Nebula Awards 2010: Short stories - nominees & my rankings

Official nominees announcement is at SFWA.

7 stories, all first published during 2010. If you like a shocker, "Arvies" might work. Two others are at least readable - "Conditional Love" & "How Interesting: A Tiny Man". One I've not read. Rest aren't worth noting.

If I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there. Link on author or publisher fetches more matching fiction. All stories are online, & download links are included. My rating is in brackets.

List below is in order of my preference, best first, unread last.

1. Adam-Troy Castro's "Arvies" (B); download; Lightspeed, August 2010: An extreme form of slavery.
   
   Caution: This is a very dark story, intended primarily to shock, with extreme cruelty.
2. Harlan Ellison's "How Interesting: A Tiny Man" (B); download; Realms of Fantasy, February 2010; fanfic: Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" retold, with a twist.
3. Felicity Shoulders' "Conditional Love" (B); download; Asimov's, January 2010: Caring for deformed & abandoned children. Deformities introduced by parents because of their quest for genetically tweaked "perfect" babies, a process that sometimes has horrific side effects.
   Related: Judith Merril's "That Only a Mother" far more effectively addresses the same general theme.
4. Vylar Kaftan's "I'm Alive, I Love You, I'll See You in Reno" (B); download; Lightspeed, June 2010: A love story that's a bit too science fictional for my taste.
   A man & a woman. Next door neighbors. Forever in love, never really meeting. A lot of cosmic & relativity adjectives thrown in in the descriptions. In some ways, it's just a review of many popular sf tropes.
5. Amal El-Mohtar's "The Green Book" (C); download; Apex Magazine, 1 November 2010: Cannot make out the head or tail of it.
   There is a magical impossible-to-destroy notebook ("The Green Book") that can be used to chat with some dead - you write something, they write back! And some sort of sinister organization called "Sisters" that apparantly killed the dead you chat via the notebook & ominous implication they'll get to you too for having read their secret.
6. Kij Johnson's "Ponies" (C); download; Tor.com, 17 November 2010: Little (or is it teenage?) girls competing for status & belonging. It's for fans of unicorns, & of unnecessary gory violence.
7. Jennifer Pelland's "Ghosts of New York; download; Dark Faith: Not read. Going by some comments I've read about it, it has something to do with 9/11 terrorist attack in New York.

Related.

1. Other short fiction categories of Nebula Awards 2010: [novelette], [novella].
2. Previous Nebula Awards for short stories: 2009, 2008, 2007.
3. All Nebula Award winners & nominees.
4. Competing awards for "best" short stories of 2010: BSFA, [Hugo].
5. Anthologies collecting "best" short fiction of 2010: [Dozois'], Horton's, Strahan's, Hartwell/Cramer's.
6. Fiction originally published during 2010 (search "Rating: A" for my selections of "good" stories).
7. My "best of 2010" list.
8. "Best of" lists. 

Nebula Awards 2007 - short stories: Brief summaries & my rankings

List below is based on the results of preliminary ballot, final ballot, & the official winners announcement.

Note that naming convention of Nebula Awards can be confusing. "2007" awards are actually the ones to be given in the year "2008"! And they refer to not only the stories published during 2007, but in 2006 as well, & can also include stories published in 2008 (but don't in the list below). They have something called 2-years rolling rule - I never bothered to learn its particulars.

List below is ordered by my preference - best first. My rating is in brackets (ABC: A = worth your time; C = don't bother). Where I have posted a separate review of the entry, link on story title takes you there. Where I am aware an authorized copy of the story is available online, I provide the download link too.

I am among those who actually cares about science fiction as distinct from rest of what goes as speculative fiction. And my classification is intentionally simplistic: if it is not science fiction, it's fantasy! Except when it is not even fantasy - I call that "non-genre". Occasionally, I add other tags to clarify what to expect when you pick up a story.

Story list (best first).

