THE 2025 HUGO AWARD FINALISTS: SHORT STORY

RATED 92% POSITIVE. STORY SCORE = 4.2 OUT OF 5

6 STORIES: 2 GREAT / 3 GOOD / 1 AVERAGE / 0 POOR / 0 DNF

The announcement of the Hugo Award Finalists traditionally launches my reading for that vintage of science fiction. I don’t normal read “the first draft of science fiction history.” 2024 was a different year, I read a number of pretty good original anthologies and worked through the Clarkesworld Readers Award Finalists as part of the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction group on Facebook. Because of that I’m reading the Hugo Finalists with 15 Great Stories already on file for 2024. None of them were Hugo Finalists this year.

But the stories that did make the finalist list were mostly pretty. cool. The highest score for the Short Story category since I started this blog.

In Science Fiction, the most prestigious awards are the Hugo Awards. Voted on by the fans who buy a voting membership and are given out at The World Science Fiction Convention. The 2025 WorldCon will be taking place in Seattle on August 13-17, 2025 The list of finalists just dropped.

This is the fifth year that I am trying to review and rank all of the short fiction finalists.

Novella. Stories of between 17,500 and 40,000 words. (Reviewed: 2024, 2023 & 2022)
Novelettes. Stories of between 7,500 and 17,500 words (Reviewed: 2024, 2023, 2022 & 2021)
Short Stories. Stories of less than 7,500 words. (Reviewed: 2024, 2022 & 2021)

Best Short Story

“Five Views of the Planet Tartarus” by Rachael K. Jones (Lightspeed Magazine, Jan 2024 (Issue 164))
Great. Very brief and very powerful. The horrifying and ultimately bittersweet story of convicted criminals who are sentenced to “eternal life” as punishment. Manages to flip your empathy in very a few pages.
“We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read” by Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed Magazine, May 2024 (Issue 168))
Great. Structurally experimental “story” of an alien transmission from a dying civilization that reads all things at once. They try to make us understand through a multi-column structure that has echoes of House of Leaves.
“Marginalia” by Mary Robinette Kowal (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 56)
Good. A cozy fantasy of a woman who is caring for her brother and mother with palsy. When I giant snail attacks, she must rescue her brother and the Lord of the town.
“Three Faces of a Beheading” by Arkady Martine (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 58)
Good. In a future where history is played out in interactive video games and unnamed narrator grapples with how stories are policed and who has freedom to structure the telling of the past. An admirable story that shows off Martine’s personal brilliance while falling just short of telling a compelling story.
“Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim (Clarkesworld, February 2024)
Good. I hate stories that rework Omelas. (The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas • (1973) • short story by Ursula K. Le Guin.) They are often self righteous and too proud of their own morality - something Le Guin managed to avoid in the original. This has that, but also an evil sense of humor that makes it rise above.
“Stitched to Skin Like Family Is” by Nghi Vo (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 57)
Average. A chinese seamstress in the 1930s can read people’s history while sowing. She travels to a house to discover the horrifying truth of what happened to her brother.