The 2025 Hugo Best Short Story Ballot

The Hugo Short Story Final Ballot, 2025

by Rich Horton

I have now read the six short stories on the 2025 Hugo Final Ballot. I'll discuss each story briefly, then give my (for now) ballot, and make a few remarks about the state of nomination/voting which will possibly be familiar to anyone who has read me when I do these things for at least the last decade. I will say two things upfront -- none of these stories are bad. I'd have run anything them in a hypothetical magazine I was editing. But do any of them really deserve a Hugo? Let's see ...

The stories, in no particular order:

"Five Views of the Planet Tartarus", by Rachael K. Jones (Lightspeed, January 2024)

This story is flash fiction -- less than 600 words long. It is very rare for flash fiction to get nominated for major awards, especially flash quite this short. Does it deliver enough?

It's really quite simple: what appear to be political prisoners are taken to the ringed planet Tartarus, where they are tried, sentenced (there is only one sentence, and "Innocent" is not a potential outcome of the trial.) The punishment is quite horrifying -- they are essentially given immortality, then immobilized permanently so that only their eyes work. I won't detail the ending, because there is a rather effective last line that I won't spoil. And that's it.

Is it good for its length? Yes it is, and if I was an editor and it came across my desk, I'd have bought it. Is it worthy of a Hugo? I don't think so. It's worth its almost 600 words, but that's about it. It doesn't really say anything much new, or develop any characters, or tell an actual story. What it is is good flash fiction. No shame in that, but I don't see it as award-worthy.

"We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read", by Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed, May 2024)

The story never tells you -- exactly -- what is going on. Or perhaps that is all it does! It appears to be a record of interactions between one race and another, with one race trying to communicate with the other. The implication is that this represents aliens coming to Earth, but the story is, I think, more universal than that. It is told primarily in parallel columns of text, suggesting a sort of translation -- one column being for one race, the other being the other's response or understanding.

It's quite intriguing, and it is the most formally experimental, essentially the "newest" story on this ballot. It's the kind of story I want to see, and I'm happy to have read it, and it was on my personal nomination ballot. Having said that, I do think that while it is successful on its terms, and it's a very good story -- it didn't quite wow me the way my favorite stories have. But we can't always be that lucky!

"Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole", by Isabel J. Kim (Clarkesworld, February 2024)

As the title tells us, this is a story in dialogue with "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas". I should note right away that there are a LOT of pieces in dialogue with Le Guin's great story. Easily enough to fill an anthology, I'd think. But that raises a problem -- does the story say anything really new?

The basic premise is that somebody breaks into the place the suffering kid is kept in, and kills it. All of a sudden, Omelas is a terrible place -- there are natural disasters, disease, crimes, even trolls on social media. But once the authorities grab another kid and put them in the hole and torture them -- everything is wonderful again. But then that kid is murdered, and the cycle repeats. And again, and again ...

It's very cleverly told, quite funny, effectively dark. It's a good story, even really good. It makes all kind of pretty explicit contemporary points, and universalized them in time too. I liked it. And I'll note that it's already won the BSFA, the Nebula, and the Locus awards. But ... I pretty much think everything the story says is implicit in Le Guin's original. It's just expanding on what any reader should have thought about while unpacking "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" -- and, indeed, N. K. Jemisin's "The Ones Who Stay and Fight". It's doing so in entertaining and intelligent ways, mind you, if also in a rather didactic fashion that I think has become pretty common these days. In the end, this is a good story, but I would hope there might be better choices.

"Marginalia", by Mary Robinette Kowal (Uncanny, January-February 2024)

This is set in what seems a fairly conventional medievalish fantasy world. Margery is a peasant woman, caring for her mother in a cottage on the estate of Lord Strange. Margery and her mother both had worked at the Lord's house, but had had to stop when the older woman became ill. The Lord had given them a cottage in which to live, and they have just enough to get by, along with Margery's ten year old brother Hugh. Then Hugh brings news -- a giant snail is attacking. Apparently, these incursions are common, and it is the Lord's place to drive the snail away. Hugh, who desperately would like to be in the Lord's service, wants to watch the action, and Margery allows it -- only to be horrified when the Lord's horse runs by, with no rider. She realizes that the Lord has somehow failed, and that Hugh is in danger, and she decides to look for her brother, bringing medicinal supplies -- plus one crucial ingredient her mother suggests -- and sets out. She learns quickly that Hugh is safe, but the Lord has fallen and been trapped under a tree, and the snail is still on the loose ...

