2025 Hugo-nominated Short Story Panel

Hey there, everybody. Welcome to a special episode of the Hugo's There podcast. I've done these before, but I missed a year, but I'm reconvening my panels on... Hugo nominees for the fiction categories, and we're going to start with short stories. I'm planning to do a couple of these. You will recognize some of the faces if you're seeing this on YouTube. You will recognize certainly the voices.

if you're not watching it on YouTube, because everybody here has been on the podcast before. So I will go ahead and introduce everybody. Cora Bulerk, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me again. It's great to have you. And then we have Scott Ullery. Hey, Scott. Hey, Seth. Thanks for having me. And we also have Lisa McCarty from Narrated.

Hi, Seth. Thanks for having me. Yes. And my continued joke that I'm not going to let go is that I'm unofficially co-hosting or hosting the narrated discussion. for the short stories, because you've already done episodes on novels and novellas, I think, right? And you're doing one on series? Yes. And then we have Emmanuel Dubois. Hey, Emmanuel.

Bonjour, Seth. Hey, and this is your first discussion panel, but you have been on the podcast and on Take Me To Reader as well. Yes, exactly. And I'm glad to be here with you. Yes. And then Sarah Elkins, also a veteran of many of these and a couple episodes of the regular podcast. Hi, everybody. It's great to be back. It's great to have you.

Okay, so before we get started, I will run down the list of nominees and then we're each going to lead out on one of those and just kind of start the discussion and then we'll kind of give them all a bit of a mulling over and maybe talk about which our favorites are. Okay, so the nominees are Five Views of the Planet Tartarus by Rachel K. Jones, Marginalia by Mary Robinette Cole, Stitched to Skin Like Family Is by Nii Vo, Three Faces of a Beheading by Arkady Martine,

We Will Teach You How to Read by Carolyn Yoakum, and Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim. Okay. most of these, I think all but two of them are available as audio. Is that right? Or is it half of them? Yes, I think all but two. Four of them, yeah. Okay, yeah. So it's short stories, you know, don't get spoiled if you don't need to. They're all...

available if you're at least they're in the hugo packet but i think most of these are available to read for free is that right i think all of these are available yes yep yeah so like i said don't you know don't let us spoil it on these stories because there's some good stuff in here

So we're going to go ahead and kick off the discussion with Five Views of the Planet Tartarus, and Cora is going to lead out on that. Well, as Cess just said, Five Views of the Planet Tartarus by Rachel K. Jones was published in the January... 2024 issue of Lightspeed. It starts with a shuttle arriving at the prison planet Tartarus, and the planet is surrounded by rings of some kind of space debris.

One of the prisoners asks the pilot, do you really have to hit every single one because the shuttle keeps bumping into that space debris? And the pilot always replies, we always try to hit as many as we can. Then we get a brief description of the trial, which has a foregone conclusion. It's basically a sham trial. However, the entire sentence is read out because apparently we have to torture those poor prisoners even.

Yeah, I work as a core translator. I know how torturous reading out endless sentences can be. And then we get a description of the... punishment. I mean, I will have to spoil this because otherwise it's kind of difficult to discuss the story. I'm really sorry. It's also only 500 something words long. So just go ahead and read it. Read it or listen to it. It's very short.

Well, we get the punishment, and the punishment is eternal life, which sounds good for now, except that the way it's done is terrible. The prisoners are giving nano injections. which repair all the damage. They briefly feel young again, but then the nano injections also paralyze them. Only the eyes can move. Then they're stuck into spacesuits and shot out.

into the orbit of Tartarus to float among the space debris, which we finally realize is basically the rings are floating prisoners, because this is an authoritarian regime and they have a lot of prisoners. And the story ends and the prisoner and the spacesuits last for 200 years. The prisoners cannot die, so they're basically stuck floating in space around Tartarus for 200 years and quickly grow mad.

go mad and just hope to die and to be hit by some kind of random piece of space junk or space debris. And the story ends as it began with the shuttle coming back. And now we finally realize why the pilots try to hit as many of those space debris parts, which are really prisoners, as they can.

And this was actually the only story on my personal ballot, which made the actual Hugo ballot. It's very, very short, very punchy, extremely, extremely powerful. I think also, let's say, resonates more, especially with these difficult times in the U.S. where people are being snatched off the streets, disappeared, thrown into alligator Alcatraz or some kind of...

Prison in El Salvador. And yeah, I kind of hope Trump and Musk don't read the story because it might give them ideas we don't want them to have. Yeah, this is an extremely dark story. And this is not Rachel K. Jones's first extremely dark story. And I'm going to have to, if she's at the Hugo Awards this year, I want to talk to her.

This was one of my favorites. And I love the fact that it's very, very short. And I like the way it recontextualizes itself at the very end. But it's funny because I talk on my other podcast, Take Me to Your Reader. Colin and I are very different. appreciators of different kinds of fiction. I love a downer ending. I like a dark story. And so this is the kind of science fiction that I really enjoy. So let's go ahead and kick it out to everybody else.

This gave me a very visceral type of horror of what it would be like to be one of those prisoners. Anybody remember the Doctor Who episode with the Amber? where people were trapped, like, I think it was Doctor Who, where people were trapped for like centuries and they didn't age and they were just stuck and couldn't. There was a Fringe episode like that. Was that what you were thinking? It might have been. Anyway, I may have misremembered it. But it was basically time was frozen.

for these people, but they were aware of every passing moment. And it just reminded me of that. And it was, and I still get kind of, you know, flashes of like how horrible that would be from watching that one episode years ago.

That apparently I don't even know what show it was. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was Fringe. Okay. So there's other fiction this year that I don't... I don't think the timing works for it to be directly in conversation with, but yes, there's certainly other fiction finalists this year about being paralyzed and under someone else's control and also about... prisoners and treatment of prisoners. But on a lighter note, the TV show that...

This reminded me of a little when they're forced to sit, stand there and listen to their long, long sentences being read out. It reminds me of the Buffy. the vampire slayer episode where they know the, the, the principal, they're all about to go to graduation. Now they know the prince.

is some horrible demon monster that's going to try and kill them all. And yet they go to graduation and he starts reading the commencement speech. And one of the Buffy gang is saying to the others, I can't believe he's making us listen to this. speech before it all starts. And so making these prisoners who know something horrible, they may not understand what's going to happen, but making them listen to all this, the sentencing of everyone, it just reminded me a little.

of that i can't believe you know he really is a monster um making us listen to the speech first yeah yeah cory you had something to say Yes, well, like I said, I sometimes work as a court interpreter, and in Germany, for people who cannot... who don't speak German well enough to understand the court proceedings, which sometimes even is German, but it's mostly foreigners.

they usually always read out the entire accusation, the writ of accusation, which can be very long and very detailed. I mean, I just had a credit card fraud case in the... in great detail listened everything this guy ordered with stolen credit cards and there was literally lots of sports shoes read out and it can be extremely difficult I've noticed for the

accused to listen to this bit of accusation and they're not allowed to reply I've even taken to telling them before then you don't I know it's hard to listen to this but

Listen, let them talk. You're not allowed to reply. You can reply if you want to later on. So, yes, I can totally understand the torture of having this whole sentence read out. It also reminds me of... of one of the Masters of the Universe comics by DC from, I think it's 2011, where an important character dies and the King of Eternia holds a speech while...

what we know, but he doesn't know. This woman who was basically her husband, except that they never married, and they had to keep the relationship secret standing there. And Adam and He-Man and Tila are squabbling and Tila is like, how long do we have to listen to the speech? And then, yeah, King Randor loves speech, so everybody has to listen to this. bloody speech and yeah so it's just a little bit of extra torture on top of already terrible torture and to Cora's point about the

you know, the spirit of the times. It really is, you know, the cruelty is the point. Right. Yeah. Right. There was a picture just yesterday of some... leaders standing in front of cages laughing in the news, knowing that real people are going to be suffering in those cages. It's pretty heartless. And I agree for some people, the cruelty is the point. Yep. Well, we're all going to die. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. I mean, unless we get stuff full of nanotech that's going to keep us alive forever. True.

Agreed. These days, that doesn't actually sound as good as maybe it might have in the past. Emmanuel, go ahead. Yes. Me, what I found very interesting with this story is first the efficiency of it. I mean, I like the very short nature of it, which does, I think, divers a one-two punch.

I think is the strength of short stories. I like when they do that. I have the same thing with the stitch to skin like family is. I find it's very brief. We'll talk about it later. What I liked also about this story is despite its very short length. There is, I would say, quite a few themes that reasoned back.

in literature. I mean, the fact of being condemned like this with no hope whatsoever of the reverence, that's a very common theme in mythology, in literature. I mean, just Tartarus, if memory serves, is the god of chaos. Just the whole thing revolves, literally, around this conceit. Me, when I read this, it reminded me of the Count of Monte Cristo, who was thrown at jail.

for no reason for, I think, 14 years, basically in a whole, with the same idea. He should rot here for the rest of his life. And we should not talk about this guy. And I just found it... more profound than it looks like on a first read. I think it's one of the stories that you need to read quite a few times to truly appreciate. Yeah. It had resonances to me with I have no mouth and I'm a scream. I thought of that too.

