i started watching the show a little less than a year ago and let me say there are moments where this community is amazing. however recently it’s seemed like there’s no way that ethan and the crew can actually please the audience, so i want to show some appreciation for the crew and all their hard work. ethan is incredibly funny and receptive to feedback, and he has really helped me on my mental health journey, specifically my journey of starting medication. male role models like him are super important. hila is such an incredible boss woman who has inspired me to step outside my comfort zone and try new ways to express myself. she also seems like an incredible mom and is such an empathetic soul dan is an incredible producer. it’s so amazing the work that he puts into the show and the role he plays in the live shows. without dan the show wouldn’t exist. he’s smart, funny, and runs a great show. zach is a genius as the sound lad and his input as well as his sound bites elevate the show so much. h3 show would not be what it is without the sound bites and zach does it better than anyone in the game ian is a comedic genius and his unseen work does not go unappreciated. he puts together great skits and bits and he adds an extra flair for the show sam is an AMAZING artist who helps make the shows, especially the live shows, incredibly beautiful and high quality. also, her work with NOCD has been incredibly encouraging for me AB is such a funny and committed crucial part of the show. his research and live-time fact checking is incredibly impressive, especially for debates, and his dedication to the show is amazing. Lena is the kindest, most badass woman who is both incredibly sweet and also a total powerhouse. she’s such a beautiful perspective to have on the show. Olivia is beautiful and perfect and has inspired me to be more confident and unapologetic. Her powerpoints are amazing and i love to hear her perspective on issues. Love is so fantastic in the studio and his social media posts are so funny. I also love to hear his perspective on issues and appreciate him always standing up for the girlies Finally, Nate is doing an incredible job switching. His comedic timing is fantastic and his camera work has added a fun new element in the show! peace and love to the entire crew, we appreciate you!

I don't know if this violates the subreddit rules maybe it does in which case delete it.
Every day when I'm scrolling through apps such as this one I see all these advertisements that stick out like sore thumbs. They immediately catch my attention because they stick out like a sore thumb and my brain processes the first two words before devaluing the content past zero. And then I move on with my life. I can't imagine I'm the only one who feels this way? So that raises the question do these ads actually work?
In a similar vein I had the displeasure of watching television recently and the advertisements just seemed to drone on forever and I just scrolled through apps on my phone. But in a similar vein I watched YouTube constantly. I have YouTube premium because I don't like advertisements but that doesn't save me because all the people I watch have sponsored ad reeds in their videos. And while I don't have a problem with them having to make a buck, I find that oftentimes those sponsored ad reads especially recently are so scripted and structured that they no longer feel like skits and have lost their charm.
I have historically found these ad reads to be much more convincing than any other form of advertisement. I attribute this to them coming from people I already have a certain base level of trust with. Their advertising is more persuasive because I already like the person telling me about the thing. But lately I find I'm much more cynical towards these ads than I used to be because they are no longer funny or silly skits. I find that I just skip them most of the time. And when I don't skip them I either have one of two reactions well three reactions really but the third one is much less common.
Reaction one is basically ignoring the advertisement. It doesn't really have that much of effect on me but I do tend to remember the product and the company so I would say it's effective even if I'm ignoring it.
The second reaction comes when the creator is advertising a product that I know is bad / evil such as better help. Instead of cynically ignoring it and writing it off as the creator having to make a buck, I tend to view the creators who advertise these things as corporate shills who will do anything to make a buck and don't have any moral compass. It's not very effective at advertising the product to me but it's very effective at devaluing the advertiser to me.
The third option is that they have advertised something that sounds genuinely interesting and then I look into it and perhaps make a purchasing decision. That's very rare.
I personally think that the skits that YouTubers used to use were quite nice and they did make me remember the product. I also have this suspicion that product placement would be a much better advertising strategy in the modern era than what it's currently seen as traditional advertising.
I guess I'm looking for opinions on this because I'm a curious cat and I like to understand the world around me.

Originally From: https://myspace.com/discovetrending/2014/04/14/all-that-oral-history-season-one/

How ‘All That’ Became the ‘SNL’ for the Next Generation

By Steven J. Horowitz and Jill Menze • April 14, 2014
Twenty years ago, Nickelodeon took a chance by airing a one-off special that stretched into 10 seasons of sketch comedy. To commemorate the milestone, the show's executives, actors and guest musicians reflect on the first season of what would become an iconic series.
"Now it's just an introduction, before we blow your mind / The show is All That, and yes we do this all the, time." So went one of the opening lines of All That's unshakeable theme song, as delivered by Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes alongside TLC group members Rozanda "Chilli" Thomas and Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins. It was an introduction on Nickelodeon, a cable TV station that was taking a chance with one of its first sketch comedy shows, that set the precedent for a series that, over the next 10 seasons, would shift the course of television history.
Since its debut as a one-off special on April 16, 1994, All That continued on to become one of the only sketch comedy shows aimed at a younger generation. Series like Saturday Night Live and In Living Color found an audience in adults, but there weren't any shows that solved the riddle of what kids should be watching on Saturday nights.
In turn, All That became more than just a weekly ritual—it was a destination for kids, a virtual hangout dotted with familiar faces and recurring characters including Ear Boy, Miss Fingerly and Superdude. Created by Brian Robbins and Michael Tollin, the show first aired with a core cast—Angelique Bates, Alisa Reyes, Kenan Thompson, Kel Mitchell, Katrina Johnson, Josh Server and Lori Beth Denberg—that rotated in the years to come. Before the show closed up shop on October 22, 2005, it served as a breeding ground for future stars including Nick Cannon, Amanda Bynes and Thompson, who has been on Saturday Night Live since 2003.
Following the show's debut, it was picked up for a full season that began in December 1994 and became a staple on SNICK, a two-hour block of programming that also included Are You Afraid of the Dark? and The Secret World of Alex Mack. All That was a hit: It spawned the spinoff series Kenan & Kel, and later helped usher Nickelodeon into feature films with Good Burger, which starred Thompson and Mitchell as characters from the show.
But beyond that, All That was crucial in introducing kids to hip-hop and R&B, booking acts that parents would often consider too risqué for the preteen set. The first season featured an all-star roster of musicians who acted in and performed on the show including Brandy, Usher, Aaliyah, Da Brat, Coolio and much more. Throughout the years, its stage hosted A Tribe Called Quest, Destiny's Child, Britney Spears and N*SYNC. It became a conduit for musicians hoping to crack the youth market, and reciprocally educated viewers on the music that was soundtracking the nation.
Though it stopped producing new episodes almost a decade ago, All That left shoes behind that are yet to be filled. It takes a network to produce a lasting show, but it takes creativity and talent to cement its legacy. In honor of All That's 20th anniversary, a comprehensive oral history of the show's first season featuring the cast, executives and musicians who made the series come alive.

THE PLAYERS

Angelique Bates (Cast Member): Known famously for her Steve Urkel impression, Angelique Bates opened the door for young black women in sketch comedy.
Chauncey Black of Blackstreet (Musical Guest): The namesake behind New York’s Blackstreet, Chauncey Black helped lead the R&B group to early ‘90s success with hits like “Before I Let You Go” and “No Diggity.”
Coolio (Musical Guest): The Compton rapper was riding on the success of his breakout single “Fantastic Voyage” in 1994. After Nickelodeon liked his appearance on All That so much, they kept him around to record the theme song to All That spin-off Kenan & Kel.
Da Brat (Musical Guest): The Chicago-bred rapper has released four studio albums, two of which went platinum, including her 1994 debut Funkdafied. With numerous hits and standout features under her belt, Brat appeared on the second episode of All That as an actress and performer, and later returned for two episodes in seasons two and four.
Lori Beth Denberg (Cast Member): As part of the original cast, Lori Beth Denberg appeared on four seasons of All That as well as Figure It Out and The Steve Harvey Show. In addition to acting, Lori Beth is an ordained minister and officiates weddings.
Katrina Johnson (Cast Member): An original cast member, Katrina Johnson stayed on the show for two-and-a-half seasons. While her acting roles have been few since her appearance on All That, she is currently a host on UnCensored Radio.
Kel Mitchell (Cast Member): A five-season veteran of All That, Kel Mitchell parlayed his success on the show into the breakout series Kenan & Kel and film Good Burger. He has since appeared on Sam & Cat and starred in the 2011 movie Dance Fu, which he also co-wrote and co-produced.
Alisa Reyes (Cast Member): During her three seasons on All That, Alisa Reyes made a lasting impression with her characters Kiki the Island Girl and Tinsel Teeth. Since then, she's continued acting with appearances on Six Feet Under and Boston Public, and is currently writing a children's book in honor of her mother.
Brian Robbins (Co-CreatoExecutive Producer): With a résumé dotted with acting roles prior to All That, Brian Robbins later worked on television shows including Smallville, One Tree Hill and Sonny With a Chance, as well as films including Varsity Blues, Hardball and Good Burger.
Dan Schneider (Executive Producer): After finding major success writing and producing All That, Dan Schneider has maintained a high-profile name in kids programming for shows such as Drake & Josh, Zoey 101 and iCarly.
Josh Server (Cast Member): The only cast member to remain on the show for all original six seasons, Josh Server went on to act on Drake & Josh and Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide. He recently returned to acting after taking a hiatus from the entertainment industry.
Rozanda "Chilli" Thomas of TLC (Musical Guest): As one-third of the multiplatinum group TLC, Chilli contributed to All That's theme song in addition to acting in a skit and performing on the series' first episode. The group would later close the first season with another appearance.
Kenan Thompson (Cast Member): Arguably the most famous of All That alum, Kenan Thompson went from the show to the Kenan & Kel/Good Burger franchise to Saturday Night Live, where he’s appeared since 2003.
Michael Tollin (Co-CreatoExecutive Producer): Alongside Brian Robbins, Michael Tollin debuted the first sketch comedy for kids on Nickelodeon. Additional credits include Kenan & Kel, The Amanda Show, Coach Carter and Varsity Blues.