1. [prelim] Mary Robinette Kowal's "For Solo Cello, op. 12" (B); download; Cosmos, February/March 2007; science fiction: A man is forced to make an impossible choice - get his hand lost in accident in return for the life of his unborn child!
2. [final, prelim] Andy Duncan's "Unique Chicken Goes In Reverse" (B); download; Jonathan Strahan (Ed)'s "Eclipse 1: New Science Fiction And Fantasy", October 2007; non-genre, humor: A little child has met an avatar of Jesus Christ!
3. [final, prelim] David D Levine's "Titanium Mike Saves the Day" (B); download; F&SF, April 2007; science fiction: An ordinary mortal becomes a hero in fantastic space legends. Organized as 5 separate stories that trace the evolution of the legends over a century. For me, most important take was a reminder in one the stories - when you want someone's attention, selling a dream works better than selling data.
4. [winner, final, prelim] Karen Joy Fowler's "Always" (B); download; Asimov's, April/May 2007; non-genre: Description of life in a quasi-religious commune. Protagonist comes across as a loser, but otherwise a readable story - occasionally humorous.
5. [final, prelim] Vera Nazarian's "The Story of Love" (B); download; (probably author's own collection titled) "Salt of the Air", September 2006; non-genre: Father/daughter estrangement, & finally patch up.
6. [final] Mary Turzillo's "Pride" (B); download; Fast Forward 1, Pyr, February 2007; non-genre: Joys & pains of raising a big wild carnivore from a little cub. There is a very minor sf element, but it's essentially a non-genre story. Note this wasn't there on preliminary list (is probably a jury nominee).
   
7. [prelim] Melanie Fletcher's "The Padre, the Rabbi, and the Devil His Own Self" (B); download; Helix #2 (Fall 2006); fantasy, humor: Justice is meted out to a conman priest. There are parts related to prejudices among Catholic, Protestant, & Jewish sects that you will probably enjoy more than me if you are familiar with these religions. Not very original plot - there are probably a half dozen Hindi movies that include threads with its theme, & innumerable local tales in India (may be elsewhere too). But I still liked the story.
8. [final, prelim] Jennifer Pelland's "Captive Girl" (C); download; Helix #2 (Fall 2006); science fiction, horror: Gross abuse of three little girls by an agency of the State.

Related.

1. 2007 Nebula Awards novelettes, novellas.
2. 2008 Hugo Awards short stories.
   

Jennifer Pelland's "Captive Girl" (short story, science fiction): Don't bother unless you can stand graphic horror

Another story that had no business being in this year's Nebula Award preliminary list. Or may be there are a lot of people out there that love graphic horror - not my genre.

Full text of this story is available for download.

Story summary.

First & unnamed human colony planet beyond earth. People live under domes. Something attacks it. Lots of people die. Attackers apparently didn't want anything - apart from slaughtering a lot of people!

In the aftermath, local administration wants the skies watched - need ample warning before another attack. Security agency in charge recruits 3 little orphan girls. Their bodies are grossly mutilated surgically - most sensory organs removed, brain linked to some kind of sky watching machine, face permanently covered in some kind of metallic plate, confined & forcibly restrained to a chair, ... They each have caretakers assigned whose job it is keep them alive.

They do 8 hour shifts watching the skies; then be lonely miserable invalids rest of the time. No holidays, since there are only 3 watchers.

Story is told from the point of view of Alice. She was recruited into the program when she was 9, & has been brainwashed to think that she actually volunteered. Her caretaker, Dr Marika DeVeaux, takes a fancy on her incapacitated body - becomes sort of lover, & the only person Alice is somewhat intimate with.

Alice is now 19 - she has spent 10 long years in the program. First one of the girls break down; then other is on the verge of breaking down. Word leaks to civilian administration; they move to shut the program down.

The girls will be rehabilitated & freed - with artificial transplants, but can never be normal either physically or psychologically. And are also ugly, thanks to all the facial mutilation originally done.

Alice's lesbian partner, Marika, no longer wants her - she only wanted the invalid - making the girl depressed. Eventually, Alice will play to Marika's fetish - will become mock invalid when Marika is around!

Fact sheet.

"Captive Girl", short story, review
First published: Helix magazine, #2, Fall 2006.
Rating: C
Passed first round of Nebula Awards 2007 nominations in short story category.