Novellas, Unbound!
First, we posted links to all of the Hugo nominated short stories (all free and digital), then we followed up with the novelettes (mostly free and all digital), and now we have… novellas! Of the six nominated novellas, five are available digitally, and four are free. Considering Hugo defines a novella as being up to 40,000 words, that’s a lot of reading for not much.
Do remember that Chicon 7 (Worldcon 70) members get digital copies of all five novels, six novellas, five novelettes, and five short stories for FREE. Even if you don’t plan on attending Worldcon this year, you can get a supporting membership for only $50, and you’ll be able to vote.
If membership isn’t in the cards this year, you can still get the novellas (most of them for free):
- “Countdown” by Mira Grant (aka Seanan McGuire) (Orbit) is just $2.99 on Kindle, as well as Nook and Google Books.
- “The Ice Owl” by Carolyn Ives Gilman (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November/December 2011) is the only nominated story that doesn’t seem to be available online in any format. I’ll keep looking, but, for now, the only way to get this story is by ordering the Nov/Dec issue in dead tree format.
- “Kiss Me Twice” by Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s, June 2011) is free!
- “The Man Who Bridged the Mist” by Kij Johnson (Asimov’s, September/October 2011) is free!
- “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” by Ken Liu (Panverse 3) is in PDF format (so is ebookable) and is free!
- “Silently and Very Fast” by Catherynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld / WSFA) is free!
A note on the two stories that are not free: Countdown is a real book, published by Orbit, which sells digitally for $2.99. This, I think, is the beginning of a trend. Shorter stories are starting to sell on Kindle at less-than-novel prices. Even though the other books on this list are free, I think the trend to charge small amounts for novellas, novelettes, and even short stories means that otherwise unaccessable stories will have a longer shelf life, giving us more to read. While Seanan McGuire is being all cutting edge, “The Ice Owl”, by Carolyn Ives Gilman, does not seem to be available anywhere online. If that changes, we will update this article and let you know by tweet (@WWEnd).
Links to all of the award winning books are, as always, available through BookTrackr. So, now you have no excuse when someone asks you who you think should win. Get to reading!
5 Comments
Thanks Rico. Stunning effort in getting all these reading material together.
Wow, thanks for all your work in finding resources for the short fiction! This was incredibly helpful :).
"The Ice Owl" is part of the contents of both Hartwell & Cramers’ Year’s Best SF 17, released May 29 ($8 paperback or ebook) and Dozois’ 29th Annual Year’s Best SF, released July 3 ($15 paperback, $10 ebook). Anyone who doesn’t mind waiting a month or two can get that story along with a couple of dozen other good ones in one or the other of these books… Both should be out before the Hugo winners are announced… (In yet another plug, it couldn’t hurt to mention that, for anyone wanting to keep up with short fiction, subscriptions to F&SF and Asimov’s (and Analog) are cheap and convenient, now that they’re releasing them electronically through ebook sellers.)
Allie and Emil: You’re welcome. It was fun to do. Dr. Laz: Thanks for the info. I’m glad to see that will be online in some format, even if I would like to have the opportunity to buy it independently. Those release dates are later than the Hugo readers’ packet, alas. I guess I’ll be reading this one last.
Thank you very much for centralizing these links!I would like to correct you on one thing though. Supporting membership in Chicon 7 does not guarantee that you will get digital copies of the Hugo-nominated works. It is up to the publishers, writers and creators of the Hugo-nominated works as to whether they will participate in making electronic copies available for review by the Hugo Award voters.
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