To Stir the Soup

Story title: Answerless Journey (没有答案的航程) Author: Han Song (韩松) Link to story (Chinese only): https://www.99csw.com/article/9260.htm (Spoiler-free)  So a bit of context, this story was originally in Chinese. But since no one in the Hugo Award jury can read a single line of Chinese, they have to throw in a translator to do the work for them. I cannot seem to find the translated version anywhere online without having to sacrifice my hard-earned money, so oh well, I only get to read the original Chinese text.  Long story short, this story was the physical embodiment of the phrase "all fart but no shit". What this story achieved was that it constructed more questions than it provided answers, but instead of those good philosophical questions that make you sit back, ponder and question your existence, the reader only has the energy to ask, "huh? That's it?" Reading this felt more like a chore than a pleasurable activity, and the plot was advancing about as fast as a ...

Story title: The Sound of Children Screaming Author: Rachel K. Jones Link to story: https://www.nightmare-magazine.com/fiction/the-sound-of-children-screaming/  (Spoiler-free) Good stories are rare as gold. Most fiction I read daily are just a-okay. Even the one written by the great masters (you know, the ones with covers labelled "best-seller" as some other crap), rarely excite me, and even if they manage to throw a bit of a punch with a plot-twist or a gimmick, the entertainment they deliver resembles 10-second cheap fireworks: short-lived and forgettable.  But sometimes if you keep sifting long enough, you strike a dash of glimmer. With the first three paragraphs, "The Sound of Children Screaming" (TSCS) had me hooked. The prose is precise, provocative, powerful. Jones' command of the language is a surgical knife, cutting straight to your very centre of your heart without resistance, where doubt and fear lie. And Jones amplifies that discomfort to 11.  Make n...