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Marginalia
2025 Hugo Voter Packet version (Best Short Story nominee).
25 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 2024
23 people want to read
About the author
Mary Robinette Kowal
252 books5,414 followersMary Robinette Kowal is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award winning alternate history novel The Calculating Stars, the first book in the Lady Astronaut series which continues in 2025 with The Martian Contingency. She is also the author of The Glamourist Histories series, Ghost Talkers, The Spare Man and has received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, four Hugo awards, the Nebula and Locus awards. Her stories appear in Asimov’s, Uncanny, and several Year’s Best anthologies. Mary Robinette has also worked as a professional puppeteer, is a member of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses, and performs as a voice actor (SAG/AFTRA), recording fiction for authors including Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow, and Neal Stephenson. She lives in Denver with her husband Robert, their dog Guppy, and their “talking” cat Elsie.
Her novel Calculating Stars is one of only eighteen novels to win the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards in a single year.
Her novel Calculating Stars is one of only eighteen novels to win the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards in a single year.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
August 12, 2025
Really, really fun and good, but a couple of things didn't quite work for me - still, delightful and whimsical in the best way. Giant snails. Giant snails.
July 23, 2025
Wasn't expecting to be sniffling at the end of this short story that involved a giant snail, but here we are.
June 29, 2025
Snails.
2.71828 star
2.71828 star
July 12, 2025
This entry in my Hugo Award nominee readings moves the dial from the novelettes to the short stories. I picked this one to go first in that category because the author is one that I’ve certainly enjoyed in longer forms, notably her Lady Astronaut series and The Spare Man.
Having finished this story, I have a feeling that it made the Hugo Ballot because I’m not alone in that name recognition and affection for her longer works. Because this short just didn’t gel, particularly in comparison to the novelette nominees.
Yes, I know they’re not the same thing, and the novelettes have a bit more room to work, but still, with the novelette nominees even the ones that didn’t work as well FOR ME still had very interesting things to say and/or said those things in interesting ways.
“Marginalia” is, well, the most apropos title this story could have, because that’s exactly what the story feels like – marginalia. Something that got scribbled around the edges of something bigger or more important. It’s also a bit of an academic in-joke as well as a potential explanation for the absolutely stellar giant snail monsters, but from this perspective, it captures the nature of the story a bit too well and not in a good way.
It may be that this is trying to do too many things in a very small number of pages, of which a few too many are taken up by an imperious cat (and I’m saying that in spite of how much I love cats in general and this one in particular), and not nearly enough glitter from the slime left behind by the giant snail monsters.
Those giant snails are the best part.
Overall, this is very much a typical medieval fantasy-type setting, where the main characters are Margery, a young woman caring for her dying mother, her younger brother Hugh, dreaming of adventure beyond their little farm, and the nobleman Lord Strange doing his best to keep his lands and people safe from the rampaging giant snails. And, of course, the snails doing the rampaging.
The boy disobeys his sister, keeps the nobleman safe from the snails – and the sister does the heroic thing and saves not just the day but all the lands ravaged by the snails. Not through might, but through ingenuity.
The ending falls a bit flat because it doesn’t end satisfactorily. The boy gets his wish, the nobleman realizes he knows nothing about how the people in his demesne really live, the mother dies to set her children free and Margery is left standing on the horns of a dilemma, knowing that her future has the possibility of being brighter than her past and completely uncertain which way to step to make it so.
Escape Rating C: “Marginalia” feels like a story that’s a bit of a filler. Putting it another way, the story lives up to, or more appropriately down to, its title, as marginalia are, according to Wikipedia, “marks made in the margins of a book or other document.” The bits around the outside edges of something else. Whether that something else was a bigger story, or in this case whether that something else should have been pitched at a younger audience, either way this story is fun enough for its length – or its length in audio, but no more than that.
I did listen to the podcast, I enjoyed Erika Ensign’s reading and it was the perfect length for a short drive, but there’s just not a lot of there, well, there. The giant snails were the best part and they’re just doing what their nature intended.
Meanwhile, I’m left hoping that the rest of the short story nominees rise above this one.
Originally published at Reading Reality
Having finished this story, I have a feeling that it made the Hugo Ballot because I’m not alone in that name recognition and affection for her longer works. Because this short just didn’t gel, particularly in comparison to the novelette nominees.
Yes, I know they’re not the same thing, and the novelettes have a bit more room to work, but still, with the novelette nominees even the ones that didn’t work as well FOR ME still had very interesting things to say and/or said those things in interesting ways.
