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Hugo Awards finalists 2026

Posted in Books, Kids with tags , , , , , , , on May 9, 2026 by xi'an

Here are the 2026 Hugo Awards finalists, with winners to be announced on 30 August at LAcon V. Since I registered for selecting the awards, I did get the Hugo Voter Packet (with full ebooks, some audiobooks, if not movies, or TV scripts) and hence be able to read at least some of them. Before or after the deadline in August.. Here are some categories:

Best Novel

  • A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape) [sequel to The Tainted Cup]
  • Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow; Gollancz)
  • Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US)
  • The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK)
  • The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Tor US; Orbit UK)
  • The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (Orbit US; Hodderscape)

Best Novella

  • Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
  • Cinder House by Freya Marske (Tordotcom; Tor UK)
  • Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)
  • The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
  • The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)
  • What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (Nightfire; Titan UK) [a constant in the nomination lists!]

Best Novelette

  • “Kaiju Agonistes” by Scott Lynch (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 62)
  • “Never Eaten Vegetables” by H.H. Pak (Clarkesworld, Issue 220)
  • “Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy” by Martha Wells (Reactor, July 10, 2025)
  • “The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For” by Cameron Reed (Reactor, April 2, 2025)
  • “The Millay Illusion” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 67)
  • “When He Calls Your Name” by Catherynne M. Valente (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 65)

Best Short Story

  • “10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days” by Samantha Mills (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 63)
  • “In My Country” by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld, Issue 223)
  • “Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything” by Effie Seiberg (Diabolical Plots, May 16, 2025)
  • “Missing Helen” by Tia Tashiro (Clarkesworld, Issue 226)
  • “Six People to Revise You” by J.R. Dawson (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 62)
  • “Wire Mother” by Isabel J. Kim (Clarkesworld, Issue 229)

Best Series

  • Emily Wilde by Heather Fawcett (Del Rey US; Orbit UK)
  • October Daye by Seanan McGuire (Tor US; DAW)
  • Old Man’s War by John Scalzi (Tor US; Tor UK) [read some of these!]
  • The Chronicles of Osreth by Katherine Addison (Tor US; Solaris UK; Subterranean)
  • The Craft Wars by Max Gladstone (Tor; Tordotcom) [read the first one, did not like it that much]
  • White Space by Elizabeth Bear (Saga Press; Gollancz)

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a journal of the [end of the] chaos year

Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel, Wines with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 31, 2025 by xi'an

 Read the delightful Barrowbreck by Andrew M Hurley, a great collection of short stories is made coherent by its unity of place, a lost, dark, valley between Lancashire and Yorkshire. The stories unfold from the Bronze ages till a near and disastrous future. While the book is often presented as horror fiction, I rather see it as an exploration of an alternate reality, a fantasy just outside our own world. Not inducing dread or unease in the reader. The author demonstrates great skill in setting substantial characters and situations within a few pages, in translating the inner feelings of highly diverse people and, above all, in refraining from providing a definite conclusion to his stories. Some of them are striking enough to remain in my memories for a while!

Apart from an Indian-style vegetable six dishes feast, did not experiment much in the kitchen, in part due to my travelling one week out of two between November and December. But harvested and prepared my olives after collecting about 3 litters of them. (I also tasted a Banh Chhev (in Petit Cambodge, Paris but it failed short from my expectation, neither crispy nor sizzling. And cold.)

Watched As You Stood By, a Korean drama about domestic violence. And then Last Samurai Standing. Adapted from the novel of the same name written by Shogo Imamura. And the rather hilarious movie Good News, a South Korean disaster black comedy film playing a similar trick to Good bye Lenin. Gave up watching an unlucky series of terrible films and TV series. From the cheezy A Man on the Inside (which surely makes Agatha Christie cringe in her grave), to Ichikei’s Crow (a highly unrealistic sequence of near-judicial errors in a Tokyo tribunal, with the redeeming feature of a three-leg crow logo, Yatagarasu, also a guardian on the Kumanokodo), to the pretentious Frankenstein by Guillermo del Toro (where over-prefect Victorian tableaux and crepuscular lighting games kill the scenario even before it is brought to life by Dr. Frankenstein’s steampunk apparatus, aka, the mélo chokes the drama!), to Troll 2, even worse than Troll, pulling on the very same strings as the first film, with the very same house eviscerated again by another strolling troll!, as well as a complete disregard for archaeological dig rules and with the ultimate lame resort to holy water! Catching a few views of the Jotunheimen peaks, though (which we hiked 35 years ago).

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Exhalation [book review]

Posted in Books, Kids, pictures with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on January 18, 2024 by xi'an

Exhalation is a diverse and original collection of (more or less) short stories by Ted Chiang, published between 2007 and 2015 in different journals including Nature at the time Nature had a weekly one-page short story (of varying quality). This is science fiction in a sense, given that all stories involve impossible situations and a connection with science at a low technical level (no space opera). However, it is much closer to philosophy in my opinion in that the author builds upon an alternate reality to question ours, sometimes with remarkable prescience and a remarkable kindness towards his characters.