THE GENESIS

Brian Robbins: Albie Hecht, then-President of Nickelodeon, asked me if there were any shows that I wanted to make. I knew that making a kid-version of SNL would be incredibly fun.
Dan Schneider: In 1993, I got a call from my friend Brian Robbins. Brian and I had been actors together as high school kids on a TV show called Head of the Class [ABC, WarnerBros., 1986–1991]. Brian had started his own production company, and he'd been talking to a friend of ours named Albie Hecht. Albie had recently become the head of development at Nickelodeon and had been talking with Brian about creating a new show.
Michael Tollin: Brian and I had a started our partnership with a handful of documentaries. We were lucky enough to win a few awards and get invited to festivals. We’d kind of been put together indirectly through Albie Hecht, whom we were both friends with and with whom my wife had done a TV series. I got married and moved to L.A. in the early ‘90s and Brian was making a transition. Famously, Albie called [my wife] and said Brian is looking for a producer. She said, “Right house, wrong spouse,” and put me on the phone.
That led to the show Magic Johnson’s All-Star Slam 'N Jam, a piece of sports TV trivia for sure, but it gave us an opportunity to work together. I had an idea for a documentary film which we sold to FOX with Wesley Snipes narrating, Hardwood Dreams. We were doing the show together in a very ad hoc seat-of-the-pants way, which became our style. When we landed Wesley Snipes, The Hollywood Reporter called and said, “We want to do a story,” and wanted to know the name of the company. We said, “Call back tomorrow.” [The production company became Tollin/Robbins Productions.]
We had made a few documentaries. Albie, who now I refer to as the Godfather of Tollin/Robbins Productions, called and asked us to do a mini Nickumentary. It was a half-hour documentary on a Nickelodeon touring road show with Mike O’Malley and Phil Moore as co-hosts, driving around the country on a bus. We had two days to shoot a half-hour show and make it look like we traveled all over the country. [We were in] Topeka, Kansas, for a full shoot. We’d say, “Hello, Topeka,” say cut, and they’d go backstage and change the show and say, “Hello, Rochester,” “Hello, Minneapolis.” We went all out. That was kind of a progression of things, Albie giving us a trial, seeing if these guys can pull it off. That show worked and it was kind of a chance to work together. [Then] Albie said, “I have an idea of a sketch show.”
Dan Schneider: Brian thought it would be a good idea to bring me in, and Albie agreed. At that time, I had solid acting career going, but I was between gigs, and when Brian talked to me about the idea creating a TV show for Nickelodeon, I thought it sounded like a fun "side job,” just to keep my busy for a while.
So, Brian and I started talking creatively about creating a sketch comedy show. I was a huge fan of Saturday Night Live, and as a younger kid I had also loved watching The Carol Burnett Show with my dad. I even had seen reruns of a show called Laugh In, which was popular in the late 1960s. I really loved sketch comedy, so the idea of creating a new sketch comedy show was exciting for me. The fact that it was going to be for a kid audience just made it a bit more challenging.
The idea was basically to produce a half-hour show that would usually feature three sketches, a couple of "runners" (short little sketches), and then at the end of the show, there would be a performance from an established music act. That was our plan, and that's pretty much how the show was for all 10 seasons. But we never had a rigid format for the show. We'd change it up a little, from episode to episode. That was one of the cool things about All That—there were no real rules. We could mix things up make the show however we wanted.
Brian Robbins: When we set out to make the show, we had no idea whether or not we would be able to find kids who would be talented enough to be the next generation of sketch comedians—Eddie Murphy, Gilda Radner or John Belushi. Our expectations were blown away by the talented kids who came to star on the show.
We did a national talent search and looked in different places and locations. We found Kel at an open call in Chicago, Lori Beth at a high school talent showcase and, later, Amanda Bynes at a kids' stand-up comedy night.
Michael Tollin: The great thing about the way that it was set out, we all realized casting was critical. Albie being very a producer-friendly executive, creative by nature, we were given the resources to have a very expensive casting period. Months and months of bringing in kids from all over the country. It’s kind of wonderful to especially see Kenan on SNL every week. Obviously Amanda [Bynes] has had a very interesting career. That was a really deep dive to sit there day after day, week after week, and try and discover kids and figure out the right chemistry.
I think it was always: find great kids who are winning, talented or funny, and build characters or sketches around them. I’d be lying if we had a vision of a certain number of these characters or that characters. We had a great writing staff, and the kids were so fertile and such a great source of humor.
Dan Schneider: We knew that casting was extremely important. In fact, we viewed casting as so crucial that we decided that I would not write the pilot script until we had our cast in place. That's very unusual in television. Almost always, you write the first show and then you cast it. But with All That, we wanted to hire the best kid comedy actors we could find. We decided that we'd do a nationwide talent search, find the best ensemble cast we could and then I would write the script, tailoring the sketches to the specific actors' strengths. I wanted to create characters that would be perfectly suited for the actors.
As for the kids we cast, they were all unknown at the time. Well, Kenan Thompson had appeared in one movie [The Mighty Ducks], but he was still pretty new, like the others.
Michael Tollin: [An important date was] January 17, 1994. We had dinner [at home] and I said goodbye and took the red eye [from Los Angeles] to Orlando, and I got to the hotel at eight something in the morning Eastern Time and didn’t have a cellphone. I got the sleep that I could and woke up and stumbled to a taxi. [I received a] message when I checked in [to the hotel] that was said your wife called to say she and your daughter are fine. That’s a pretty scary message. The Northridge earthquake had happened at 4:30 a.m.; it had been in the hour we were arriving. We were pretty close to it [in Southern California], as was Brian. The morning was spent figuring out how bad was the damage both physical and psychological. Should we postpone [the pilot shoot?]. I was trying to do the right thing. [My wife] was trying to do the right thing. Aftershocks ensued. She said, “I can’t believe you didn’t come home.” The show went on.
We took a while, we were really proud of it. [The show] went through testing, it went through conversation. It was a departure for Nickelodeon. There was no prime time Nickelodeon yet. It all sort of worked in the coming years. Nick put together a Saturday night block, [SNICK]. All That was kind of the flagship. [Eventually] we had pretty much the whole two-hour block: Kenan & Kel and The Amanda Show. A lot of stuff started happening, it was kind of amazing.
Dan Schneider: I didn't have any big expectations for All That because, at the time, I knew almost nothing about the world of kids TV. Creating All That was a ton of fun and I gave it my best because I wanted it to be good and successful. But I just considered it a temp job. I was an actor. I never thought becoming a writeproducer would turn into a full-time thing for me.
Anyways, after we made the All That pilot, about six months went by and I didn't hear much of anything from Brian or the network. At some point, I called Brian and asked him if the network was planning to pick up the show. He wasn't sure. Then I heard that the pilot "hadn't tested great." You see, whenever you make a new TV pilot, the network tests the show with focus groups. So, for All That, they got a bunch of kids—boys, girls, different age groups—and they let them watch the show, and then moderators ask them questions, sort of like a group review. I actually still have the results from those tests. Basically, the people who ran the testing wrote a report—a summary—and they said that while kids might like some aspects of the show, overall, kids wouldn't like All That. I think that's why nothing happened for six months. The pilot only tested "so-so,” so the network was nervous about picking it up.
Then, if I recall correctly, I heard that the president of Nickelodeon (at the time), a woman named Geraldine Laybourne, watched the All That pilot and loved it. She said something like, "This show is great. Why haven't we picked this up yet? Let's make it." Next thing I knew, we were back in Orlando, where we'd shot the pilot, and we were making a bunch of episodes of All That. It was a blast. I loved every minute of it.
Michael Tollin: Albie gets a lot of credit for the vision and the persistence. Kevin [Kopelow] was also the Nick executive assigned to the show, a third producing partner. [He was] very smart, very creative, got the show, was invested in the show. I look back very fondly and feel very grateful.
(... Continued in the comments, maxed reddit character limit)

TW: Long Post

I need some outside perspective on a situation that has been bugging me for a while.
I (20F) met my ex-boyfriend, Raiyan (21M), in a rather unconventional way. I was on Bumble, just trying to meet new people, when I matched with this great guy, Salman (also 21M). We hit it off but only as friends, and we started hanging out quite a bit. Through Salman I got to know his twin brother, Raiyan.
Raiyan and I had instant chemistry, and we started texting on WhatsApp. Our connection grew quickly, and soon enough, we were dating. Things were going well for a while, We met for our first date on December 12th, 2023. Raiyan didn’t tell his brother nor his family that he was coming to meet me. When we met, we had loads of fun and it was such a cute, passionate, romantic date because he was holding my hand the entire time and was really shy to kiss me, which was quite okay for me as it was his first time going out with a girl. After he got back home from spending time with me, he was confronted by his older sister because his brother Salman had snitched on him. I had shown Salman a picture of us sharing a memorable moment, and he told his sister and mother that my ex went to meet a girl 2 hours away from his home. His mother was slightly angry at first, but when she saw my ex carrying a bag of cookies I baked for him and she tasted them, she loved it. From then on, his mother and sister started liking me, which caused Salman's girlfriend to get jealous and angry at him. She wanted to be the number one in the family, so me becoming the favorite wasn't digesting to her. She got pissed off at Salman and wanted to get rid of me, of course, by her boyfriend's hand since she wanted to maintain the image of being the innocent one. Salman was the golden child in the household, and his girlfriend was the pick-me type who could do anything to ruin someone else's life and be jealous very easily. Salman always tried to intervene between us, including trying to break us apart and blaming my ex for not being able to keep me happy. Back on December 31st, Raiyan and I celebrated New Year's Eve together, which turned out to be a very romantic night. Things got somewhat intimate verbally between us. Then, in January 2024, he mentioned he had his military exam coming up and needed to focus on studying. He assured me he would text or call me whenever he was free. Fast forward to January 13th, Raiyan left for his exam, and on the 16th, the results came out. However, he didn't reach out to me despite my attempts to contact him throughout the day. Finally, on the 17th, he replied at 8 pm, saying he couldn't get in. I can't help but feel ignored and brushed aside. I understand he had his exam, but his lack of communication made me worried and anxious. I was expecting at least a quick message to let me know how he was doing, especially after our romantic New Year's Eve together. After his initial reply, Raiyan ghosted me for 2 days. When I reached out again, he responded, but he was still depressed and angry. He even blamed me for his failure to get into the military, saying he gave me too much time. However, he seemed to forget that I had helped him with his speech event previously, which he messed up due to his carelessness. Over the next week, I flooded him with texts trying to talk things out, but he kept leaving my messages on seen-zoned. To add to the hurt, our two-month anniversary passed by unnoticed by him. Next day he text me like nothing happened as if i didn't cry and beg to him just for his reply which shooked me. Then once again he started ghosting me and i was slowly getting habituated with it and even the plans we made on valentines day was dropped becasue he didn't reply to me and all.
Fast forward to March 3rd, 2024, Raiyan texted me and apologized for not understanding how I felt. However, I was still deeply hurt by his actions, and I told him that his apology couldn't undo the pain he caused me. I felt like the sorry wasn't worth it anymore. He left my message on seen-zoned again, and it seemed like we both realized that maybe it was the end of our relationship. During the two months of our break, I spent most of my time crying and missing him. I reached out to him with heartfelt texts and even tried calling him, but he left my messages on seen-zoned and didn't bother to respond. During the period of heartache and longing for Raiyan, one of my friends suggested reaching out to his older sister to facilitate communication between us. Taking this advice, I decided to text his older sister, hoping she could help me reconnect with him. Despite the emotional turmoil I was going through, I made sure to maintain utmost politeness and respect in my communication with her, despite the three-year age gap between us. After texting his sister, Raiyan finally replied to me, and we started talking again. However, I noticed a significant change in his attitude. His replies were cold, dry, and unusually short compared to before. That same day, he told me he was going to Dhanmondi Lake, a public sight, at 8 pm to meet one of his friends. (Note: Dhanmondi Lake is notorious for being a place where illicit activities occur, often associated with infidelity) The friend he mentioned meeting at Dhanmondi Lake turned out to be none other than a female from his military coaching. Considering Dhanmondi Lake's reputation as a rendezvous spot for illicit affairs, it doesn't take much imagination to guess what might have transpired between them. I was a crying mess once again shocked that this isn't the raiyan i loved because the raiyan i loved was even hesitatnt to hold my hand and shy to the core and now he's having illicit affairs yet he literally said to me. The next day, he mentioned meeting another woman at Dhanmondi Lake. This time, I felt utterly revolted and sickened to my core. The thought of him using that notorious spot, known for its sleazy affairs, as a backdrop for meeting different women made me want to vomit. When i confronted him about this he said he was pranking me which seemed a white lie because he wouldn't be online for 2 to 3 hrs after he said that and left.
Fast forward, Raiyan asked me out on a date on June 8th, saying he wanted to mend things between us. He claimed he would do anything to make me forgive him and promised to make up for his absence. Despite everything, I found myself wanting to give him another chance, and I happily accepted. On April 27th, 2024, I was chatting with one of my friends, absolutely enraged about a perverted guy who wanted to meet me for sexual purposes. My reaction was so intense that I found it funny and decided to make a meme out of it, which I posted on my story. Unfortunately, Raiyan's sister saw the meme and mistakenly thought I was talking about Raiyan. She took a screenshot and sent it to Raiyan and Salman. Raiyan texted me all pissed off, and despite my furious attempts to explain that it wasn't about him but someone else, showing him the conversation as proof, he chose to believe his sister over me. after that his brother salman insulted me and i decided to seek help from a friend of mine who is same age as his sister and while all the drama lasted at 12 am of night her sister text me saying "listen I tried to help you from my side as much as possible, but now I've come to know how you've been humiliating both of my brothers in different ways. Now I have to take steps. Delete those two fucking posts from the Facebook group and delete whatever shits that are there. We will deal with our issues; you don't have to be the social worker. My doors are closed for you and delete those posts otherwise I will take bigger steps. Delete those posts and stop giving screenshot to others You dont know how we are dealing with issues Dont increase problems" yea her empty threat didn't scare me and i cussed her out saying "I never wanted to harm any of you guys. I just wanted to feel loved by you like a sister. But you never understood me. However, hope you are happy now and I will never forget whatever you guys did to me. Take care, Apu. I looked up to you like an older sister, but you stabbed me in the back for no reason. You were such a vile, spiteful bitch, relishing in the pain and chaos you caused. I curse you to suffer the same betrayal and agony with your boyfriend, future husband, and kids, every single day of your miserable fucking life. God is always watching and may he Inflict the same pain on your entire existence henceforth" and then blocked her, raiyan and salman and his gf and all his family members so tell me reddit community am i the AITAH for doing this?