“Marginalia” is, well, the most apropos title this story could have, because that’s exactly what the story feels like – marginalia. Something that got scribbled around the edges of something bigger or more important. It’s also a bit of an academic in-joke as well as a potential explanation for the absolutely stellar giant snail monsters, but from this perspective, it captures the nature of the story a bit too well and not in a good way.
It may be that this is trying to do too many things in a very small number of pages, of which a few too many are taken up by an imperious cat (and I’m saying that in spite of how much I love cats in general and this one in particular), and not nearly enough glitter from the slime left behind by the giant snail monsters.
Those giant snails are the best part.
Overall, this is very much a typical medieval fantasy-type setting, where the main characters are Margery, a young woman caring for her dying mother, her younger brother Hugh, dreaming of adventure beyond their little farm, and the nobleman Lord Strange doing his best to keep his lands and people safe from the rampaging giant snails. And, of course, the snails doing the rampaging.
The boy disobeys his sister, keeps the nobleman safe from the snails – and the sister does the heroic thing and saves not just the day but all the lands ravaged by the snails. Not through might, but through ingenuity.
The ending falls a bit flat because it doesn’t end satisfactorily. The boy gets his wish, the nobleman realizes he knows nothing about how the people in his demesne really live, the mother dies to set her children free and Margery is left standing on the horns of a dilemma, knowing that her future has the possibility of being brighter than her past and completely uncertain which way to step to make it so.
Escape Rating C: “Marginalia” feels like a story that’s a bit of a filler. Putting it another way, the story lives up to, or more appropriately down to, its title, as marginalia are, according to Wikipedia, “marks made in the margins of a book or other document.” The bits around the outside edges of something else. Whether that something else was a bigger story, or in this case whether that something else should have been pitched at a younger audience, either way this story is fun enough for its length – or its length in audio, but no more than that.
I did listen to the podcast, I enjoyed Erika Ensign’s reading and it was the perfect length for a short drive, but there’s just not a lot of there, well, there. The giant snails were the best part and they’re just doing what their nature intended.
Meanwhile, I’m left hoping that the rest of the short story nominees rise above this one.
Originally published at Reading Reality
June 16, 2025
A very good, but conventional, story
Marginalia, by Mary Robinette Kowal, is a finalist for the 2025 Best Short Story Hugo. You can find it in here in Uncanny. (By the way, Uncanny really cleaned up in the short categories this year.) It's a very good story. I ranked it second after Nghi Vo's Stitched to Skin Like Family Is, because I am a flaming neophile and Stitched felt more novel to me. Not novel for Vo-- it was recognizably the kind of thing she writes. But no one else could have.
Marginalia is a fantasy story set in the kind of faux-feudal/medieval world that so much of fantasy occupies. (European fairy tales and J.R.R. Tolkien.) If you read a lot of fantasy you will recognize the essential plot. In fact, Kowal herself puts that basic plot in the mind of a ten-year-old in the story and pans it. But then the story ends up being only a slight variation on it.
Still, it's a well-done cover of a well-known old song, and I enjoyed it.
Blog review.
Marginalia, by Mary Robinette Kowal, is a finalist for the 2025 Best Short Story Hugo. You can find it in here in Uncanny. (By the way, Uncanny really cleaned up in the short categories this year.) It's a very good story. I ranked it second after Nghi Vo's Stitched to Skin Like Family Is, because I am a flaming neophile and Stitched felt more novel to me. Not novel for Vo-- it was recognizably the kind of thing she writes. But no one else could have.
Marginalia is a fantasy story set in the kind of faux-feudal/medieval world that so much of fantasy occupies. (European fairy tales and J.R.R. Tolkien.) If you read a lot of fantasy you will recognize the essential plot. In fact, Kowal herself puts that basic plot in the mind of a ten-year-old in the story and pans it. But then the story ends up being only a slight variation on it.
Still, it's a well-done cover of a well-known old song, and I enjoyed it.
Blog review.
June 2, 2025
Available here, and a finalist for the Hugo awards (as a short story, just under the word count), and oh it is lovely.
Fantasy mediavelesque, gentle, such a good PoV and her duties and her courage at many things, but with an insight into class distinctions (and mobility). Very very good - 4.5 stars I guess.
If you like Naomi Novik's fairy tale-ish novels or like Robin McKinley stories you might like this.
As an extra, as somebody who tries to garden a bit (and bonds with other gardeners over how much we absolutely hate snails) and had the day I read this tried to do some snail control, the snails as destructive dangerous pests were extremely relatable and believable and I bet the author is a gardener.
