I am (foolishly) determined to read all of the Hugo nominated short stories.
Oldies:
Mack Reynolds "Status Quo"
Clifford D. Simak "Desertion"
Clifford D. Simak "Huddling Place"
Orson Scott Card "The Lost Boys" (It's a ghost story)
Gary Jennings "Myrrh" (a weak horror story)
James Patrick Kelly "Itsy Bitsy Spider"
Gene Wolfe "No Planets Strike"
Robert J. Sawyer "The Hand You're Dealt"
Karen Joy Fowler "Standing Room Only"
Andy Duncan "Beluthahatchie"
Michael Swanwick "The Very Pulse of the Machine"
Bruce Sterling "Maneki Neko"
Woke era shit:
“As the Last I May Know”, by S.L. Huang
“Do Not Look Back, My Lion”, by Alix E. Harrow
“A Catalog of Storms”, by Fran Wilde
“Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island”, by Nibedita Sen
The Hand You're Dealt, Itsy Bitsy Spider and The Very Pulse of the Machine are probably my three favorites of the bunch. Nothing must-read or anything.
I also re-read a couple of Hugo nominees that appeared in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthologies:
The Moon Moth by Jack Vance. This one is ok but it needed two things: 1) a more plausible reason why the fugitive couldn't be identified and 2) a stronger closing sentence. The story reminds me of David D. Levine's Tk Tk Tk a little bit.
A Rose for Ecclesiastes by Roger Zelazny. I like this one quite a bit. This level of quality is what I'm looking for (hoping for) when I pick up an anthology of "The Best" or "Award Winning" science fiction.