Right. It really is a pretty down, dark ending. It does beg the question, would Oblivion be kinder, you know, at this point? Right. Yeah, and it invites kind of like theological discussions as well. It does. Right, the malevolence of the eternal punishment. You mentioned Tartarus, Emmanuel. I also think of Prometheus, who is... His liver is eternally being torn out, and then it regenerates, so it can happen all over again. So yes, this idea of eternal punishment goes back a long, long way.

And the fact that the way it's described in the story, I mean, the way Madame Jones wrote, it's almost clinical. You know, it feels like a documentary on what you're seeing. It's not meant to be. felt as it's meant to be described if if that makes any sense and i think it adds to the punch effect because it's like you're watching a documentary or something horrible and you go oh my god that that happened

And it makes it very believable in a sense. Like we could do something like that. And it certainly feels believable these days when we see some governments acting.

Yeah. And to your point in terms of the compactness, and I think Seth had talked before in terms of how it loops around, it recontextualized the opening and seeing the space debris and like if you go back and reread that initial there's an extra level of horror that you don't have from oh it's space debris and now you know what the space debris is going back it's

It really gets... Yeah. The first time I read it, when they were going through it, you know, are you really trying to hit those? It reminded me of Galaxy Quest when they're going through the minefield. But this is not a funny story.

Yeah. Galaxy Quest rules, man. Yes. All right. Anything else or should we move on? Okay. Let's go ahead and move on to marginalia. And Scott, you're going to lead on that one. Yes. So this is, as you said, by... Mary Robin Cole, and this is from Uncanny, issue 56. And so marginalia is set in a secondary world loosely inspired by drawings in the marginalia or the sides of older.

older texts that featured scenes of knights and at least in one case a woman fighting off large snails and so in the story Marjorie lives with her brother and mother, caring for her aging mother, who's retired from housekeeping service in the local. local manor to the local lord and she also left service to care for her mother so we have a very there's a very core underlying of kind of caregiving and family ties in that in this. But in the story.

When a particularly large snail is sighted and the local knight's horse shows up riderless, Marjorie goes to find her brother who had been seen trying to... chase down the knight and see the snail. So she's kind of thrust into adventure and maybe being an unwitting hero or unexpected hero.

I really enjoyed this story both for the fun prompt to the story, and I would encourage folks to seek out the original episode. I don't think it's included in the... the the huger voter packet but in the original episode there's also an interview uh with uh mary robinette uh kowal to uh to talk about kind of the origins of it um as well as kind of her experiences with the balance of

caregiving with, you know, adventure or in her case, going to conventions and, and, and that. And so, um, I think she does a great job of balancing that adventure, but also, um,

the kind of day-to-day of life. And in particular, I think this is, I always like when kind of tropes are subverted a little bit and I think this is one where there is mostly a happy ending but there are definitely elements of even the ending where yeah that's nice but it's not really doesn't really work for her situation and i won't go into the details on that but i i like that that balance uh there so all right throw it to the floor anyway anyone want to talk about this one sarah go for it

So, yes, the part I liked the most about this story was the thing about gift giving. This lord of the manor meant to be all beneficent by telling. his servants find, find a nice farm to put this.

housekeeper who's being retired. And he doesn't realize the consequences of his doing that means the daughter of the mother also has to leave service in order to take care of the mother. There's other... gifts that he gives and to his credit does start to realize he has no idea how to give gifts other than if he's courting some grand lady and he's just He starts to realize that, which I've certainly been given gifts that I'm like, oh, no.

Either I just don't want and they're clutter or they're actively really not what I wanted. And now I have to decide whether to hide them, you know, or whatever. It gives us more burden. Yeah, yeah. I don't want to take care of this huge plant you've given me. Now the next time you come back, it'll be dead and you'll wonder where your plant went. So I had a lot of sympathy with that angle and with, you know, I really liked the daughter. She is doing her absolute best.

in this situation to be a loving daughter and a loving sister. Remember to say the polite things to the nobility when they ride through on their grand horses and all that. I liked that viewpoint in the story a lot. Go ahead, Emmanuel.

Yeah, it's funny because of the six stories, the two I like the least, I won't say I won't like them, are the two by the most known authors. So this one and the one by Martine, which we'll talk about later. I like the premise of it, and I like the fact that we take away the light from the night and we go to the common folk, which is, I think, a nice thing to do. But otherwise, I found the tropes to be too predictable.

I mean, I saw this story coming a mile away after a couple of pages and I could see what would go on. And even the way the Lord behaves at the end, which looking for redemption, what you will. I mean, for some reason, I just found it very dull in that respect. Even though I like the whole thing with the snail and the little brother, it felt like a still written TV episode of a series to me.

for some reason it's like good ideas but the execution and the tropes that she used didn't work for me and that's something of an issue I have with Marie Robinette Cowell as an author. I don't know why, but the way she structures her story and the aspects she chooses to explore don't work for me. The Lady Astronaut series, I have the same problem. After...

At 20% of the book, I'm like, okay, I know what's going to happen and I don't need to read the rest, even though I do because I finished the book. But I don't know. It doesn't resonate well with me. Sorry for everybody who loves that story. It's okay. We're all entitled to our opinions. Cora, go ahead. Okay, I seem to be dropping out here. Sorry. Uh-oh. We have frozen Cora. Well, I'll just...

say something to follow on. I really don't want to read more stories that kind of glorify or are complacent with monarchy and aristocracy. But if you're going to read a story like that, this is a good one to read because it does give, you know, kind of the lower person's viewpoint.

Sorry, now I'm back. I just dropped out for a moment. Sorry about that. Yeah, go ahead. Okay, so well, about seeing... it coming the moment the mother mentioned salt I knew what was coming because well I live in a house with a large garden and Snails are sometimes a problem. And yes, salt is one way to get rid of them. It's not very nice if you like snails. And I love snails. As a little girl, I collected snails.

tapped them and got very, very angry and saved them from lawnmowers and got very, very angry when they were hurt. So, but yeah, salt is away. And as soon as you mentioned salt, I knew what was going to happen. But I still found it clever because using salt is something that a peasant woman, like the mother, would know. And a housekeeper. It's not something a lot of the men would know. Because he doesn't have to bother with snails in the garden.

And what also worked for me about the story is the caregiving issue because my mother fell quite, she had been not well for a while, but she fell really ill. 2022 and never recovered from a hip replacement operation. She lived and she died last February. year or so of her life was not very nice. She just had an unpleasant life and at first we still tried to keep her at home as much as possible. So yes, I feel about the caregiving.

That's what kept me away from Chicago, Chicago in the Chicago world kind of person because I couldn't leave my dad alone with her. You could hardly leave her alone at all for longer periods. It was only maybe for an hour or so that you could. I really feel that. to the aspect of feeling trapped because you always have to, even if you love the person, you always have to be there for them. So yes, I felt that aspect. Okay, so that's basically what I wanted to say. Lisa, go ahead. I agree that I...

Definitely could feel. I also accompanied my mother through hospice care, and so I definitely felt that piece of it. And I think she did that.

really well and used it as many artists do to work through something she was going through at the time. I also agree with Sarah about have really being turned off by anything that's got a sort of... monarch monarchical or feudal structure and like you really got to work hard to sell me on uh something on fantasy set in medieval europe at this point i'm a little bit done with it um And so, like Emmanuel, this was not my favorite of the stories. But I did, I think my favorite part of it was...

a little bit of exploration that we get of the relationship to authority in the sort of code switching that the characters do. They change their whole manner of speech when they're talking to the Lord. And even though, you know, he's. blundering around not doing um not really helping matters uh they still feel like they have to have this deference to him yeah

Yeah, this wasn't my favorite either. I mean, I enjoyed it. It was a fun little lark. It does have some deeper layers to it, especially with the idea of... Well, the solution to this problem comes from the peasant class who's more familiar with being in the dirt. I do have a hard time believing that even little boy princes aren't running around the castle finding things.

to kill in gruesome manner. Just from growing up as a boy, it's not just a boy thing, right? It's a little kid thing. You find an anthill and you have a magnifying glass. You know, you're needlessly cruel, unless you're one of those tender hearted kids, which I was not. I think we all have our tender hearted. things, but there's a threshold that it has to meet. But yeah, it was a fun story, but it didn't make much of an impression on me. Okay, should we move on to the next story?

So then we're on to Stitch to Skin Like Family Is. So Emmanuel, why don't you take this one? Yeah, sure. So Stitch to Skin Like Family Is was published in Uncanny Magazine in 2024. I'm not sure which issue though. 57. 57? Okay. Nii Vo, I hope I'm pronouncing her name well. And so we're basically following a young Chinese woman, Chinese American woman, I should say.

on her journey in Dust Bowl America in the 1930s and she's looking for her brother and at first we have this young woman hitchhiking her way all to the way uh to her brother where where she got the letter from him and through the tale we meet a couple of drivers one salesman who doesn't seem like a very nice person and uh

black American truck driver who do seem like a very nice woman. And so we have themes of racism and xenophobia in it. And then the story takes a left turn into horror. when she finally reaches her destination. In a way that I found very clever, I don't know if you want me to go into support right away, I think we can, is that when she touches fabric, she can feel the trauma and the history in it.

