Hugo Awards 2025: Best Short Story Nominees

I have become even more time blind than usual lately, and am woefully behind on any emails that may be reminding me of voting deadlines. Nevertheless, I’m glad that I’m finally getting a chance to look at this year’s Hugo nominees, beginning, as is tradition, with Best Short Story!

And, as is tradition, let’s start with my favorite of the bunch then work our way downwards. I read each nominee in alphabetical order by title, and had a really obvious favorite until I got to the last story, Isabel J Kim’s Why Don’t We Just Kill The Kid In The Omelas Hole. That title alone is a hell of a choice. The lack of a question mark signals that this is a story that has no interest in moral hand-wringing, even if it is based on one of science fiction’s greatest thought experiments on questions of justice and conscience. It was actually that basis that made me avoid this story until I had to read it for the Hugos. Someone taking on what is arguably Ursula K LeGuin’s most famous work? Bold move, considering that it very much needs to live up to its source material in order to succeed.

Readers, I’m pleased to report that it very much does. I have an instinctive repugnance towards accelerationism, as shown by my review of yesterday’s graphic novel, but Ms Kim uses it here in fascinating, thought-provoking ways. When people start killing the kid in the Omelas hole, greater discussions are spurred as to culpability, transparency and the morality of utilitarianism. Most strikingly, this is done both in Omelas and in the “outside” world, reminding readers once again that we too are active participants in this conversation with Ms LeGuin’s text as it continues to apply to our everyday lives. It’s an incredible bit of literary sleight of hand from Ms Kim that, frankly, deserves to win all the awards.

A close runner-up, however, was Nghi Vo’s Stitched To Skin Like Family Is. I haven’t been a huge fan of Ms Vo’s works outside of her Singing Hills novellas, so was genuinely surprised by how much I loved this story. Set in the summer of 1931, it follows a young Chinese American woman as she goes in desperate search of her brother, who’s disappeared while looking for work out West.

Our narrator has a gift with clothing, and hires herself out as a seamstress to sustain herself on her quest. But in addition to her skill with needle and thread is her ability to literally hear what clothing has to tell her about its wearers. This ability helps her track down her brother and discover what happened to him. Will it also help her escape the same fate that befell him?

I love the way Ms Vo affixes Asian people into the landscape of America’s past, with this, I feel, being the most successful of her efforts so far. More importantly, her pacing has vastly improved, with the action scenes here feeling suspenseful and almost cinematic. And while she’s always been able to make me cry, the ending of StSLFI felt particularly luminous.

In third place by a distance was Mary Robinette Kowal’s charming Marginalia. It’s very clear what the author’s influences were, as a young woman named Margery struggles with caring for her ailing mother and spirited younger brother in fantasy medieval times. Saying more would be ruining the surprises of the story. I did very much enjoy the setup, even as I thought it was pretty silly that no one had thought of that solution before. Still a very cute story with strong ties to the exact kind of thing that fantasy/history/art nerds love.

My next pick was Rachael K Jones’ Five Views Of The Planet Tartarus. As a professional reader, I always appreciate a stylish economy of writing, but this was too short! The 500+ words describe the punishment meted out to the rebels against the Sibylline Empire. The imagery is stark but requires a lot more narrative to explain some of the most obvious questions it raises, imo. Would definitely love to read more of this universe tho!

In fifth place, we have Caroline M Yoachim’s We Will Teach You How To Read | We Will Teach You How To Read. I think that I am perhaps too dumb to understand what Ms Yoachim was getting at here. I usually love metafiction — as soon as I saw two columns going, I was automatically on board with wherever she might be going with the story — but this was too esoteric even for me.

Finally, we have Arkady Martine’s Three Faces Of A Beheading, which is about one-third scholarly references to historiography, to two-thirds actual fiction. Gtfoh with that. The story itself had potential — I love the way she talks about rebellion in the age of cyberpunk — but the world-building history bits were iffy and the academic quotations incredibly boring.

As usual, I’ve linked to as many of the places where you can read these stories online as I can. This year, all the stories are (currently) available! Give them a read and let me know your thoughts. And oh no, I just opened my ballot to vote and saw that the deadline is in seven days! Good thing I took this week off from social engagement, lolololsob.

Anyway, you can check out the list of my favorite books in my Bookshop storefront linked below!