Best Novelette – Halfway Between Never Eaten Vegetables and No Award

 In today's episode of "former aspiring writer whose blunt opinions inspired so much gatekeeping she decided she didn't really care as much about getting through that gate as much as sharing her obnoxiously unfiltered consciousness streams and blowing up bridges," we are torn.

One option is to vote No Award, just to say that I don't think any of these stories belong in a "best stories" collection although they are all perfectly adequate on their own terms. I'm not seeing any exciting future trends (the way I once did with Murderbot stories) or finding any voices likely to keep me awake and turning pages until 2:00 a.m. 

Another option is to just omit this category from my ballot and pretend it doesn't even exist. And a third option would be voting for Never Eaten Vegetables as a middle finger to someone who once told me that 3D printing human embryos to seed planets was a disgusting sexist concept that nobody should ever write about. I might just do that, since it’s always a great day when you can bring happiness into another person’s life while also rehashing an old grudge.

Yes, yes, I probably shouldn't have read these stories after having an intense monthlong relationship with the Carl books, but what's done is done. I don't want to hurt any of the authors' feelings and wish them much luck writing for a subculture I shall continue to mostly avoid except for the platinum outliers to which my cheap commercialized aesthetics gravitate. 

EDIT: After a friend suggested I just find pictures of them all, and vote for the cutest one, and flat out state that was how I was basing my decision, I started to do that. And I discovered they are all cute, but Cameron Reed seems to be avoiding the spotlight. So I abandoned this plan just in case they turned out to be so staggeringly cute that I was forced by my own logic to vote for them. H.H. Pak, meanwhile, is represented by a cartoon, and I thought that was super cute, and all the rest are at least cuter than me, although probably nowhere near as mouthy. As of this current moment I'm inclined to vote for H.H. Pak because we both thought Giving Tree was a crock and so was Cold Equations. And also if this wins I kinda want to do a whole series about robot nannies.