And she can even at some point control it, which I found quite interesting. And certainly it was a first for me to read that. And in the end, there is also kind of a symbolism that I think we should explore with the moonlight and everything. Okay. Go ahead, Sarah. Looks like you are. Yes. So, yes, I liked the story a lot.

It is fine with me that we, I'm curious about this magical ability, which I hadn't remembered from other stories. I know I saw one reviewer who didn't like this story because it isn't explained. But for me, I don't have to understand. everything in a story about someone else's magic it was it was a really interesting look at me on how

how something as simple as fabric could be tied up with family and memory. And that comes through in the story, not just through touch, but she recognizes some fabrics during the story that... even before she touches them, and that is partly a plot driver. So I'll be interested to hear more about the moonlight, but the magic... I thought was quite interesting. And the setting of the Dust Bowl and people in poverty is also interesting. The other thing I would say is...

part of the horror that she runs into is a horror I've read a lot in British fiction short stories. The danger that she gets into is a danger that is described.

in a number of, say, early 20th century, late 19th century fiction stories where someone is wandering the countryside and taps on a door and apparently kindly... farm people take them in and that's all i'll say for that but uh it's it's i don't know if it's in conversation with them but it it i i did wonder if what was going to happen was part of what was going to happen. Cora, go ahead. Well, this one was the biggest surprise to me because I've read some other works by Guy Rowe and

They weren't bad, but they never really hit me that way. And I was really surprised how much I enjoyed this. First of all, I love the 1930s Great Depression dust bubble setting. which is very, very well evoked here. And about this psychokinesis, if that's the correct word, with the fabric, there actually is a...

precedent for that, but I would be very surprised if Givo, she might know it, but it's because it's very obscure. But Dorsey Quick, who was a woman pulp writer working in the 1930s and 40s, who's these days mostly remembered because he met Mark Twain at the age, I think he was 11, and he was... And he was an older man and she met him on a riverboat and she was scared of this, was one of these stern or center wheelers. She was scared of the boat and the train who'd been working on riverboats.

explained everything to her and encouraged her. And that's why she's mostly remembered. But she was a very good pulp writer. She wrote lots of things for Weird Tales and Unknown. And in Unknown, she wrote a trilogy of stories called The Patchwork.

There would have been more, but unknown folded, unfortunately. It's called the Patchwork Quilt Trilogy, where there's a... patchwork quilt made up of all sorts of fabric and if you fall asleep touching the fabric you dream of the life of the person who wore the fabric which usually ends very very shockingly and dramatically dramatically in death and those are really really great stories they deserve to be known better they've never really been reprinted

be printed, but like I said, they're pretty obscure, so I'm not sure if Givo knows them. As for the predicament of that... that first her brother Young Yoon and then our narrator gets into. Yeah, that's a quite common thing. There's an interview with Gi Vo where she says this is inspired by a real case called The Bloody Benders, which I've...

never heard about. It's a family who also killed lodgers. But the things I thought about were, of course, first of all, Rosemary and Fred West, which was another real case in the UK in the 1990s. A couple who also killed one of their daughters and lots of young women, women who were boarding with them. And this happened just shortly before I went to university.

in the uk and so i was basically really terrified about staying anywhere anywhere because this had just happened very shortly before and it reminds me of course of norman bates and from psycho and bates motel motel. But there are a lot of such stories all over with the Strange Inn and the Kindly Couple. There's lots of those stories. I mean, Arsenic and Old Lace is another... comedic take on the same theme. But...

Another case which really happened was a serial killer called H.H. Holmes, who was operating in Chicago in the early, I think it was the early 20th century. There was a world fair in Chicago and... And he built a boarding house with all sorts of trap and murdered people. So, yeah, there's a long history to these stories and also a lot of cases which really, really happened.

even though I don't know the specific one. But yeah, this was a story I really, really liked this one. And to your point, Cora, the only other thing I've read from Nivo is the... novella that is uh offered this year for the yugo winning packet um the name escapes me at the title excuse me at the moment but that's the brides of high hill yeah

Thank you. And I was also not that impressed with that novella. I mean, I liked it, not that much, but that story truly impressed me. I mean, there's so much to unpack here. You have clothing as memory and magic, if you will. It's like a vessel for... all that stuff. Whereas usually in a story, it would be like a picture or something written.

garment and i i like that she chose that as a vessel for her story then there is grief and family legacy i mean she literally carries that uh suitcase with her father's and mother's clothing i believe that

So she carries them in a way with her all through the story. Then, of course, there is racism, violence, you know, surviving in 1930s America. It's kind of all put together when she reaches the... boarding house uh you have that tension growing and growing you you can feel something's off you know like this father and his son there's something wrong with them and you're not sure about the daughter even though i mean you do feel like she's in on it

And of course she is. Then there is the ending, which is a mix of vengeance and love because she does kill them. But after they assaulted her. So I don't think she had any intention of doing something like that. from the get-go and then there's that ending when she goes out in the moonlight and takes the clothing off and

It's a very cinematic scene. You could see that scene in a movie where she would unfold them. It's almost a grief ritual in a way. And I thought it was a very nice way to... uh round us three uh up you know it's a very very well package story, which is quite impressive given its very short size. I mean, what I'm saying now is something we'd expect from a novel or maybe a novella, not a short story. That amount of themes that she was able to explore is quite impressive.

Sarah, go ahead. So one thing, the H.H. Holmes serial killer on a grand scale, as opposed to the simple lodger killings. That was 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. And people who want to read more about that can read Eric Larson's The Devil in the White City, which goes into his industrial scale planning.

killing of people um the other thing is uh well i have a different point to make but i could step back and let lisa say her thing and then circle that sounds good um i was just going to say um that um, Nivo has done this, um, sort of imbuing history into objects before, um, with the Empress of Salt and Fortune that was all written in, um,

Which is the first of the Singing Hills cycle that this year's nominated novella is part of that. And Emmanuel, if you've only read that one, I mean, it is a standalone, but I can understand why it wouldn't have made as big of an impact on you because... It's the fifth, I think, in a series, maybe sixth. And so it's, which is an amazing series. But Empress of Salt and Fortune had this, basically, each of the...

Chapters was an object, and the object would be used to further the story, and it was done really beautifully. All right. Sarah, what was the other point? It's not a big part of this story, but the discussion of everyday racism that's just, in this story, it's not the focus. It's just one more thing this young woman has to deal with while she's trying to track down her brother.

from the salesman who tells her she must be Chinese because she's smaller than the Japanese woman he knew before. And it's just one more of the grind. of trying to get by in this very tough world that she's in. It's maybe playing a little into what happened to the brother, but probably not that much. And I just thought that it was dealt with very deftly.

In this story, it's a real pain, but it's just one of all the things she's trying to deal with. Yeah, that reminds me of all the times that... a white man it's inevitably a white man says hey you know there's no white privilege i've worked for everything i've i've gotten and you you want to say yes i i i'm sure you have but you did not have to overcome the fact that you are a white man in a white man's world

exactly it's just part of what people have to go through when they're marginalized in any way yeah Cora go ahead Yeah, well, regarding the clothes that she's carrying around her dead family, there's also a dead sister. That's not just the mother, and I think the mother has a traditional Chinese garment which belonged to the grandmother.

The fact that she's carrying around her dead family's clothing, it did sort of ring true because there is a connection between clothing and grief. I mean, both my parents died within four and a half months of each other. My dad very suddenly in 2023 and my mom in early 2024, not so suddenly. And I still haven't completely...

We lived in the same house. I live on the top floor. Now I basically have the house to myself and I still haven't cleaned out their closets. Closets, not fully. I've thrown some things out. And I've also kept, especially because I'm fairly big, I'm wearing my dad's winter jacket because I needed a new one. This was a nice jacket, so I kept it. I'm wearing his... At this moment, I'm wearing what used to be my dad's house slippers.

He didn't even like the slippers. I bought them for him. And he said they've got a bit more stable. He preferred the softer ones. But he did wear them. And I kept them. And I've since heard that this isn't unique. It happened to other people who started wearing clothes by deceased relatives.

just also kept them. There was a woman whose husband had died and she kept his head, I think, on the hat rack of her... of a wardrobe for ages even though he was dead and she didn't she didn't even wear it so this part also rang true it's her way also because these are poor people people and They probably don't have a lot of other remnants and legacies except for the closing. Yeah. Scott, go ahead. Yeah, I think the other element of the...

