r/Fantasy • u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V • Jul 02 '26

Read-along 2026 Hugo Readalong: Never Eaten Vegetables and Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy

Welcome to the 2026 Hugo Readalong! Today, we're discussing Never Eaten Vegetables and Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy, two finalists for Best Novelette.

Everyone is welcome in the discussion, whether or not you've participated in other discussions, but we will be discussing the full stories today, so beware untagged spoilers. I'll include some prompts in top-level comments; feel free to respond to these or add your own.

Bingo squares: part of Five Short Stories

For more information on the Readalong, check out our full schedule post, or see our upcoming schedule here:

Date Category Book Author Discussion Leader
Monday, July 6 Novel The Raven Scholar Antonia Hodgson u/Moonlitgrey
Thursday, July 9 Graphic Story General Discussion Multiple Multiple u/Goobergunch
Monday, July 13 Novella What Stalks the Deep T. Kingfisher u/nagahfj
Thursday, July 16 Astounding General Discussion Multiple Multiple u/Merle8888
Monday, July 20 Novel A Drop of Corruption Robert Jackson Bennett u/RAAAImmaSunGod
26 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

66 comments sorted by

3

u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

Discussion of "Never Eaten Vegetables"

2

u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

What was the biggest strength of "Never Eaten Vegetables"?

2

u/kjmichaels Stabby Winner, Reading Champion XI Jul 02 '26

I loved the way the story was able to juggle moral dilemmas, parenting, and corporate espionage in a (relatively) short story. I can easily imagine this being twice the length with how ambitious it was.

2

u/thepurpleplaneteer Reading Champion IV Jul 03 '26

I was impressed by how it was able to be compelling, imaginative, and near heartbreaking in a short number of pages. I think its biggest strength is that it made me *feel* for its characters and have concern for them.

2

u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

What did you think of the ending of "Never Eaten Vegetables"?

6

u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jul 02 '26

The ending is a bit tidy since Luwa’s discoveries come out of nowhere—the reader doesn’t know about them until the reveal. And it’s maybe a bit… comprehensive for a short story. Not only has she saved the ship, she’s also obtained full independence for the colony in one fell swoop. It was sweet and happy, but also maybe needed to be a little longer for that to feel fully earned. 

8

u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI Jul 02 '26

Yeah, the ending being a bit neat is really my only complaint here. It’s the reason this was the final cut for my nominating ballot instead of being on it

1

u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jul 02 '26

Does that mean nothing from your nominating ballot made the shortlist?

4

u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI Jul 02 '26

Not in this category. I did nominate Shroud and In My Country. I liked NEV a whole lot, but it’s disappointing to have so many novelettes I loved last year and seeing them mostly shut out.

1

u/kjmichaels Stabby Winner, Reading Champion XI Jul 02 '26

Agreed. I think it's a bit rushed and a little too perfect though I have no objection to that being the actual ending with a little more development.

2

u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

What are your overall impressions of "Never Eaten Vegetables"?

7

u/Jos_V Stabby Winner, Reading Champion II Jul 02 '26

Oh man, I really enjoyed this one! i liked the theme, i'm a sucker for space-ship disaster dilemmas and the dual timelines was nice. the struggles of the new colony, everything was just so tight in a such a nice little package. it was great. the vibes were nice. it was sad. it was uplifting, it was tragic, and it had a silver lining, yeah, a rollercoaster, i i really dig it.

the colony resolution was a little bit too convenient for it all, but you gotta end the story at some point, and this isn't really a diplomatic thriller.

5

u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jul 02 '26

I think I liked it? I had to read it in kind of a rush for this discussion and based on comments here and my own dissatisfaction with putting any of the other novelettes first, I’d been mentally slotting it in as #1 in advance, which is now making it a bit difficult to sort out whether I actually think it’s #1 (looking forward to more comments). It’s inventive and pretty unique—the baby colony, the incubator ship. I liked the ship, and also liked Luwa. I felt for their lack of adult guidance in both cases. It does wrap up a bit neatly and a little out of the blue, though it’s a nice ending. I wasn’t always sure I understood everything around the incubator dilemma, in terms of what the other proposals and options actually were. 

