{"id":14768,"date":"2022-11-09T22:24:12","date_gmt":"2022-11-09T22:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=14768"},"modified":"2022-11-09T22:31:18","modified_gmt":"2022-11-09T22:31:18","slug":"the-2022-nebula-award-novelette-finalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=14768","title":{"rendered":"The 2022 Nebula Award Novelette Finalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Summary:
\nThe best of this group (and the only one I would expect to see on an award ballot) was the entertaining and thoughtful Just Enough Rain<\/em> by P.H. Lee which, superficially, is about the narrator dating an angel in a world where God is manifest. I also liked the Lauren Ring and Caroline M. Yoachim stories\u2014and would have been happy to find them in a magazine issue\u2014but I don’t think they are award level work (and that latter observation applies even more to the Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and John Wiswell stories).
\nThere were better stories out there in 2021.<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editors, LaShawn Wanak, Lezli Robyn, Sheree Ren\u00e9e Thomas, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas (x2)<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nJust Enough Rain<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 novelette by P.H. Lee \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nO2<\/sub> Arena <\/em>\u2022 novelette by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki \u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\n(emet)<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 novelette by Lauren Ring \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThat Story Isn\u2019t the Story<\/strong> <\/em>\u2022 novelette by John Wiswell \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nColors of the Immortal Palette<\/strong> <\/em>\u2022 novelette by Caroline M. Yoachim \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

There are five finalists in the novelette category\u2014the winner was O2<\/sub> Arena<\/em> by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Just Enough Rain<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by P. H. Lee (Giganotosaurus<\/em>, 1st<\/sup>\u00a0May 2021)1<\/sup>\u00a0opens with an arresting first line:<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t surprised when God showed up for Mom\u2019s funeral. They\u2019d always been close.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After the funeral service is over, Annie goes over to talk with God and they have a long and wandering conversation (His friendship with her mother, His sending angels to remove the sarcomas produced by a previous bout of cancer, etc.) before God tells her He is thinking of bringing Annie\u2019s mother back to life. Once He ascertains that Annie has no objections (expected inheritance, etc.) there are sounds of movement from inside the coffin.
\nThis opening passage is followed by a short second chapter which tells of the parable of Honi the Circle-Drawer (Honi asks God to provide rain, and then the\u00a0correct<\/em>\u00a0amount of rain when there is a flood) before the rest of the story settles into its groove, which is that of Annie\u2019s love life. This latter begins with her resurrected mother telling Annie that she wants grandchildren:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know,\u201d she\u2019d say, as if I hadn\u2019t heard it a hundred times before, \u201cone of my great regrets was dying without getting to meet my grandchildren.\u201d
\n\u201cMom,\u201d I\u2019d say, \u201cyou\u2019re still alive.\u201d
\n\u201cOnly because of a miracle, dear,\u201d she\u2019d say, \u201cand we mustn\u2019t count on miracles. What happened to Brett, anyway? I liked Brett. Good Jewish boy. And a doctor!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After more of this kind of thing, and some of Annie\u2019s backstory (a vision she had at 15 about saving monarch butterflies from extinction), Annie\u2019s mother calls her and says that she has phoned God and had a word with him about Annie\u2019s love life. Annie later experiences the result of this intercession in a hilarious passage:<\/p>\n