The clothing, you know, there are definitely scenes in here of her doing mending and that as working with the clothing or other clothing. And it kind of is also symbolic in terms of... you know, her journey of kind of bringing back together, uh, family in, in what way she can in terms of figuring out what, uh, um, what happened and the. Again, kind of almost the clothing and the mending as mending also of the family story and figuring out what happened as well. So, yeah, I liked how that...

narrative kind of goes through it all. Yeah. I guess I haven't really talked about this one. I really enjoyed this one. I thought, like Emmanuel said, this is a very efficient story.

It gets across a lot of information in a very short amount of time. And yeah, I really enjoyed it. Anything else or should we move on? Okay, let's go ahead and move on to Three Faces of a Beheading and Lisa. All right. Three Faces of a Beheading by Arkady Martine was published in Uncanny Magazine, issue 58, May, June 2024. This story starts with a scene of a soldier.

dramatically beheading herself while making a statement, which I was just going to read. They only call us usurpers because they killed enough of us. How's this for loyalty? And then she beheads herself. And we quickly learned that we were witnessing a scene from a multiplayer role-playing game, and someone has hijacked the game in order to make a statement. Everyone...

And everyone who was participating is then, and just saw it happen, didn't even have anything to do with it, is then banned from the game for two weeks. The structure of the story is pretty unique. We follow a participant in the game who... was taken with the beheading the beheaded soldier statement and wants to do something to get it out in the world. Um, and interspersed, we have sections of historical theory, uh, which, uh,

about how history is written to support a narrative and to have a plot. And we also have interspersed sections that I at least understood to be... The history of some events that were real within the world of the story and were universally known in a way that was written by the victor.

Game follows the history, and it seems clear that whoever orchestrated the beheading in the game had a statement to make about that history. And I thought I really enjoyed the unusual... format, the interspersing of some historical theory and... Also, in an interview with Uncanny, she said that this story was grappling with living in a society where genocide is being perpetrated. Nice. All right, Cora, go ahead.

Well, I'm not sure it worked fully for me, but it's a very, very interesting story. And also one thing we should know is Arkady Metin is a historian in her day job. She's a historian. those texts about history as a narrative, which is inevitably written by the winners. Winners were actually excerpts from an academic work she was trying to write, but that's what she says in that interview, the one that Lisa just mentioned, but that never really went anywhere. And there are even footnotes.

It was an academic work after. One of the footnotes references the Wehrmacht exhibition, which I'm quite familiar with. Most of you probably aren't. In the 1990s, there was an exhibition organized by... by the Hamburg Institute of Social History, which was called Crimes of the Wehrmacht. The Wehrmacht was the name of the Nazi-era and World War II-era German army.

army and it's not the name of our current army so army because sometimes people get it mixed up and it's quite offensive to you to say it even if it's an honest mistake so and At the time, the narrative was like the Nazis were terrible, but it was only the Nazis. It was the Gestapo. It was the SS. It wasn't the Wehrmacht. The Wehrmacht were just the innocent, poor little victims who were forced to conquer all the things. And this was a really...

pervasive narrative all the way from late 40s all the way to the 1990s. Remember, I think it was 1994. And this exhibition basically... It was just mostly photos of people, of partisans being hanged and people being killed and Wehrmacht soldiers grinning and posing with them. with them and it was hugely controversial. Lots of people were complaining about this exhibition and were saying like, oh, this is...

oh, this is terrible, but my grandfather didn't do this. Yes, maybe your grandfather didn't, but somebody else's grandfather did. And there were protests. And I remember I actually went to see this exhibition. I didn't party. I was like, okay. kind of knew that I don't really need to see photos of atrocities. I don't actually think that my grandparents were that great people.

I mean, one guy probably didn't do a lot, simply because he was stationed in Norway, where there weren't a lot of atrocities happening. Might have committed some. I don't have any evidence. The other guy... Let's just say, I'm pretty sure my family, there were things they didn't want me to know because I was stopped from asking questions. But I went to see this exhibition simply to support, and I remember it was a huge queue all over. It was an hour.

town hall was all over the market place but basically this exhibition vision it shattered in narratives which had a false narrative which had been built up for at this point point or almost 50 years and so i found it very interesting that she refers to this and now i'm going to shut up even though i have a bit more to say but i will say that later okay uh emmanuel go ahead yeah so i

I mean, as some of you may know, I'm a trained historian. That's why I have a history podcast. And so I really enjoyed that part about historiography. I mean, I know she has a PhD in Byzantine history. And it shows in her text. It shows also in the...

Tex Callahan series of novels, the way she approaches her work and the way world building is made. And I like when she wrote All Historians a Liar. I agree with that because we're not here to... provide truth we're here to provide a narrative as well research as can be but there is no such thing as an unbiased You just can't because you're using all your knowledge, all your references, all your cultural bias, whether you want it or not. I mean, ask a French historian to write about Joan of Arc.

Ask an English historian to write about Joan of Arc. You're not going to get the same storyline. Even though they might agree on many of the facts, they won't have the same perspective on her. Talk about Elsass and ask Germans. Ask French people, ask Alsatians. Note, my great-grandfather was from Alsace, so...

I have a bit of personal connections there. Exactly. It depends on where you come from, what your point is, what you're trying to say. And that aspect of the story I found very interesting. And the whole VR thing. in a way, the game thing, and all put together with some official narrative and academia. I don't know if it worked for me as a whole. The thing is, I like each part for itself.

But I don't think the sum works as a whole story, if that makes sense. I feel like I'm missing some... common thread that would make it easier for me to digest even though I can appreciate what she was trying to do and I can appreciate the effort of you know shattering the structure, especially in a very short form, which I'm sure was very hard to make and still have any sense to that story. It could have become a complete mess. It's not a complete mess.

But I think it's a bit hard to grapple with, at least for me it was. Yeah, I felt very similar to that way, Emmanuel. Go ahead, Sarah.

So I think part of what Arcata Martine is doing in this story, she isn't just talking about historiography. She's talking about cultural influences. And the game variations are a big, big part of what she's doing. in this story because the game variations are each telling different stories. They're each bringing forward facts, and some of the facts are in agreement, but which facts are centered?

in the stories matters hugely. And I think Arcady, like I, have some friends on Twitch and we watch different friends. play the same game on Twitch. And it's a different game depending on who's playing it. And I think for me, Emmanuel, that's what pulls this together. She's looking at game narratives and how... that influences people. Circling way back to Lisa's point about

This is a story where people are struggling to live in a world where their country is doing some genocide. This is a story where everyone is living in a surveillance society. And yet some of the choices people are making in games is having some cultural influence on people who are watching the games. And so for me, It's a fairly impersonal story in ways with some shocking moments in them. Yes, starting at the beginning. But I really think she's brought a bit of a new angle.

to the discussion of historiography by this game variations over and over where one thing changes and the story is very different. Cora, go ahead. Well, about this in-game, sorry, in-story, historical story that we get interspersed, where she says you can add names, the story of the sword. And what is called the twist headed, headed, headed whatever from the east and the rebellion and against the empire. Empire. Well, she basically says you can add names and.

What I think she's referring to is the story of Belisarius, the Roman general who was sent to put up an uprising in... Byzantium in Eastern Rome, and he was a little too successful and was eventually executed as a traitor. And Belisarius is an interesting... I'm not sure if you, but... When I read this, I immediately thought, okay, this is a variation of the Balisarius story. And the story of Balisarius is interesting.

Because, like I said, I took Latin in school. I never heard the name Balisarius in Latin classes. I never heard it in history classes. But then history was mostly 19th, 20th century. We didn't get a lot of early history. But I heard his name several times in science fiction, because science fiction writers, for some reason, love Belisarius. He's the model for Bell Rios in the foundation stories, in the story The General, which was...

And he also showed up in the TV show in a slightly different version. Well, quite different, actually. He does get a somewhat better ending. He still dies, but at least he doesn't get executed off page as a traitor, but he dies heroically on his own terms. So he showed up on the TV show. Belisarius, and he actually survives, shows up in Last Darkness Fall by Elsprag the Camp, where a historian ends up...

ends up just before the fall of Western Rome. And he recruits Belisarius to his cause and basically tries to preserve Rome and history. So it's fascinating that this historical character... And I'm sure Arkady Metin knows this, is more beloved by science fiction writers than he is by official historians who are not specializing in this area. All right. Other comments on this one? I do just want to mention that I listened to a whole Norwegian railroad construction history podcast.

that was all about its construction during World War II and the atrocities associated with that. There's a whole lot of atrocities in history that don't get the highlight because there are even worse ones that get the headlines. Yeah.

Okay, let's go ahead and move on to We Will Teach You How to Read. We Will Teach You How to Read by Carolyn Yocum. This was published in Lightspeed Magazine in May 2024, issue 168. I'll go ahead and lead off on this one. I'm not sure exactly how to characterize this one other than to say, this is our story, simplified, life, loss, transformation, love, death, iteration. This is, I believe, I'm going to give my best shot at this. I wasn't prepared because we were going to have another guest.

