Tag Archives: Naomi Kritzer

Should ‘Better Living Through Algorithms’ Win the Hugo?

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Looks like it’s time for my SECOND short story Hugo Award nominee review of 2024 (the first was How to Raise a Kraken In Your Bathtub by P. Djeli Clark).

This week, we have Better Living Through Algorithms by Naomi Kritzer.

A quick google search has revealed to me that Naomi Kritzer is no stranger to the Hugo circuit with nominations in 2016, 2019, 2020 (I’m counting Lodestars), two in 2021, and now 2024. They took wins in 2016, and 2020 (again counting Lodestars), and have been getting nominated for other awards as early as 2003.

I am . . . hugely impressed.

And a bit embarrassed that my only other coverage of this author on this blog was for Little Free Library back in 2021. Apparently I enjoyed that story but did not think it would take the award.

It would seem that if there was an algorithm for writing award worthy fiction, Kritzer has figured it out. And then gone beyond it.

Better Living Through Algorithms is both a story and not a story. It hardly feels like science fiction because its set so firmly in our modern day reality. We’re already living this premise although it isn’t one app, it’s twelve, or fifteen, or a hundred apps which should add up to something wonderful like Abelique, but — like the fabled “universal” remote — never do.

I say it’s both a story an not a story because while we have a pretty easily identifiable protagonist in Linnea, the story’s antagonist is somewhat harder to pin down. Linnea’s skepticism of Abelique kind of positions the app itself in an antagonistic role, although it never seems to do anything outright nefarious, and indeed the opposite seems to be true. It’s actually be helping people.

Of course when the app is shut down, it is because people are acting badly on the app, and again, not because of anything nefarious that the app is doing.

Of course there is the issue of privacy and the amount of data the app needs to have in order to work as magically as it does. I think there is a lot to consider here. If this data is given freely and with consent is it as big a problem?

There’s an example in which Linnea takes a picture of her closet in order for someone on the app to help her make outfit decisions. In theory she consents by snapping the photo, and could just NOT do that in order to retain privacy. But did the app do enough to allow her to make an informed decision? Abelique does not really disclose where that image is stored and what else it can be used for.

Where I feel this story does resemble a more classic mode of science fiction is the way it evaluates a technology and warns of dangers and misuse. Even more so in that there is a way we can read this in which the tech is neutral, and (inevitably) it is people using the tech which are the bad actors. Big mood right here.

There’s just so much here to consider. So many pertinent questions which we must answer not in ten years, or fifty years time, but today, as we live and breath. I won’t spoil the ending, but I think the author leaves us something of a solution but again something we must ponder and tease out for ourselves . . . as the best stories ask us to do.

Should This One Win The Award?

I’ve only read two stories so far, but this is where I would put my money if I was betting for this category.

Better Living Through Algorithms is in some ways not like any other science fiction stories I’ve read. It’s casual in it’s approach, almost simple, but as we read, we find ourselves questioning seemingly foundational story elements like the role of the antagonist. Can something BE an antagonist if all it does is help people?

Yet for all that it is “not a story” it still manages to do what many great science fiction stories have done, which is to posit potential futures of a technology. Kritzer seems to strike a neutral stance, showcasing both positive and negative side effects of the tech, but what I thought was interesting about the story, was how it was the human element which inevitably caused it to go wrong.

All of this seems extremely relevant to today’s moment, but also to the future, as the decisions we make regarding this type of tech will surely influence generations to come. Ultimately, it is this pertinence to today’s world that I think will set it above the other nominees.

That’s all I have for this week. How’d I do? Did I miss anything? Would you use an app like Abelique? Let me know in the comments!

See you next time?

Should ‘Finna’ Win a Hugo?

by in Book Reviews, Sci Fi Month, Sci-Fi and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Hi again. Another Wednesday, another review. This time we’re talking about Hugo Award finalist Finna by Nino Cipri. I’ve reviewed quite a bit of Hugo finalists already, so if you’re interested in checking out any of those, please do.

Also, it’s #SciFiMonth, which is always a great time. The two posts I’ve done for it so far are a review of Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary and Five (non-American) Authors I Want to Read. I’m hoping to do more as the month goes on so I’ll be storing them in the Sci Fi Month tag if you’re interested in the latest.

Anyway, onward with the review!