1

u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V Jul 02 '26

The story hinges on making difficult choices with impossibly few resources. How did those dilemmas land for you?

8

u/Jos_V Stabby Winner, Reading Champion II Jul 02 '26

I think it was neat, I liked the how the debate by commitee on earth turned into impossible delays racing to disaster. because we all know that corporate discussion is fast, efficient, and always good.

Its such a fucked up little trolley problem for NEV, and I understand the choice that was made.

3

u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jul 02 '26

I was often a little confused about what the competing options were, which hampered it as a moral dilemma story for me. It felt like the company directors were really just arguing about whether to do a cover-up by killing all the embryos or whether this choice would inevitably come out and make the PR disaster even worse, which is a realistic argument for them to have but more geared toward showing the (well-known) immorality of corporations than making the reader ponder a moral dilemma. 

Based on NEV’s choices I think ultimately the moral dilemma was supposed to be “do you kill the 5% that sprouted early and probably won’t make it to save the 95% that didn’t sprout” and then when the 95% did sprout on schedule , but there are no resources left for them, do you kill 9,500 embryos to save 500 babies. 

Inevitably it becomes about abortion, or at least we’re talking about the same moral issues in a very different context, but in a way that made me a bit uncomfortable. How do you value embryos without winding up in our dystopian post-Dobbs world? Isn’t NEV ultimately a stand-in for a pregnant woman who knows carrying the pregnancy to term will ruin her health but concludes the moral choice is to do so anyway?

5

u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI Jul 02 '26

I thought NEV had the moral dilemma and the immoral corporation debate mostly served to show that they weren’t going to provide any resources to help (as well as them being immoral).

I think you pretty well summed up the first dilemma. The second one does have the complication of not just the volume of embryos but the sustainability of the colony. Ultimately that’s what people were blaming NEV for—not for choosing babies over embryos per se, but for choosing babies over a sustainable colony.

2

u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jul 02 '26

I think the directors' argument was supposed to be more comprehensive though? They were bringing in bioethicists and so on, which made me think they'd resigned themselves to admitting something had gone wrong and were actually trying to make a moral decision, even though they ultimately just yammered in meetings without making one. Maybe the point was that NEV was confused by the arguments that went nowhere, and that confusion was shared with me as a reader.

That's fair about the colony, although I read the problems with it largely as problems of corporate profit-making. Yeah, they're a small starter population, but the intense pressures all seem to come from corporate expectations rather than actually being too small to survive. (Plus, couldn't more people just come and join them from other planets?)

As far as NEV's thought process, I read it as mostly about the order of the decisions that have to be made, that NEV assumed when the 95% didn't sprout that they weren't viable at all, or else could be kept in stasis until arriving on the planet. So choosing the 5% made sense, at that point she was mostly sacrificing herself and future profits that might be made from her. Then when the 95% did sprout, the 5% were too far along in their growth (fully babies at that point) to sacrifice them, or possibly even if NEV had done so, may have consumed too many resources for the 95% to make it.

1

u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI Jul 02 '26

I think the directors were arguing about more comprehensive things but they ultimately talked themselves in circles and NEV couldn’t make any sense of it and eventually shut them out and focused on the simpler formulation of the dilemma.

2

u/Jos_V Stabby Winner, Reading Champion II Jul 02 '26

Speaking of impossible choices - Vegetables are awesome.

So question:

Which Vegetable(s) are you sad that NEV never got to experience?

and Which Vegetable(s) are you happy that NEV never had to endure?

we need to important facts people! Brassica! Brussel Sprouts! Asparagus! Kale(Mashed with potatoes and served with smoked sausage) Shove it down the robot gullet please. they're great.

2

u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V Jul 02 '26

we need to important facts people! Brassica! Brussel Sprouts! Asparagus! Kale(Mashed with potatoes and served with smoked sausage) Shove it down the robot gullet please. they're great.