That it's a story of attempted communication from a race that's very short-lived, but that has different mental capacities than we have, or than the receptor species has. Able to think in threads and attempt it. before they die out to establish communication and to pass on their legacy to another species. And this is one that I think if you only read it in print, you're missing out.

because I think the best... implementation of this was the audio version of it. It's extraordinary. And that's what pushes this one over the top of all the other ones, just because it's so different than anything I've ever read. And it's such an accomplishment that that's why my...

it's my favorite and i did listen to this one first before i read it um and i definitely prefer the audio version that's what i was going to ask who has listened to it i have yet to listen to it i've read it i have yet to listen to it but yesterday I've listened to our friend Colin and Phil's episode Science Fiction 101 and they were talking about the short stories and Phil he read it first

And he said, I can't see how that could go into audio. Because when you read it, there is a structure to it that is pretty unique. And you say, how can you possibly do that into audio? But apparently, it was done for audio first. And from what I understand from you, Seth, it's really worth listening to. So I'll do that after we hang up. But it's certainly a unique approach. It reminded me of many science fiction stories, you know, First Contact, what have you, in some sort of way.

Done in a very brilliant way, honestly. Yeah. Go ahead, Lisa. I was going to say, I don't think it was done for audio first. From what Stefan Rudnicki said at the beginning of the episode, he was saying... that he was shown the story that had been purchased. And was told, you know, we want to do this as audio. And he was like, you're kidding me, right? But the way it turned out was just amazing. Very, and like rhythmic and just like musical.

Yeah, it's one of those things where in print, it shows multiple columns and the text encourages you to read both columns simultaneously, which of course is impossible. But there's layers to it too, where you can see that the lines will line up. automatically at times you don't see that quite as much listening to the audio but um but in the print i think you get more of that so i think it definitely rewards both uh go ahead uh scott yeah i

Probably unsurprisingly, I had listened to the audio of this first. I did make sure to go back and take a look at the print version when it came up on the ballot and for the discussion here. This really is... In some respects, an exploration of form, but because it is kind of connected to a first contact, form is substance. And so is probably one of the...

more unique ones on the ballot in that respect. And it is also one that, because it is so novel, it probably bears... listening to or reading a couple of times just to try and, you know, I think you can. have different things sink in, which is actually kind of encouraged in the context of the story as well. Yeah, the repeating nature of it kind of says, you need to read this more than once. Yeah, and just to...

briefly try and summarize how they approach the audio. Essentially, they do it with multiple narrations, and so it's overlaying. the story on top of each other. And using, using the stereo effect as well, right? Where one narrator will be on your left ear and one in your right. So if you're going to listen to this, make sure you have both. Yeah, I do. Well, and that's an important point because I do often listen with.

like one ear earbud in and yeah that's a good point this is one where you you need you need the stereo experience to to fully uh fully get it Yeah. I mean, in some senses, it reminds me a little bit of the Darmok episode of The Next Generation, where there's a language barrier, because fundamentally, the language is different. And here, certainly with the threaded nature of the language, that's a... That's a barrier. Sarah, I think you had something to say.

So far, I've only read it. And to me, what it called back is a lot of poetry, particularly in the 20th century, where they were playing a lot with the format and printing of a poem about sea life in the form of a fish, how it's printed, and other more creative ways than just the shape of it. And it is... We are much more used to processing multiple audio input at the same time, you know, in conversations in a party where you may...

hone in on one thing and back off of another and then suddenly switch when a word from the other conversation gets your attention. But it's possible to do it some in print. I mean, words, it makes me think of... like magic pictures where you're supposed to stare and your eyes change focus and suddenly you can see there is a penguin in the picture that just looked like a bunch of abstract dots.

or things like that. That's not exactly what's going on here, but when you're reading down and reading down, and one on the column on the right... keeps repeating and suddenly one word changes in that. I'll be interested to catch the audio later, but I thought that the print did work fairly well. Again, yes, definitely merits re-listening.

I also think of my sweetheart just Friday was telling me about walking in on his nephew, who is a professional musician who was listening to some music on headphones. Something was on TV that was also music, and he was working, doing some... I forget if he was transcribing or something even more creative compositionally. And he plays the piano. And I also listened to a podcast about some guy who can listen to.

Who can listen to... Right on cue, Sarah. Great sound effect. Thanks, Streetcar. Who can listen to multiple tracks of music all at the same time. repeat them. So we can definitely train our brains to do more than we commonly do for multiple inputs at the same time. And it makes me wonder about this alien life. if they're doing that all the time and they're trying to get us to the point where we can do it so we can really process more like the way they do.

Right, right. And in that sense, it kind of reminds me a little of Arrival as well, right? Or the story of your life. Exactly. Where learning their language, you know, expands the mind as well. Right, by Ted Chiang? Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Emmanuel, go ahead. Yeah, so that story was certainly interesting in both form and depth in the sense that

To go with what Sara said about poetry, it did remind me a lot of French poetry from the early 20th century, especially from Guillaume Apollinaire. I don't know if you've ever read that name. He would, for example, do a... a poem about a bird but the poem would be shaped as a bird uh it would do stuff like that and and you can read it in different ways and what i liked about that story is they use that

effect in a way and also but they used it to teach the value of language and words uh if i may read just a small quote they say love the gift of words we give to our children is our greatest expression of love We want to give this gift to you, even knowing how hard you must work to receive it. And that, to me, is a very good example of what this story is about. There's that language barrier, but also it's a way to unify people.

Because what you learn in your life, especially when you learn a second or third language, is that your brain works with your language. It's not a standalone thing. You know, that's why an American or a French or a Chinese or a Japanese or a... Tunisian they don't think in the same way because you don't think in the same way in Arabic or in French or in English it's

It's your brain's operating system in a way. That's how you structure your ideas. And that's how you structure your life and the way you perceive even very basic concepts in your life. So talk about an alien culture. I have no way of knowing how somebody from Indonesia would perceive something in their daily life. So how about somebody from a few thousand light years away?

that's the kind of question that you were right to mention arrival is another example of such a story but i thought it was done in a very beautiful way in that yes or in a very poetic way and certainly something i've I have not read since I've studied literature like 25 years ago. Lisa, go ahead. Um, I was going to, um, say something else that, uh, that it made me think of, which was embassy town by China. Um, that, uh, yeah.

Where the alien species that they're trying to communicate with speaks in a way that's... There are two sounds at once and they have to be made in concert. And so there's pairs of humans that are being trained to be mentally aligned enough that they can speak together. And it's very difficult for humans to even produce something that sounds like this language, but it has to be like the thought has to be there. in it too but um

Yeah, those listening on audio didn't see my excited hand motions when Lisa was mentioning. I listened to that audiobook earlier this year, and it's one of my favorite by China Mievel. It's really good. Yeah, it's a kind of a Tower of Babel story, too, because it's like, if there, you know, I know, I know that the language doesn't work like there was an...

you know, language that we were born with and then it split apart. But I always, I like to think about what if it did, and this is one of my favorite, like, what if it did stories. Yeah. Cora, go ahead.

Well, this is, in a way, linguistic science fiction. And I always, we've all had a lot of examples already. Arrival, Embassy Town, Babel 17 by Samuel Delaney, another word list.

list. I always like linguistic science fiction because linguistics is a science and one that science fiction often ignores. Also, I sometimes call myself an accidental linguist because I actually taught an introductory class in linguistics at the University of Vechta, very shortly after my own graduation, when I sought out... I think I pulled it off well, but I didn't really know what I was doing. So yes, I'm fond of linguistic science fiction stories. Seth also made a good point. It's...

It reminded me very much of Star Trek. Not just of Coahu's Darmark, I think, is the one, but... It's also, there are lots of first contact and linguistic stories in Star Trek. There was, I forget the name now, there was a great one in season three of Star Trek Discovery.

discovery where they try to communicate with this alien species which is actually destroying lots of planets accidentally and Star Trek also has a lot of stories going back all the way to the original series about an alien species that has died out. out trying to transmit their legacy. The most famous one of this is probably the Next Generation episode, The Inner Light, where Picard lives the whole life of this character. And one thing that's also...

One aspect that we haven't noticed is that the children of this alien species, the children who always, the story is basically, these people read their story, which we are also taught to read. read only three times. They read it first when they're young with their parents, then alone, and then they teach it to their children. But the children at some point refuse to learn this story. They don't want the old ways anymore.

And this is the fate of many indigenous languages. When a colonizer shows up, the indigenous language gets lost and is superseded by the language of the colonizer. And also, a lot of the times, the younger people also, the parents are like, why should we learn this old language? We must learn a language which is more important for our economic... situation and our prospects. And like I said, it's mostly indigenous. There's a lot of indigenous languages which are very close to dying out.

But it also happened in, it doesn't just happen in Africa, Asia, the Americas. It also happened in Europe, that their language, Welsh, Cornish. Cornish, Scottish Gaelic almost died out. While if we have Low German, which is a separate language, it would probably be my native language. if some people hadn't tried to eliminate it in the 18th and 19th century, to the point that I was taught Low German for, I think, exactly one or...

to lessons in school, but I can still understand and read it, but I can't speak it. I can understand it simply because I were old people. who still spoke it, but most of them are dead now. One of the last who still spoke it died two or three weeks ago. Last week I went to his funeral. So yeah, this one is quite, it hit very well. It's also short, but it also touches on a lot of points. And it could have been just as well in the best poem category.

