But when a transport is spotted approaching the obelisk, she has to decide how to direct her AIs, and then wait for the significant communication delay in both directions to find out how it turned out. AI-driven equipment constructs tiles from local materials and use them to construct an impressive tower for any future visitors to our solar system to find.

But instead of dwelling on the gloom and doom of the dismal future, she is determined to remotely build an obelisk on Mars that will serve as a monument to humanity that will survive for thousands of years, long after she expects humanity to be dead and gone. An attempted Mars colony has failed catastrophically, so humanity’s only attempt to find somewhere else didn’t fare any better. Susannah lives in what seem to be the waning days of human civilization, a time when the consequences of generations of short-sighted decisions come to their consequences for the survival of humanity. “The Martian Obelisk,” by Linda Nagata (Tor.com, July 19, 2017) This was my top nomination pick for this year of the hundreds of stories that I read, and I am absolutely delighted to see it on the final ballot for both the Nebula and Hugo.Ģ. I take the view that time is the most universal currency, we spend our time no matter what we do but what we spend our time doing defines us and our connection to those around us, the turns of clockwork people was a great metaphor for that. This is a beautiful, heart-wrenching story with so many powerful moments and themes, but especially in terms of the effort of being a caretaker, and also in terms of how we choose to spend our time. One day a carnival train comes nearby the closet where their town is located, and Zee decides to sneak off to see it, and everything changes. Her parents always tell her to do her work first so she has turns left to play.

Zee is lucky enough to have an extra capable mainspring, so she has the ability on an especially good day to see more and do more. Every action you take winds down your spring and that will be all you get to do until the Maker winds you again the next day. In a clockwork world, each person only gets as many turns as the Maker gives them each day, but never more than their mainspring can handle. Yoachim ( Beneath Ceaseless Skies, May 2017) On to the short story category, my favorite category of all the Hugo categories, covering stories less than 7500 words. Science fiction award season is here again, and the Hugo final ballot was announced for WorldCon 76 in San Jose.

Linda nagata memory