2019s society, and the history of both it and the colony world. This provides the biggest (albeit unintentional) laugh in the story:<\/p>\n

\u201cI took you to the museum on a whim. To enjoy the irony. For all these centuries, the Founders told us that the Earth died because of greed. That was true, but they lied about whose greed was to blame. Too many mouths to feed, they said, too many \u2018useless\u2019 people . . . but we had more than enough food and housing for everyone. And the people they declared useless had plenty to offer\u2014just not anything they cared about. The idea of doing something without immediate benefit, something that might only pay off in ten, twenty, or a hundred years, something that might benefit people they disliked, was anathema to the Founders. Even though that was precisely the kind of thinking that the world needed to survive.\u201d
\nWe did what was rational. We have always been more rational than you people.
\n\u201cWhat the Leaving proved was that the Earth could sustain billions, if we simply shared resources and responsibilities in a sensible way. What it couldn\u2019t sustain was a handful of hateful, self-important parasites, preying upon and paralyzing everyone else. As soon as those people left, the paralysis ended.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The soldier then suggests that, rather than staying on Earth, he should go back and start a revolution on his own planet, and the story finishes with the old man showing him how to get rid of the implanted consciousness.
\nThe politics of this story\u2014\u201cEarth will be a Paradise if we get rid of all the Rich White Guys!!!\u201d\u2014provide a simplistic view of the world that shows little if any grasp of history, never mind any idea of how people, societies, or the world actually works.
\nApart from this starry-eyed nonsense there is also a considerable amount of othering going on here: the colony\u2019s wealthy founders and successors are explicitly (a) white (b) rich and (c) misogynists (the only \u201cfemales\u201d on the colony planet are \u201cpleasurer\u201d robots). If you wrote a story where any other group was portrayed and scapegoated in this way there would be uproar, but it seems that rich white men are fair game nowadays\u2014as if they are a single homogeneous group automatically worthy of everyone\u2019s loathing, and not individuals. I note that this is not the first of this type of story I\u2019ve read recently.
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For He Can Creep<\/em><\/strong> by Siobhan Carroll (Tor.com, July 10th<\/sup> 2019) is a story I read when it came out last year, an entertaining light fantasy involving an asylum tomcat called Joffrey, an insane poet, and the devil. You can get a good idea of the general tone from the opening:<\/p>\n

Flash and fire! Bristle and spit! The great Jeoffry ascends the madhouse stairs, his orange fur on end, his yellow eyes narrowed!
\nOn the third floor the imps cease their gamboling. Is this the time they stay and fight? One imp, bolder than the others, flattens himself against the flagstones. He swells himself with nightmares, growing huge. His teeth shine like the sword of an executioner, and his eyes are the colors of spilled whale oil before a match is struck. In their cells, the filthy inmates shrink away from his immensity, wailing.
\nBut Jeoffry does not shrink. He rushes up the last few stairs like the Deluge of God, and his claws are sharp! The imps run screaming, flitting into folds of space only angels and devils can penetrate.
\n[. . .]
\nThe whole asylum is his, and let no demon forget it! For he is the Cat Jeoffry, and no demon can stand against him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jeoffrey then visits the poet, who is trying to write a poem for God (when he is not being pestered by his publishers to write something else).
\nThat evening the devil comes to the asylum to speak to the cat\u2014he wants Joffrey to stand aside so he can visit the poet and force him to write a particular poem. If the devil is successful in this it will change the future of the universe and put it under his control. The cat accepts a bribe of various treats.
\nThe next day Jeoffrey is in a dreadful state\u2014the treats were just dead leaves which he has been vomiting up\u2014and the tomcat is in no state to protect the poet when the devil arrives. On a subsequent visit by the devil to check the poet\u2019s progress, Jeoffrey fights him but is unsuccessful, and only survives due to the poet\u2019s intercession.
\nThe final part of the story has Jeoffrey visit three of the asylum\u2019s other cats to help him deal with the devil on his next visit. One of these is an air-headed kitten called Nighthunter Moppet, whose personality changes markedly when they start discussing how the defeat the devil:<\/p>\n

<This is the wrong strategy,> says the Nighthunter Moppet, and her voice has the ring of a blade unsheathed.
\nAll kittenness has fallen away from Moppet. What sits before the milk bowl is the ruthless killer of the courtyard, the assassin whose title nighthunter is whispered in terror among the mice and birds of Bethnal Green. It is rumored that the Moppet\u2019s great-grandmother was a demon of the lower realms, which might perhaps explain the peculiar keenness of her green-glass eyes, and her talent for death-dealing. Indeed, as Jeoffry watches, the Moppet\u2019s tiny shadow seems to grow and split into seven pieces, each of which is shaped like a monstrous cat with seven tails. The shadow cats\u2019 tails lash and lash as the Nighthunter Moppet broods on Satan.
\n<It is true that as cats we are descended from the Angel Tiger, who killed the Ichneumon-rat of Egypt,> says the Moppet. Her shadows twist into the shapes of rats and angels as she speaks. <We are warriors of God, and as such, we can blood Satan. But we cannot kill him, for he has another fate decreed.><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story concludes when the devil visits the next night to pick up the finished poem.
\nThis is an enjoyable tale, but the plotting at the end is a little on the weak side (spoiler: while the three cats attack the devil, Jeoffrey sneaks past and eats the poem). One more minor criticism: what is with the < > symbols to delineate the cats\u2019 speech? They are disconcerting, and don\u2019t suit the style of the tale.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Omphalos <\/em><\/strong>by Ted Chiang (Exhalation<\/em>, 2019) opens with a diary entry from an unnamed female archaeologist that quickly places us in an entirely different universe. Apart from the fact that the narrator begins her entry (and all the others in the story bar one) with an exhortation to God, we soon pick up other salient details from a lecture she gives. This includes a passage where she shows how wood rings can be used to date remains:<\/p>\n