I think, you know, in our lifetime, some of that stuff with the low German has started to fade even more. Because I remember when I was taking German in high school, you know, we learned to say, you know, please speak. German it's trying just as Welsh and Cornish and so on and Manx they're trying to revive it nowadays children get more lessons also if you're studying German

language or literature. There are some universities in northern Germany will offer classes on low German, and those classes are always funny because you have foreign students, often from like Japanese, Korean, Chinese students sitting in between Germans who sometimes grew up speaking this language. Language. And my radio station, local radio station, Radio Bremen, they have every day, they have low German news.

Nachrichten where they have all the news translated into Low German and they're cultural. So there are attempts to preserve it, but it will never be the common language again. It will be a kind of curiosity. Also, the funniest thing is one of the guys who does a lot of these low German programmings is a black guy. The guy who was adopted as a...

As a young kid, he was adopted. I think he's from Ethiopia or Somalia somewhere. And as a small kid, he was adopted by a German couple who spoke low German. And so he grew up... grew up speaking Low German and people are always surprised when they hear him. And when they see him, because it's usually sort of like, oh, but someone who looks like that cannot speak Low German. But it's one of his early speaks languages. Go ahead, Sarah.

One message that's not spelled out but is subtext through this in the story is, we love our children. We think you must love your children too. And it talks about childhood and nurturing and so on, but it doesn't quite say that. I think it is part of kind of the plea of let's try and understand each other because we all love our children and want, you know. Can we find a way to talk with each other? Yeah. Emmanuel, go ahead.

Oh, you're on mute. I think you're double muted, Emmanuel. Oh, hold on. Sorry. So just to echo what both Sarah and Cora said, For the use of language and the teaching of language as part of your culture and who you are, I mean, Cora gave a very good example of what happened in Germany, what's happening now to trying to fix this.

Here in Canada, we had the same thing with the indigenous nations. We basically wanted to eradicate their culture. I know you had some of that story in the States too, but the kids were put into schools where they would be forbidden. to talk their own language they would have to learn french or english depending of where they were here in quebec the french-speaking people were seen as

lower citizens for a long time compared to their English counterparts. And it's only in the second half of the 20th century that that got fixed in a way. And now there are some... pushing back in the other way that french-speaking people don't want to hear any word of english on the street so you know there is a back and forth instead of trying to communicate we try to push each each other which is uh is a shame

France had the same thing as Germany had. You know, we're trying to eradicate all local French patois or languages. to unify the country they were saying in the 19th century. So everybody should speak French. It's fine to have one common language. It's not fine to say to people, hey, you cannot speak your own language on top of that. I mean, having more than one language is a...

it's something that you should crave, not something that you should fear. And it's one of the elements, it's probably the element that isn't the most with me in that whole story, that it is a wealth to have. more languages in more than one way to think. Because having only one authorized way to think is exactly the description of a total dictatorship, which is not what you want in your daily life, I believe. No, no. Sarah, go ahead.

The title of the story is a little bit of cultural imperialism. We will teach you to read. We will teach you how to read. you ignorant people who only read single-threaded or only listen single-threaded. We're better than you. We're going to teach you how to come up to snuff, which is... It's sort of a natural assumption to say, well, I can multi-thread. You're only single-threading. You must be inferior. I'm not sure if this is where the author was going, but it does talk about...

how easy it is for someone to come in thinking they're the superior one and the other person has to learn. But they clearly already have learned some enough of... Earthlings' language to give some message to them. But there's a lot of layering and nuance going on in this story. Yeah, yeah. Cora, go ahead. Yeah, once again on attempts to eradicate language. This is, of course, also an issue which faces immigrants.

all over the place, not just in the US, in the UK, in Germany, because immigrants are often actively discouraged from transmitting their own native language to their children. Children. It was considered a kid growing up bilingual. Was considered bad well into my lifetime. My lifetime. Luckily, my parents...

ignore, well, for once they did ignore what the specialist said because it's wrong and there's also a difference if it's a prestige language. For example, a kid in Learning very early to speak English or Chinese or Japanese was popular for a while or French is good, but Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian, Arabic are bad, which is, of course, silly.

Silly, but children also, at least I was viewed as sort of disruptive in kindergarten and primary school because I did a shocking thing once. I was angry at a girl named Petra. Really sorry, Petra. And I pushed her and called Leave Me Alone in English. And Petra didn't understand me, of course. She didn't speak English, but...

But I think the teacher probably also didn't understand me and was very, very upset that I tried to speak English in class and how could I do this? And the sad thing is it happened to a lot of first and second generation. Asian immigrants. I have two cousins in the US and they speak very little German, even though both their parents are German. It's not just one parent, it's both parents.

And on the other hand, I'm always happy, live in a sort of multicultural neighborhood. My neighbors, my neighbors, literally garden to garden, garden fence, they're Russian, well, they're kind of Russian, German, Ukrainian. post-Soviet mix, and they speak Russian with their children and German, and the children speak both, and code switch, and it's lovely. And on the other side, I have a Turkish-German couple.

Must be, I think, probably second or third generation, but probably even third generation. And the Turkish people actually mostly did keep their language. Of course, they were also treated like, oh, they will go home again. And now we have people living here in the third, fourth generation and also being successful. But language and cultural education is something which happens.

Also, which happens to immigrants and also to the victims of colonialism. So it's a really, really common issue. Yeah. All right.

We went quite a long time on it. Quite a short story. All right. So let's go ahead and wrap it up. Sarah, I think you're going to lead us off about why don't we just kill the kid in the Omelas hole? That's right. From Isabel J. Kim, Clark's World, February 22, 24. This story is in conversation with Ursula K. Le Guin's Hugo Winning, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas. all the related commentary and stories that have been spawned since.

That was published in 1973. So quite a long conversation. So for those who haven't read it, Olmos was a supposedly utopian city which depended on the continuing misery of one. child and this um this 20 this finalist um why don't we just kill the kid in in the homeless hole um is told in the form of a history looking back, which is similar kind of to Ursula K. Le Guin's story on that same kind of impersonal tone, looking back at when some people killed the... the child.

for motives which are debated and what's happened since then. This story has some snappy language, kind of colloquial, so they did this, so they did this, and also comes up with the... phrase, the load-bearing suffering child. And that's used several times in this. So what happens after that? I was on the fence about the story until the ending, which had seemed sort of like a philosophical exercise. But in the end...

it kind of zooms out and situates it in our own timeline, referring to some of our own atrocities and horrors. And for me, that turned it... into kind of just an analytical discursion into a somewhat restrained, angry, and frustrated howl about the world we're in, the situation we're in, the fact that some people are still... discussing misery and torture to profit people in a somewhat cold and impersonal way. But still, I felt the tone.

I felt so much anger and frustration underneath in the end, and it kind of makes me feel like howling along with it because there are no easy answers. There are no easy answers. And, you know, are things we're going to try and do to fix it actually going to make it better or just kind of... changed the bad things, but still bad. And so for me, it got me in the end. I was neutral on it until the end. Can I ask one question real quick, just of everybody here? Who is the we?

Why don't we just kill the kid in the Omelas hole? This is not people in Omelas, right? It is people in Omelas, I think. Is it? I always saw it as, why doesn't the rest of the world... you know, figure out how to stop the suffering of this one child. Yeah. I think it can be read either way. Okay. But I think it was an internal resistance.

Okay, so this is no longer the people who walk away. This is the people who kill the kid. Right. I saw this as this is an option beyond just walking away. Walking away is... slightly more passive in terms of just separating from it. Whereas this story is, okay, what can we do to restructure, to change what's going on? It's, I mean, in some respects, I thought too, you know.

the, um, the trolley problem, you know, it's the, okay, well there is a choice in the trolley problem of not choosing and stepping away and not being part of it, but then active decision. Obviously, different construct and different philosophical issues, but some similarities there. Yeah. Go ahead, Emmanuel. Yeah, me, I was interested because I...

I had never heard of the Ursula K. Le Guin story before reading that, but I had never read it before. So I went and read it, then read that story. And of course, Le Guin being Le Guin, it's amazingly... well-written story. And that's not only the story itself, but just the prose, the quality of how she wrote that woman was amazing. Everything I've read from her is just outstanding. And I'd like your take on that. I mean, you're all, except for me, native English speakers. When you take...

something like this, a classic, something that is part of basically of the sidecast of the culture at this point, and is considered extremely well done. And then you do a riff on it, basically. Do you think the...

How do you think we should judge it, in a sense? Because it is a riff on it. It doesn't have the same, I mean, it's well done, but it doesn't have the same literary quality as Le Guin's story. And do you think it should impact our reading on it? I'm just curious of your feelings about that.

