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In My Country
2026 Hugo Awards Voter Packet.
16 pages, ebook
Published May 6, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
July 2, 2026
2026 Hugo Short Story finalists
Here are the finalists for the 2026 Best Short Story Hugo Award, with my rankings:
1. ★★★☆☆ 10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days, Samantha Mills
2. ★★★☆☆ Six People to Revise You, J. R. Dawson
3. ★★★☆☆ Wire Mother, Isabel J. Kim
4. ★★★☆☆ Missing Helen, Tia Tashiro
5. ★★★☆☆ Laser Eyes Ain't Everything, Effie Seiberg
6. ★★☆☆☆ In My Country, Thomas Ha
I apologize: I'm gonna do a half-assed job of reviewing these. It was, IMO, a lack-luster harvest. What I always hope for when I read the Hugo finalists is something that makes me say, "I sure am glad the Hugo nomination process pointed me at that story!" This year, 2026, that happened in the series, novel, novella, and novelette categories. It didn't happened for a short story. (I have not yet read the poetry finalists -- the only remaining category in which I plan to vote.)
I have one complaint for all the short stories: they aren't. Stories that is. They are written English documents that have the form of stories, but not the essence. Everyone knows the famous but unhelpful dictum from Aristotle's Poetics that a story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end (usefully modified by Jean Luc Godard, "not necessarily in that order") Unhelpful though Aristotle is, the point on which he fails to put his finger is a good one: a story has a structure, not just of words, but also of events and emotions. I would summarize it as, "a problem should be resolved."
It's not that that doesn't happen in any of these stories -- it's just that it feels perfunctory, as if that isn't what the story is about. Several of them are more like thinly disguised polemics than stories. I'd put Six People to Revise You, Laser Eyes Ain't Everything, Wire Mother, and probably In My Country in that category. ("Probably" because I didn't understand In My Country.) Missing Helen was more storyish, but it was just not, IMO, a very good story.
10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days is a series of ten very short stories about a Lovecraftian end to the world. So there was some story-ness to it, quite possibly more than I understood. Also, it was funny. I chuckled several times.
So, there you have it. Better luck next year!
Blog review.
Here are the finalists for the 2026 Best Short Story Hugo Award, with my rankings:
1. ★★★☆☆ 10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days, Samantha Mills
2. ★★★☆☆ Six People to Revise You, J. R. Dawson
3. ★★★☆☆ Wire Mother, Isabel J. Kim
4. ★★★☆☆ Missing Helen, Tia Tashiro
5. ★★★☆☆ Laser Eyes Ain't Everything, Effie Seiberg
6. ★★☆☆☆ In My Country, Thomas Ha
I apologize: I'm gonna do a half-assed job of reviewing these. It was, IMO, a lack-luster harvest. What I always hope for when I read the Hugo finalists is something that makes me say, "I sure am glad the Hugo nomination process pointed me at that story!" This year, 2026, that happened in the series, novel, novella, and novelette categories. It didn't happened for a short story. (I have not yet read the poetry finalists -- the only remaining category in which I plan to vote.)
I have one complaint for all the short stories: they aren't. Stories that is. They are written English documents that have the form of stories, but not the essence. Everyone knows the famous but unhelpful dictum from Aristotle's Poetics that a story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end (usefully modified by Jean Luc Godard, "not necessarily in that order") Unhelpful though Aristotle is, the point on which he fails to put his finger is a good one: a story has a structure, not just of words, but also of events and emotions. I would summarize it as, "a problem should be resolved."
It's not that that doesn't happen in any of these stories -- it's just that it feels perfunctory, as if that isn't what the story is about. Several of them are more like thinly disguised polemics than stories. I'd put Six People to Revise You, Laser Eyes Ain't Everything, Wire Mother, and probably In My Country in that category. ("Probably" because I didn't understand In My Country.) Missing Helen was more storyish, but it was just not, IMO, a very good story.
10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days is a series of ten very short stories about a Lovecraftian end to the world. So there was some story-ness to it, quite possibly more than I understood. Also, it was funny. I chuckled several times.
So, there you have it. Better luck next year!
Blog review.
July 11, 2026
2026 Hugo Award finalist - Best Short Story
This is a strong allegory of how fascist governments try to control what people write, read, and think. The writing is stylistic without being obtuse, creating a sort of circular Mobius strip that seems to continue without end.