I was on the Blue Line, reading\u00a0The Guermantes Way<\/em>\u2013the new translation\u2013when I noticed him\u2013her? them?\u2013sitting across from me, beautiful.
\nIt was their skin, I think, that caught my attention. Strong, muscled, but still soft as a feather. I sucked in my breath and, without thinking, bit my lower lip. There was no question of going back to\u00a0The Guermantes Way<\/em>. I just sat, and looked at them, beautiful, God they were beautiful.
\nThen, just as we left Elmonica\/SW 170th<\/sup>, they stood up\u2013tall, broadshouldered, the slowest curve of their chin\u2013and unfurled their wings of holy light, almost the length of the entire train car.
\n\u201cOh no,\u201d I said, but I couldn\u2019t look away.
\n\u201cHARK,\u201d they said, their voice filling the entire railcar. \u201cBE NOT AFRAID, FOR I AM A MESSENGER OF THE LORD YOUR GOD.\u201d
\nSome people were fumbling with their phones, but most of them just gawped, open-mouthed. I felt the cold-warm rush of embarrassment and I wanted to hide under my seat almost as much as I wanted to keep staring.
\nHe\u2019d sent an angel. Of course He\u2019d sent an angel.
\nThe angel turned to a slightly paunchy man\u2013nice curly hair, though\u2013in glasses, khakis and a polo shirt. \u201cDAVID ELIAS RUTENBERG,\u201d it said.
\nDavid blanched and looked for all the world like he\u2019d just had a dream about taking a final exam in his underwear. \u201cY-yes?\u201d he finally managed.
\nThe angel pointed to me and I tried my very best to blend into the seat cushion. \u201cTHIS WOMAN, ANAT BETHESDA MEAGELE, IS SINGLE. SHE HAS A GOOD JOB AND SHE\u2019S EMOTIONALLY MATURE AND READY FOR A COMMITMENT. YOU SHOULD ASK FOR HER NUMBER. SO SAYETH THE LORD.\u201d
\nDavid stared at me and swallowed hard. His face was covered in sweat.
\n\u201cTAKE HER SOMEWHERE NICE, NOTHING TOO FANCY, IN THE $20-30 RANGE,\u201d continued the angel, just when I thought that this couldn\u2019t get worse. \u201cARGUE ABOUT WHETHER TO SPLIT THE CHECK BUT THEN PRETEND TO GO TO THE BATHROOM AND SECRETLY PAY.\u201d
\nDavid, still sweating, gave me an appraising look that made me instantly aware of every wrinkle and sag. \u201cShe\u2019s, uh\u201d he started.
\n\u201cYES,\u201d said the angel, turning their magnificent gaze upon me. \u201cHURRY IT UP.\u201d
\n\u201cShe\u2019s a bit old for me, isn\u2019t she?\u201d
\nThe angel snapped their gaze back to him. \u201cWELL YOU\u2019RE NO SPRING CHICKEN YOURSELF, DAVE.\u201d
\nDave looked like he\u2019d just swallowed a toad. \u201cI-is that also the word of G-G-God?\u201d he managed.
\n\u201cNO, DAVE, THAT\u2019S JUST A SIMPLE OBSERVATION THAT ANYONE COULD MAKE. YOU\u2019RE NOT EXACTLY GOING TO LAND A SUPERMODEL.\u201d
\n\u201cUh, well,\u201d said Dave, and pulled the emergency brake.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Annie subsequently phones God and tells him not to intercede again, before asking for the angel\u2019s telephone number. God phones her back with it, and Annie and the (monomaniacally dull) angel subsequently go on a car crash date. Worse, he then pesters her with a series of texts asking to see her again and, when those are unanswered, another series asking what went wrong.
\nAnnie (bearing in mind her mother\u2019s comments about being too quick to judge) eventually agrees to another date with the angel. This one works out better, even though their dinner conversation spans an eclectic range of topics (the semiotics of the translations of\u00a0Remembrance of Things Lost<\/em>, Korean Food, angelic languages, etc.). By the fourth date they are having sex, or whatever word you would use to describe congress between a woman and a being who, unclothed, has a distinctly inhuman form:<\/p>\n

Their human guise\u2013clothes, but also skin and eyes and everything\u2013lay in a pile beneath them. What remained was a great cloud of a thousand different hands, in each hand a different eye, in each eye a different name of God, all wreathed in light and holy fire.
\n\u201cTHIS IS ME,\u201d said the angel, with a voice that seemed to come from everywhere.
\nI stepped forward, took one of the hands, and kissed it. \u201cYou\u2019re beautiful,\u201d I said, and meant it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Eventually, and after sections that detail Annie\u2019s conversations with (a) her mother about the parable of Honi the Circle-Drawer, and (b) the angel about the unpublished Rimbaud translations in her notebooks (the story is fairly discursive throughout), Annie phones her mother to tell her that she is pregnant. The story ends with, among other things, a discussion of God\u2019s likely reaction, what Annie intends to do with her child, and what happened \u201clast time\u201d (i.e. with Jesus).
\nThis is not only an original story (the idea of a slightly bumbling God manifest in the world is relatively novel or at least underused in genre fiction) but also an amusing, and sometimes hilarious, one. It is, however, slightly more sprawling than it needs to be (the ending is a bit wafflely, for instance) and some tightening up would have benefited the whole piece. That said, I enjoyed the story\u2019s various diversions\u2014the parable, Annie\u2019s butterfly vision and whether saving them was God\u2019s purpose for her, the discussions about Proust\u2019s\u00a0Remembrance of Things Lost<\/em>, etc., etc. These gave what could have been a piece of froth some thoughtful heft and, at times, made it a wise and reflective work.
\nWell worth a look.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+ (Good to Very Good). 9,550 words. Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/span><\/p>\n

O2<\/sub>\u00a0Arena<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki (Galaxy\u2019s Edge<\/em>, November 2021)2<\/sup>\u00a0opens with a short fight section before the story flashbacks to a point a few months earlier where the narrator, a new student at the Academy of Laws, is listening to his induction lectures. We later learn that the academy is located in a future Nigeria where climate change has damaged the atmosphere so badly that people need masks and portable air when they go outside (and where they use oxygen as a currency):<\/p>\n

Mrs. Oduwole was at the podium now. The Head of Hostels began by stating that the generators would be on until midnight for reading and for the making of breathable air. After midnight, we would revert to our O2<\/sub>\u00a0cylinders which we must keep by our bedsides throughout the night.
\nThe tuition was expensive but was only meant to cover the central hall\u2019s oxygen generation when lectures were on. O2<\/sub>\u00a0masks filtered the bad air temporarily, for the brief periods when moving between places. O2<\/sub>\u00a0cylinders were for longer periods when there were no O2<\/sub>\u00a0generators.
\nWe weren\u2019t allowed to be in the hostels during the day when lectures were on, for any reasons. She didn\u2019t care if you were a girl on your flow, no matter how heavy. And this was apparently the only example she felt obligated to give.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

During this series of lectures the narrator goes outside the hall for a break and meets Ovole, a female friend\/undisclosed love interest. During their bantering exchanges we find out she has cancer (\u201cDo you want to feel [the tumour]?\u201d she asks at one point).
\nAfter several pages of the above, and other data dump information about the narrator\u2019s academy and society (various forms of institutional and political oppression make the narrator struggle to breath in more ways than one it would seem), the story kicks up a gear when he decides to visit his old gang on the mainland, a part of the story that has some interesting local colour. When the narrator later talks to an old gang acquaintance, he learns that Dr Umez, one of the induction lecturers, has a reputation for molesting both male and female students. Then, when the narrator tells the acquaintance that he needs to earn some money (for Ovole\u2019s medical needs), they go to the O2<\/sub>\u00a0arena and watch a cage fight that ends when one of the combatants is killed.
\nThe narrator subsequently decides not to take the risk of entering the cage fights, but (spoiler) he then learns that Ovoke is in hospital and needs expensive ICU treatment. So, after a visit to hospital to see Ovoke and her parents, he returns to the arena and enters the fights. After a vicious bout he kills his opponent and wins a substantial prize pot, but it is too late\u2014Ovoke has died in the meantime.
\nThe story closes with the narrator using the prize money to form his own gang, and their first action is the killing of the abusive Dr Umez.
\nThis is a bit of a mixed bag. The opening set-up (about ten pages) is overlong and plodding, and the story only really gets going when the narrator goes to the mainland. I also didn\u2019t care for the political messages that were constantly telegraphed throughout the story (\u201cYou see, the rich deserved to breathe\u201d, \u201cShe thought she would be nothing in a patriarchal society that valued men for their ability to provide, and women for reproduction\u201d, etc., etc.\u2014the author is not a fan of show don\u2019t tell). On the other hand the mainland setting and culture is interesting, as is the idea of oxygen as a currency\u2014so a promising piece, but not an even or polished one (its Nebula Award and Hugo nominations way overrate the story).
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 8, 150 words. Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

(Emet)<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Lauren Ring (F&SF<\/em>, July-August 2022)3<\/sup>\u00a0opens with Chaya in her countryside home watching a golem dig up dandelions in her garden\u2014these creatures of Jewish folklore are created daily by Chaya and linked to her home network:<\/p>\n

After a few false starts, Chaya has the bestowal of life down to a science. Each morning at dawn, she molds assistants from clay, connects them to her wireless network just like any smart watch or Bluetooth dongle, and passes them the day\u2019s variables: a list of chores, with each step painstakingly defined. The golem in charge of the dandelions finished early, but there are others of various sizes lumbering about the yard, carrying eggs from Chaya\u2019s chicken coop and clearing loose stones from her long, winding driveway.\u00a0 p. 67<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We learn that Chaya is a teleworker for Millbank Biometrics, a company that is developing facial recognition software. Then, after some backstory about how Chaya\u2019s mother taught her how to make golems and the generalities of Chaya\u2019s job, Chaya virtually attends a company meeting where she and the other employees are given a list of thirty-six protestors that law enforcement want to track:<\/p>\n

Confusion spreads across the faces on Chaya\u2019s monitor. If her camera was on, she is sure that she would see the same expression reflected in her own frown. Tracking protesters isn\u2019t exactly what she signed up for when she applied to Millbank. Sure, it\u2019s what their software was ultimately going to be used for, but she wasn\u2019t supposed to have to do it.
\n\u201cAre there any questions?\u201d
\nChaya expects someone to ask what crimes these people committed, or what is going to happen to them when the information is turned over to the police, even though she already knows the dark answer to that. She expects questions about ethics and precedent and nondisclosure. At the very least, she expects someone to ask how they are supposed to check every partial match from every instance of every client\u2019s software without neglecting all their other work.
\nNo one asks any questions, though, not even her manager, so Chaya stays in line and keeps quiet. She sets the thirty-six faces to display on one of her monitors and returns to her code. What else can she do? She\u2019s only one person, after all.\u00a0 pp. 72-72<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The next section of the story sees, among other things: (a) Chaya remember a childhood incident when a black friend was arrested on a false positive match (Chaya\u2019s family didn\u2019t do anything before the child was eventually released); (b) Chaya spot one of the thirty-six protestors in a local shop (when they talk to each other, Chaya is told about a surveillance protest in a couple of weeks); (c) Chaya garble the code for one of her golems\u2014this makes it create another one, which in turn creates one more (\u201clike a line of self replicating code\u201d); (d) Chaya\u2019s mother\u2019s death due to cancer and health algorithms; and (e) Chaya realise, when she receives another dubious request from her company, that she is little better than a golem herself.
\nThe story ends (spoiler) with Chaya\u2019s long simmering rebellion, which sees her create self-replicating golems with the same faces as the target individuals, something designed to overload Millbank\u2019s servers (she is helped with this by the man from the shop, who she meets again at the protest, and who gets the dispersing protesters to take a self-replicating golem with them to increase the area where Millbank will record sightings).
\nI found this story interesting but something of a mixed bag. On the plus side, the gimmick (golems controlled by computer code) is original, and the story is more multi-layered and complex than most but, on the minus side, the golem\/computer mix feels a bit odd (a fantasy idea mixed with science fiction), and the politics of the story (surveillance + algorithms = bad) feels a bit simplistic (look at how much surveillance data we give away willingly).
\nI\u2019d also add that the very last part, where Chaya conflates her actions with the idea of \u201ctruth\u201d (\u201cEmet\u201d in Hebrew) doesn\u2019t make much sense as they seem to be more about political values or freedom. Finally, I didn\u2019t understand why \u201cEmet\u201d is the word that brings the golems to life.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u00a0(Good). 7,800 words. Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

That Story Isn\u2019t the Story<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by John Wiswell (Uncanny<\/em>, November-December 2021) opens with Anton leaving a vampire household with the help of an old friend called Grigorii. As they leave the house in Grigorii\u2019s car, Anton sees Mr Bird (the vampire) return:<\/p>\n

A black town car trails up the street toward them. Sleek and black, with that short club of a man Walter at the wheel. Mr. Bird\u2019s senior familiar. Anton knows who sits in the tinted windows and the shadows of the rear seats.
\nFrom inside the Kia, Grigorii pops the passenger door open. \u201cCome on, man.\u201d
\nIs blood spotting in Anton\u2019s jeans? He gropes at his thighs, unsure if the moisture is sweat on his palms or if he\u2019s bleeding. The car is getting closer. Mr. Bird definitely sees him. Anton sinks into the car. He clutches his seatbelt until they are doing forty in a twenty mile zone. He\u2019s too worried to turn around, and too afraid not to fixate on the rearview mirror.
\nThe black car stops in the middle of the street. A rear door opens, and a dark thing peers out. There is no seeing any detail of that figure\u2014no detail except for his mouth. It is open and sharp. Distance doesn\u2019t change how clearly Anton sees the teeth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anton then meets Luis, another stray, at Grigorii\u2019s house, and worries about Mr Bird before examining himself in the toilet to see if the bite wounds in his thighs are still bleeding (these are semi-permanent, and bleed in the presence of Mr Bird). They aren\u2019t, which means that Mr Bird is not nearby, or not yet.
\nThis background feeling of menace and unease pervades most of the rest of the story, and rises and falls as different events play out. To begin with, Luis is attacked on the way back from his job, something Anton thinks may be related to his departure and which causes a fight between the two when Anton tried to inspect Luis for bites. Then Walter, Mr Bird\u2019s familiar, approaches Anton to tell him that he must return, the first of two visits (during the second one Walter tells Anton that the twins, two of the vampire\u2019s other victims, have also run away).
\nThere is never any force or violence used to get Anton to return, oddly enough and, towards the end of the story, the contacts stop and Anton transitions to a normal life. Then, one evening when Anton and a new boyfriend called Julian go out for a meal, Anton sees Walter working in the restaurant and realises that he has left Mr Bird too.
\nThe story closes a few weeks later, when Anton goes out of town with Julian for the weekend and detours past Mr Bird\u2019s house: Anton sees the building is in an obvious state of disrepair and then, while he sketches the house, it collapses.
\nThis has the trappings of a vampire story but is really a mainstream piece about escaping abusive relationships or situations, and one which suggests that people can choose their own destinies\u2014the line \u201cthat story isn\u2019t the story\u201d is used a couple of times:<\/p>\n

Walter asks, \u201cWhat made you think you could survive without him?\u201d
\n\u201cThat story is not the story I\u2019m telling today.\u201d [Anton replies.]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[Anton] asks [Grigorii], \u201cWhat happened to your [abusive] mom? Do you ever see her?\u201d
\n\u201cThat story is not the story I\u2019m telling today, man.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This would have been a reasonably good straight piece, but the story undermines itself somewhat by setting up the vampire menace at the beginning of the piece and then letting it fade away. That said, I realise that the idea of a perceived threat being more perception that reality may be one of the points the story is trying to make.2<\/sup>
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Average). 9,000 words. Story link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022<\/p>\n

Colors of the Immortal Palette<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Caroline M. Yoachim (Uncanny<\/em>\u00a0March-April 2021)2<\/sup> is set in Paris in the time of Manet and Monet (the mid- to late-1800s, I guess), and opens with a Japanese woman called Mariko posing for an unnamed immortal artist (who is also referred to as a \u201cvampire\u201d at points in the story, although he takes life energy from others rather than their blood).
\nThen, at the end of the session:<\/p>\n

I\u2019m about to give him up as hopeless when he turns to look at me. I\u2019m lost in the darkness of his eyes, drowning in the intensity of his attention. I can barely breathe, but I repeat my invitation, \u201cI could show you other poses.\u201d
\n\u201cYes.\u201d He sweeps me into an embrace that is strong and cold. White. He is snow and I am determined to melt it.
\nThe sex builds slowly, deliberately, like paint layered on a canvas in broad strokes\u2014tentative at first as we find our way to a shared vision, then faster with a furious intensity and passion.
\nAfter, when other artists might hold me and drift off to sleep, he dissipates into a white mist that swirls in restless circles around the room, chilling me down to the bones when it touches my skin. His mist seeps into me and pulses through my veins for several heartbeats. I feel energized, an exhilaration more intense than watching him work, a connection closer even than our sex.
\nHe withdraws, and I am diminished. I hadn\u2019t known until this moment what I was lacking, but now I am filled with a keen sense of my incompleteness. I long for him, for the sensation of vastness I felt when we were one.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Subsequently she becomes his lover, poses for another painting, becomes jealous of his other models, and thinks of the extra time that immortality would give her for her own art (she is a painter too). Later, she convinces him to make her immortal, a process leaves him unable to take any form but mist for over a year.
\nThe rest of the story concerns her subsequent life and development as an artist, and telescopes in time from the point she paints another model called Victorine (which gives Mariko a new found awareness of the woman\u2019s mortality) to (spoiler) her final painting, a self-portrait that will change with time, and which is painted after she learns that her jaded benefactor has dissipated into mist, never to recohere.
\nThere are various other significant events for Mariko during this period: she gets married, achieves artistic success, learns of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (the birthplace of her mother), and, in one of the pivotal passages of the piece, receives a telegram in 1927 informing her of Victorine\u2019s death:<\/p>\n

The world has been a week without her in it, but her death did not become a truth for me until the telegram arrived. She is the last. Even Monet has ceased his endless paintings of water lilies, having passed in December. I\u2019ve not seen either of them for decades, but tonight I feel the loss as keenly as if I\u2019d sat with them yesterday, all of us gathered at the Caf\u00e9 Guerbois, Victorine and I engaging the men in passionate discussions on the purpose of art, the role of the model, and whether critical outrage was an attack on the honor of the painter, this last being a topic that always irritated Manet.
\nThey were my cohort\u2014\u00c9douard, \u00c9mile, Claude, Paul and Camille, and of course Victorine. I met them not knowing that I would outlive them, and without having the distance that knowledge brings. My immortal artist was right\u2014I don\u2019t get quite so close to mortals now, I no longer see myself as one of them. But I\u2019m accustomed to navigating a world I do not feel a part of, a place where I am unlike all the others. This has always been my truth.
\n[. . .]
\nI have outlived my friends, my colleagues, and for what? All my paintings combined have not garnered the renown of\u00a0Olympia<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0Impression, Sunrise<\/em>. I am best known as the model from\u00a0Woman, Reclining (Mari)<\/em>, and maybe my lack of success is not\u2014as I have always told myself\u2014because I am a woman and an outsider, but because I am lacking in talent.
\nEven being immortal, which should be simple enough, is a task that I am failing for I cannot bear the thought of stealing time from mortals whose lives are already so fleeting. I take just enough here and there from models\u2014always with their consent\u2014to maintain a human form, but if I cannot create beauty, cannot leave my mark on the world of art, their time is wasted, and nothing is so precious as time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I liked this piece well enough but there isn\u2019t much here apart from an extended historical slice of life, the angst of immortals, and talk about artists and painting. This may not be to everyone\u2019s taste.
\n\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong> (Good). 12,800 words.<\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n

The best of this group (and the only one I would expect to see on an award ballot) was Just Enough Rain<\/em> by P.H. Lee. I liked the Lauren Ring and Caroline M. Yoachim stories\u2014and would have been happy to find them in a magazine issue\u2014but I don’t think they are award level work (and that latter observation applies even more to the Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and John Wiswell).
\nI haven\u2019t read a lot of 2021 stories, but I\u2019d suggest that You Are Born Exploding<\/em> by Rich Larson (story link<\/a>) is better than all of the above (it would have been my pick for the award), and The Metric<\/em> by David Moles (story link<\/a>) is at least as good.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. I\u2019m surprised that Just Enough Rain<\/em> by P. H. Lee didn\u2019t end up in a better paying market (Giganotosaurus<\/em> pays $100 for its stories, which is about 1 cent a word for this piece).<\/p>\n

2. The Oghenechovwe Donald Epeki and Caroline M. Yoachim stories were also Hugo finalists.<\/p>\n

3. (Emet)<\/em> by Lauren Ring won the 2022 World Fantasy Award for best short story.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: The best of this group (and the only one I would expect to see on an award ballot) was the entertaining and thoughtful Just Enough Rain by P.H. Lee which, superficially, is about the narrator dating an angel in a world where God is manifest. I also liked the Lauren Ring and Caroline M. […]<\/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":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nebula-awards"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-3Qc","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14768","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=14768"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14768\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14814,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14768\/revisions\/14814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}