Well, like I said back on the thread about the Valentines special. I thought it was funny as shit. That I decided to rewatch GA from the beginning.
Two things I noticed. First: They love to provoke during the investigation. I guess they've learned their lesson not to really do that anymore.
Second. The equipment. We take for granted what we have now days. Look at those early shows of GA. What they use to investigate with. A digital recorder, a emf tri-field unit and a night vision camera or IR. That's about it.
We've come so far and yet. This paranormal Investigation stuff is still in what I would call the early stages. A lot more cool stuff to come and learn.

This years Nebulas are being awarded tomorrow night, so I thought I’d give my rankings of the Hugo and Nebula nominees. The Hugos are awarded on August 11th. Obligatory mention of how the Hugos appear to have been fixed last year, but that has been thoroughly discussed elsewhere, so I don’t really want to rehash it. And this year appears to be completely transparent, and I’m guessing and hoping will include efforts to prevent any similar corruption again.
For those who don’t like the Nebulas or Hugos, or don’t find them useful ways to find things you like to read, that’s certainly understandable. I’d love to hear your thoughts on any nominees you did read, or on works from 2023 that you enjoyed and feel are award worthy!
Notable things from this year: Martha Wells declined Murderbot nominations, a classy move for an already well awarded series. Lot’s of our usual nominees, while the only notable absence I caught was Seanan Mcguire’s Wayward Children novella, which is a bit of a shame as #8 is easily the best of the series, and it functions as a stand alone like all of the even numbered ones. But also, once you’re 8 books in, it does seem past due to start nominating other things. I’ll be curious to see if it was the Chinese works that edged it out.
A couple last things. Fantasy is doing their Hugo read, and it has some great commentary. u/brent_323 put out his rankings and comments on the Nebula novel nominees, and they differ from my somewhat if you want a different perspective. Lstly, I’ve added Goodreads ratings (out of 5 stars) for novels and novellas to give some context on how generally liked and how widely read each book is.

Best Novel

9: (Nebula Nominee) Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, Wole Talabi (DAW, Gollancz)
Stars: 3.70
Number of ratings: 633
Thematically, Shigidi is pretty similar to American Gods but with an emphasis on the Yoruba religion. My apologies in advance for any potential inaccuracies, my knowledge of Yoruba is based on this book, and some cursory Wikipedia reading. Different creators or gods have their own corporate structure, with minor sub-deities as employees. Olorun is the creator in Yoruba, with Orisha’s being lower level gods. One of these, Shigidi (a nightmare god in the book, although Wikipedia lists him as Guardian of Home and Environment), is trying to split from the Yoruba corporation and be an independent entity, along with his lover, the succubus Nneoma (based on Naamah, a demon from Jewish mysticism). To pay off his debt to the company, Shigidi has one last job.
It’s an interesting world, but despite the thematic American Gods comparisons, it feels nothing like that and has little else in common, and its structure ultimately makes it a much less successful book. Approximately a third of the book is the present day story, but most of that is in the second half of the book. The first half is brief tastes of the present in between longer chapters of background events. Those events are telling a single secondary story, just filling in the info you need to understand how we got to the present situation. Everytime we finally had some momentum, that thread would be done and I’d have to ‘get into’ the book all over again. If it wasn’t so broken up, I think I would have really enjoyed it, but as it is I was pretty done with the book by the time I got to where the bulk of the present day heist story was, and ended up skimming the last 50 to 100 pages.
8: (Nebula Nominee) The Terraformers, Annalee Newitz (Tor; Orbit UK)
Stars: 3.38
Number of ratings: 5,213
I loved The Future of Another Timeline, and on that alone will read any future Newitz novels, but so far nothing else of hers has come close to the same heights. The Terraformers is a set of 3 novellas set around 500 years apart, watching the terraforming of a planet over time through the eyes of the workers owned by the corporation terraforming the planet. Most of the plot is focused on terraforming, the corporation’s shenanigans, civil engineering, and civil rights, as the populace works to win the freedom to enjoy their home.
Very interesting, but it definitely drags at times. I loved the themes explored, although the civil engineering could be a bit much at times (said as a Kim Stanley Robinson fan). I did love the sentient buses, naked mole rats, and the cat reporter! Ultimately, more interesting than it was enjoyable.
7: (Hugo Nominee) Starter Villain by John Scalzi (Tor, Tor UK)
Stars: 4.18
Number of ratings: 43,367
I really enjoyed Starter Villain! There was some criticism of The Kaiju Preservation Society for being ‘light’, and that seems somewhat fair, although I likewise enjoyed it. People have leveled similar criticism at Starter Villain, but that seems less true. It’s quippy, a bit light hearted, but so are the other Scalzi books I’ve read (Redshirts, The Android’s Dream) it’s not exactly dealing with light topics despite that. It’s a critique of capitalism, and how wealth can become entrenched to both oppose what’s good for society, and oppose innovation. That said, I found the ‘villain’ idea pretty silly, as it’s essentially being used as a shorthand for disruptive technology, not for anything actually villainous or bad. I probably wouldn’t vote for it for a major award, but it was a fun and thoughtful novel.
6: (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) Witch King by Martha Wells (Tordotcom)
Stars: 3.71
Number of ratings: 16,432
While Martha Wells declined nominations for Murderbot, she did accept them for Witch King! It’s really imaginative and interesting world, and I’m hoping we get more of it (I hear she’s working on another book in the setting, so I trust we will). It has two narrative threads, the present day, where the main character Kai has been held prisoner during a pivotal political moment. The story focuses on his escape and the efforts to figure out what’s going on. The second thread tells the backstory of Kai’s life, and how the world came to the current situation.
I loved the world, and really enjoyed the book! It seems like quite a few of the people who didn’t disliked it because they thought the back story was a lot more interesting than the present day story, which I have to agree with, honestly. I wish they were told as two separate books, or in a way where splitting them contributed to the story. For example, a historian character that wheedled Kai about what has actually happened in the past could have been a vehicle for exploring the past events. Regardless of these qualms, I still enjoyed the book and look forward to more.
5: (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) Translation State by Ann Leckie (Orbit US, Orbit UK)
Stars: 4.11
Number of ratings: 9,848
Translation State is yet another book set in Leckie’s Raadchai universe. It’s not necessary to read the Ancillary books first, although I think it would help (and they’re awesome). Not sure how much Provenance relates, as I didn’t enjoy it and DNFed. Translation State is really good though, looking at the life and society of the Presger translators (as you might imagine), and giving some glimpses of what’s going on in the broader setting. I have enjoyed the books giving hints of that bigger picture, but would love one like Ancillary Justice where that’s more of a primary focus. I’d say this book is award worthy (as are all the ones I ranked higher), but I also feel like it’s linked enough to the setting that it’s fair to treat it more like a sequel, and I’m less inclined to award sequels major awards.
4: (Nebula Nominee) The Water Outlaws, S.L. Huang (Tordotcom; Solaris UK)
Stars: 3.82
Number of ratings: 2,326
The Water Outlaws is a queer, gender bent retelling of the Chinese classic Water Margin. And by classic, I mean in the sense that Don Quixote or Middlemarch is classic. It’s (probably) a 14th century novel, set around 1120 and following the rebellion of the outlaws at Mount Liang against the Northern Song dynasty. It is one of the 6 classics of pre-modern Chinese literature. At least, that’s what Wikipedia says, and it sounds like retellings and adaptations are pretty common.
I really enjoyed The Water Outlaws, and it’s the first that I would actually be happy to see win. It was fast paced and fun, but also had quite a bit of interesting insight into gender. It was also interesting to see how more Eastern values played into the story. I’m not necessarily very attuned to that, although it sounds like other readers can attest that it felt both like a Western and an Eastern novel. But I definitely noticed that the outlaws weren’t rebelling against the Emperor or the Empire really, just the corrupt people just under the top who were managing it. To me at least, it seemed to reflect the Eastern collectivism over Western individualism. S. L. Huang also has a great AMA on Fantasy from a month ago that’s worth checking out. This and the following novels are the ones I’m really hoping win.
3: (Hugo Nominee) The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty (Harper Voyager, Harper Voyager UK)
Stars: 4.28
Number of ratings: 44,645
A 12th century century Muslim lady pirate comes out of retirement for one last job. It’s fantastic! It’s also apparently set in the same world as Chakraborty’s Daevabad Trilogy, albeit some centuries earlier. I appreciated the obvious effort that went into research and world building, and writing that made it a lot of fun even when it was dealing with heavy subjects. And I loved when things finally got on the weird side, and supernatural entities took over the story. I also thought that it was pretty interesting to see how Chakraborty was able to incorporate quite a lot of diversity and modern ideals in a way that genuinely felt authentic and believable. Related, but perhaps a bit different, it was interesting to see Amina as a devout Muslim, despite not always being a great person (she is a pirate after all). So often, religion is portrayed in pretty uncompelling ways, either as bad or dumb (sometimes in ways that feel accurate and sometimes in ways that feel like caricatures), or in ways that are very pro-religion such that some big bias is showing. In Amina, it was a significant part of her life, but didn’t feel in your face. It felt lived in, if that makes sense, but well balanced with the other aspects of her life.
I’m very much looking forward to the next two books!
2: (Hugo Nominee) Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (Tordotcom, Orbit UK)
Stars: 4.06
Number of ratings: 7,957
This book appears to be pretty well regarded, but also a bit divisive. The main character, Kyr, lives on Gaia Station, the last outpost of (real) humanity in the fight with the broader galactic society of aliens and their reality warping AI, the Wisdom. Despite losing the war and most other humans moving on and integrating with galactic society, Gaia Station is still fighting. The book is ultimately an exploration of indoctrination, how your upbringing and surroundings shape your worldview, and what can later shake you into new perspectives. It reminds me of a scene from the book, Touching Spirit Bear, where a counselor demonstrates that people change from slow, steady pressure that pushes them off the course they’re on, or by a single big push that jolts them out of their path. Some Desperate Glory is several of those large pushes. In some ways, that does make it feel a little less authentic, as we don’t see Kyr really change over time, just have some pretty abrupt shifts (the first of which very much was unexpected, although the second not so much), but it also makes those changes much more accessible, since that time could be pretty hard to show. Despite that, it’s a really interesting look at indoctrination and deprogramming. As someone who grew up in and subsequently left what could be called a ‘high demand religion’, albeit one that is much, much milder than Gaia in the book or Jonestown in real life on the cult-o-meter, there’s a lot of resonance.
It seems like the main reason people didn’t like the book is that Kyr is a pretty unlikeable character. To be honest, that isn’t a thing that normally affects me, at least not for main characters. I tend to be in their headspace, as that’s what’s presented, so I’m usually not seeing them as unlikeable. Some obvious exceptions if they’re really annoying, and of course it became pretty clear over time that Kyr wasn’t exactly a considerate or kind person, but Kyr’s growth throughout the book is pretty specifically the point, so that wouldn’t really bother me either, honestly. The other issue is a scene towards the end where Kyr is touching (with consent) an alien’s feathers as a show of acceptance that he’s a person too, but some people have felt it comes off racially coded and offensive. I feel like that is pretty clearly not the author’s intent, and it’s a bit overblown, but I’m also not from a group where that would be triggering. Someone on the publishing team definitely should have seen that this would come off wrong, and changed it to something else that got the idea across in a way that wouldn’t be offensive.
I do hope that we get more of the world. It’s an interesting setting, and I would love a book exploring how the Gaians integrate into society. And also looking at Kyr’s dynamics with her group now that she has a broader perspective, and isn’t always a well meaning asshole, as we didn’t get a whole lot of that once she had grown out of it.
1: (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
Stars: 3.71
Number of ratings: 2,056
My wife bought this for me as a birthday present, thinking I’d like it based on the description. And I did! He is now on my must read list, and I’m pretty excited for Rakesfall, which comes out this month. I had never heard of The Saint of Bright Doors, or Chandrasekera, but I absolutely loved it. Then I was surprised to see people periodically mentioning it on reddit, and then I was thrilled when it was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula. This is easily the most daring and innovative book on this list, mostly because it’s pretty atypical. Honestly, the closest thing I can think of to it is Some Desperate Glory due to reality warping, but they’re mostly nothing alike. The Saint of Bright Doors follows Fetter, with a brief bit of his childhood, and then a jump to his 20’s or so. Fetter appears to be based on Rāhula, the son of Siddhārtha Gautama (the Buddha), with Rāhula meaning fetter, as he was a fetter on Gautama’s path to enlightenment. The book also appears to engage quite a bit with Sri Lankan politics, particularly surrounding Buddhism. I’m not super familiar with any of that, although some Wikipedia reading gives some clear parallels. Even without that added depth, the story was fascinating. The world is complicated and at times pretty opaque, and it has a tendency to shift and change as the story progresses. There’s a pretty deep sense of mystery with the bright doors, but they ultimately end up becoming just another part of the world for most people in the setting. Fetter ends up being part of a support group for ‘Unchosen Ones’ from different religions that, for whatever reason, were meant to be ‘Chosen’ but ultimately weren’t. Interestingly, each of the religions appears to be true. We don’t get nearly as much of the other members of the group as I would have liked, but maybe some day we’ll hear about their stories. I hope so.
The primary complaint I see is that the story meanders a lot and is quite aimless, and that’s mostly because Fetter doesn’t really act. He has little agency, and instead things just happen to him. When he does make choices, it’s pretty unclear why. That’s a pretty fair assessment, but again, not something that bothered me at all. I loved how I never knew where the book was going. I’d get comfortable with where it was at and what was happening, and then it’d shift pretty quickly. I can see why that could bother some, but it worked for me in this book, and kept me interested. The other aspect of that is how the story is told. There’s a big reveal towards the end that I won’t spoil here. We get a few hints of it along the way, some that if you catch it you definitely know something is going on, even though you don’t know what. But it goes a long way towards explaining why the story has jumps in time, why we don’t get much view into Fetter’s mind and decisions, and just how the story is told. The one downside is that the story ends a bit abruptly, and while it makes sense in context, it’s also less satisfying. But it makes me think about what I want from a story, and the place the storyteller has in it. Sometimes things being unsatisfying can stir more thought, and maybe that’s worth it. Should a storyteller always give us everything? It makes me think of a song from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, The End of the Movie (some spoilers for that show). It captures some of the ambiguities in Bright Doors, but that ends up just adding to why I like it, whereas for some it definitely seemed to detract.