This is a strong allegory of how fascist governments try to control what people write, read, and think. The writing is stylistic without being obtuse, creating a sort of circular Mobius strip that seems to continue without end.
May 16, 2026
Didn't realise I'd been holding my breath the whole story until I took a big breath to cry at the end.
May 23, 2026
This story felt elegant and timeless. It could have been written fifty or a hundred years ago, with echoes Borges or perhaps Camus, and yet, it is disturbingly timely to our moment. It's very rare to find a writer capable not only of unearthing these deep themes, but one who presents them so casually, with grace but without pretention. A remarkable piece of writing.
June 13, 2026
This is the third short work in my personal Hugo Awards reading and this is another story that is interesting and thought-provoking rather than any sort of fun. Which in this case is definitely the point.
At first, it reads as if it’s set in a totalitarian country. And it would be an easier read if it were. I mean, it kind of is, but not in the way we think of such things. Because we think that totalitarianism tends towards uniformity of thought – or an attempt to force it.
(We also think of totalitarian regimes in the spirit of neighbors watching neighbors, government watching everyone, Orwell’s 1984 and “Big Brother is Watching You”. We do get that but it’s just different enough to speak to our moment rather than the usual idea about it. All the mechanisms are there, but they’re pointing in a different direction.)
In this unnamed country, there are blue houses in every neighborhood. The person who lives in the blue house is watching everyone, and has the technology to do so covertly. It’s still obtrusive because everyone knows that the person in the blue house is watching everyone all the time.
But what that person, and by extension the government is watching for, isn’t a particular opinion. What they’re watching and listening for is uncertainty. Ambiguity. Thoughts that go down rabbit holes and find multiple possible choices down in the dark at the bottom of the hole.
This government doesn’t care if you love it. Or, for that matter, if you hate it. Neither attitude is punished as long as you’re clear about where you stand. Because people who are certain in their attitudes and their thought processes don’t ask questions and don’t look for new answers.
What this government fears, punishes, and eliminates at any cost is ambiguity. Open-ended stories. Writing that is open to interpretation. Because interpretation invites questions, and questions invite exploration, and exploration has the potential to upset the status quo and change the certainties that keep the country on an even keel.
The story is told by one man, one father with two children, as he does his best to toe the party line. To tell his children what they need to know to survive in this world where everyone is watched and everyone must be clear every minute and no one can afford to ask questions of the world around them.
It’s only after his children are both gone, chewed up by the system that does not allow open-ended questions and less than 100% certain answers, that he realizes that his attempts to teach them not to ask him questions he didn’t want to answer clearly only led to their deaths. Because in his lack of clarity they learned that the system was clearly designed to keep people from thinking at all. And they couldn’t stop.
Escape Rating B: I listened to the podcast of this story, and it worked well as an audio experience because the story itself is all about the speaker’s attempt to teach his children through the words he couldn’t say and, at the end, his willingness to say the words that he was wrong to try to anyone who is willing to listen.
Under that, or over it, there’s the implicit message – again, what is not said – about the power of stories that don’t tie up neatly and don’t follow a prescribed format and don’t fit neatly into a box to engage the human mind and keep it worrying through the possibilities and the implications. The kind of story of which this story is itself an example. Because it too is open ended and that open ending is filled with possibilities. Some better, some worse but none of them either clear, or certain.
Originally published at Reading Reality
At first, it reads as if it’s set in a totalitarian country. And it would be an easier read if it were. I mean, it kind of is, but not in the way we think of such things. Because we think that totalitarianism tends towards uniformity of thought – or an attempt to force it.
(We also think of totalitarian regimes in the spirit of neighbors watching neighbors, government watching everyone, Orwell’s 1984 and “Big Brother is Watching You”. We do get that but it’s just different enough to speak to our moment rather than the usual idea about it. All the mechanisms are there, but they’re pointing in a different direction.)
In this unnamed country, there are blue houses in every neighborhood. The person who lives in the blue house is watching everyone, and has the technology to do so covertly. It’s still obtrusive because everyone knows that the person in the blue house is watching everyone all the time.
But what that person, and by extension the government is watching for, isn’t a particular opinion. What they’re watching and listening for is uncertainty. Ambiguity. Thoughts that go down rabbit holes and find multiple possible choices down in the dark at the bottom of the hole.