I have now read all of the short stories categories, though I mean to reread one I read last year. But basically of the 6, I liked two and this was one of them. The other was the Isabel J Kim take on Omelas which is the total opposite of this one, very different qualities, but which I also thought it interesting and thought provoking. The other 4, meh.
Fantasy mediavelesque, gentle, such a good PoV and her duties and her courage at many things, but with an insight into class distinctions (and mobility). Very very good - 4.5 stars I guess.
If you like Naomi Novik's fairy tale-ish novels or like Robin McKinley stories you might like this.
As an extra, as somebody who tries to garden a bit (and bonds with other gardeners over how much we absolutely hate snails) and had the day I read this tried to do some snail control, the snails as destructive dangerous pests were extremely relatable and believable and I bet the author is a gardener.
I have now read all of the short stories categories, though I mean to reread one I read last year. But basically of the 6, I liked two and this was one of them. The other was the Isabel J Kim take on Omelas which is the total opposite of this one, very different qualities, but which I also thought it interesting and thought provoking. The other 4, meh.
July 21, 2025
Fun. The re-vision of fantasy tropes was well done, but didn't feel groundbreaking. The freedom that comes at the end - an opening up of horizons, not because of potentially being able to change/improve social station, but because a cronically ill loved one has passed and however much missed, their passing allows for change. That struck hard. But it's almost a throw-away line at the end. Not at all developed.
May 29, 2025
Read for the 2025 Hugos
A short, gentle look at life on the edges of a society and what makes something valuable and important to the people that live there. Unlike other stories, it doesn't try to beat you over the head with the point. It's kind of up to you to put a little thought in after you read it.
A short, gentle look at life on the edges of a society and what makes something valuable and important to the people that live there. Unlike other stories, it doesn't try to beat you over the head with the point. It's kind of up to you to put a little thought in after you read it.
April 28, 2025
Read for 2025 Hugos
Like all of Mary Robinette's stories, this one is lovely and caring, but has an undercurrent talking about the systems in place in the world. How do we treat our elders given the demands of the highest echelons of society?
Like all of Mary Robinette's stories, this one is lovely and caring, but has an undercurrent talking about the systems in place in the world. How do we treat our elders given the demands of the highest echelons of society?
May 20, 2025
The title refers to those who live on the margins, the forgotten and aging, the poor, and the intersection of where they meet the illustrations of knights jousting snails, becoming their own protagonists.
June 2, 2025
Thanks hirondelle as usual great recommendations
Available here, finalist for the Hugo awards.
Available here, finalist for the Hugo awards.
June 24, 2025
Epic battles with a giant snail? Yes please. Read for the Hugos.
June 27, 2025
A nice little story that asks, "What if those giant snails in Medieval European manuscripts were real and dangerous, and you had to deal with them while caring for vulnerable relatives?"
July 13, 2025
more fun than substantial
July 22, 2025
A short work that feels a bit like a proposal for a longer work (to which I say yes, please). Or it could just be the equivalent of author doodles. Either way, I liked it.
August 8, 2025
(mostly notes to myself)
2025 Hugo Nominee Short Story Category (3 of 6)
Mature MC, interesting world building, interesting plot, greatly enjoyed this one.
2025 Hugo Nominee Short Story Category (3 of 6)
Mature MC, interesting world building, interesting plot, greatly enjoyed this one.
August 24, 2025
Cute short story about fighting giant snails in medieval times.
September 4, 2025
3.5 stars
An entertaining short story, that amusingly has giant snails with caustic slime trails that are wrecking the countryside.
An entertaining short story, that amusingly has giant snails with caustic slime trails that are wrecking the countryside.
September 13, 2025
What an enjoyable tale, I love the idea of these snails and the encompassing kingdom. I need to check out more writing from this author.
October 28, 2025
Big fan of the giant snail monsters... Not sure I had very strong feelings about this one aside from that, but it wasn't bad.
July 13, 2025
(3.5/5 stars)
This fantasy short story was a fun and quick read.
The beginning was a little slow and I'm not sure I fully liked the ending, but I really enjoyed the middle! It uses one of the standard plots that happen in fantasies loosely based on a semi-medieval world, with the biggest difference in the form of the creature wrecking havoc in the story.
CW:
This fantasy short story was a fun and quick read.
The beginning was a little slow and I'm not sure I fully liked the ending, but I really enjoyed the middle! It uses one of the standard plots that happen in fantasies loosely based on a semi-medieval world, with the biggest difference in the form of the creature wrecking havoc in the story.
CW:
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews