The Hugo Shortlist, 2006: Novelettes

Here's another set of reviews of the components of the Hugo fiction shortlist. I thought this novelette list was pretty fine. The Ryman story is the only one included in my Best of the Year books, but "The Djinn's Wife" was definitely in the mix (excluded for one reason, as I have mentioned about other stories, because I didn't want to have too many Asimov's stories). 3 of the 5 stories were from Asimov's, again an excellent showing.

I could easily switch places 3 and 4 in this list -- otherwise it's a fairly firm ballot.
 
1. Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter (Fantasy), by Geoff Ryman (Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 2006)
 
A gem. It is et in very near future Cambodia. A young woman grows up isolated, and very rich: she is Pol Pot’s beautiful daughter, but she is obstinately naïve about her father’s legacy. She finally meets an interesting young man, who jumps to just the wrong conclusion about her mysterious past. She must come to terms with this man’s expectations, and with the expectations of the myriad tortured ghosts her father left behind. From an unexpected angle, the story manages to convincingly portray Cambodia, and to bring tears in its evocation of plight of Cambodia’s ghosts. 
 
2. The Djinn's Wife, by Ian McDonald (Asimov's, July 2006)

"The Djinn’s Wife" is set in the same future India as his wonderful novel River of Gods and last year’s excellent Asimov’s story "The Little Goddess". Both of those were also Hugo nominees. An older woman tells a story about a beautiful dancer who married a djinn. But human/djinn relationships never turn out well. So is this a fantasy? No, for the "djinn" here is an AI, capable of interacting with people’s phones/PDAs (or "’hoeks" in the story’s idiom) to project images, talk, and even make love. The backdrop is the water war that was central to River of Gods. The dancer and her AI lover are from the two rival countries, Awadh and Bharat. Their love affair is played out against the backdrop of that coming war, and of threats against the continuing existence of high-level AIs, and inevitably one or the other or both will be tempted to betrayal. It’s a strong and moving story driven by both human problems and by intriguing SFnal ideas. I did feel, just a bit, that its impact was lessened for one who has already read the novel: but it remains a first rate piece.

3. Dawn, and Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth, by Michael F Flynn (Asimov's. October/November 2006)

This story intertwines the stories of a number of survivors of a strange disaster: a ferry in Seattle’s Elliott Bay disappears without a trace into some anomaly. The story follows the response of a number of witnesses, and relatives, and investigators, in the years to follow. Reactions vary: religious enlightenment, despair, scientific curiosity, guilty relief, and so on. I thought some of the bits unconvincing, the characters too conventional, but other parts, and in particular the end (and the Rupert Brooke quote), are quite moving.

4. Yellow Card Man, by Paolo Bacigalupi (Asimov's, December 2006)

Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the future of his celebrated story "The Calorie Man" with "Yellow Card Man", about a once successful businessman, a Chinese man in Malaya, who has been expelled to Thailand, where he must grub daily for scraps of work. His feelings of degradation are sharpened by his interaction with a now more successful younger man, a man he had fired for fraud in his earlier life. This is a convincingly dark story, with redemption of a sort on offer but not easy for a fallen man to grasp. That said, I rank it fourth on this ballot -- partly because my imagination wasn't ever excited -- that is to say, my SF jones was left a bit unsatisfied.

5. All the Things You Are, by Mike Resnick (Jim Baen's Universe, Oct 2006)

A cop encounters a mystery -- a couple of people who seem to be asking to die -- acting in absurdly heroic ways. He tracks it down to a distant planet, and goes there to look for the secret. What he finds is fairly interesting -- and the end result is predictable enough. I thought the story OK, but not brilliant. I wasn't really convinced, for one thing. And the mysterious answer, while not stupid, isn't all that fascinating, or SFnally intriguing, either. By no means is this a bad story, but it's not Hugo worthy either.