Hugo Awards 2026: Best Novelette

Ooh, boy, is Doug gonna be surprised when he reads my voting slate for this year’s Hugo Awards nominees for Best Novelette! Presented, as usual, in descending order of preference.

Top of my list this year is Catherynne M Valente’s When He Calls Your Name. Perhaps oddly, it is one of the two nominees on this slate that were very obviously influenced, if not outright inspired, by Dolly Parton’s classic country song Jolene. It actually took me a while to get into this story — at first, I thought the narrator and Charlie were cousins, lol — but once the narrative gets going, it really gets going.

It’s probably impossible to talk about the novelette otherwise without spoilers, but I will say that I find it endlessly fascinating how I can chart whatever’s going on in Ms Valente’s personal life by the contents of her stories. I’m just glad she’s moved on from the self-sabotaging weirdness of the Deathless series, and that she seems to have finally internalized that no man is worth lying to yourself and diminishing your own desires and personal happiness. The ambiguous ending did make me ache a little, and I’m hoping that the narrator does eventually follow that silvery trail away.

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Speaking of messy personal lives, we have Scott Lynch and his hilarious alternate history Kaiju Agonistes. This reimagining of Godzilla and the dawn of the atomic age is genuinely funny in its examination of jaded politicians worldwide faced with a monster intent on destroying their nuclear stockpiles. It’s hard to quibble with the way that the monster is forced to embrace capitalism in order to finally quell the self-destructive masses. It genuinely is easier to believe that humanity will quit doing bad things only if explicitly bribed, because appealing to our better natures only works till you get that one truculent asshole who refuses on the principle of contrarian selfishness disguised as something otherwise positive like patriotism or self-sufficiency.

Next, I was a fan of Sarah Pinsker’s The Millay Illusion, a novelette of stage magic and feminism centering on the occasionally strained friendship of two roommates in a traveling show. If the ending depends a little too much on the suggestive properties of mesmerism, the story as a whole is still an entertaining, speculative tale that pulls the curtain back on a fascinating profession and (alternate) historical era.

I also really liked the themes of Cameron Reed’s The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For. The narrator’s lived experience as a trans woman makes her choices in the dystopian future feel all the more compelling, as she struggles to survive in the wake of being cast aside as the parent of her “mother’s” genetic clone. The only reason that this story didn’t rate higher on this list is that the ending was essentially just a wall of text, as the story abruptly switched to tell instead of show mode. It was an odd choice, and one I’m hoping is rectified in future iterations, as this novelette definitely feels more like a launchpad to a novel rather a complete story.

I wanted to like H. H. Pak’s Never Eaten Vegetables but I’ve started to get genuinely irritated by Artificial Intelligence that is only ever as smart as the moral of the story needs them to be. And while I could buy into the idea of the ship lacking failsafes for the entirely commonplace (and completely unsurprising) reason that it did, I was far too skeptical of the entire premise of the colony. Sending thousands of babies into space to be cared for solely by robots and holograms, are you for real? It’s a dumb plan. Plus, I didn’t even know what the point of all the arguments over “what constitutes a life?” counted for given what the robots did to babies they didn’t find up to par. If you know you’re going to be utilitarian about it, why bother bringing in philosophers at all?

Finally, we have Martha Wells’ Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Community, Empathy. I know Doug loved this story but it genuinely does not stand up well on its own. It’s great as part of the Murderbot series, which I enjoy. But I’m also far enough removed from having read the other books to recognize that this novelette only makes sense if you’re already a fan. Otherwise, it’s basically “OMG, the AI has a crush!” (and let me be clear, one reason I enjoy the Murderbot series is that the AI are messy and complicated and feel like actual characters instead of plot devices.) This story is awesome if you already know all the characters involved. I fear that anyone coming into this cold would be all “That’s nice, but who are these people and why should I care?” because frankly, the answer to that lies entirely in the rest of the series.

Anyway, that’s my voting slate this year! I’ve linked to each story so give them a read if you have time, and lmk your thoughts. I know Doug will weigh in with his own column soon!

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