Size / / /

This week sees round whatever of this debate, occasioned by the opening of nominations for this year's Hugo Awards. I lean more towards the side of reticence about this sort of thing, for reasons that are probably easily explained, but I can justify doing at least this much, because the information isn't immediately transparent:

We published just the one new novelette last year, "In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind" by Sarah Pinsker. All our other original fiction was (so far as the definitions used by most SF awards are concerned) short stories.

The following authors we published last year gained eligibility for the John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer as a result (i.e. we were their first professional sale). If you liked their stories here, and are eligible to nominate, do seek out other work by them and consider them for this award.

In addition, the following writers we published last year were already Campbell-eligible:

You can find more Campbell-eligible writers listed here, some of whom haven't even sold stories to SH. A lot of people are recommending Benjanun Sriduankaew for a nomination, for instance, and they're not wrong to do so.

Also, so far as general short fiction nominations go, I'm still putting my ballot together, but I'd recommend all of the following for consideration:

  • Novella

  • Novelette

  • Short story

    • "We're All Gonna Have the Blues" by Rodge Glass (in Beacons ed. Gregory Norminton)
    • "Droplet" by Rahul Kanakia (in We See a Different Frontier eds. Fabio Fernandes and Djibril al-Ayad)
    • "Vector" by Benjanun Sriduankaew (in We See a Different Frontier eds. Fabio Fernandes and Djibril al-Ayad)
    • "Saga's Children" by EJ Swift (in The Lowest Heaven eds. Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin)

(EJ Swift would be a good Campbell pick, too.)



Niall Harrison is an independent critic based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. He is a former editor of Strange Horizons, and his writing has also appeared in The New York Review of Science FictionFoundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, The Los Angeles Review of Books and others. He has been a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and a Guest of Honor at the 2023 British National Science Fiction Convention. His collection All These Worlds: Reviews and Essays is available from Briardene Books.
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