I mean, I think in general, science fiction is more in conversation with itself than other forms of literature. I'm not downplaying the way other forms can dialogue with each other, but science fiction, I feel like, is more intentional about that. But Lisa, why don't you go ahead? I was just going to mention that last year at ReaderCon, there was a wonderful panel that the entire panel was about Omelas and its...

uh, successors and all of the, um, you know, all of the stories that have been written in conversation with it since, um, I think NK Jemisin's, uh, those who stay and fight being probably the most famous. Um, but, and. You know, I think in a way you don't have to, when you are making a reference, you don't necessarily have to tell. everything in the same you know it you you can shortcut a little bit um and that doesn't necessarily um reduce the literary quality

Because what you're trying to say with one of these response stories is yes, and also consider this perspective. You zoom in on some aspects you want to explore more. Right. Go ahead, Sarah. So, Emmanuel, it doesn't affect, I don't think, so much my reading of it. Of course, it depends on whether I've read the story it's referring to or not, but it does affect my voting.

I am not as likely to vote as winner, something that doesn't stand alone. And that refers to best novel category if something's a sequel rather than the first work. I simply am not as likely to vote for something if I don't feel like it stands on its own. I may read it, I may think it's great, but I'm not going to cast it as a winner. And that is affecting my ranking in this category. So that's where I stand on it. Go ahead, Cora.

Well, Omela's response stories are probably as common as code equations response stories. Code equations, of course, being even older, one of the very first Hugo winners. And it has spawned also, it's also a similar case of a... philosophical problem and it spawned a lot of response stories you can fill in including one from you yes including one from one by me you can also fill in

Oddly enough, just this week, there was a new Omelas response story, and a quite good one, which I actually think I liked it a tad more than this one, also in light speed. Lightspeed, which has various variations of the Omela story, how you can view it. For example, maybe the people were poor and the child was tyrannical. It's also really interesting. done. About this one, I did consider what also, like Sarah said, and Emmanuel, how well does this stand alone?

can you understand this story if you don't know Omelas? I thought about what if my mom was still alive and she's been a Hugo voter in the past and she's not a major science fiction reader and so she wouldn't have known the Omelas stories. Would she have understood the story?

without me explaining what the Omelas... I mean, you can read... The ones who walk away from Omelas is very, very short. You can easily read it. It's not a huge issue, but this one... stands as a response story less well alone than some of the, for example, samples that are also quoted by now of Starship Troopers by Robert A Heinlein.

Forever War by Joe Haldeman responded to Starship Troopers. Old Man's War by John Scalzi responded to Forever War and Starship Troopers and Light Brigade by Cameron Hurley. probably responded to all three. But you can read all of these four different novels as stand-alones. You can't really read this story as a stand-alone without knowing the original Omela story.

Yeah. This one, my problem with this one is my friend Colin put a bug in my ear. And I think he mentioned it on Science Fiction 101 that this story seems to misunderstand the premise.

of the ones who walk away from Omelas, where it isn't that that child has to live in misery. It's that that child can never experience anything but misery. And so killing the child was not the only... way to subvert this saying a kind word would have been enough um and and so it's it's strange that it goes to the lengths that it goes and that that's why it kind of i don't know it bothered me it rankled me um It also, the why don't we just kill the kid reminds me of sometimes I've said,

after I hear about some terrible thing that's going on in North Korea. I'm like, why do we allow North Korea to be a thing? It's a similar kind of tone to that kind of sentiment for me, which is, of course, foundationally a very imperialistic thought. It's almost something, a dictatorship like North Korea is almost an inversion of the Omelas story, where it's instead of one kid has to suffer so everyone can be happy, it's this one guy is happy because everybody else there is suffering.

And that's, I mean, almost always the case in a dictatorship, really. But anyhow, I don't know who clicked their hand, raised their hand first. Lisa, go ahead. I just wanted to say in... talking about other interpretations of the omla story. Um, if, if anyone has not, um, I think it was posted only as a thread on Blue Sky, but the unofficial Hugo Book Club blog posted a story called My Omelas Right or Wrong? And boy, does it get at the...

the current, um, moment in history. Um, and you know, go, go check that one out. Definitely. All right. I don't know who's next. Cora, go ahead. Well, responding to what you just said, and was it Lisa, at any rate that the story is somewhat, that it misunderstands the Omela story. Also the idea, the North Korea thing, well, why do we let this happen? This is a very... When you first read the Omela story or anything else as a young person,

person or there's some terrible injustice happening somewhere in the world. And you're like, why don't we just take our, we have the bloody Bundeswehr, our army, why don't we take that and conquer this? I think I wanted to conquer Singapore because I was... truly outraged that they were executing drug dealers. I assumed drug dealers. At the time, I thought, like, all these people, they all say they're innocent.

I was an adult until I thought, and my dad had worked in Singapore, so I had a personal, I was, we also spent some time there, I was nine, nine, I was old enough to read newspapers and there was a graphic description of a of executions and terrible murders in those newspapers. And so I was kind of really terrified that someone would slip drugs to my father and I was terrified. And there was...

It's actually referred to, it was a Dutchman executed for drug smuggling in the early 90s. It's referred to by William Gibson in this terribly racist essay about Singapore. And I was really outraged on behalf of the Dutchman. Dutchman because I live close to the Dutch border. I've lived in the Netherlands. I speak Dutch. And I was like, okay, the Dutch army and we shall be enough to conquer Singapore, rescue the sky, rescue all of them.

Kick the dictator out and the Singaporeans can finally live happy. Yes, I'm going to conquer Omelas. Of course, Singapore is also kind of weird Omelas. But yeah, that was what I felt like as a late teens and so on. And also, I think my first was, I wouldn't call the story from first reading probably around the same time Omelas was. I wouldn't call the story the ones who walk away from Omelas. I would call it the ones who burn fucking Omelas to the ground.

And rescue the child first, because this also bothers me. My kind of naive answer was always, okay, break the child out and... Lack it with the child from Omelas. Not kill the child. The poor child has suffered enough. And Omelas be damned. So I understand. But I also have some issues with this one. Yeah. And of course, why do we allow North Korea to be a thing? The answer is it's complicated and regime change is not clean.

Every time that kind of thing gets brought up, I think that might not be a good idea. We should kind of know by now that regime change is not clean. I mean, everybody who's lived a bit, think of Iraq, think of Afghanistan. actually being regime change twice and ending up worse than before Iraq and also the whole Arab Spring so we kind of know by now regime changes usually aren't clean but

If you're a very, very young person, you think like, okay, it's all going to kick out the terrible dictator and it's all going to get better. You have to grow a bit older to know it doesn't work. Yeah. Emmanuel, go ahead. Yeah, it's... changing what's in place is certainly no guarantee for something better. As the French, they had seven regime changes in the 19th century, and it was not always an improvement. Anyhow, for that story, what I...

What I found very interesting what Cora said about the different novels that came after Starship Troopers is that there are They are their own thing. Yes, they answer to that story, but they're not part of it. Whereas this is part of the Le Guin story. It's basically, you could call it a continuation and adaptation to the modern day, call it what you want, but it's really in the same setting.

And that, when done well, I think it's very academic and it can be very interesting. But I don't find it that original. If you find, for example, this year's nominee, finalized novella, The Practice, The Horizon and The Chain. It does have a resonance with the Omela stories, but it's done in a completely different way with its own storyline. So I find it, in that respect, anyhow, a much stronger contender.

to be voted for, for the Hugo Ballad. This story, I appreciate reading it, but just like Sarah, I don't think I would vote for something like that. I can appreciate the effort and the relevancy of writing it. I just don't think it... it deserves to be over other stories that we talked about today, just because it's not its own thing. It's part of a discussion, which is certainly interesting, and we're talking about it a lot.

But I don't think it stands out enough to be voted for. That's my opinion anyway. Yeah, even though it did win the Nebula. So some people disagree with me. Fine. They won the Nebula and the Locus and the Baltimore Science Fiction Society's like first writer thing, I think. So it's...

won a slew of awards. So I feel no compulsion to vote for it. Science fiction fans and also writers love these response and insights. Sure. I mean, my code equation... response story is actually made Hugo longlist in 2021 for a story which I posted on my blog as a sort of joke. And we've had lots of response stories to Oma Lars and her code equations. Equations makes Hugo Longlist or Ballard.

It makes us feel clever. It resonates. And those are awards voted on by science fiction readers. A regular reader who doesn't know the Omela stories would probably be okay. This is interesting what this is about. Also, lots of other, we have Narnia response stories and fairy tale. The Narnia response stories always get me because I didn't grow up with those books. I didn't.

encounter them the story as a basic story until i was an adult i still haven't read the books because and so whenever i run across a nanya response story i'm like okay um Initially, I often didn't even recognize what it was, and I still can't really relate to them. Go ahead, Lisa. I just wanted to respond to what Seth was saying earlier about this story. I don't know, missing the point or maybe not or not offering a good solution.

I'm not sure it was supposed to be. I mean, it is like, I don't think that, you know, what an author says is happening. What an author. characters do in the story is not necessarily what the author is advocating doing and i think in this case it's it is supposed to be you know these murders are supposed to make you feel like that's a terrible thing to do and And it's supposed to just make you think about, you know, the whole situation again. You know, I don't...

Yeah, that's all I wanted to say. Yeah, when did killing kids become a good idea? Right, right. And I don't think this is in any way saying that that would be the best response. Right. Yeah, no, I get that. Yeah, I think the story itself is answering the title's question. This is why we don't. This is why we don't. Because it's messy. And as Seth said, it's complicated. And, you know, there's other...

There's other aspects. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I will also just chime in to agree that the, you know, whenever you have things that are kind of more directly tied to others, it gets, it gets complex. You know, again, I think it's.

um i have recommended it we actually had talked about it a while back on on narrated as as well with our our short fiction but you know it's it's something worth um Reading and listening to, I agree with all the comments that when you get into how you vote and how you balance that, I think there is certainly an aspect that... emotionally gets tied into the voting and each voter and each kind of...

award is going to weight things a little bit differently in terms of, okay, how much of this is quote unique content versus others. And, you know, I, I appreciate Coors comments in terms of. Other things that are in dialogue and I'm glad you mentioned the, you know, there's a lot of fairytale retellings that pop up and how much they add unique.

to that, to those particular narratives. Cause we do see those pop up on, uh, um, on the ballots a lot, especially it seems in like the novella category, there's a, um, trend of, of a lot of those.

Okay. Well, you want to go around kind of with final thoughts? Tell me what your favorites are, what you're going to be voting for, and then we'll kind of – and actually, why don't we do it this way? I'll just – I'll start with Lisa, who is now in the upper left corner for me because –

We had to restart the session. I happened to come back first. Yes. So why don't you mention, you know, like where people can find you and where they might know you from. Obviously, I think people would know you from Narrated. Yep. Yes. So again, I'm Lisa McCarty. You might know me from narrated podcast where we talk about mostly audio books, mostly science fiction, fantasy, but not entirely. And.

I have not... Oh, and you may also see me on Blue Sky a lot. That's where I like to hang out. Okay. And what are your favorites? And I think... The top of my ballot is going to be We Will Teach You How to Read by Carolyn Yocum. And I haven't really made a final decision on where anything else places. But I think the three phases of a beheading, which I hadn't really engaged with before starting to prepare for this podcast, but because I drew the straw of presenting it, I...

um, kind of got to spend a lot of time and thought with it. And, and, and that sort of, you know, it won me over during that process. Um, so I think that's going to be high on my list too. Nice. All right, Sarah, why don't you go next? Sure. My top favorite is Stitch to Skin Like Family is. I did love that story. Actually, during our conversation, I've moved around my choices.

ranking of the other stories a lot, which is one reason why I love these conversations with people who've done close reading and have really interesting perspectives that made me take a second look. at a story that I may not have thought about as much before. You can find me mostly on Mastodon these days for social media. I am at configures on mindly.social.

If you find me, great. I know Mastodon is a little hard for some people to navigate, but it's my preferred social for these days. Okay. Thanks. Nice. Scott, go ahead. Uh, yeah, I think in terms of rankings, similarly, um, I absolutely agree that the discussion helps refine. I've, I've got my kind of list of. my orders and I think I've changed all of them around, uh, at some point during, uh, during the discussion. Um, but you know, overall a great, um,

a great slate. Um, I think at the moment, uh, we will teach you how to read and, uh, stitch to skin like family are, are kind of top of, of mind, but, uh, I reserve the right to, uh, to change that by the time I put in my, my final ballot. In terms of, you can find me on Narrated as well. And as I mentioned, I think in the intro, we've been doing, we just recorded our best series episode. So that'll be coming out probably around the...

same time as, uh, as this episode. So, uh, if you looking for more Hugo, uh, hugo finalist discussion you know i never get tired of it i like i listen to the incomparable and i listen to yours you know science fiction 101 i i love listening to other people talk about it

Yeah. And, and every time I listen to somebody else or have one of these discussions, yeah, you get different perspectives on it and it's just great to, to get the different views and a different, a different take on it. And I think it helps too that. when you get the final ballot, you know, because if you just go in your kind of isolated mind, sometimes you put in your votes and then you see the final order and you go, well, how could it possibly come up that?

But I think the more you appreciate just the breadth of fandom and the different perspectives, it's part of the fun, I think. Yeah. Agreed. Any social media people can find you at narrated or? Uh, yes. Uh, I'm primarily on blue sky. I am not as, uh, active on it as, uh, as Lisa. Um, but, uh, um, but I am, I am there and I do, uh, I do monitor and worst case Lisa can, uh, highlight if somebody tags me and I don't immediately see it and won't bug me about it. Nice. Okay, Emmanuel. Yes, so...

I also greatly appreciate the discussion. As I said, it's my first year voting for the Yugos this year, so that helps. My top two remains the same. It's Stitch to Skin Like Family is, and we'll teach you how to read. battling for their top spot because I find two fantastic stories just extremely different. I did appreciate a lot of the discussion we had about three phases of happy hitting because that's the one that I had the hardest time grappling with.

Jury is still out, but it does help clarify things. As to where you can find me, I'm the host of Lafayette We Are Here podcast, French History podcast.

You can find it on LafayettePodcast.com or any podcast app. And that's also my handle for Blue Sky, LafayettePodcast.com. I'm also on Threads and Mastodon, but my main social media station is... on blue sky and if you want to read about my movies and science fiction and whatnot it's on my personal account which is manufoto.com M-A-N-U-P-H-O-T-O dot com because I happen to work in photography so that's why perfect alright Cora

Well, my rankings. My first is still five views of the planet Tartarus, followed by stitched to skin like families, which was the biggest surprise to me. Battling out for places three and four are marginalia, and we will teach you how to read. These are my current, and I'm still not sure how I will rank them. They're very different. Then we get three phases of a beheading.

which I bounced off the first time I read, but the discussion of reading it again really helped me. And the final one is, last but not least, is Why Don't We Kill the Kids in the Omelas Hall? because I appreciate the story and what it's trying to do, but it just doesn't stand alone well enough for me. Okay, as for where you can find me... The best place is probably korabulat.com, which is my website blog. It's C-O-R-A-B-U-H-L-E-R-T.com. You can also find me under my name at korabulat.

All the social media sites, except Facebook, so I'm on Twitter, Blue Sky, Mastodon, and Threads, which are... I think Blue Sky is currently the one which actually gets me the most actual engagement, but I use all of them. You can also sometimes find me at galacticjourney.org where we talk about the science fiction of 55 years past. So it's currently... July 1970, and times are rather unquiet in all over the world, just like now.

Now, and also there's a German world, the only German world can ever coming up later this year. And the Das Millionen Spiel, the German adaptation of The Price of Perils, also coming up later this year. And sometimes you can also find me at the Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow blog of the Seattle Worldcon, Worldcon, where we discuss science fiction.

published around 1960, 61, when Worldcon was last in Seattle, I think. My last one actually was published, I think, last week or so, and it was about an East German science fiction film called Der Schweigende Sch... Just down the silent star. Nice. And apropos of The Price of Peril, there's a new adaptation of The Running Man coming out this year. It's similar. Yeah.

So obviously everybody, you can find me at Hugo's podcast on, you know, wherever you, you go on social media for the most part. I think actually I am. Maybe Seth Heasley on something, but whatever. Reminder, Galactic Journey is on the shortlist for Hugo nominations, so send a vote. Best fan scene.

You don't have to vote for us. I'm not going to tell you. But anyway, I just want to tell everybody who listens to this, don't ignore the four fan categories because it's full of great people who do great work for... for no money at all. So the four fan categories are best fan writer, best fan scene, best fan artist, and best fan cast. So please vote in those categories. They get some of the lowest votes.

Well, they all have great stuff in the Hugo Voter packet. You don't have to vote for anything I'm involved with, but just please don't ignore those categories. But if you listened this far in this podcast, you do have to vote for me. for best fan cast. Thank you, Cora, for that reminder. I have ranked all the fan categories already. Nice.

Nice. Yes, I will be sitting in the Hugo ceremony with the whole gang from Hugo Girl. It'll be fun. And Narrated is also eligible in the fancast category, if anyone... Correct. Doing good work. At some point in the future. Great. And hopefully in a couple years you'll all be in Montreal because it's supposed to be Montreal for 2027. That would be amazing. That's pretty close for me and Scott. Yeah, that's true.

That would be probably the first one I will go to since Glasgow because I'm skipping the next two because I'm not going to the US right now. I don't really want to end up on Planet Tartarus or Alligator Alcatraz or something like that. Understood. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you all for doing this. I really appreciate it. It was pretty short notice. Thank you so much.

And, you know, anybody listening to this, I'm not sure if I'm going to post it to YouTube because of some of the difficulty we had. But let us know, you know, what were your favorites? Did we move the needle? Because these kind of discussions always... cast more light, shed more light on the stories and what people see in them. So, all right. Thank you so much, everybody. Bye now.