It’s that time of year again– when we swap out our tank tops for flannels, and our careless summer fun for anxiously awaiting important news. About what, you ask? Why, for the winners of the Hugo Award to be announced, of course. Was that not your first guess? We have had almost this exact conversation all too many times, and have reluctantly accepted the fact that people in our orbit do not care very deeply about the most prestigious annual award that a work of science fiction or fantasy can win. That being said, now is a better time than ever to get interested, as the winners of the awards are to be announced on October 21, 2023, but finalists for each category are already public. To aid you on your quest, we have done the hard work of picking some of our favorite works that have been nominated in the hopes that you will read them.

“Rabbit Test” by Samantha Mills is our pick from the Short Story category, which includes works of fiction less than 7,500 words. It tells the story of a teenage girl in 2091 who lives in a world where technology can surveil her body at a moment’s notice and report back to her parents and doctors. Through this, she discovers her unwanted pregnancy, sending her on a destined-to-fail journey for an abortion. We enjoyed the stylistic choice that Mills made to interrupt the main narrative with flashes and snippets of other women’s lives as they go through the same struggles. It helps in illustrating how commonly, and more importantly, how long women have been fighting for themselves. Some of these women are named, while many are not, but all of them carry a pain someplace deeper than their wombs. “Rabbit Test” is a story about all women, as our grasps at full autonomy weave us together. 

The Novelette category consists of stories with between 7,500 and 17,500 words. One story that stood out to us from this category was “We Built This City” by Marie Vibbert. We follow Julia, who enjoys her job cleaning and doing maintenance on the dome protecting their Venusian city. Even though Julia and her coworkers have a vital job, their department barely receives any financial support. The plot is kick-started when all but four of the crew are let go. They don’t get the recognition or fair treatment that they deserve. This novelette highlights the way that people look down on and mistreat others that they think are less than them, both with the treatment of the maintenance workers and with the way that other characters are treated, especially when they don’t appear well off or important. 

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno Garcia is a contender for the Novel category, and a thrilling reimagining of the novel The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells. Set in 1800s Mexico on a lavish, isolated estate called Yaxaktun, 20–year-old Carlota Moreau lives with her father, her father’s employee Montgomery Laughton, and the doctor’s creations: the hybrids. These part human, part animal creatures are Doctor Moreau’s life’s work, but that doesn’t mean that he has created them entirely successfully, or that he treats them well. The hybrids struggle with frequent pains and aches, and have to be given regular doses of a secret medication in order to regulate their pain and other ailments. Moreau’s work with the hybrids is funded by Hernando Lizalde, who only funds the work because of his wish to use the hybrids for cheap labor. Lizalde is also responsible for the presence of Montgomery, having brought him to Yaxaktun so that he can pay off his debt to Lizalde. This story is vibrant and bold, and the descriptions of the hybrids in particular are vivid and intriguing. The themes throughout the book are as engaging as the prose, and include topics such as colonialism, the morality regarding the experiments of Moreau, and how control is used against people, sometimes without them even realizing. 

We believe that many readers turn their noses to science fiction and fantasy because the concepts can seem a little too “out there” for some. While we understand that sentiment, we would argue that in a good piece of sci-fi or fantasy literature, the narrative benefits from the unfamiliar settings or technologies. “Rabbit Test” utilizes distant medical advancements to form a speculative short story tackling the issues surrounding reproductive rights, something that most of us should be familiar with. “We Built This City” comments on workers’ rights, but moves the workers to another planet to recontextualize the problem. The Daughter of Doctor Moreau discusses the use of control in relationships, especially when it comes to the patriarchy as a source of this power inequality, but these control and relationship dynamics frequently include inhuman hybrid characters in order to reframe the problem. By taking us as readers into an unorthodox situation, good authors give us a palate cleanser, setting-wise. With this, a writer provides biting social commentary using a world that isn’t even ours.