Best Novella

9. (Hugo Nominee) Rose/House by Arkady Martine (Subterranean)
Stars: 3.76
Number of ratings: 1,850
I really didn’t care for this story. I admittedly listened to it as an audiobook, rather than read it, and that isn’t usually as good an experience for close readings for me. Plus the only place I could find it was Hoopla, my least preferred app for audiobooks, because it’s pretty glitchy on the audio. My library has it on order, so I’ll give it another shot when I can do so in print, but all of that speaks to the larger issue that this novella was really hard to get a hold of, which is maybe not ideal if people are going to vote for it.
Anyways, on the story itself, it seemed a bit ambiguous. I couldn’t always tell what was going on, and on looking at reviews, that wasn’t just my listening experience, that was other people’s experiences as well. I didn’t feel like it added much to the AI discussion, although I did enjoy the house being convinced that a police detective was not in fact a person, but rather a police precinct. The story wasn’t all that interesting. All around, not a great read, with the above caveat on the listening experience, which is a shame since I loved the Teixcalaan books.
8. (Hugo Nominee) “Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet”, He Xi / 人生不相见, 何夕, translated by Alex Woodend (Adventures in Space: New Short stories by Chinese & English Science Fiction Writers)(Originally published in 2010)
This was a bit of a frustrating story. Some of the setting was interesting, but the insistence on both modifying humans to adapt them to other worlds, and that those modifications can’t be too much not human, because then they’re aliens, and humans can’t cultivate alien intelligences because they may at some point turn on us. The story is a bit more complicated than that, but it has quite a few things that just don’t make a lot of sense.
7. (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher (Tor, Titan UK)
Stars: 4.01
Number of ratings: 25,644
I loved What Moves the Dead and Nettle and Bone! As did many others, given the nominations they received. It’s starting to look like Kingfisher might join the ranks of the usually nominated at this point. And I definitely look forward to more of her work, with What Feasts at Night one of my next several reads. That said, Thornhedge was not my favorite. I loved Toadling, pretty much everything about her and her life, and the twist on Sleeping Beauty was interesting, but the story just doesn’t shine the way the others of hers that I’ve read do.
6. (Nebula Nominee) “Linghun,” Ai Jiang (Linghun)
Stars: 4.00
Number of ratings: 1,594
A thoughtful meditation on grief, and what it looks like if we could be haunted by those we’ve lost. In some ways it feels a little unrealistic, as people are more or less fighting to the death to get access to the houses where said hauntings can actually happen, but I can see how society might not have the will to ban such obviously harmful things if they also offered the chance to see your loved one again. The one and only reason this isn’t one of my top picks is because it falls apart in the last third. There’s a second story element that is introduced early on, but doesn’t take on much prominence until towards the end, and it doesn’t really fit. It’s another character whose story is relevant, and does add nuance to the themes, but it just feels like an insertion that distracts from the rest of what’s going on in the story. Linghun would ultimately work better if that character was stripped out.
5. (Nebula Nominee) The Crane Husband, Kelly Barnhill (Tordotcom)
Stars: 3.89
Number of ratings: 6,326
This is an odd book, to say the least. It's a retelling/subversion of the Japanese folktale, The Crane Wife. The main character is a 15 year old girl telling us the story years later. The setting is a pretty normal, slightly dystopian near future, with elements of magical realism when the girl's mother brings home a crane to be her new husband, and horror as that relationship turns (more) bizarre and abusive. It’s a symbolic exploration of both abuse and generational trauma, and it’s pretty interesting, but I’m still not sure how I feel about it. It definitely feels like the most ‘out there’ of the novella nominees, but this is the first I’d be happy to see win.
4. (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older (Tordotcom)
Stars: 3.64
Number of ratings: 5,689
I rather liked this story, and I'm pretty excited for when I get around to reading the sequel! While I've seen complaints about the language and style, that's a large part of what I like. More than almost any book I've read, besides ones by Gene Wolfe, every word Older uses feels specifically considered and used intentionally. And unlike in academic texts, the other main place that writing feels like this, this doesn't makes the meaning confusing or hard to sort through. Older uses complex, nuanced sentences with quite a bit of clauses and qualifiers, but it illuminates rather than obscures. It feels like the way I think (or at least the way I think I think), so I appreciate that. There's also a story and characters and such, and those are pretty nifty. One of the things I love on that front is how deftly words are used; without explicitly telling us things, the setting, characters, and world really come clear. While there is a story, the driving force really is the interactions between the two main characters, particularly as the viewpoint character deduces that thoughts and intents of the other main character through subtle signs. Anyways, more than any other element, the writing for this story really worked for me!
3. (Nebula Nominee) Untethered Sky, Fonda Lee (Tordotcom)
Stars: 3.90
Number of ratings: 8,153
Another book about birds, where the main character is a ruhker, someone who trains with rocs so they can be used to fight manticores. The book feels quiet, with the primary relationship being two humans who are both quiet introverts, and their birds who of course don’t talk. There’s action and violence and terror , but on the whole, it feels like a quiet meditation. This book is one of the reasons I’ve grown to love novellas. It could easily be a novel, but instead it just tells its story and is done. There’s a power in limiting your scope like that, a purity, and I feel like this book has that more so than any other novella on this list.
2. (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)
Stars: 4.25
Number of ratings: 4,478
My comment from the Fantasy Hugo discussion of Mammoths at the Gates:
Each of the 4 books to date have Chih take on a greater role in the story.
In the 1st, they mostly seem like the context of the frame narrative, and not really a main character.
In the 2nd, the framing has its own story with the tigers that's as significant as the story being told by Chih and the tigers.
In the 3rd, the story told merges with the framing story, and they become one at the end.
In the 4th (Mammoths at the Gate), the framing story is the story, dealing with the grief of Cleric Thien passing, with the other smaller stories about him within adding or illuminating but never really being separate from the framing.
It seems that over time, it's shifting from Chih and Almost Brilliant being a means of telling different stories to Chih and Almost Brilliant being the story. It makes me curious what book 5 and beyond will be, because I can only imagine one more book of following that trend before I'm out of ideas on how they could be more of the story.
At the same time, it shifts the focus from what a story is and how we tell it, how we know what the 'right' version is, and makes it more and more personal. Book 1, the historical figures had different understandings of what was happening, to the detriment of the overthrown kingdom. Book 2, Chih and the tigers had different understandings, and together told a fuller story by sharing that. Book 3, the story becomes much more complicated when you actually meet the characters. Book 4, a person you know becomes more complicated and nuanced when you learn from others their experience with the person. There's more to the story of who a person is than your personal experience of them.
All that's super interesting to me. Each of the books really does function fine as a stand alone, and I'm not sure that there's a clear overarching storyline outside of Almost Brilliant's having a kid, but there's a thematic evolution that seems to be following a specific path. I'm pretty curious to see where it's headed. (In the Fantasy Hugo read along, u/tarvolon confirmed that book 5 is thoroughly The Adventures of Chih, so I guess that trend is accurate, and u/Nineteen_Adze thought that perhaps later books could have Chih hear stories where he featured as a main character, an idea I really like).
1. (Hugo Nominee) “Seeds of Mercury”, Wang Jinkang / 水星播种, 王晋康, translated by Alex Woodend (Adventures in Space: New Short stories by Chinese & English Science Fiction Writers)(Originally published in 2002)
This was ultimately my favorite of the stories. It’s about secretly seeding life on Mercury. Sometimes the language is clumsy, and I’m not sure if that’s the original writing or the translation, but ultimately it’s not too much of an issue. I loved the look at the alien life and their society!