This government doesn’t care if you love it. Or, for that matter, if you hate it. Neither attitude is punished as long as you’re clear about where you stand. Because people who are certain in their attitudes and their thought processes don’t ask questions and don’t look for new answers.
What this government fears, punishes, and eliminates at any cost is ambiguity. Open-ended stories. Writing that is open to interpretation. Because interpretation invites questions, and questions invite exploration, and exploration has the potential to upset the status quo and change the certainties that keep the country on an even keel.
The story is told by one man, one father with two children, as he does his best to toe the party line. To tell his children what they need to know to survive in this world where everyone is watched and everyone must be clear every minute and no one can afford to ask questions of the world around them.
It’s only after his children are both gone, chewed up by the system that does not allow open-ended questions and less than 100% certain answers, that he realizes that his attempts to teach them not to ask him questions he didn’t want to answer clearly only led to their deaths. Because in his lack of clarity they learned that the system was clearly designed to keep people from thinking at all. And they couldn’t stop.
Escape Rating B: I listened to the podcast of this story, and it worked well as an audio experience because the story itself is all about the speaker’s attempt to teach his children through the words he couldn’t say and, at the end, his willingness to say the words that he was wrong to try to anyone who is willing to listen.
Under that, or over it, there’s the implicit message – again, what is not said – about the power of stories that don’t tie up neatly and don’t follow a prescribed format and don’t fit neatly into a box to engage the human mind and keep it worrying through the possibilities and the implications. The kind of story of which this story is itself an example. Because it too is open ended and that open ending is filled with possibilities. Some better, some worse but none of them either clear, or certain.
Originally published at Reading Reality
May 30, 2026
This review is for In My Country by Thomas Ha (goodreads groups together stories that appears in anthologies).
Every year I read all the finalists of the most prestigious science fiction awards (at least in the English speaking world): the Hugo awards. This story is a finalist in the Short Story category. I have read and loved previous work by this author, and I was looking forward reading this new story.
Reminiscent of classic mid-century dystopian literature, Thomas Ha’s award-nominated short story In My Country delivers a deeply atmospheric and unsettling look at life under a quiet, insidious regime. Rather than focusing on grand political machinations or a named external adversary, the narrative turns inward, focusing on a single family. It masterfully explores the slow, compounding friction that builds not just between a household and a hyper-vigilant, oppressive society, but within the family unit itself as they navigate the unspoken rules of survival.
Told with a meditative, eerie focus on character interiority, the story trades flashy sci-fi spectacle for a tense, psychological landscape where what is left unsaid carries the most danger. By forcing the reader to read between the lines, Ha crafts a haunting allegory of contemporary societal anxieties—leaving a lingering sense of unease that probes the costs of conformity and the fragility of trust behind closed doors.
This is another strong contender for the award in this category... it is going to be quite hard to pick among them this time around.
Every year I read all the finalists of the most prestigious science fiction awards (at least in the English speaking world): the Hugo awards. This story is a finalist in the Short Story category. I have read and loved previous work by this author, and I was looking forward reading this new story.
Reminiscent of classic mid-century dystopian literature, Thomas Ha’s award-nominated short story In My Country delivers a deeply atmospheric and unsettling look at life under a quiet, insidious regime. Rather than focusing on grand political machinations or a named external adversary, the narrative turns inward, focusing on a single family. It masterfully explores the slow, compounding friction that builds not just between a household and a hyper-vigilant, oppressive society, but within the family unit itself as they navigate the unspoken rules of survival.
Told with a meditative, eerie focus on character interiority, the story trades flashy sci-fi spectacle for a tense, psychological landscape where what is left unsaid carries the most danger. By forcing the reader to read between the lines, Ha crafts a haunting allegory of contemporary societal anxieties—leaving a lingering sense of unease that probes the costs of conformity and the fragility of trust behind closed doors.
This is another strong contender for the award in this category... it is going to be quite hard to pick among them this time around.
