I wanted to share my recommendations for this year’s Hugo nominations, so I am writing a series of posts highlighting my favorites and recommendations in various categories. Where possible, I will link to the works or ways to purchase/peruse them. Let me know if you read any of them and what you think! Also let me know your own recommendations.
A constructed facade for a fake life has been built around the daughters of a wealthy CEO in order to ensure the line of cloned children takes over for the company and runs it properly. This novelette is about identity, wealth, and poverty. The way it treats the interplay between its themes is fascinating, and Cameron Reed has rapidly ascended into the upper echelon of must-read authors for me despite having few published works (but a new novel coming this year!).
“Donacon” by Paul E. Franz (Analog Sept/Oct 2025)
The invention of a nanomachine-driven health remediation technology has led to the creation of superhumanly attractive and physically fit people. The first beneficiaries are those working for the health company that invented the process. But as the technology proliferates and the standards for the “perfect” human form get higher and higher, Ian, the main character and an employee high up in the company, discovers that his own view of reality ahs become skewed by the relentless pursuit of that perfection. This novelette is a wonderfully done look at the human obsession with the human form, and it has an ending that absolutely sticks it. Highly recommended reading.
When it became possible to implant an AI in the brains of newborns, many of the wealthiest opted in. Their children have grown up with another voice in their heads–one that could immediately search for any answer online. When Vince, born without such an AI implant, gets some extra brain training, he tries to navigate his way in a world where humans are devalued and the jobs that should have always been there are fading away. He channels his newfound skills into a contest of wits against a number of AI enhanced students, doing a kind of quiz bowl game that challenges them to see if they can do better than a non-enhanced group of math and logic whizzes. The story becomes a series of these quiz bowl games with incredibly complicated questions. I confess that I wasn’t able to follow many of them–and certainly not solve them–but I enjoyed the reading nonetheless. It’s partially a story of human achievement and mostly a series of cleverly constructed world problems and their solutions. It’s unlike almost anything I’ve read before.
Conclusion
I’d love to hear what you think of these and other stories. Let me know in the comments!
I wanted to share my recommendations for this year’s Hugo nominations, so I am writing a series of posts highlighting my favorites and recommendations in various categories. Where possible, I will link to the works or ways to purchase/peruse them. Let me know if you read any of them and what you think! Also let me know your own recommendations. And yes, I know you can only nominate 5 in each category, but I haven’t whittled all of my categories down to that many nominations yet.
Short Story
“Termina” by Subodhana Wineyeratne (Analog Nov/Dec 2025)
“Termina” is filled with fantastic prose and heart-rending scenes that are astonishingly frequent in a short story. The plot follows a human and an AI companion watching her. A series of vignettes follow the human’s life and the despairing scenario she’s in. The story is bleak and beautiful and I love it.
“Imperfect Simulations” by Michelle Z. Jin (Clarkesworld 231, Dec 2025)
The ghosts that haunt this town are not benevolent; they are spirits that have stayed behind from acts of violence and racial oppression. And, it is time that one of them start to get back at those who have caused these wrongs. Far from being a simple revenge story, this moving tale constructs a past of systemic oppression and then shows how such chains might be broken, even if it takes another life. Beautiful.
“Strays” by Scott William Carter (Asimov’s Sept/Oct 2025)
A married couple spends their life hunting down lost ordinance from a long-lost war in order to prevent them from being navigational dangers. The story navigates a number of different genres and feelings, but is tightly woven, too. The central couple isn’t happy; they are struggling. But what happens when they face a threat–that is a story worth reading. It’s a haunting story that will stay with me for a while.
Grandma has dementia and her calls have become increasingly deranged. Or… is she actually living in a greater reality than might have first been perceived? This story is from a Black Isekai special edition of FIYAH magazine and it absolutely hit me at the right time. When I read it, my own grandma had recently died from dementia–a terrible, awful disease that I hate. I got some semblance of healing from this story, and that’s about the highest praise you can give.