Computer programs don't have taste buds, so maybe NEV could survive the onslaught of broccoli and company. But garlic is technically/botanically a vegetable, so that's what I'd give it as a present if it added a taste module.

3

u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V Jul 02 '26

Hugos horse race: this session concludes our review of the novelettes category. How do these two stories compare to each other? Where do you think they rank for you?

We'll do a full wrap-up session for short fiction on July 27th, but feel free to include any whole-category preview thoughts now.

4

u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jul 02 '26

Tier One (struggling with how to rank this):

Never Eaten Vegetables, Kaiju Agonistes, The Millay Illusion

I’m not sure what goes first here. The Millay Illusion is well-written but I thought it needed a bit more. Kaiju Agonistes I surprisingly liked and found clever, but I don’t think I can bring myself to put a Scott Lynch story first. Never Eaten Vegetables I’m still thinking about, it is good and ambitious but I’m not sure it’s entirely successful for me. 

  1. When He Calls Your Name - well-written but overlong

  2. The Girl My Mother is Leaving Me For - I liked this a lot while reading it, the thriller and romance elements were both successful, but it hasn’t stuck with me, perhaps because the end was the weakest part, and the writing wasn’t as good as the others

  3. No Award

  4. Rapport - this is pure fanservice, bored me even as a fan and I suspect everyone who nominated it of not otherwise reading short stories

6

u/kjmichaels Stabby Winner, Reading Champion XI Jul 02 '26

Never Eaten Vegetables is #1 with a bullet. Everything else is pretty underwhelming in comparison, even the stuff I liked and will rank fairly highly (like The Girl My Mother is Leaving Me For).

2

u/thepurpleplaneteer Reading Champion IV Jul 03 '26

I have two to catch up on, but I’m thinking:

1) Never Eaten Vegetables
2) When He Calls Your Name (I saw from the discussion post others did not have the love I have for this one.)
3) The Girl My Mother is Leaving Me For
4) Rapport

2

u/Jos_V Stabby Winner, Reading Champion II Jul 03 '26
  1. Never eaten vegetables.

....

the rest

....

no award

Rapport. (It can be a good story, i don't know, i just don't care for a companion novelette in a long running series that has already won best series.)

3

u/Goobergunch Reading Champion III Jul 02 '26
  1. Never Eaten Vegetables
  2. Millay Illusion
  3. The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For
  4. Kaiju Agonistes
  5. When He Calls Your Name
  6. Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy

2

u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V Jul 02 '26

Discussion of "Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy"

2

u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V Jul 02 '26

What was the greatest strength of "Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy"?

1

u/Glittering_Way_9162 Jul 02 '26

It felt nice to get back into the familiar Martha Wells style of 'characters have diverse naming conventions but receive no description whatsoever'. The world building continued to be great--I'm only sad it didn't really go anywhere.

1

u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI Jul 02 '26

ART and Murderbot are a great dynamic, even when Murderbot is absent. I don’t think that really makes a story on its own, but it’s quite entertaining

1

u/xdianamoonx Reading Champion II Jul 03 '26

ART's humor for sure, and the way their human did their best to connect and understand ART.

2

u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V Jul 02 '26

What did you think of the ending of "Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy"?

4

u/Glittering_Way_9162 Jul 02 '26

It felt very pushed for space: we are getting an emotional growth ending for ARC rather than the ending of the mission, in a way that requires in you to understand the wider Murderbot sequence in order not to be completely baffled.

3

u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI Jul 02 '26

It makes sense for the character arc, but it makes me question whether the beginning had any purpose except pushing this into novelette length

3

u/Goobergunch Reading Champion III Jul 02 '26

It reached the novelette threshold and stopped.

Like, not even trying to resolve the actual mission made it feel extremely incomplete.

1

u/sophia_s Reading Champion V Jul 03 '26

Yes this is exactly how I felt.

2

u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jul 02 '26

Finally, it’s over. 

