Open Discussion — What's worth considering for the ballot in 2022?

The following list will be updated over the next few months as we read, watch, and listen to Hugo-eligible works for 2022. These are not necessarily what we plan to nominate, but rather works that at least one member of the Edmonton Hugo Book Club has enjoyed and believes to be worth consideration. We appreciate any additional suggestions in the comments.

Updated on March 11, 2022 

Items marked with a “*” are ones for which there was significant disagreement within the book club. 

Novel
Machinehood — S.B. Divya

Chaos on Catnet — Naomi Kritzer

Shards of Earth — Adrian Tchaikovsky

Desolation Called Peace — Arkady Martine ** (At least one member of the club intends to nominate this, but at least one other had a strong aversion to it.) 

Civilations — Laurent Binet (translated by Sam Taylor) 

Far From The Light Of Heaven — Tade Thompson

Novella
Remote Control — Nnedi Okorafor
These Lifeless Things — Premee Mohamed

The Annual Migration of Clouds — Premee Mohamed

Light Chaser — Peter F. Hamilton & Gareth Powell

Elder Race — Adrian Tchaikovsky

Novelette

O2 Arena — Oghenechovwe Ekpeki

Self Care — Annalee Newitz

You Are Born Exploding — Rich Larson 

Short Story
Tyrannosaurus Hex — Sam J. Miller

The Trolley Solution — Shiv Ramdas
Crazy Beautiful — Cat Rambo

Orumai's Choice — Gautam Bhatia

Patriotic Canadians Will Not Hoard Food! — Madeline Ashby
Flowers Like Needles — Derek Künsken

Yesterday's Wolf — Ray Nayler

Best Series
Merchant Princes — Charles Stross

Chorus of Dragons — Jenn Lyons

Jade War trilogy — Fonda Lee

Related Work
True Believer — Abraham Riesman
Unstuck In Time — Robert B. Weide

Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction — Jesse Sheidlower

Graphic Story
Strange Adventures — Written by Tom King, art by Mitch Gerads & Evan Shaner

Wasted Space — Written by Michael Moreci

Beasts of Burden: Occupied Territory — Written by Evan Dorkin & Sarah Dyer

Frontiersman — Written by Patrick Kindlon

Universe — Written and illustrated by Albert Monteys

Semiprozine
Black Nerd Problems

Strange Horizons

Professional Artist
Will Staehle

Astounding Award for Best New Writer

Neil Sharpson (When The Sparrow Falls)

Gautam Bhatia (The Wall & The Horizon) 

Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) 
Expanse S05E10 — Nemesis Games

Shadow & Bone S01E01 — A Searing Burst Of Light

For All Mankind S02E01 — The Grey *** (While at least two members of the book club intend to include this on their ballots, several others within the book club have expressed a strong dislike for this work)

Schmigadoon — S01E01

Lower Decks S02E09 — Wej Duj 

Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) 
I'm Your Man (directed by Maria Schrader)
The Green Knight

Dune

In The Earth

The Matrix: Resurrections 

Fanzine
Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog

Runalong The Shelves

The Full Lid

Salon Futura

Fan Writer
Cora Buhlert

Chris Barkley

Paul Weimer

Alasdair Stuart

Stewart Hotson

Fan Artist

Lorelei Esther

Iain Clark

Fancast
Hugo Girl
Hugos There
Androids & Assets
Desi Geek Girls

The Humanity Of Machinehood

Several short works by S.B. Divya have been among our favourites in the past five years or so.

Image via Simon
& Schuster

“Contingency Plans for the Apocalypse,” “Loss of Signal,” and the Nebula-shortlisted novella “Runtime,” demonstrate that she is a writer who delivers interesting ideas wrapped in approachable and stylish prose. We therefore had high hopes for her debut novel Machinehood — and were not disappointed.

The novel is clever, brimming with engaging ideas, and provides important commentary on current political trends. Set a century down the line, Machinehood delves into the erosion of human rights, the perils of capital-driven pharmaceutical development, and the evolving understandings of privacy.

Machinehood centres on Welga, a security contractor who ends up investigating a series of terrorist attacks thought to be orchestrated by the world’s first truly sentient artificial intelligence. Although the story initially feels like an adventure novel, it’s soon apparent that the story centers on Welga’s quest to create stability, the precariousness of her work situation, and her sister-in-law’s medical investigation into seizures that Welga begins experiencing.

Divya uses these narrative threads to explore how capitalist-driven competition can lead to negative outcomes for society. In particular, the use of performance-enhancing drugs has been normalized in this future, leading to workers whose employment is contingent on their willingness to punish their bodies and nervous systems beyond their natural limits. While this is a bleak (and unfortunately believable) aspect to the world Divya has crafted, it is not entirely dystopian.

While the novel depicts various forms of body modification having detrimental effects, and the gig economy making working relationships more tenuous, other advances such as automatic kitchens, the ease of global travel, and medical printers have created higher standards of living in other ways. This is a nuanced future that avoids monocausal explanations for society’s changes.

Escape Pod co-host
S.B. Divya's engineering
background is evident.
Image via Analog

One of the recurring themes explored in the book — and one of the reasons it should be considered for the Prometheus Award — is the relationship between government services, the private sector, and do-it-yourself culture. As an example, those wanting to go to space do so through the participation of voluntary hobbyist rocket-ship clubs, while health care is allocated through a system of micro-auctions. Pharmaceuticals are often printed at home with some government oversight, but pill designs come from both giant corporations and from hobbyists. None of these details are delivered by way of polemic, but rather flow naturally within the story.

In such a setting, the most powerful actors seem to be religions, in part because of the unassailable sway they have over their followers. Without giving too much away, there are philosophical aspects to a religion of Neo-Budhism that provide incredible motivations to some of the religion’s adherents. Religion thus is shown to be a tool to navigate and instigate change.

One of the greatest strengths of the novel is that as it progresses, the conflict becomes less and less black-and-white. The antagonist is compelling in large part because it’s easy to see their side of the issues, even though their tactics aren’t acceptable. Has the terrorism perpetrated by the Machinehood improved the lives of humanity? Divya has the courage to leave that question unanswered.

Every few years, it starts to seem like science fiction is running out of ideas. Thankfully, authors like Divya remind us that the future has an almost infinite array of possibilities. Machinehood is the type of novel that gives us faith in science fiction as a genre.