The Nebula Award nominations have already come and gone, and the Hugo Award is up next.  The Hugo Award, presented by the World Science Fiction Society, is speculative fiction’s other major writing award.  While there is often considerable overlap in nominations  between the two, very few works tend to win both awards.  Personally, I’ve tended to enjoy the Hugo Award winners a little more than the Nebula Award winners, especially in the novel category. 

As with the Nebulas, this time around I’m most interested in the short fiction categories.  Here are the 2012 Hugo nominees for best novelette:

• “The Copenhagen Interpretation” by Paul Cornell (Asimov’s Science Fiction)
• “Fields of Gold,” Rachel Swirsky (Eclipse 4)
• “Ray of Light” by Brad R. Torgersen (Analog)
• “Six Months, Three Days,” Charlie Jane Anders (Tor.com)
• “What We Found,” Geoff Ryman (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) 

and for best short story:

• “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees,” E. Lily Yu (Clarkesworld Magazine)
• “The Homecoming” by Mike Resnick (Asimov’s Science Fiction)
• “Movement,” Nancy Fulda (Asimov’s Science Fiction)
• “The Paper Menagerie,” Ken Liu (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction)
• “Shadow War of the Night Dragons: Book One: The Dead City: Prologue” by John Scalzi (Tor.com)

Comparing the Hugo and Nebula nominations, I notice the two stories from Gignotosuarus are conspicuously missing from the novelette category, which I find unfortunate (I particularly liked Katherine Sparrow’s “The Migratory Pattern of Dancers”).  Likewise Lightspeed Magazine, which had three stories with Nebula nominations, were shut out in the short fiction categories.  That said, I’ve read most of these stories already, and all are worthy of their recognition.  I look forward to reading the ones I’ve missed.