★★★☆☆ Never Eaten Vegetables, by HH Pak
Eventually very good, but a little too late
Never Eaten Vegetables
HH Pak
Eventually very good, but a little too late
The finalists for the 2026 Best Novelette Hugo Award are:
★★★★☆ Kaiju Agonistes by Scott Lynch
★★★☆☆ Never Eaten Vegetables by H.H. Pak
★★★★☆ Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy, by Martha Wells
☆☆☆☆☆ The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For by Cameron Reed
☆☆☆☆☆ The Millay Illusion by Sarah Pinsker
★★★★☆ When He Calls Your Name by Catherynne M. Valente
H.H. Pak's Never Eaten Vegetables is a story about an interstellar generation ship whose people face a terrible dilemma. It was published in Clarkesworld Issue 220. Here is a direct link.
The ship is NEV-476, originally meant to stand for "Natal Embryonic Vessel-476". Its cargo is ten thousand fertilized embryos held in stasis. They are to be released from stasis and grow to become babies when the ship arrives at its destination. There's a malfunction, and things become very, very difficult. As a consequence, the ship refuses the name "Natal Embryonic Vessel" and instead says its name is "Never Eaten Vegetables."
The story, as I eventually understood it, was a good one, even a very good one. The problem, though -- the reason for my lackluster rating, was that it took me a long time to understand what the Hell was going on and who these people were. I mean, I get the impulse to set up and preserve the mystery. In fact, I usually expect Speculative Fiction to be confusing, and am disappointed if I understand fully on the first read. But in this case the mystery was so successfully opaqued for so long that I spent about half my reading time completely baffled.
All does eventually become clear. I will probably re-read, and I expect I'll enjoy it more on the second reading. But right now, after just one reading, I am more annoyed than amused. You might call my three-star rating unfair. Indeed, I might call it unfair. But I'm sticking with it for now.
Sounds like an intriguing story!
And if the author’s goal was perhaps to try to get some folks to want to read the story multiple times then perhaps the author succeeded! 📖⚖️📖