So, there is the time travel portal story that does not lead to paradoxes, even with temporal loops, but to a reflection on human nature. (Not my favourite but this first story got the Nebula Award, the Hugo Award, and the Seiun Award!) They are doomed universes, either because the pressure is slowly getting away, or because a lack of communication and awareness pushes one species towards extinction (with the side sad coïncidence of being associated with the soon to fall Arecibo dish!). There are social media killing free will but calling for resistance. And a novella on virtual entities (digients) turning more and more real, while the company that produced them goes bankrupt and their universe is no longer upgraded, which also brings a well-balanced discussion on whether or not they should become legal entities and be given freedom, resonating in opposition to the recent doomsaying warnings about AI taking over humanity. Plus reflecting on the hardships of parenting and teaching. There is a Victorian story of building a difference engine nanny, with terrible consequences on two successive generations. There is another story about the potential horror of having one’s entire life stored on line and accessible by sentient interfaces, negating the very notion of memory since both remembering and forgetting escape the individual. There is a pre-Copernician universe where everything literally fits the Bible creation, until it does not. And there is the case of a quantic collection of universes where alternate paths could be consulted, to the point of interacting with alternate selves, maybe a bit fuzzy in the scientific details, but again leading to deeper reflections on human nature. I read the book around my trip to Melbourne and back, which may explain for my highly positive reaction as I had plenty of free time and sunny days to enjoy reading in the planes, on the trams (where I nearly lost my wallet, rescued by the kindness of another passenger!), and in my St Kilda comfy rental, but I do very much recommend it. Especially for those with a scientific mind. Joyce Carol Oates wrote for The New Yorker a much longer and better argued analysis of Exhalation. when the book appeared.

[Disclaimer about potential self-plagiarism: this post or an edited version may eventually appear in my Books Review section in CHANCE.]

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a journal of the [experienced] plague and pestilence year

Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 4, 2022 by xi'an

Read The Cybernetic Tea Shop, by Meredith Katz, which is a short and rather clever (if YA) novel about the hazy boundary between humans and humanoids. Plus involving tea addicts! (Which is presumably why Amazon suggested it to me following my reading A Psalm for the Wide Built). And further read over a few sleepless nights the terrible Isandor series starting with City of Strife, by Claudie Arseneault, which had an interesting built of characters and fantasy universe, only to collapse into the usual cracks of super-evil villeins, a massive imbalance of power and a focus on the mundane (like foods and romantic attractions) when their society is under attack. The writing style is also heavily handed, to the point that I found myself skipping more and more paragraphs as the story unfolded. And will definitely not consider the incoming volume.

Went smoothly through my first (?) COVID positivity, which only caused a mild fever over one single day, amidst common cold symptom. Luckily did not pass it to anyone in my immediate vicinity, and resumed running if not swimming almost immediately (if not hard enough to train for the Argentan 1/2 marathon!). But sadly missed the 800th anniversary conference in Padova, as I was still testing positive the day before. I may have gotten infected in Britain or Belgium, despite my constant use of a mask (except in restaurants!).

Watched three more episodes of House of the Dragon, with great characters but a definitive lack of scope (when compared with Game of Thrones). The story remains at a highly local level of power fights and bickering, with existential threats inexistent. Still relatively enjoyable.

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a journal of the [downgraded] plague and [mostly] pestilence year [from Belgium, w/o fries]

Posted in Books, Kids, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel, University life with tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 2, 2022 by xi'an

While away for more than a week in Brussels, Belgium (for reasons I cannot reveal at this point!), I had various culinary experience ranging from terrible (in a ghastly Turkish pizza stand) to fabulous (at Ethiopian Toukoul), with a scandalously bland lamb vindaloo in the middle…

And found an historical (!) public swimming pool near my airbnb, namely the Bains de Saint-Josse, that dates from the 1930’s, with original changing cubicles where one can leave one’s clothes, great opening hours, reasonable water temperature, few swimmers, and cheap access. (The only negative point is the shallow end of the pool that makes turning awkward.) Which was fantastic as running options in the vicinity were limited and all involved 100% street trails.

Read Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovski, Sharp Ends by Joe Abercrombie, and the first two volumes of The Scholomance by Naomi Novick. The Scholomance has a rather difficult start with a complex setting only described by an insider (although an outlier in the school pecking order), hence less inclined to details. Then the central character gets more attaching and then a bit too popular. The series is (again) rather too YA-ish for my taste, with the now common pattern of a coming of age in a wizard boarding school, just without any adult in control, which makes it a most bizarre school. However, I am rather shocked by how of little consequence deaths of students are, incl. for the central character. Sharp Ends is rather aptly named since this a collection of short stories, it is inevitably mixed in quality. The setting is the usual (and by now solidly established) First Law World, involving some of the most famous Abercrombie characters like Glotka and Logen Ninefingers. Some I felt like having already read in other books, like the final story, some were too light for grimdark, and some were going nowhere. But when looking at the original cover,  I seem to remember buying it at a farmers’ market in Northern California! And Elder Race is a short novel on a theme inspired from the early Ursula Le Guin novels, namely the impact of an “advanced” civilization on a less “developed” former colony. Where an anthropologist (an homage to Le Guin?) gets progressively involved in the plight of a population he cannot any longer treat in a clinical and remote way. The core crisis initiating this epiphany is however rather poorly constructed, as the “plague” impacting the colony merges too many tropes of the genre, while clashing with the overal rationalism of the novel. In addition, the depiction of the depression symptoms of the anthropologist is overdone.

Watched three episodes of House of the Dragon, none of RIngs of Power (so far). Lacking somewhat in scale (except those on the dragon), but with a brilliant actress playing Rhaenyra Targaryen in these episodes.

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