My votes for the 2021 Hugo Best Novella Award

A strong set of nominees are contending for the 2021 Hugo Award for Best Novella. Any one of these deserve to win, but I have to rank them for my ballot. You can get a list of where to find the 2021 Hugo Award Finalists for free online at File 770.

I’ve ranked my choices more or less on how hard I think the story pushes the literary possibilities — I believe we can declare that speculative fiction is as literary as any other kind of writing. By that I mean that speculative fiction can use every tool available to writers.

My votes:

6. Come Tumbling Down, Seanan McGuire (Tor.com) As a continuation of the Wayward Children series, the story is a return to familiar characters trying to cope with the horrible fantasylands that have claimed them. They’ve learned truths and skills over time, and they’ve changed. The story is an exciting, entertaining time with old fictional friends, best for readers who have been following the series.

5. Upright Women Wanted, Sarah Gailey (Tor.com) In a dystopian American West, a young woman joins a team of traveling librarians, and the journey takes her to peril and self-discovery. More adventures seem to lie ahead, and I’d enjoy reading about them.

4. Finna, Nino Cipri (Tor.com) When a portal to another dimension opens in a store much like a very bad IKEA, a customer is lost. A pair of employees who have just broken up a romance are assigned to find her. Fun ensues, and the story ends on a profound note: There are infinite multiverses of possibilities, and maybe this is the one where you need to be.

3. Ring Shout, P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com) A trio of black women fight the supernatural force that has tapped into Ku Klux Klan hatred in Georgia in the 1920s to create monsters. Horrors build on horrors until they reach an urgent and spectacular showdown involving the film The Birth of a Nation on Stone Mountain.

2. Riot Baby, Tochi Onyebuchi (Tor.com) A baby born during the Rodney King riot and his sister, who has potentially violent supernatural powers, grow up and cope with the disasters of racism and poverty in their lives. The story ranges between beauty and brutality, suffering and love, and despair and hope.

1. The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Nghi Vo (Tor.com) A cleric visits an old, almost abandoned palace to try to learn how the Empress of Salt and Fortune managed to take the throne. The items in the palace and an elderly servant have the answers. The narrative moves with slow, deliberate, captivating complexity to reach the heights of sorrow, anger, and redemption.