Best Novelette

10. (Nebula Nominee) “Imagine: Purple-Haired Girl Shooting Down The Moon,” Angela Liu (Clarkesworld 6/23)
This is a weird story, and one I really didn’t care for. It deals with memory and how that shapes who we are, and quite a bit with people being used. Oh, and purpose haired girls. But if it was trying to say something in particular, I missed it.
9. (Nebula Nominee) “A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair,” Renan Bernardo (Samovar 2/23)
The story of a chair, as you might guess from the title, but just as much it’s the story of the family that owns the chair. It has an interesting family secret that’s eventually revealed and which hinges on the chair, but ultimately, this was a more interesting idea than story.
8. (Nebula Nominee) “Saturday’s Song,” Wole Talabi (Lightspeed 5/23)
This is the sequel to Wednesday’s Story. Like Talabi’s novel nominee this year, Saturday's Song features Shigidi as a nightmare god again, but also Hausa spirits. Both stories feature a frame narrative, with a story within a story similar to Vo’s Singing Hills noellas. I enjoyed it, and Saturday’s Song does tell you what you need to know from Wednesday’s Story, but it works better if you read them in order, as it functions more as a resolution than anything.
7. (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) I AM AI by Ai Jiang (Shortwave)
This is a decent story, looking at capitalistic dystopias. Specifically, the pressure to be better while competing against AI, to the point where the main character is slowly morphing into a machine to catch up but in doing so loses what makes them unique and human. I don’t know that it adds a lot to the conversation exactly, but it makes some good points and summarizes some common concerns pretty well. I would have likely ranked it higher, but there were quite a bit of plausibility issues in the setting that I couldn’t really get past, and which made it much more dystopian than it would otherwise be.
6. (Hugo Nominee) “Ivy, Angelica, Bay” by C.L. Polk (Tor.com 8 December 2023)
This is a sequel to St. Valentine, St. Abigail, St. Brigid. And it was pretty good! I wouldn’t say there’s anything super special about it, but I enjoyed it. The lead of the previous story has grown up and taken on her role keeping her area of the city safe through small magics, but trouble is stirring. This story onwards are ones I’d feel comfortable voting for.
5. (Hugo Nominee) “One Man’s Treasure” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny Magazine, January-February 2023)
Our only Pinsker nominee this year! And while it’s pretty good, it doesn’t seem like a top contender to me. It reminds me of Wiswell's DIY from last year, thematically. It’s about several garbage collectors who remove magical items once a month, and the rich people who don’t particularly care about basic safety. Like DIY, it focuses on finding common person solutions since the rich don't care, something I can sympathize with. It’s a well told and interesting story, but that’s hardly a surprise from Pinsker.
4. (Nebula Nominee) “Six Versions of My Brother Found Under the Bridge,” Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny 9-10/23)
This is a story about the bargains and sacrifices we make for grief, and how they can further harm and traumatize us. Also, it’s about how the devil exploits our grief and trauma to mess with us. It turns out when you go under the Devil’s bridge, you really ought not to make deals. This story and the following are the ones that I actually hope win.
3. (Hugo Nominee) “On the Fox Roads” by Nghi Vo (Tor.com 31 October 2023)
This story was pretty light on magical or sf elements, at least until the end, much like Vo’s other early to mid 1900s books (The Chosen and Beautiful, Siren Queen). This one is about finding yourself, and how relationships with others can help you do it. Even when those others start as complete strangers. Oh, and it’s about heists. I really enjoyed this one, and the ambiance Vo summons with her more real world settings.
2. (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) “The Year Without Sunshine” by Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2023)
On the Fox Roads was pretty light on the magical elements, but they were there, and they were integral to the story. The Year Without Sunshine could pass as non-genre fiction just as well as it could as SF. The only element is an unspecified calamity that temporarily put a bunch of ash in to the air. THe story itself focuses on community working together when social safety nets are only semi functional, and resources become pretty scarce. I really enjoyed the the characters and how people worked together. It felt genuine and realistic, if optimistic, and seems much more helpful for real world disasters where things start to break down but aren’t post-apocalyptic. I would say it’s a very inspiring story.
1. (Hugo Nominee) “Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition”, Gu Shi /〈2181序曲〉再版导言, 顾适 translated by Emily Jin (Clarkesworld, February 2023)(Originally published in 2020)
This is science fiction is the most classic sense, and done well, in that it looks at a technology (cryosleep) and extrapolates what kind of impact it would have on society. The closest comparison I can think of to it would be Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clarke’s The Light of Other Days. But of course, this is completely different in that it’s written as an introduction to a fictional nonfiction book, which gives Gu Shi a lot of freedom to tell the story in a unique way, with fictional quotes with commentary from fictional people who are important to the history of cryosleep. Towards the end, it gets into the personal story behind that history, the creator of the book, and the person writing the introduction, and that allows the technical and sociology exploration to add a really touching emotional component. While I don’t agree with all of the extrapolations (hardly a surprise for a story like this), this is easily the best of the translated nominees this year, and one of my absolute favorites overall from this year.

Best Short Story:

(Hugo Nominee) 美食三品 (“Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times”), 宝树 / Baoshu (银河边缘013：黑域密室 / Galaxy’s Edge Vol. 13: Secret Room in the Black Domain)
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to read this story. It appears to have only been translated into English for the Hugo voter packet. Since I’m not actually a member of the Hugos (maybe one day, if I can attend the actual convention), I don’t have the packet.
9. (Hugo Nominee) “Answerless Journey”, Han Song / 没有答案的航程, 韩松, translated by Alex Woodend (Adventures in Space: New Short stories by Chinese & English Science Fiction Writers)(Originally published in 1995)
Easily the worst of the translated fiction this year, or really just the worst nominee. The writing is stiff and clumsy, and it’s not just the translator as we have 2 other nominees to compare it with that were also translated by Alex Woodend. Minimal plot. The main character, who is human, is called ‘Creature’, presumably because amnesia has made him forget his name. It just doesn’t make a ton of sense all around.
8. (Hugo Nominee) “The Mausoleum’s Children” by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny Magazine, May-June 2023)
This feels like an interesting story, except I can’t really tell what's going on. The setting isn't particularly clear, despite seeming pretty interesting. The story was ok outside of that, but not amazing, and it’s hard to come back from not really getting what’s happening.
7. (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) “The Sound of Children Screaming” by Rachael K. Jones (Nightmare Magazine, October 2023)
This piece has some insightful comments on gun violence, but those make up approximately 2 or 3 paragraphs. It goes from a somewhat generalized description of a shooting to a specific one to a portal fantasy to a world with evil mice. Interesting, but it doesn't make a ton of sense and doesn't really all fit together.
6. (Nebula Nominee) “Bad Doors,” John Wiswell (Uncanny 1-2/23)
I didn’t care much for Wiswell on first reading him, with The House on Haunted Hill. I mean, I liked that and thought it was a cute story, but it wasn’t something I’d vote for. But his writing has grown on me, with each year getting better and better. Bad Doors breaks that trend though. It’s not a bad story, it just wasn’t that interesting to me. Not much happens besides a family falling out over political drama, and honestly that is a bit too much like real life to be worth reading unless it’s going to give some good insight or be really good.
5. (Nebula Nominee) “Window Boy,” Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld 8/23)
A strange story about the anxieties around the other, set mostly in post apocalyptic underground bunkers. It looks a lot at the relationship between the haves and the have nots, and the imbalance around friendships in that context. Are have nots always only friends to take advantage of the haves? Is that actually unreasonable if it is the case? But also maybe they have nots are actually weird 20 foot grackle bird things. The reality filters on the cameras to see outside the bunkers make it hard to tell.
4. (Hugo Nominee) “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” by P. Djèlí Clark (Uncanny Magazine, January-February 2023)
This is where I’d really start voting for the nominees. How to Raise a Kraken is a funny story about an ambitious idiot who gets a newspaper ad kraken, one that is actually real, and the fall out from doing so. It addresses colonialism and hubris in a pretty amusing and satisfying way.
3. (Nebula Nominee) “Once Upon a Time at The Oakmont,” P.A. Cornell (Fantasy 10/23)
This is a thoughtful story about time. It’s set in an apartment building with tenants from different points in time going about their normal lives. Because of that, there are lots of rules to prevent info being transmitted to the past and to stop any harm from foreknowledge. The story centers on a lady from the present in a relationship with a man from the 1940's. It’s one of the more interesting ways of playing with time that I’ve seen.
2. (Nebula Nominee) “Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200,” R.S.A Garcia (Uncanny 7-8/23)
This is set in Tobago, with the local vernacular, and tells of a robotic farmhand trying to take care of an old lady's goat, and gaining further intelligence in the process. It’s a powerful, moving story. It’s occasionally a little unconvincing, in that the old lady used emojis in her youth but seems unfamiliar with what would be basic tech from her childhood, but also old people do frequently tend to struggle with technological things, so perhaps that’s unfair of me. It does a really good job looking at the social isolation of the elderly though. Tantie Merle and the following story are both the ones that I’d really hope win.
1. (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) “Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld May 2023)
The second Naomi Kritzer story, this one is about an AI app that directs people on what to do to make them happy. It’s a nifty idea, well executed, and something I could actually see lots of people being interested in in real life if it worked as described. It also has well written, interesting, and relatable characters. I’ve only read the CatNet books by Kritzer, and while I liked them, it didn’t have me searching her out. After Better Living and The Year Without Sunshine though, I’ll have to check out the rest of her work.

This years Nebulas are being awarded tomorrow night, so I thought I’d give my rankings of the Hugo and Nebula nominees. The Hugos are awarded on August 11th. Obligatory mention of how the Hugos appear to have been fixed last year, but that has been thoroughly discussed elsewhere, so I don’t really want to rehash it. And this year appears to be completely transparent, and I’m guessing and hoping will include efforts to prevent any similar corruption again.
For those who don’t like the Nebulas or Hugos, or don’t find them useful ways to find things you like to read, that’s certainly understandable. I’d love to hear your thoughts on any nominees you did read, or on works from 2023 that you enjoyed and feel are award worthy!
Notable things from this year: Martha Wells declined Murderbot nominations, a classy move for an already well awarded series. Lot’s of our usual nominees, while the only notable absence I caught was Seanan Mcguire’s Wayward Children novella, which is a bit of a shame as #8 is easily the best of the series, and it functions as a stand alone like all of the even numbered ones. But also, once you’re 8 books in, it does seem past due to start nominating other things. I’ll be curious to see if it was the Chinese works that edged it out.
A couple last things. Fantasy is doing their Hugo read, and it has some great commentary. u/brent_323 put out his rankings and comments on the Nebula novel nominees, and they differ from my somewhat if you want a different perspective. Lstly, I’ve added Goodreads ratings (out of 5 stars) for novels and novellas to give some context on how generally liked and how widely read each book is.