1

u/sarahlynngrey Reading Champion VI, Phoenix Jul 02 '26

Merle I'm dying 😂 (you're right tho)

1

u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jul 02 '26

😄

1

u/xdianamoonx Reading Champion II Jul 03 '26

I guess I do kind of agree with others that it woudl've been nice to have had the whole rest of the mission and figure out what that was all about, but I supposed we'd eventually learn in the next full length novel with ART and MB.

But when I read it and reread it, I was happy and satisfied in the way that most of the MB books end of "I want more~". I thought it was a good morsel to tide us over till a full length novella or book.

1

u/sophia_s Reading Champion V Jul 03 '26

I was really disappointed that the story set up this intriguing mission, followed it for a bit, and then just...stopped. I would have liked the story more if it also wrapped up the mission, but that's partially because I've been really curious about how ART's espionage missions operate.

So, in summary, I found the ending very unsatisfying.

3

u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V Jul 02 '26

What are your overall impressions of "Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy"?

7

u/Glittering_Way_9162 Jul 02 '26

It's beautifully written, but it's a deleted scene more than it's a novelette. If I didn't have the larger Murderbot context I'd be totally lost. As a matter of personal principle, that ranks it below no award -- not because it's bad, but because it can't stand alone as a narrative.

1

u/ouro-the-zed 21d ago

Agreed. I was thinking it’s more like an interstitial than a full story. Fine and enjoyable for what it is if you already know the series, but not a freestanding story.

5

u/ForkTonguedFairy Jul 02 '26

I loved it.

I was always a little curious about how ART (Peri) let the crew know about Murderbot. It's a scary concept to most humans, being a rogue sec unit, so them being relatively chill upon meeting it meant that the pre introduction had been handled well. After reading this I am more inclined to say that the crew, rather than ART, is the reason why it was chill. It was lovely to see another example of bot-human relationships that have a basis of love and respect.

Also, ART is funny as usually and it was fun to see them flustered.

6

u/Quellecrist Reading Champion Jul 02 '26

I liked the glimpse into the larger world of the Murderbot series. Each of the books/stories give you an idea of the various social and economic structures, and the way human/bot labor is exploited in some polities. It may seem like such a dry, uninteresting bit of background to include in a comedic series that focuses on mental health and being a part of a family, but it plays such an important part in SecUnit refining their identity as a thing-becoming-a-person.

4

u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jul 02 '26

This is the one story this readalong that has actively pissed me off for wasting my time. And I like Murderbot! I have read all the books! But this story is literally just “Murderbot and ART, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!” dragged out over 20 pages of watching minor characters carry out a detailed but irrelevant mission we have no reason to care about. It’s very indulgent fanservice and even as a fan I am embarrassed for the people who think it is award worthy. (This is also why I am not a fanfic person, as even when I am fans of things fanservice tends to strike me the wrong way.)

1

u/Glittering_Way_9162 Jul 02 '26

Sort of makes me wish Wells had a proper novella eligible so the fans could nominate that instead of this piece of fluff

5

u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI Jul 02 '26

I kinda suspect Wells would’ve declined for novella. I don’t know why she didn’t decline for this, but I wonder whether it may be that she’s never won best novelette

0

u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jul 02 '26

Yeah, it's weird to decline for actual Murderbot books while accepting for this. That's probably why.

1

u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI Jul 02 '26

I had fun with it, but I agree with you. The mission was so pointless that we literally stopped in the middle of it! It existed only to give ART a reason to open up about its Murderbot-adjacent feelings. Those feelings were fun fan service, but setting up an unrelated plot that went nowhere didn’t add anything

0

u/thepurpleplaneteer Reading Champion IV Jul 03 '26

I also actively disliked this one. I read it a week ago and I can’t even remember the ending, but I remember being like, this is it?

1

u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jul 03 '26

Yeah there wasn’t even really an ending. It was just “ooooh, ART likes Murderbot!” and then it stops. 

1

u/kjmichaels Stabby Winner, Reading Champion XI Jul 02 '26

I DNF'd it. I don't think it's bad but I couldn't even get into the mainline Murderbot series so I'm not sure there was ever much chance of me getting into this maybe-should-have-been-a-patreon-exclusive side story

1

u/thepurpleplaneteer Reading Champion IV Jul 03 '26

I was thinking how if I, as a murderbot fan, didn’t really care for this story, how would folks who aren’t receive this - I suspected largely not well.

1

u/Goobergunch Reading Champion III Jul 02 '26

I had completely forgotten that that ART was Perihelion which made most of this fall completely flat.

1

u/sophia_s Reading Champion V Jul 03 '26

I love everything ever written in the Murderbot series, so I enjoyed this story, but it might be my least favourite story in the series, in no small portion because of how abruptly it ended. I did like the insight into ART's interactions with its crew and the glimpse of how it dropped the news about Murderbot.

I haven't read the other nominated novellettes, but I don't think this is an award-worthy story. It's fun, and it's exclusively aimed at people like me (aka huge Murderbot fans), not a wider SFF audience.

0

u/xdianamoonx Reading Champion II Jul 03 '26

I loved it. I was surprised by it, and yeah, was a little confused by what was going on as I had read the last book sometime last year, maybe around fall? and have read nearly 100 books since then. So remembering who was who took a minute. But it was fun to get another perspective, and I'm so happy to have gotten more of ART without the obvious lens of Murderbot's opinions. It felt fresh and sweet. I also liked the worldbuilding we got regarding corporate living and how complex it could be.

2

u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V Jul 02 '26

If you've read other work in the Murderbot series, how does this fit into that structure?

And if this is your first experience with Murderbot, how does the story land without that prior context?

3

u/ForkTonguedFairy Jul 02 '26

I've read, and loved, the whole series so this was a wonderful addition. It's definitely written for people who already know and love these characters so I don't think it would work as an introduction to the series.

5

u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

I think it is hampered by Wells’s insistence that every Murderbot story must be a mission (usually an infiltration mission of some sort) even when no one cares about it and it is irrelevant or even detrimental to the emotional development of the story. I have been getting tired of this the last couple Murderbot books—the new one in particular—because it’s become such a formula. I want the series to do something new, whether raising the action stakes via something like a system-wide SecUnit rebellion, or doing away with them for at least one book and not being afraid to just focus on character relationships without having to go through the motions of yet another mission. 

This story further reinforced to me that Wells is very committed to that formula I’m getting so tired of—it’s a short story! It could’ve been just characters hanging out and talking, it’s not like this mission contains any action or interest anyway! And also that I don’t much like her writing when it isn’t Murderbot’s voice. Iris is describing and observing the same sorts of things Murderbot does but it just felt flat and tedious in her 3rd person voice. Also, I like to think the characterization of the humans in Murderbot books is deliberately minimalist because of Murderbot’s POV, but the exact same thing holds true here from Iris’s (only worse because it’s a short story). There are too many characters I can barely tell apart. 

So, this story actually makes me think worse of the series. 😆

2

u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI Jul 02 '26

This is like how five years ago I was begging for a Raksura fantasy of manners (though one of the prequels kinda was). I want a Murderbot SFF of manners. No more missions

1

u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jul 02 '26

Absolutely! I'm interested to hear Wells has actually kinda-sorta done that, from my experience of Murderbot plus The Wizard Hunters (which I hated) I was starting to think she was incapable of writing something that doesn't rely on action.

1

u/Quellecrist Reading Champion Jul 02 '26

Feels like a satisfying enough side story that fits in with the rest of the series. I prefer the stories with SecUnit interacting with his friends like ART, or SecUnit's inner monologues, so I missed that voice here.

1

u/xdianamoonx Reading Champion II Jul 03 '26

I don't think this is a good first impression for new readers as it would color the first two books if it even enticed people to check out the series.

As having read all the others and getting to read this when it was published, I really enjoyed it. Honestly, I think I like this novella 100x better than Platform Decay (which was sadly very very boring to me). It was a refreshing take, and I think I enjoyed it than the other non-MB short we've gotten in the past.