“A Shaky Bridge” by Marissa Lingen (Clarkesworld August 2025)
A man’s diagnosis of dementia leads to his family using a neural bridge–a new health treatment–to try to help him. While the neural bridge does indeed help him, it also has some unwanted features or bugs from its billionaire entrepreneur’s mind, such as occasionally making it seem like he’s a walking advertisement. Again, this one hit hard with my grandma having died of dementia, but I think it’s a fantastic story regardless of that context (as is the previous one). What would we be willing to give up for our brains to get the treatment they need? Is “curing” dementia worth an ad subscription? This moving tale asks those questions, and more.
Conclusion
I’d love to hear what you think of these and other stories. Let me know in the comments!
The Great Honor Harrington Read Along is a read along led by me with critical analysis and SPOILER FILLED looks at the Honor Harrington series and related works by David Weber and collaborators. I’ve read the whole main series and the overwhelming majority of the offshoots, but some of these will still be first time reads. However, spoilers will be abundant throughout these posts, including for much later books in the series.
In Fire Forged is another collection of stories from the Honorverse. As such, we’ll look at each story individually.
Ruthless by Jane Lindskold
Judith Templeton, who escaped from Masada with the help of Michael Winton (yes, THAT Michael Winton of the royal family) in the story “Promised Land,” must use all her resources to find her kidnapped daughter. The story develops well, and I appreciate that the villains have some wrinkles in their motivations that make them more than one dimensional evil people, as is often the case in the Honorverse. Lindskold spins a compelling yarn and shows she has the chops to write in the Honorverse, something Weber clearly noticed as he enlister her to later co-author offshoot books in the Beautiful Friendship series.
Judith Templeton is one of the most interesting characters in these offshoots, having used her mental prowess after being kidnapped herself by Masadans to escape from that oppressive patriarchy. Having her then work towards finding her own daughter kidnapped, this time, by Manticoran separatists makes for a bit of a rehash, but also a compelling yarn that I don’t mind retreading. Michael Winton getting some time on the page is also nice. I like their developing relationship and hope to see more of both in the future.
An Act of War by Timothy Zahn
Basically a story about the attempt to get Manticore and the Andermani Empire to go to war against each other. I enjoyed it well enough, but it didn’t blow me away at any point. It gives a little insight into some of the tension found between those two powers in the mainline books.
Let’s Dance by David Weber
Honor Harrington investigates, finds, and destroys a slave trade. Again, a story that doesn’t advance much for any side characters, but does fill in a little bit for parts of the Honorverse, especially related to the Audubon Ballroom. Overall, just okay.
Conclusion
I think In Fire Forgedis uneven. I especially enjoyed “Ruthless” as a continuation of one of my favorite Honorverse stories. The other two basically just give some background filler on questions that might naturally arise from reading the mainline Honor Harrington entries. Not bad, but the Lindskold story is the star. What do you think of this collection?
Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!
I’m a huge science fiction fan, and, having read a list of what are alleged to be the top 200 science fiction novels, I decided to next tackle a read-through of all the Hugo Award winners and nominees for best novel. Let me know your thoughts and favorites. I’ve marked the winner as well as my own choice for which novel would win, had I the choice among the nominees. I’ve also dropped a short reflection on the year’s Hugo list at the end.
Rainbow’s End by Vernor Vinge (Winner)- Grade: C+ Vinge is full of great ideas. Rainbow’s End is on the cusp of greatness. It starts with a bang, but quickly sputters outs. There is quite a bit of hand-wringing about the singularity, a common theme for Vinge. This is paired with an intensely visceral reaction against separation from reality. Where’s the harm in using technology to separate oneself from reality? Vinge has some words about that. While these are all fascinating themes and ideas, the plot somehow plods along, despite a fantastic introduction. We get a glimpse at the beginning of what seems like a thrilling cyber detective novel but then only catch hints of that throughout the book as it takes a sharp 90 degree turn and follows different characters. Those characters are rather boring in comparison to the setup, which is unfortunate. If you’re the kind of reader who enjoys ideas just as much as the journey, check this one out. I was ultimately disappointed by it.