In general, I really enjoyed this story. I think nearly everyone has shared the experience of getting so totally and completely bassackwardly lost in a big-box store like this (specifically IKEA) that it isn’t hard to imagine you’ve accidently stepped off the path of your own reality and entered into some kind of labyrinthian alternative composed entirely of the latest trending cabinetry.

(Or at the very least had an experience like SCP-3008)

It felt almost cathartic to have it confirmed, and to find out that the corporation who designed such a place, knows about it and attempted to smooth over the problem in the only way they know how: some faux hip instructional bullshit.

Everything mentioned above is enough for an incredible story, but the fact that this is merely the platform on which to explore romance, marginalization(s), trauma, and the path toward healing, to my mind, is what makes this story stand out. It’s also pretty funny at times.

The last element of Finna which I felt interesting to note was it’s use of the multiverse (trope?) theory. In late 2021, we are seeing multiverses EVERYWHERE in fiction. The obvious ones right now are Marvel’s What If, Loki, Into the Spiderverse and the upcoming Spiderman No Way Home, but I feel we’ve seen a lot of multiverse fiction even within the Hugo finalists from 2020 (which means we’ve been in this moment for a while).

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson made expert use of the multiverse to heighten the tension and moral questions of the story. Michael Zapata’s The Lost Book of Adana Moreau was another 2020 award winner which relied heavily on the multiverse (kicking myself for not reviewing it here. sooo goood!). I’m unsure whether portal fantasy counts as a multiverse story, but that would add The Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire, and Naomi Kritzer’s Little Free Library to the trend as well.

All of these stories use the multiverse to express a variety of different questions and themes. What do you do when you (literally/physically) are confronted with a better version of yourself? With one that’s worse? What would have happened if you had done that one thing differently? If your entire world/circumstances were different, who would you be then? There’s a kind of nature vs nurture argument happening in these stories, but also a kind of fatalism.

While I’ve enjoyed many multiverse stories, I’ve started to feel the message has shifted (I would say unintentionally), and I’ve asked myself why do our hero’s actions matter if there are infinite realities in which those actions didn’t take place?

What I enjoyed about Finna was that it seemed to posit that this was a source of freedom rather than despair. There is a universe in which you are a coward and there is a universe in which you are brave, and there are universes in which you do not exist at all. So do whatever you want. You’re not beholden to any other version of yourself.

Perhaps I’ve read too much into what was on the page, but to my mind, this take was quite refreshing and also a relief.

So . . . Hugo Award?

No. Despite all the good and heavy things packed inside of Finna, I’m still thinking that Tochi Onyebuchi’s Riot Baby is the choice. I mentioned in my review that Riot Baby was almost a mood instead of a book. Plus as a writer I could just feel that there was a lot to study and emulate within that story. I did not get the same vibes from Finna.

But know this. Finna will definitely be a hard 2nd place to dethrone, and though it isn’t my choice this time, I would still like to encourage everyone to read this story and see what you take away from it. Also, there are an infinite amount of universes in which Finna was my 1st choice so think on that!

Should ‘Little Free Library’ win the Hugo Award

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So it’s been a little while since I’ve posted any reviews related to the 2021 Hugo Awards. I’ve been pretty busy (first two weeks back to work full time! and a bunch of birthdays, mine included) and while I don’t feel like I’ve been slacking, I have not had as much time for reading and writing as I had before August hit (also before #smaugust hit lol).

Anyway, I think the perfect way to remedy that is to add some Hugo nominated short story reviews to my ever-growing list of Hugo related reviews. It’s been quite a while since I reviewed any short stories on this blog (the last one being a Robert Sharp number in 2018), so I’m feeling a little unsure how to proceed, but I supposed it’s just the same as any other review I’ve written . . . and who cares if it isn’t. I’m here for the funzies.

So, should Naomi Kritzer’s Little Free Library win a Hugo award in 2021?

Hot take: Probably not?

Don’t get me wrong, this is a wonderful short story, expertly crafted with much to love in the moment, but seems to crumble under further scrutiny. It does, perhaps, capture the essence of a portal fantasy, not by the literal use of a Little Free Library as a portal within the text, but in the fact that while you read the story, you are transported away from reality briefly and returned more or less able to continue on, refreshed but not really affected (in the times we’ve been having, perhaps this IS award worthy). I feel, especially since we have books like those in the Wayward Children series such as In and Absent Dream, that as a genre this is too simple a way to look at portal fantasies in general.