Best Novel

9: (Nebula Nominee) Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, Wole Talabi (DAW, Gollancz)
Stars: 3.70
Number of ratings: 633
Thematically, Shigidi is pretty similar to American Gods but with an emphasis on the Yoruba religion. My apologies in advance for any potential inaccuracies, my knowledge of Yoruba is based on this book, and some cursory Wikipedia reading. Different creators or gods have their own corporate structure, with minor sub-deities as employees. Olorun is the creator in Yoruba, with Orisha’s being lower level gods. One of these, Shigidi (a nightmare god in the book, although Wikipedia lists him as Guardian of Home and Environment), is trying to split from the Yoruba corporation and be an independent entity, along with his lover, the succubus Nneoma (based on Naamah, a demon from Jewish mysticism). To pay off his debt to the company, Shigidi has one last job.
It’s an interesting world, but despite the thematic American Gods comparisons, it feels nothing like that and has little else in common, and its structure ultimately makes it a much less successful book. Approximately a third of the book is the present day story, but most of that is in the second half of the book. The first half is brief tastes of the present in between longer chapters of background events. Those events are telling a single secondary story, just filling in the info you need to understand how we got to the present situation. Everytime we finally had some momentum, that thread would be done and I’d have to ‘get into’ the book all over again. If it wasn’t so broken up, I think I would have really enjoyed it, but as it is I was pretty done with the book by the time I got to where the bulk of the present day heist story was, and ended up skimming the last 50 to 100 pages.
8: (Nebula Nominee) The Terraformers, Annalee Newitz (Tor; Orbit UK)
Stars: 3.38
Number of ratings: 5,213
I loved The Future of Another Timeline, and on that alone will read any future Newitz novels, but so far nothing else of hers has come close to the same heights. The Terraformers is a set of 3 novellas set around 500 years apart, watching the terraforming of a planet over time through the eyes of the workers owned by the corporation terraforming the planet. Most of the plot is focused on terraforming, the corporation’s shenanigans, civil engineering, and civil rights, as the populace works to win the freedom to enjoy their home.
Very interesting, but it definitely drags at times. I loved the themes explored, although the civil engineering could be a bit much at times (said as a Kim Stanley Robinson fan). I did love the sentient buses, naked mole rats, and the cat reporter! Ultimately, more interesting than it was enjoyable.
7: (Hugo Nominee) Starter Villain by John Scalzi (Tor, Tor UK)
Stars: 4.18
Number of ratings: 43,367
I really enjoyed Starter Villain! There was some criticism of The Kaiju Preservation Society for being ‘light’, and that seems somewhat fair, although I likewise enjoyed it. People have leveled similar criticism at Starter Villain, but that seems less true. It’s quippy, a bit light hearted, but so are the other Scalzi books I’ve read (Redshirts, The Android’s Dream) it’s not exactly dealing with light topics despite that. It’s a critique of capitalism, and how wealth can become entrenched to both oppose what’s good for society, and oppose innovation. That said, I found the ‘villain’ idea pretty silly, as it’s essentially being used as a shorthand for disruptive technology, not for anything actually villainous or bad. I probably wouldn’t vote for it for a major award, but it was a fun and thoughtful novel.
6: (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) Witch King by Martha Wells (Tordotcom)
Stars: 3.71
Number of ratings: 16,432
While Martha Wells declined nominations for Murderbot, she did accept them for Witch King! It’s really imaginative and interesting world, and I’m hoping we get more of it (I hear she’s working on another book in the setting, so I trust we will). It has two narrative threads, the present day, where the main character Kai has been held prisoner during a pivotal political moment. The story focuses on his escape and the efforts to figure out what’s going on. The second thread tells the backstory of Kai’s life, and how the world came to the current situation.
I loved the world, and really enjoyed the book! It seems like quite a few of the people who didn’t disliked it because they thought the back story was a lot more interesting than the present day story, which I have to agree with, honestly. I wish they were told as two separate books, or in a way where splitting them contributed to the story. For example, a historian character that wheedled Kai about what has actually happened in the past could have been a vehicle for exploring the past events. Regardless of these qualms, I still enjoyed the book and look forward to more.
5: (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) Translation State by Ann Leckie (Orbit US, Orbit UK)
Stars: 4.11
Number of ratings: 9,848
Translation State is yet another book set in Leckie’s Raadchai universe. It’s not necessary to read the Ancillary books first, although I think it would help (and they’re awesome). Not sure how much Provenance relates, as I didn’t enjoy it and DNFed. Translation State is really good though, looking at the life and society of the Presger translators (as you might imagine), and giving some glimpses of what’s going on in the broader setting. I have enjoyed the books giving hints of that bigger picture, but would love one like Ancillary Justice where that’s more of a primary focus. I’d say this book is award worthy (as are all the ones I ranked higher), but I also feel like it’s linked enough to the setting that it’s fair to treat it more like a sequel, and I’m less inclined to award sequels major awards.
4: (Nebula Nominee) The Water Outlaws, S.L. Huang (Tordotcom; Solaris UK)
Stars: 3.82
Number of ratings: 2,326
The Water Outlaws is a queer, gender bent retelling of the Chinese classic Water Margin. And by classic, I mean in the sense that Don Quixote or Middlemarch is classic. It’s (probably) a 14th century novel, set around 1120 and following the rebellion of the outlaws at Mount Liang against the Northern Song dynasty. It is one of the 6 classics of pre-modern Chinese literature. At least, that’s what Wikipedia says, and it sounds like retellings and adaptations are pretty common.
I really enjoyed The Water Outlaws, and it’s the first that I would actually be happy to see win. It was fast paced and fun, but also had quite a bit of interesting insight into gender. It was also interesting to see how more Eastern values played into the story. I’m not necessarily very attuned to that, although it sounds like other readers can attest that it felt both like a Western and an Eastern novel. But I definitely noticed that the outlaws weren’t rebelling against the Emperor or the Empire really, just the corrupt people just under the top who were managing it. To me at least, it seemed to reflect the Eastern collectivism over Western individualism. S. L. Huang also has a great AMA on Fantasy from a month ago that’s worth checking out. This and the following novels are the ones I’m really hoping win.
3: (Hugo Nominee) The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty (Harper Voyager, Harper Voyager UK)
Stars: 4.28
Number of ratings: 44,645
A 12th century century Muslim lady pirate comes out of retirement for one last job. It’s fantastic! It’s also apparently set in the same world as Chakraborty’s Daevabad Trilogy, albeit some centuries earlier. I appreciated the obvious effort that went into research and world building, and writing that made it a lot of fun even when it was dealing with heavy subjects. And I loved when things finally got on the weird side, and supernatural entities took over the story. I also thought that it was pretty interesting to see how Chakraborty was able to incorporate quite a lot of diversity and modern ideals in a way that genuinely felt authentic and believable. Related, but perhaps a bit different, it was interesting to see Amina as a devout Muslim, despite not always being a great person (she is a pirate after all). So often, religion is portrayed in pretty uncompelling ways, either as bad or dumb (sometimes in ways that feel accurate and sometimes in ways that feel like caricatures), or in ways that are very pro-religion such that some big bias is showing. In Amina, it was a significant part of her life, but didn’t feel in your face. It felt lived in, if that makes sense, but well balanced with the other aspects of her life.
I’m very much looking forward to the next two books!
2: (Hugo Nominee) Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh (Tordotcom, Orbit UK)
Stars: 4.06
Number of ratings: 7,957
This book appears to be pretty well regarded, but also a bit divisive. The main character, Kyr, lives on Gaia Station, the last outpost of (real) humanity in the fight with the broader galactic society of aliens and their reality warping AI, the Wisdom. Despite losing the war and most other humans moving on and integrating with galactic society, Gaia Station is still fighting. The book is ultimately an exploration of indoctrination, how your upbringing and surroundings shape your worldview, and what can later shake you into new perspectives. It reminds me of a scene from the book, Touching Spirit Bear, where a counselor demonstrates that people change from slow, steady pressure that pushes them off the course they’re on, or by a single big push that jolts them out of their path. Some Desperate Glory is several of those large pushes. In some ways, that does make it feel a little less authentic, as we don’t see Kyr really change over time, just have some pretty abrupt shifts (the first of which very much was unexpected, although the second not so much), but it also makes those changes much more accessible, since that time could be pretty hard to show. Despite that, it’s a really interesting look at indoctrination and deprogramming. As someone who grew up in and subsequently left what could be called a ‘high demand religion’, albeit one that is much, much milder than Gaia in the book or Jonestown in real life on the cult-o-meter, there’s a lot of resonance.
It seems like the main reason people didn’t like the book is that Kyr is a pretty unlikeable character. To be honest, that isn’t a thing that normally affects me, at least not for main characters. I tend to be in their headspace, as that’s what’s presented, so I’m usually not seeing them as unlikeable. Some obvious exceptions if they’re really annoying, and of course it became pretty clear over time that Kyr wasn’t exactly a considerate or kind person, but Kyr’s growth throughout the book is pretty specifically the point, so that wouldn’t really bother me either, honestly. The other issue is a scene towards the end where Kyr is touching (with consent) an alien’s feathers as a show of acceptance that he’s a person too, but some people have felt it comes off racially coded and offensive. I feel like that is pretty clearly not the author’s intent, and it’s a bit overblown, but I’m also not from a group where that would be triggering. Someone on the publishing team definitely should have seen that this would come off wrong, and changed it to something else that got the idea across in a way that wouldn’t be offensive.
I do hope that we get more of the world. It’s an interesting setting, and I would love a book exploring how the Gaians integrate into society. And also looking at Kyr’s dynamics with her group now that she has a broader perspective, and isn’t always a well meaning asshole, as we didn’t get a whole lot of that once she had grown out of it.
1: (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
Stars: 3.71
Number of ratings: 2,056
My wife bought this for me as a birthday present, thinking I’d like it based on the description. And I did! He is now on my must read list, and I’m pretty excited for Rakesfall, which comes out this month. I had never heard of The Saint of Bright Doors, or Chandrasekera, but I absolutely loved it. Then I was surprised to see people periodically mentioning it on reddit, and then I was thrilled when it was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula. This is easily the most daring and innovative book on this list, mostly because it’s pretty atypical. Honestly, the closest thing I can think of to it is Some Desperate Glory due to reality warping, but they’re mostly nothing alike. The Saint of Bright Doors follows Fetter, with a brief bit of his childhood, and then a jump to his 20’s or so. Fetter appears to be based on Rāhula, the son of Siddhārtha Gautama (the Buddha), with Rāhula meaning fetter, as he was a fetter on Gautama’s path to enlightenment. The book also appears to engage quite a bit with Sri Lankan politics, particularly surrounding Buddhism. I’m not super familiar with any of that, although some Wikipedia reading gives some clear parallels. Even without that added depth, the story was fascinating. The world is complicated and at times pretty opaque, and it has a tendency to shift and change as the story progresses. There’s a pretty deep sense of mystery with the bright doors, but they ultimately end up becoming just another part of the world for most people in the setting. Fetter ends up being part of a support group for ‘Unchosen Ones’ from different religions that, for whatever reason, were meant to be ‘Chosen’ but ultimately weren’t. Interestingly, each of the religions appears to be true. We don’t get nearly as much of the other members of the group as I would have liked, but maybe some day we’ll hear about their stories. I hope so.
The primary complaint I see is that the story meanders a lot and is quite aimless, and that’s mostly because Fetter doesn’t really act. He has little agency, and instead things just happen to him. When he does make choices, it’s pretty unclear why. That’s a pretty fair assessment, but again, not something that bothered me at all. I loved how I never knew where the book was going. I’d get comfortable with where it was at and what was happening, and then it’d shift pretty quickly. I can see why that could bother some, but it worked for me in this book, and kept me interested. The other aspect of that is how the story is told. There’s a big reveal towards the end that I won’t spoil here. We get a few hints of it along the way, some that if you catch it you definitely know something is going on, even though you don’t know what. But it goes a long way towards explaining why the story has jumps in time, why we don’t get much view into Fetter’s mind and decisions, and just how the story is told. The one downside is that the story ends a bit abruptly, and while it makes sense in context, it’s also less satisfying. But it makes me think about what I want from a story, and the place the storyteller has in it. Sometimes things being unsatisfying can stir more thought, and maybe that’s worth it. Should a storyteller always give us everything? It makes me think of a song from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, The End of the Movie (some spoilers for that show). It captures some of the ambiguities in Bright Doors, but that ends up just adding to why I like it, whereas for some it definitely seemed to detract.

