I’ve read some Hugo Award for Best Short Story winners, and only like 1 is good, others are either mediocre or just straight-up trash.

To be fair, I didn’t really read the winners of Hugo Award for longer stories, because most of them don’t have Chinese translations, and reading them raw would just take me so much time. Short stories, on the other hand, are really really short, like I could finish most of them in 30-40 minutes, sometimes less, and book publishers often just post them for free on their websites, like a blog post, so reading them is really a fast and convenient way to absorb some Hugo Awardees.

Unfortunately, although reading short stories in a quiet room with some chill music on really gives me some precious peaceful time, most of the stories are very bad, or at least don’t deserve the award. The following is what I’ve read:

Not all of them are award winners, some are just nominees, “just”.

To give a quick summary, of the 7 short stories I’ve read, 1 is really good, 1 is not bad, 1 is mediocre, and the rest 4 are either trash or why-the-fuck-does-it-win-an-award-for-speculative-fictions.

Now I’ll give my thoughts on each story, in chronological order of when I read each story.

I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter

  • awards: Hugo Award for Best Short Story nominee (2021)
  • rating: mediocre

This story is a bit funny. The story itself is mediocre. It conveys something, but nothing really insightful. However, it caused a lot of controversies, mainly because people can’t read.

So the story is a bit of a clickbait. The core story is just about the government brainwashing people. Not a new concept, you see this kind of stories every now and then. But the author make the brainwashing part connected to gender, saying that since gender is a social construct, like boys become tough because they are told to be tough by society, we can just construct a gender of attack helicopter, this way we can generate great attack helicopter pilots at no cost, because they would become one themselves once given the gender. It doesn’t really change the core concept, as it’s still straight-up brainwashing into what they want you to be, but it would attract so much attention, good or bad, just by connecting that to gender, as political correctness is very trendy.

Political correctness isn’t a bad thing to pursue, but the thing is that, there are many brain-damaged normal people ({people | IQ>70} - {people | have functional brain}) out there, and when they participate in political correctness movements or debates, they say many retard things, and with other retards agree with them, they start canceling things. As of this story, just because the whole story is a clickbait, with the title from a meme that is considered transphobic, it caused controversies, and the author is attacked by retards thinking they’re advocating for political correctness. What’s more hilarious is that, because of the title, it is supported by retards on other sides, namely, the real transphobic side, while the author is actually a trans herself.

So much drama, and so much backlash from people who can’t read, the author even took out the story for some time.

To sum up, a clickbait story that attracts attention from both sides, causing controversies, while the story itself is just nothing special.

(I wrote this 6 months after I finished it, so I could get something wrong, despite my best effort to recall. Here(archive)’s a lengthy article explaining the whole drama in a fairly neutral POV tho.)

As the Last I May Know

  • awards: Hugo Award for Best Short Story (2020)
  • rating: really good

It’s a very short story of 5400 words, about a very interesting model.

There’s a very powerful weapon, so powerful that it would destroy the world or something like that. To prevent moral hazards, they set a rule that to launch the weapon the president has to use a dagger to get the launch code hid inside a preselected little girl’s chest.

There’s an order that acts like a creche for this role. They’d give the selected children different education, and ultimately select one of them as the “carrier”, the carrier of the launch code. It’s viewed as an honor, and the kid would have to be close to the president at all times in case of emergencies.

The carrier has never been activated, however, since the foundation of the order.

The story is about a 12yo girl selected as the carrier. She’s a poet, and published some of her poetries under the guidance of the order. Everyone loves her poems and her, so many people start protesting because they think such a lovely girl can’t be killed.

The president is mad about it because it makes the cost of making the decision greater.

The nation is in a war then, in which they keep losing. Finally, it’s the moment where the weapon has to be used. When the president is about to use the dagger to stab the girl in the chest, he starts trembling and ultimately let go of the dagger and be like “Find me another way!”

After that the order discovers a hack to get the code without hurting the girl. The end.

The model is very powerful as in the mental cost of using the weapon is so high. If they still aren’t mentally prepared to stab the girl in order to get the launch code, it means that the situation isn’t bad enough for the weapon to be used.

 “It’s not about right and wrong,” she said to him. “It’s about making it hard.”

The author, Shi Lian Huang, has a degree in math from MIT btw.

If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love

  • awards:
    • Nebula Award for Best Short Story winner (2013)
    • Hugo Award for Best Short Story nominee (2014)
  • rating: wtf

Very poetic, but not a speculative fiction at all (mind if I remind you that both Hugo & Nebula award are for speculative fictions).

Don’t know what to say. Really just a tiny story, some blocks of text. 900 words, isn’t really able to make me feel anything.

This “story” is talking about the narrator’s fiancé (M) being killed by some random people, probably gang members? Written in first person POV, in a very poetic way. I feel like it should be able to win some awards for pure literature, but definitely not awards for science fictions and fantasies like Hugo & Nebula.

The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere

  • awards: Hugo Award for Best Short Story (2014)
  • rating: wtf & trash

See The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere.

Emergency Skin

  • award: Hugo Award for Best Novelette winner (2020)
  • my rating: trash

Totally undeserved the award. Just a wholesome 100 story, not caring about the nature of human beings whatsoever. Everyone should just stop being bad, and start being good, that would solve everything, how insightful is that! I imagine the author blew up his own mind when he came up with that.

Seasons of Glass and Iron

  • awards:
    • Nebula Award for Best Short Story (2016)
    • Hugo Award for Best Short Story (2017)
    • Locus Award for Best Short Story (2017)
  • rating: wtf

See Seasons of Glass and Iron.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

  • awards: Hugo Award for Best Short Story (1974)
  • rating: not bad

The core concept of this story is pretty similar to that of As the Last I May Know, but it’s more …… simple, not as profound as the latter.