Buffalito World Outreach Project

This book is made up of the English-language science fiction short story "Buffalo Dogs" and its translation into thirty different languages, including French, Italian, Hindi, Tamil, two varieties of Spanish, and Klingon. (Author Schoen is the founder of the Klingon Language Institute, and seems to have done that translation himself.) For this to work, I think the paratext would have  to make the case that this was a worthy project... but in his introduction, Schoen devotes only about a paragraph to the book itself, and it pretty much just says, "I thought it would be fun, so I did it." Any sense of why this might have been a noteworthy idea is absent.

On top of that, I found the story in question pretty bad. It's about a hypnotist who show more abuses his powers to violate people's consent in order to carry out illegal acts for not really any reason at all other than that he is greedy. Wow, what a hero! I also found the worldbuilding pretty unconvincing; it's clearly there to make the story work, but doesn't make sense on its own merits. The cover blurb for the book says, "Maybe, just maybe, the power of the buffalitos will bring us all together and we’ll begin treating one another better," but it's about a guy who goes around treating other people quite horribly! If you want to pick a story to bring the world together, there had to have been a better one. show less

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/hugos-2023-best-related-work/

A single short story translated into into thirty languages, including “Croation” [sic] and two varieties of Spanish. I absolutely support its eligibility for the category – to be eligible, a nominee “if fictional, is noteworthy primarily for aspects other than the fictional text, and … is not eligible in any other category.” The story “Buffalo Dogs” itself was first published in 2001, so it is not eligible for this year’s Best Short Story or Best Novelette categories (at 7800 words it’s on the cusp between them). And the whole point of Buffalito World Outreach Project is that it’s noteworthy not for the primary text but because of the translations. You show more can get it here.

However, to adapt Dr Johnson, this is a case of being impressed that the thing has been done at all, rather than wondering if it has been done well. I am glad that this has been done, but the other five finalists are more worthy winners. show less