Best Novella

9. (Hugo Nominee) Rose/House by Arkady Martine (Subterranean)
Stars: 3.76
Number of ratings: 1,850
I really didn’t care for this story. I admittedly listened to it as an audiobook, rather than read it, and that isn’t usually as good an experience for close readings for me. Plus the only place I could find it was Hoopla, my least preferred app for audiobooks, because it’s pretty glitchy on the audio. My library has it on order, so I’ll give it another shot when I can do so in print, but all of that speaks to the larger issue that this novella was really hard to get a hold of, which is maybe not ideal if people are going to vote for it.
Anyways, on the story itself, it seemed a bit ambiguous. I couldn’t always tell what was going on, and on looking at reviews, that wasn’t just my listening experience, that was other people’s experiences as well. I didn’t feel like it added much to the AI discussion, although I did enjoy the house being convinced that a police detective was not in fact a person, but rather a police precinct. The story wasn’t all that interesting. All around, not a great read, with the above caveat on the listening experience, which is a shame since I loved the Teixcalaan books.
8. (Hugo Nominee) “Life Does Not Allow Us to Meet”, He Xi / 人生不相见, 何夕, translated by Alex Woodend (Adventures in Space: New Short stories by Chinese & English Science Fiction Writers)(Originally published in 2010)
This was a bit of a frustrating story. Some of the setting was interesting, but the insistence on both modifying humans to adapt them to other worlds, and that those modifications can’t be too much not human, because then they’re aliens, and humans can’t cultivate alien intelligences because they may at some point turn on us. The story is a bit more complicated than that, but it has quite a few things that just don’t make a lot of sense.
7. (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher (Tor, Titan UK)
Stars: 4.01
Number of ratings: 25,644
I loved What Moves the Dead and Nettle and Bone! As did many others, given the nominations they received. It’s starting to look like Kingfisher might join the ranks of the usually nominated at this point. And I definitely look forward to more of her work, with What Feasts at Night one of my next several reads. That said, Thornhedge was not my favorite. I loved Toadling, pretty much everything about her and her life, and the twist on Sleeping Beauty was interesting, but the story just doesn’t shine the way the others of hers that I’ve read do.
6. (Nebula Nominee) “Linghun,” Ai Jiang (Linghun)
Stars: 4.00
Number of ratings: 1,594
A thoughtful meditation on grief, and what it looks like if we could be haunted by those we’ve lost. In some ways it feels a little unrealistic, as people are more or less fighting to the death to get access to the houses where said hauntings can actually happen, but I can see how society might not have the will to ban such obviously harmful things if they also offered the chance to see your loved one again. The one and only reason this isn’t one of my top picks is because it falls apart in the last third. There’s a second story element that is introduced early on, but doesn’t take on much prominence until towards the end, and it doesn’t really fit. It’s another character whose story is relevant, and does add nuance to the themes, but it just feels like an insertion that distracts from the rest of what’s going on in the story. Linghun would ultimately work better if that character was stripped out.
5. (Nebula Nominee) The Crane Husband, Kelly Barnhill (Tordotcom)
Stars: 3.89
Number of ratings: 6,326
This is an odd book, to say the least. It's a retelling/subversion of the Japanese folktale, The Crane Wife. The main character is a 15 year old girl telling us the story years later. The setting is a pretty normal, slightly dystopian near future, with elements of magical realism when the girl's mother brings home a crane to be her new husband, and horror as that relationship turns (more) bizarre and abusive. It’s a symbolic exploration of both abuse and generational trauma, and it’s pretty interesting, but I’m still not sure how I feel about it. It definitely feels like the most ‘out there’ of the novella nominees, but this is the first I’d be happy to see win.
4. (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older (Tordotcom)
Stars: 3.64
Number of ratings: 5,689
I rather liked this story, and I'm pretty excited for when I get around to reading the sequel! While I've seen complaints about the language and style, that's a large part of what I like. More than almost any book I've read, besides ones by Gene Wolfe, every word Older uses feels specifically considered and used intentionally. And unlike in academic texts, the other main place that writing feels like this, this doesn't makes the meaning confusing or hard to sort through. Older uses complex, nuanced sentences with quite a bit of clauses and qualifiers, but it illuminates rather than obscures. It feels like the way I think (or at least the way I think I think), so I appreciate that. There's also a story and characters and such, and those are pretty nifty. One of the things I love on that front is how deftly words are used; without explicitly telling us things, the setting, characters, and world really come clear. While there is a story, the driving force really is the interactions between the two main characters, particularly as the viewpoint character deduces that thoughts and intents of the other main character through subtle signs. Anyways, more than any other element, the writing for this story really worked for me!
3. (Nebula Nominee) Untethered Sky, Fonda Lee (Tordotcom)
Stars: 3.90
Number of ratings: 8,153
Another book about birds, where the main character is a ruhker, someone who trains with rocs so they can be used to fight manticores. The book feels quiet, with the primary relationship being two humans who are both quiet introverts, and their birds who of course don’t talk. There’s action and violence and terror , but on the whole, it feels like a quiet meditation. This book is one of the reasons I’ve grown to love novellas. It could easily be a novel, but instead it just tells its story and is done. There’s a power in limiting your scope like that, a purity, and I feel like this book has that more so than any other novella on this list.
2. (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)
Stars: 4.25
Number of ratings: 4,478
My comment from the Fantasy Hugo discussion of Mammoths at the Gates:
Each of the 4 books to date have Chih take on a greater role in the story.
In the 1st, they mostly seem like the context of the frame narrative, and not really a main character.
In the 2nd, the framing has its own story with the tigers that's as significant as the story being told by Chih and the tigers.
In the 3rd, the story told merges with the framing story, and they become one at the end.
In the 4th (Mammoths at the Gate), the framing story is the story, dealing with the grief of Cleric Thien passing, with the other smaller stories about him within adding or illuminating but never really being separate from the framing.
It seems that over time, it's shifting from Chih and Almost Brilliant being a means of telling different stories to Chih and Almost Brilliant being the story. It makes me curious what book 5 and beyond will be, because I can only imagine one more book of following that trend before I'm out of ideas on how they could be more of the story.
At the same time, it shifts the focus from what a story is and how we tell it, how we know what the 'right' version is, and makes it more and more personal. Book 1, the historical figures had different understandings of what was happening, to the detriment of the overthrown kingdom. Book 2, Chih and the tigers had different understandings, and together told a fuller story by sharing that. Book 3, the story becomes much more complicated when you actually meet the characters. Book 4, a person you know becomes more complicated and nuanced when you learn from others their experience with the person. There's more to the story of who a person is than your personal experience of them.
All that's super interesting to me. Each of the books really does function fine as a stand alone, and I'm not sure that there's a clear overarching storyline outside of Almost Brilliant's having a kid, but there's a thematic evolution that seems to be following a specific path. I'm pretty curious to see where it's headed. (In the Fantasy Hugo read along, u/tarvolon confirmed that book 5 is thoroughly The Adventures of Chih, so I guess that trend is accurate, and u/Nineteen_Adze thought that perhaps later books could have Chih hear stories where he featured as a main character, an idea I really like).
1. (Hugo Nominee) “Seeds of Mercury”, Wang Jinkang / 水星播种, 王晋康, translated by Alex Woodend (Adventures in Space: New Short stories by Chinese & English Science Fiction Writers)(Originally published in 2002)
This was ultimately my favorite of the stories. It’s about secretly seeding life on Mercury. Sometimes the language is clumsy, and I’m not sure if that’s the original writing or the translation, but ultimately it’s not too much of an issue. I loved the look at the alien life and their society!

Best Novelette

10. (Nebula Nominee) “Imagine: Purple-Haired Girl Shooting Down The Moon,” Angela Liu (Clarkesworld 6/23)
This is a weird story, and one I really didn’t care for. It deals with memory and how that shapes who we are, and quite a bit with people being used. Oh, and purpose haired girls. But if it was trying to say something in particular, I missed it.
9. (Nebula Nominee) “A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair,” Renan Bernardo (Samovar 2/23)
The story of a chair, as you might guess from the title, but just as much it’s the story of the family that owns the chair. It has an interesting family secret that’s eventually revealed and which hinges on the chair, but ultimately, this was a more interesting idea than story.
8. (Nebula Nominee) “Saturday’s Song,” Wole Talabi (Lightspeed 5/23)
This is the sequel to Wednesday’s Story. Like Talabi’s novel nominee this year, Saturday's Song features Shigidi as a nightmare god again, but also Hausa spirits. Both stories feature a frame narrative, with a story within a story similar to Vo’s Singing Hills noellas. I enjoyed it, and Saturday’s Song does tell you what you need to know from Wednesday’s Story, but it works better if you read them in order, as it functions more as a resolution than anything.
7. (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) I AM AI by Ai Jiang (Shortwave)
This is a decent story, looking at capitalistic dystopias. Specifically, the pressure to be better while competing against AI, to the point where the main character is slowly morphing into a machine to catch up but in doing so loses what makes them unique and human. I don’t know that it adds a lot to the conversation exactly, but it makes some good points and summarizes some common concerns pretty well. I would have likely ranked it higher, but there were quite a bit of plausibility issues in the setting that I couldn’t really get past, and which made it much more dystopian than it would otherwise be.
6. (Hugo Nominee) “Ivy, Angelica, Bay” by C.L. Polk (Tor.com 8 December 2023)
This is a sequel to St. Valentine, St. Abigail, St. Brigid. And it was pretty good! I wouldn’t say there’s anything super special about it, but I enjoyed it. The lead of the previous story has grown up and taken on her role keeping her area of the city safe through small magics, but trouble is stirring. This story onwards are ones I’d feel comfortable voting for.
5. (Hugo Nominee) “One Man’s Treasure” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny Magazine, January-February 2023)
Our only Pinsker nominee this year! And while it’s pretty good, it doesn’t seem like a top contender to me. It reminds me of Wiswell's DIY from last year, thematically. It’s about several garbage collectors who remove magical items once a month, and the rich people who don’t particularly care about basic safety. Like DIY, it focuses on finding common person solutions since the rich don't care, something I can sympathize with. It’s a well told and interesting story, but that’s hardly a surprise from Pinsker.
4. (Nebula Nominee) “Six Versions of My Brother Found Under the Bridge,” Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny 9-10/23)
This is a story about the bargains and sacrifices we make for grief, and how they can further harm and traumatize us. Also, it’s about how the devil exploits our grief and trauma to mess with us. It turns out when you go under the Devil’s bridge, you really ought not to make deals. This story and the following are the ones that I actually hope win.
3. (Hugo Nominee) “On the Fox Roads” by Nghi Vo (Tor.com 31 October 2023)
This story was pretty light on magical or sf elements, at least until the end, much like Vo’s other early to mid 1900s books (The Chosen and Beautiful, Siren Queen). This one is about finding yourself, and how relationships with others can help you do it. Even when those others start as complete strangers. Oh, and it’s about heists. I really enjoyed this one, and the ambiance Vo summons with her more real world settings.
2. (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) “The Year Without Sunshine” by Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2023)
On the Fox Roads was pretty light on the magical elements, but they were there, and they were integral to the story. The Year Without Sunshine could pass as non-genre fiction just as well as it could as SF. The only element is an unspecified calamity that temporarily put a bunch of ash in to the air. THe story itself focuses on community working together when social safety nets are only semi functional, and resources become pretty scarce. I really enjoyed the the characters and how people worked together. It felt genuine and realistic, if optimistic, and seems much more helpful for real world disasters where things start to break down but aren’t post-apocalyptic. I would say it’s a very inspiring story.
1. (Hugo Nominee) “Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition”, Gu Shi /〈2181序曲〉再版导言, 顾适 translated by Emily Jin (Clarkesworld, February 2023)(Originally published in 2020)
This is science fiction is the most classic sense, and done well, in that it looks at a technology (cryosleep) and extrapolates what kind of impact it would have on society. The closest comparison I can think of to it would be Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clarke’s The Light of Other Days. But of course, this is completely different in that it’s written as an introduction to a fictional nonfiction book, which gives Gu Shi a lot of freedom to tell the story in a unique way, with fictional quotes with commentary from fictional people who are important to the history of cryosleep. Towards the end, it gets into the personal story behind that history, the creator of the book, and the person writing the introduction, and that allows the technical and sociology exploration to add a really touching emotional component. While I don’t agree with all of the extrapolations (hardly a surprise for a story like this), this is easily the best of the translated nominees this year, and one of my absolute favorites overall from this year.