Blindsight by Peter Watts- Grade: B How do I score a novel that I’m not sure I fully understood? Watts’s prose is opaque. His ideas profound and strange. The integration of science and fiction here is much deeper than I thought it would be. Did I enjoy it? I don’t know. I think I did. This is a first contact novel that is full of the strangest ideas I’ve seen incorporated into sci-fi. I don’t really want to spoil things for it, so I’ll not give away some of the bigger secrets, but I’ll just say it’s the most seriously I’ve seen an author treat some genre tropes–with fully developed reasons for different things to happen within the world building. I think I’ll grab the sequel just to see if I can figure it out.
Glasshouse by Charles Stross- Grade: C+ I’ve said it before, but Stross is definitely an “ideas” type of author. Sometimes those ideas work phenomenally well, and sometimes they don’t. They’re usually interesting. What makes it difficult is that because he’s so full of ideas, sometimes those ideas take over the plot and characters to the point that there’s little more than cardboard cutouts moving about to show Stross’s ideas. Glasshouse reads like that kind of book. I’ve loved plenty of Stross’s work, but I did not love this one. It throws too many ideas at the reader all at once. The plot is convoluted and difficult to get into because almost every time a page is turned, there’s a new concept to deal with, some new sci-fi magic to absorb, or something else. It reads, to me, like William Gibson’s most difficult works. If I have to work so hard to understand a book, I expect absorbing characters and fascinating plots. This one read like it could have been a fun article online about all the ideas instead of a book.
His Majesty’s Dragonby Naomi Novik- Grade: A- Novik is a master of creating characters for which you can’t help feel empathy. Here, my heart was taken over by a man and a dragon, each with their own quirks, challenges, and goodness. It’s a beautiful story. Normally, I’m not terribly interested in premises that are “It’s Napoleonic Wars, but with dragons!” but here, the depth of character makes the setting almost irrelevant. That’s not to say the premise is not compelling, because it absolutely is going to scratch that itch for posh (and definitely not-so-posh) British people talking to each other. What I mean is this book has a man and a dragon that are unforgettable and I have been slowly consuming the rest of the series–slowly, because I love it so much.
Eifelheim by Michael F. Flynn (My Winner)- Grade: A+ Some of my favorite books leave me with that feeling of both fulfillment and emptiness. Fulfillment, because the book did exactly what the author wanted it to do. Emptiness, because even though I realize that and that it did it well, I still want more. I feel that way having just finished Eifelheim by Michael F. Flynn. The story bounces back and forth between present day (2000s, so far as I can tell) and the 14th century. In the 14th century, Father Dietrich encounters aliens in the Black Forest and has to figure out how to fit them into his logical-theological-scientific framework. In the present, Tom is an historian trying to figure out why the town of Eifelheim not only didn’t survive but was never replaced. Meanwhile, his girlfriend, Sharon, a theoretical physicist, is finding out new things about how the universe works. These disparate threads all come together as the physics explains the aliens explains the history. It’s done slowly and methodically, while readers are engrossed in a story of coming understanding through Father Dietrich. I loved everything about this book. It’s beautiful and haunting.
2007- I am appreciative of how diverse this set of books is from the nominations. It runs the gamut from a fairly traditional fantasy-historical fiction (His Majesty’s Dragon) to an absolutely wild, bewildering ride of ideas (Glasshouse). The subgenres get blended quite a bit, too (again, …Dragon, but also Eifelheim). This is a year where fans of stories filled with big ideas are absolutely feasting. While they’re not all my favorites, I can see where each one is coming from and how they might be quite successful.
Links
J.W. Wartick- Always Have a Reason– Check out my “main site” which talks about philosophy of religion, theology, and Christian apologetics (among other random topics). I love science fiction so that comes up integrated with theology fairly frequently as well. I’d love to have you follow there, too!
My Read-Through of the Hugos– Read more posts in this series and follow me on the journey! Let me know your own thoughts on the books.
Be sure to follow me on Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies/scifi/sports and more!
Eclectic Theist 