June 18, 2026
"In My Country" was a thought provoking short. I think this one can be taken a few different ways. and deliberately so. Well, the text even talks about ambiguity:
This method of keeping some things veiled can distract and make a story lose focus. To me, that did not happen. The way the story uses a somewhat generic back drop, a neighbor hood that gets some description but really could be a lot of different kinds of neighborhoods, with a family description that could fit a lot of different experiences, makes the story work. That relatability of the characters, the setting, the conflict, some relationship dynamics, that is what makes the narrative appealing to me and helps drive it forward. It also makes the themes a bit more timeless and poignant for the current social climate.
A well done short that is worth the buzz in my view.
"The problem with ambiguity is that it demands interpretation. The demand for interpretation welcomes a different magnitude of contemplation and unanticipated dispute."
"There is also inherent power in asymmetric ambiguity. You are allowed to have multiple meanings, to keep things veiled."
This method of keeping some things veiled can distract and make a story lose focus. To me, that did not happen. The way the story uses a somewhat generic back drop, a neighbor hood that gets some description but really could be a lot of different kinds of neighborhoods, with a family description that could fit a lot of different experiences, makes the story work. That relatability of the characters, the setting, the conflict, some relationship dynamics, that is what makes the narrative appealing to me and helps drive it forward. It also makes the themes a bit more timeless and poignant for the current social climate.
A well done short that is worth the buzz in my view.
June 8, 2026
I found this overly pretentious. The world-building is adequate, and the plot flows from the characters making decisions consistent with how they’ve been characterised. It has its clever moments, playing with the sci-fi surveillance state and how dissidents would circumvent that. The eponymous country is a thinly veiled allegory for Trump’s America, with elements reminiscent of Stalinist Russia, Mao’s China, North Korea, Cambodia, etc. Take your pick of the regimes of dictators and there’ll be something in the story that reminds you of it, so the creation of such a generic regime is an achievement. However, it’s desperately trying to be Profound, and Say Something, but the word count is too short to do it subtly. So what should have been thudding home instead feels ponderous.
July 2, 2026
An intense tale of living in a controlled society. Main character’s son becomes a subversive writer, threatening the stability that the MC has lived with all these years. His daughter and son see through the BS of the regime in power and try to make their father see the truth in the stories’ ambiguities. Powerful novel. A difficult read because of the frustration you develop listening to the father lie to himself about what’s happening around him and to his family.
Come visit my blog for all the short story nominees…
It Started With The Hugos
Come visit my blog for all the short story nominees…
It Started With The Hugos
June 8, 2026
3.5 stars
A finalist for Best Short Story Hugo Award 2026.
A father meditates of the way his country works, and the way he lives in it, and the consequences of his choices, and the choices of his son and daughter. More of a fantasy with political elements, musing on authoritarianism and compliance in advance than science fiction.
There is an inexoribility to the way the story progresses and ends.
A finalist for Best Short Story Hugo Award 2026.
A father meditates of the way his country works, and the way he lives in it, and the consequences of his choices, and the choices of his son and daughter. More of a fantasy with political elements, musing on authoritarianism and compliance in advance than science fiction.
There is an inexoribility to the way the story progresses and ends.
May 10, 2026
3/5
I'm very confused with this one but it's a nice kind of confusion. I guess I really enjoyed the direct and simple writing style. But don't ask me about the story or the message because I have no idea what to get from It.
I'm very confused with this one but it's a nice kind of confusion. I guess I really enjoyed the direct and simple writing style. But don't ask me about the story or the message because I have no idea what to get from It.
June 12, 2026
Another excellent Hugo nominated short story this year. I will also admit, being older myself, the unmistakable feeling that I am not quite getting all of what is going on, much as the main character has a similar impression.
July 18, 2026
Well, this is a short story that knows what it's doing and does it, and while some of it is perhaps a little over-explained, it doesn't completely mistrust the reader. Plus, it made me feel for the characters.
May 16, 2026
2.75*
May 22, 2026
Story about stories and censorship. It's meta in the sense that I'm not really sure what the message is. Definitely well written; Thomas Ha has a good style. Eerie dystopian vibe.
June 1, 2026
My notes for voting in Hugos: Interesting, a bit disturbing, a bit perplexed. Reminiscent of say, 1984 or Fahrenheit 541, Had impressions of political commentary but wasn't sure for who or where.
June 22, 2026
Not my cup of tea.
June 14, 2026
The sort of "unrooted in time" style makes this all the more dystopian as well as the eerie sense of uncertainty about whether and how dystopian things really are. A moving, if disturbing, story.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews