Completed 6/16/2025 Reviewed 6/17/2025
In this blog entry, I review and rank the six Hugo nominees for Best Novelette. These are stories about 30 to 50 pages in length. I don’t remember the exact count of words that defines a novelette, but the stories are shorter than novellas and longer than short stories.
The choices this year were all outstanding. It was hard to choose my top pick and equally hard to rank the rest. Here’s the list with a brief summary and some comments. They are in order from favorite to least favorite, though the margins between them all are so slight.
“The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea” by Naomi Kritzer – I love a good selkie story. This one is about a married couple, both with Ph.D.’s. The husband continued his research, the wife gave up her research on Grey Seals. They are near Cape Cod while he’s on sabbatical doing a residency at Harvard. Amazingly, she finds a group of grey seals, many of whom she remembers from her doctoral work in Maine. She tries to restart her research. Naturally, her husband doesn’t want her continuing her work because it threatens his status quo. She goes ahead with her plan anyway, only to find some interesting behaviors of the seals.
I loved how this story built up to a fantastic twist at the end. Most of the story, however, is about her and her daughter trying to integrate into the society of the small town they live in. They meet other moms and their daughters. The moms encourage the woman to restart her seal research. The mother and daughter also discover that there are four standing stones overlooking the bay which legend has it were women who got married and their husbands died. They lived a very long time and eventually became the stones.
“By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars” by Premee Mohamed – Firion the Wizard has lost her ability to read the old language and thus her magic. Still, the academy sends her Cane, an apprentice who she trains by making him do everything himself without her showing him. She says Cane can skip all remaining tests and trials if he can fend off the Bouldus, a giant sea dragon that comes and destroys parts of the town whenever it is awakened by the sound of smaller sea dragons mating. This year is going to be a Bouldus year.
What I liked about this book is that both Firion and Cane are rather non-traditional. Firion was once a great magician but has lost a crucial talent. Cane is a poor, abused boy or young man who can’t get into the academy due to the cost but just might have the talent. Firion somehow makes the training work for Cane. Also, the Bouldus scenes were great.
“Lake of Souls” by Ann Leckie – This terrific tale is told from two points of view. Spawn is a “lobster dog” on a distant planet. Orbiting the planet is a human anthropologist. She awakens from cryo-sleep to find the ship empty with lots of blood stains, no ansible for communication, and only one pod that’s not too badly damaged. She decides to go down to the planet to find the person who committed this tragedy, find the ansible, and get rescued. In the meantime, Spawn is unnaturally drawn to the water from which it hatched. The adults are worried that Spawn may not have a soul. Spawn decides to search for the Lake of Souls to figure out if it has one. On the planet, Spawn and the anthropologist meet.
I’m not a huge Leckie fan, but this story was phenomenal. There are a lot of “human meets alien and become friends” stories, but there was something special about this one. Spawn and the “lobster dog” culture and spirituality was fresh, interesting, and empathetic. The anthropologist was brave, resourceful and open minded. When the two meet, it’s written marvelously, and you love both characters.
“Loneliness Universe” by Eugenia Triantafyllou – This incredibly original parallel dimension story begins with a woman trying to reconnect with her childhood bestie. However, they seem to be at the same bus stop, but neither can see each other. The friend thinks the woman is ghosting her like she did so many years ago. Then after an evening of playing video games with her brother, he goes out for chips and she takes a nap. When she wakes up, the chips are there but not him. She can text and email these people, but they cannot see her and she cannot see them. This continues with other members of her family and even acquaintances she’s trying to get to know better. Soon the phenomenon seems to spread around the world.
This was really creepy and an interesting statement on relationships in our high tech world. The devolution of the main characters relationships and her attempts at propping them up with texts and emails is frustrating and frightening. And when it begins to happen everywhere, it’s even more terrifying. Depressing, but very well constructed.
“Signs of Life” by Sarah Pinsker – This was a wild story of two estranged older sisters who plan to meet after over 40 years apart. Veronica made the first move, feeling guilty for an old harm she perpetrated on her sister Violet. When she gets to Vi’s home, she finds her sister looking ragged and worn while Veronica, the older sister, still looks young and vivacious, though she did have one plastic surgery. Vi was a young widow and her three children all died in their late teens to early twenties. Now Vi lives with the mysterious Shane. Vi then shows Veronica the strange art she’s producing and soon Veronica discovers something about herself she never imagined.
Such a strange story, but I loved the progression. It’s told from Veronica’s perspective and she’s harboring 40 years of venomous guilt. She was a successful news reporter and anchor while her sister lived a rough life. As the two slowly reconcile, they reveal more about their past, together and separate. It all builds up to the strange art decorating the back acres of Vi’s property. There’s magic in this story, but is strange and inconsistent. The ending is happy, but so very surprising.
“The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video” by Thomas Ha – In the near future, all books are digital. There are some old fashioned bound paper books left. The main character finds one at the library and steals it since it has no stamps, identification, or tracking on it. He reads it and finds it rather depressing. Recently his mother had passed and he has been selling her stuff at Montague Street Video. So he takes the book there to find out how much it’s worth. The owner says it’s worth a lot but he may not be able to find a good buyer for it. Instead, he directs him to another Video shop out on Long Island. Suddenly, the man is approached by a supposed representative a dealer who wants to offer six figures for the book, but the main refuses to sell yet. Then things become dangerous as the rep begins to threaten the man.
This was my least favorite of the six nominees. I thought it felt like it was trying to force its point rather than just letting it happen. Still, it makes a great point about the changing of things to appeal to the lowest common denominator of society. Great things become watered down to be easily consumed. And suddenly, the past is wiped out. Very Big Brother-like.
Thanks for reading. I know I wrote a lot. The stories were short but jam-packed with good stuff. I wanted to share that good stuff and somehow not give away the awesome endings.
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