Of course, Margery manages to save the day, in a reasonably plausible way. The heart of the story is the aftermath, which is plainly and rather mundanely told -- on purpose. For the only real result is that Lord Strange comes to realize that he hasn't really valued his servants and their knowledge and imagination highly enough. And also that just showering them with gifts isn't really a solution.

All this is nice enough -- and, yes, didactic, but in a sufficiently subtle fashion that it's effective. It's solid piece of work, good stuff -- but, well, it's just fine, it's not great.

"Stitched to Skin Like Family Is", by Nghi Vo (Uncanny, March-April 2024)

"Stitched to Skin Like Family Is" is told by a young woman of Asian descent, who has the power to sense past events experienced by whoever might have worn a piece of clothing she holds. It's set in Illinois in 1931, and she's looking for her brother, whose letters have stopped reaching her. She works as a seamstress, and of course jobs are hard to find, and after an opening scene establishing both the racism of the time, and the problems a woman traveling alone faces, she makes her way to her brother's last address, which turns out to be a boarding house. She is welcomed in, and mends some clothes in exchange for board -- and learns of the horror of that house.

It's effective enough, well-written, and the narrator and her brother come through well, though the other characters are ciphers. The magic is -- a device, primarily, and I like to see more from fantasy elements; and the resolution is predictable and somewhat trite. Again -- a story I'd publish, but not to my mind a Hugo candidate.

"Three Faces of a Beheading", by Arkady Martine (Uncanny, May-June 2024)

This story is pretty interesting, but in the end didn't quite come through for me. The beheading is an historical event -- a rebellious soldier is punished because her rebellion failed, in essence. An image of the beheading shows up in a game environment, and the implication is clear to some: in certain situations, rebellion is the only moral action, even if it means you'll lose your head. Or is it so simple -- Martine is an historian, and she notes, with footnotes, the way that historical events, historical images, are contextualized and recontextualized over time history is not just written by the victor, it is rewritten again and again over time. The story is philosophically interesting, intriguingly narrated, and its point is intelligent and meaningful. Still -- as a story qua story it didn't really thrill me. I can definitely nominating this for a Hugo -- in any given year I don't think I'd vote it first.

Well, then -- what does that mean for my votes? I'll note one thing in advance -- I really haven't read very many more 2025 short stories. Through 2021, I typically felt I could speak authoritatively -- within the bounds of my personal taste, of course -- as to which stories really were the best of any given year. But in those days I read literally hundreds, even thousands, of short stories each year; and basically everything from the top markets. That isn't so any more. So I can't really tell you that there are a number of stories that deserved a Hugo nomination as much as these stories did -- but I strongly suspect that's the case.

One reason is a long-standing complaint of mine. The six stories on the short story ballot this year come from three sources, all online, all free to read. Three from Uncanny, two from Lightspeed, one from Clarkesworld. Don't get me wrong -- I admire all three sites -- and I worked for Lightspeed for several years. They are three of the four top online sources of short science fiction and fantasy -- Tor.com being, in my opinion, the fourth. And they are all very fine ezines. But, as usual in recent years, there is nothing from the print magazines -- nothing from Asimov's, nothing from Analog, nothing from F&SF, nothing from Interzone or Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. It's my opinion -- it has been for years -- that the chief reason stories from those magazines -- all also excellent -- don't get nominations is that you have to pay to read them. (And once there's any buzz about a story it's easier to find it online to read.) I don't have a solution to this issue, but to my mind the practical result is that the present day Hugo for short story and novelette is essentially for "Best Story published online".

Anyway, given that caveat -- here's what my ballot will look like. (Subject to change, for course.) And keep in mine -- none of these are bad stories. Their authors should all be proud.

1. "We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read", by Caroline M. Yoachim

2. "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole", by Isabel J. Kim

3. "Three Faces of a Beheading", by Arkady Martine

4. "Marginalia", by Mary Robinette Kowal

5. "Five Views of the Planet Tartarus", by Rachael K. Jones

6. "Stitched to Skin Like Family Is", by Nghi Vo

(Still free!)