But I suppose I should try to break it down a little better.

Stuff I enjoyed:

I think one of the main parts of the story which gives it appeal to a wide audience is all the references to other books. Of course, there is the initial hook, Lord of the Rings, which every reader will recognize and kind of lets the reader know that they’ll be reading a fantasy, or at the very least, something fantasy related (interesting that they didn’t pick anything from The Chronicles of Narnia. I mean why not call it what it is haha).

And then we continue to get bread-crumbed through the mystery of who is on the other side of this portal through the other books which they select. The main character, Meigan, kind of thinks of this mystery as a game, and the reader is encouraged to do so as well, which makes it a fun puzzle. Points to everyone all around for fun puzzles.

Perhaps the second portion that I enjoyed, was simply that it was about libraries, and specifically a Little Free Library. I work for a library, so I’m always excited when one is featured (well) in a story and we have tons of these little book boxes all around (although MY neighborhood just took theirs down hmph) and I’ve always had a great experience swapping books through them. I have wondered where the books came from and who gave them up (although I never imagined something as crazy as this).

It’s just a cool concept, and another aspect of the story which lends itself to wide appeal. Even if people don’t know about Little Free Libraries, they have usually had SOME experience with a library and it’s pretty popular in our culture to romanticize them as gateways to other worlds (which for a lot of people they metaphorically are). I liked that in this case those other worlds were real and the gateway was literal.

Stuff I didn’t like:

Stories that rely heavily on allusion to other works, or references to them, are kind of a double-edged sword. If the reader knows them, or can mostly figure them out from context, the author is in the clear, but if not, the reader will be quite helpless to know what’s going on. It’s hard to imagine — especially reading all the Sci-fi and Fantasy blogs, channels, and books that I do — but there ARE people who haven’t read Lord of the Rings, or seen Starwars.

I haven’t read Ready Player One but I’m told it’s an extreme example of this, where the book is highly referential, and for a niche that actually isn’t all that big. I think this story falls into that a little bit. I’ll admit that I actually didn’t recognize too many of the books Meigan gave away. Some of them had titles that were generic enough that I could kinda get what they were about but, who knows? I don’t think this story did it enough to be ostracizing, but it’s a slippery slope.

Plus the whole thing felt vaguely nostalgic which I sort of have a love/hate relationship with. I’ll work this out someday and look back on these times of loathing and hatred with a fondness as I — Dammit stop that! Anyway, moving on . . .

— SORRY, SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT —

What was most interesting about the story to me:

I’ve been feeling that with a lot of stories these days, other people’s reactions are almost more interesting to me than the actual content of the story. For this book, people seem to feel that it’s very hopeful, and cute (which nothing that is ever called cute wants to be called cute lol) which I would have agreed with, immediately after reading, but actually began to think the opposite of as I pondered further.

Why you ask?

Well, the story essentially ends with what’s (assumedly) a dragon egg, sent through the portal with a note that says all has been lost, please take care of this baby for us. I don’t think poor Meigan is at all prepared to take care of a child out of nowhere (Who would be?), and this particular one has the added disadvantage of not even being a human. Whatever hatches from this poor egg is going to have a hell of a time living in a strange place, with strange people, and no others even remotely like itself to relieve any of the pressure of being (essentially) “the last of my kind”

Through this lens, the story is actually pretty bleak . . .

And what of it? What is the purpose of such tragedy? Not all stories need to have a message, or moral, or theme. It’s ok to have stories which are the literary equivalent of popcorn. Which is what this story seems to portend itself to be.

But even popcorn stories, which are not intentionally written with a theme, will usually still have one, even if it’s just the author’s outlook on the vast topics that happen through the story.

Little Free Library does not seem to give us any clue as to what that theme might be, and when we think deeper on the story (and assume the rather bleak outlook I described), it seems to need that theme or message badly but I just wasn’t sure what it was.

So . . . Hugo?

I think the lack of discernable theme, whether intentionally hidden or unintentionally left out is what lowered this story in my esteem. It had a wonderful premise and great execution of that premise, but (for me) did not deliver on the higher level which we typically associate with stories which are “award worthy”.

I can recommend this story to read, but not for the award . . .

What are y’all’s thoughts? DID this story have a theme which I just completely missed (this would not be the first nor last time)? Please let me know what you loved or didn’t love about the story in the comments as well as anything I’m missing here. Thanks so much for stopping by.

See you next time.