Best Short Story:

(Hugo Nominee) 美食三品 (“Tasting the Future Delicacy Three Times”), 宝树 / Baoshu (银河边缘013：黑域密室 / Galaxy’s Edge Vol. 13: Secret Room in the Black Domain)
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to read this story. It appears to have only been translated into English for the Hugo voter packet. Since I’m not actually a member of the Hugos (maybe one day, if I can attend the actual convention), I don’t have the packet.
9. (Hugo Nominee) “Answerless Journey”, Han Song / 没有答案的航程, 韩松, translated by Alex Woodend (Adventures in Space: New Short stories by Chinese & English Science Fiction Writers)(Originally published in 1995)
Easily the worst of the translated fiction this year, or really just the worst nominee. The writing is stiff and clumsy, and it’s not just the translator as we have 2 other nominees to compare it with that were also translated by Alex Woodend. Minimal plot. The main character, who is human, is called ‘Creature’, presumably because amnesia has made him forget his name. It just doesn’t make a ton of sense all around.
8. (Hugo Nominee) “The Mausoleum’s Children” by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny Magazine, May-June 2023)
This feels like an interesting story, except I can’t really tell what's going on. The setting isn't particularly clear, despite seeming pretty interesting. The story was ok outside of that, but not amazing, and it’s hard to come back from not really getting what’s happening.
7. (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) “The Sound of Children Screaming” by Rachael K. Jones (Nightmare Magazine, October 2023)
This piece has some insightful comments on gun violence, but those make up approximately 2 or 3 paragraphs. It goes from a somewhat generalized description of a shooting to a specific one to a portal fantasy to a world with evil mice. Interesting, but it doesn't make a ton of sense and doesn't really all fit together.
6. (Nebula Nominee) “Bad Doors,” John Wiswell (Uncanny 1-2/23)
I didn’t care much for Wiswell on first reading him, with The House on Haunted Hill. I mean, I liked that and thought it was a cute story, but it wasn’t something I’d vote for. But his writing has grown on me, with each year getting better and better. Bad Doors breaks that trend though. It’s not a bad story, it just wasn’t that interesting to me. Not much happens besides a family falling out over political drama, and honestly that is a bit too much like real life to be worth reading unless it’s going to give some good insight or be really good.
5. (Nebula Nominee) “Window Boy,” Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld 8/23)
A strange story about the anxieties around the other, set mostly in post apocalyptic underground bunkers. It looks a lot at the relationship between the haves and the have nots, and the imbalance around friendships in that context. Are have nots always only friends to take advantage of the haves? Is that actually unreasonable if it is the case? But also maybe they have nots are actually weird 20 foot grackle bird things. The reality filters on the cameras to see outside the bunkers make it hard to tell.
4. (Hugo Nominee) “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub” by P. Djèlí Clark (Uncanny Magazine, January-February 2023)
This is where I’d really start voting for the nominees. How to Raise a Kraken is a funny story about an ambitious idiot who gets a newspaper ad kraken, one that is actually real, and the fall out from doing so. It addresses colonialism and hubris in a pretty amusing and satisfying way.
3. (Nebula Nominee) “Once Upon a Time at The Oakmont,” P.A. Cornell (Fantasy 10/23)
This is a thoughtful story about time. It’s set in an apartment building with tenants from different points in time going about their normal lives. Because of that, there are lots of rules to prevent info being transmitted to the past and to stop any harm from foreknowledge. The story centers on a lady from the present in a relationship with a man from the 1940's. It’s one of the more interesting ways of playing with time that I’ve seen.
2. (Nebula Nominee) “Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200,” R.S.A Garcia (Uncanny 7-8/23)
This is set in Tobago, with the local vernacular, and tells of a robotic farmhand trying to take care of an old lady's goat, and gaining further intelligence in the process. It’s a powerful, moving story. It’s occasionally a little unconvincing, in that the old lady used emojis in her youth but seems unfamiliar with what would be basic tech from her childhood, but also old people do frequently tend to struggle with technological things, so perhaps that’s unfair of me. It does a really good job looking at the social isolation of the elderly though. Tantie Merle and the following story are both the ones that I’d really hope win.
1. (Hugo & Nebula Nominee) “Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld May 2023)
The second Naomi Kritzer story, this one is about an AI app that directs people on what to do to make them happy. It’s a nifty idea, well executed, and something I could actually see lots of people being interested in in real life if it worked as described. It also has well written, interesting, and relatable characters. I’ve only read the CatNet books by Kritzer, and while I liked them, it didn’t have me searching her out. After Better Living and The Year Without Sunshine though, I’ll have to check out the rest of her work.

some notes to consider:

• i only counted the regular manga covers, not counting the relaunches like the jojonium series (also didn't count spin-offs)
  
• i didn't counted stands, only CHARACTERS (and horses)
  
• i decided to not include part 9 (the jojolands) in the list because it only have 3 covers until now, maybe in a far future i can make a updated version, who knows
  
• some covers are a bit complicated to identify each character (steel ball run volume 7 is the biggest example), but i still tried my best to identify everyone
  
• if you see a duplicated character in the list, sorry, im very lazy
  

Jotaro Kujo- 25
Josuke Higashikata [Jojolion]- 25
Gyro Zepelli- 21
Johnny Joestar- 20
Jolyne Cujoh- 17
Yasuho Hirose- 16
Josuke Higashikata- 15
Giorno Giovanna- 14
Joseph Joestar- 14
Jean Pierre Polnareff- 7
Koichi Hirose- 7
Dio Brando- 6
Bruno Bucciarati- 6
Ermes Costello- 6
Lucy Steel- 6
Jonathan Joestar- 5
Noriaki Kakyoin- 5
Okuyasu Nijimura- 5
Rohan Kishibe- 5
Leone Abbachio- 5
Guido Mista- 5
Trish Una- 5
Weather Report- 5
Narciso Anasui- 5
Slow Dancer [Johnny' Horse]- 5
Funny Valentine- 5
Diego Brando- 5
Tsurugi Higashikata- 5
Narancia Ghirga- 4
Foo Figthers- 4
Valkyrie [Gyro's Horse]- 4
Daiya Higashikata- 4
Norisuke Higashikata- 4
Yoshikage Kira- 3
Muhammad Avdol- 3
Panacotta Fugo- 3
Emporio Alnino- 3
Silver Bullet [Diego's Horse]- 3
Hot Pants- 3
Joshu Higashikata- 3
Rai Mamezuku- 3
Yukako Yamagishi- 2
Enrico Pucci- 2
Wekapipo- 2
Daiya Higashikata- 2
Norisuke Higashikata- 2
Tsurugi Higashikata- 2
Hato Higashikata- 2
Jobin Higashikata- 2
Toru- 2
Danny- 1
Kars- 1
Wamuu- 1
Esidisi- 1
Caesar- 1
Lisa Lisa- 1
Hol Horse- 1
Iggy- 1
Ken Oyanagi- 1
Hayato Kawajiri- 1
Vinegar Doppio- 1
Coco Jumbo- 1
Pocoloco- 1
Hey! Ya! [Pocoloco's Horse]- 1
Mountain Tim- 1
Gets Up [Hot Pants's Horse]- 1
Gaucho- 1
Peg [Gaucho's Horse]- 1
Scarlet Valentine- 1
Magent Magent- 1
Steven Steel- 1
Josefumi Kujo- 1
Yoshikage Kira [Jojolion]- 1
Karera Sakunami- 1
Tamaki Damo- 1
Dolomite- 1

Can't for the life of me figure this out, but I recall it being a very funny video/skit/special/whatever it was.
Comedians are, I believe, two British(?) men. They might technically be magicians, or magician comedians if such a thing exists, memory is hazy. Either way, the video isn't showing a typical stand-up, but more like a live show on a stage with an audience.
Throughout the video, or at least during this particular skit, one of the comedians is acting and speaking "normally" with various props/audience participation while the other is narrating the first guy's inner thoughts to comedic effect. At one point in the video a woman(?) is brought on stage from the audience. The main joke here is that the first guy is saying "Pleased to meet you" as he shakes the woman's hand, but the second guy establishes that he's lying. The exact phrasing in my memory is this, with the bold italics being the second guy narrating the inner thoughts.

"'Pleased to meet you,' I said."
"Pleased to meet you." "I lied."

This must have been at least 10-15 years ago I saw this video, if not longer.
Curious to see if it would help I asked ChatGPT. I was given the name of various comedy duos but nothing concrete, and most of the suggestions were around pre-made sketches with costumes and sets (such as the "are we the baddies" video with Mitchell and Webb or Key and Peele's various comedy sketches). The video I'm thinking of is not like that; as pointed out it was performed on a stage in front of an audience.

Hi, I make skits. Maybe it’s because I’m the one making them, but after I finish recording, editing, and looking back at them, they are more cringe to me than funny 😭. I could really use some outside feedback. Thank You!!
YouTube - stevenwhen
Ps. I also struggle with low click through rates. Are my thumbnails the problem?

Hi all, I’m turning 32 this year and separated from my husband 11 months ago (we were together for 14 years). I will be filing for divorce soon. I got pregnant back in 2020 and chose abortion because I wasn’t ready to be a mom. After the abortion, I didn’t really feel any sadness, but have found myself thinking about how old the baby would’ve been every year after. Funny thing I had the abortion on Valentine’s day so each Valentine’s day is a reminder of it.
After being separated and processing my feelings more, I’m starting to realize that it wasn’t because I didn’t want kids, but rather I wasn’t ready to have kids with my husband (due to his lifestyle and I couldn’t see him being a strong father figure). I’ve been debating freezing my eggs for the future in case I do want to become a mom. I currently have no intentions of getting back in the dating pool again, and most likely would be a SMBC. I told myself if I don’t have kids by 35, then that would be it, but I think preserving would give me a little more time.
I also started a new job this year where the company covers this for me and the only thing I’d pay out of pocket would be medication.
My question is if now is the right time to start the process. I know my age is creeping up there and the younger the better, but I’m not at my best mentally with the separation and divorce. I also have travel plans for the next couple of months (my way of self-care) and don’t want that to get in the way of anything if I were to start the process now.
Any advice would be appreciated! I know not everyone supports abortion, so please be kind if you do comment. Thank you.

I have 3 sets of neighbors that are all pretty awful. If you don’t laugh about this shit, you’ll be constantly stressed, so, funny nicknames it is.
My teen is pretty brutal and hilarious, and I credit him with most of these:

• ‘Porn Scorn’ family had a very public, extremely loud screamin’ street fight about “his PORN ADDICTION!! ruining the family!!”

If you’d told me it was a skit or a prank, I’d believe it, because it was so over the top ridiculous - but it’s unfortunately not. They drew a crowd and everything. I’d burn my fuckin house down and move out of shame, if I screamed at my partner at the top of my lungs in the street about all our problems. But porn addiction…. Yikes.

• ‘Haircuts’, are also screamers, but one day in particular, the awful screeching wife bellowed at the poor guy, “if you want your FUCKING hair cut, get in THE FUCKING CAR right the fuck NOW!” in front of everyone; middle of the day. I honestly feel bad for the guy - she is ‘haircuts’, not him.
  
• And the worst one, a universally hated intimidating pervert, we call ‘Jelly Tugs’, after an episode of Reno 911 where they caught one of the officers using jelly jars to jerk off… and this guy would absolutely do something like that. Also ‘Mayor McSleaze or McCheese, since he ran for mayor and lost, obviously, because he’s a batshit sexual predator that sits outside all day, half-dressed, ranting at anyone that walks by.
  

He’s also ‘horse fucker’ because (you can’t make this shit up) he’s been stopping cars, offering women ‘free horse lessons’ in exchange for sex with him. BLEHHH! they’re his wife’s horses too!
My mom calls them ‘The Bumpasses’, after ‘A Christmas Story’, because of their howling hounds that decimate my trash when they constantly escape the flimsy screen door keeping them in. They’ve made it into my house as well, over the years, trying to chase my kitties.

• Honorable mention goes to ‘Meth Witch’, who I’d never met before, but she decided 11pm, with all our lights off, would be a good time to knock on my door, asking for ‘the lady of the house’, because ‘she felt my energy, and needed to know’ if I was a witch.

It caught me off guard (for many reasons) because I thought she was probably in some kind of trouble and needed help, but… Nope! Just a Meth Fueled Witch Check. I said “yes! But I’m a good witch!” Because, what the hell else do you say? That seemed to be an acceptable answer to her, thankfully. She’s gone now, hopefully getting some help.
Would love to hear y’all’s bad neighbor nicknames. We all need an occasional laugh over the absurdity of these people, and the immense stress in dealing with them.

You got two options
The boring political debates.
Or just trying to beat him up.
Those are the choices. Cast your vote for whatever candidate could beat him.

When reading the earlier chapters of JoJolands, I put together a silly theory that Rohans 6 million dollar diamond was one that a parallel funny valentine brought into the main world during the D4C arc. Not sure if anyone else thought this and I doubt it is likely now. I suppose I just wanted to try and create some extra correlation between past parts.