Hugo Awards 2010 - novellas: Nominees & my rankings

Official announcement at AussieCon4. Covers fiction originally published anywhere in English during 2009.

I've read only one story so far - a very ordinary one.

Nominees (6 stories, best first, unread last)

If I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there. For read stories, my rating is in brackets. Links on author, editor, or publisher fetch more fiction from source. Download links are included where I'm aware of an online copy.

1. Charles Stross' "Palimpsest" (B); download (available for the duration of Hugo voting in 2010); Wireless (collection?): There are "ideas" here for at least 2 dozen stories, & I don't mean that as compliment. I found it a confused jumble of ideas rather than a coherent story; finished it only because I was determined to finish at least one story from this list. Also, there are things here designed to shock the reader - for the sake of shocking rather than to further any goal of the story.
   
   There is some sort of society of time travelers that keeps reengineering things to the end of the universe - prolonging life of sun, making solar system go traveling through intergalactic void, reintroducing humans on earth every time they keep getting extinct (which they're very good at doing). Sometimes restarting life on earth at microbe level & let it evolve; I could not figure out how it always evolved to humans as smart species! Plus conflict within this society of time travelers - incumbents vs rebels, with a small thread on how organizations tend to become an end in themselves & lose sight of what they were created for.
2. Nancy Kress' "Act One"; download; Asimov's, March 2009: Not read.
3. John Scalzi's "The God Engines"; as an independent book by Subterranean: Not read.
4. James Morrow's "Shambling Towards Hiroshima; as an independent book by Tachyon: Not read.
5. Ian McDonald's "Vishnu at the Cat Circus"; Cyberabad Days (coll): Not read.
6. Kage Baker's "The Women of Nell Gwynne's"; as an independent book by Subterranean: Not read.

Related.

1. Other fiction categories in this year's Hugo awards: short stories, novelettes, novels.
2. Last year's Hugo awards: short stories, novelettes, novellas, novels.
   
3. Competing awards that recognize "best" fiction originally published in 2009: Nebula (US) - short stories, novelettes, novellas; Aurialis (Australian authors); BSFA (fiction published in UK); Prix/Aurora (Canada); Million Writers (global, online short fiction).
   
   Note the scope of Nebulas is 1.5 years - later half of 2008 & all of 2009. All other awards only care about 2009.
4. Anthologies that collect "best fiction originally published during 2009": Dozois', Hartwell/Cramer's, Horton's, Strahan's.
5. My "best fiction originally published during 2009, 2010" lists (also link others' best of relevant year lists at bottom).
6. "Best of" lists.
7. Fiction originally published in 2009, during 2000-2009.
   

Note: I normally update list posts like this when I read a story, find new links, etc. This post was last updated 1 May 2010.