But even that thrill can\u2019t compare to that inspired by examining samples of wood a few centuries older. Because in those tree trunks, there\u2019s a point at which the growth rings stop. Counting back from the present, the oldest growth ring was formed eight thousand nine hundred and twelve years ago. There are no growth rings before that, I told them, because that is the year you created the world, Lord. In the center of every tree of that era is a circle of perfectly clear and homogeneous wood, and the diameter of that ringless area indicates the size of the tree at the moment of creation. Those are primordial trees, created directly by your hand rather than grown from seedlings.\u00a0 p. 240<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We also learn that in this world there are also the remains of humans who have no navels and, later on, she examines a deer bone belonging to her cousin Rosemary which has no epiphyseal line (\u201cthe remnant of the growth plate where new cartilage is added as a juvenile\u2019s bones lengthen into an adult\u2019s. The femur had never been shorter than it was now\u201d).
\nDuring this conversation Rosemary tells the narrator she bought the bone from the travelling archaeological exhibition at the local church. The narrator also learns that primordial abalone shells are for sale, which arouses her curiosity as there should not be any in public ownership. She decides to investigate, and visits the museum, first viewing the exhibition (there is a scene where she looks at the display of navel-less mummies). Afterwards she quizzes the gift shop salesman, who tells her who sold them the shells.
\nThe narrator then sends an easily identifiable dummy package to the post office box address in San Francisco, and travels there to stake it out. When the owner of the Post Office box turns up to collect the package she sees that it isn\u2019t the \u201cMartin Webster\u201d she had been expecting but a young woman. When challenged the woman identifies herself as the daughter of the museum director who controls the only known collection of the shells, and that she been selling them cheaply to help reinforce people\u2019s faith. She adds that there is a scientific paper due to be published that will challenge everyone\u2019s beliefs.
\nThe final scenes (spoiler) have the narrator visit the young woman\u2019s parents. During an uncomfortable conversation she finds out that the scientific paper reveals that another planet, not Earth, is at the centre of the universe. Further speculation suggests that this newly discovered planet is the reason for God\u2019s creation, and that Earth is probably just a sideshow with no special significance.
\nThe narrator then goes through a crisis of faith and contemplates the point of her existence before having an epiphany:<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve devoted my life to studying the wondrous mechanism that is the universe, and doing so has given me a sense of fulfllment. I\u2019ve always assumed that this meant that I was acting in accordance with your will, Lord, and your reason for making me. But if it\u2019s in fact true that you have no purpose in mind for me, then that sense of fulfllment has arisen solely from within myself. What that demonstrates to me is that we as humans are capable of creating meaning for our own lives.\u00a0 p. 269<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a polished story which is intellectually and philosophically involving, and which also has a reasonably profound ending. Pretty good stuff, and way above the level of anything else here.<\/p>\n

In conclusion we have one very good story from Ted Chiang, a superior piece of light entertainment (but not award winning good) from Siobahn Carroll, a good but flawed story from Caroline Yoachim, and three stories that just don\u2019t work from the two Sarahs (which are good in part), and Jesimin (about which I\u2019ll say no more). So\u2014another lacklustre set of 2020 Hugo Award finalists, but at least they are not as bad as the short stories.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. Here are the links to the texts of four of the six stories (you can find links to other Hugo work at File770<\/a>):<\/p>\n

The Archronology of Love<\/a><\/em> \u2022 novelette by Caroline M. Yoachim
\nAway With the Wolves<\/a><\/em> \u2022 novelette by Sarah Gailey
\nThe Blur in the Corner of Your Eye<\/a><\/em> \u2022 novelette by Sarah Pinsker
\nFor He Can Creep<\/a><\/em> \u2022 novelette by Siobhan Carroll<\/p>\n

The other two are available at Amazon and other booksellers:<\/p>\n

Emergency Skin<\/a><\/em> \u2022 novelette by N.K. Jemisin (free to Amazon Prime subscribers)
\nOmphalos<\/a><\/em> \u2022 novelette by Ted Chiang<\/p>\n

All these stories are in the Hugo Award Voter Pack.<\/p>\n

2. How ironic that Jesimin\u2019s Emergency Skin<\/em> is published by Amazon, founded and run by the world’s richest man. Ker-ching!
\nThe rest of the Amazon Forward<\/a> collection of original fiction includes:<\/p>\n

Ark<\/em> by Veronica Roth
\nSummer Frost<\/em> by Blake Crouch
\nYou Have Arrived at Your Destination<\/em> by Amor Towles
\nThe Last Conversation<\/em> by Paul Tremblay
\nRandomize<\/em> by Andy Weir\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: The 2020 Hugo Award novelettes are another mixed bag, but are better than the short story finalists. There is one worthy finalist from Ted Chiang, a pretty good fantasy from Siobhan Carroll, and a solid enough story from Caroline M. Yoachim. The remaining three stories have their moments, but don\u2019t entirely work. _____________________ Editors, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hugo-awards"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-3o3","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13023"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14502,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13023\/revisions\/14502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}