What I said about it in my
review of the category:
A few years ago, the world inexplicably changed so that any lie you utter would be met with a downpour of cold water that falls from nowhere combined with a feeling of angst, both proportional to the audacity of your lie. These effects can only be counteracted by saying something unequivocal. You can avoid saying the truth and you can mislead as long as you don’t utter something that can’t be untrue. The protagonist Matt is gay and has managed to avoid coming out to his traditional-minded Chinese parents for years. Now Matt and his boyfriend Gus have decided they want to get married, and Matt needs to break the news to his parents, over his sister’s objections.
At first I thought the speculative element of the water was more than a bit corny. But the story doesn’t make a joke of this concept and runs with it. As with the best speculative fiction, it’s not about the speculative element. It’s about how that element allows us to look at the real world through the lens of the speculative. This story did an excellent job of that. It’s a great story, well told, and I highly recommend it. Easy choice in this category.
I liked it. I can see what people are saying about Gus seeming too perfect, but I think that might be because we're seeing the story through Matt's eyes.
I like John Chu's voice, but sometimes his particular character voices can be distracting--in this case I thought Gus sounded kind of like Scooby Doo and it was hard to remember he's quite smart.
One quibble I had is that the story seemed to set a particular set of ground rules for how the lie detection works, and then changed the rules later. At the beginning it seemed to be based entirely on whether the person who was saying it was aware of their own untruth--hence the mention of "we're going to be married" made no water because that was the best he knew at the time anyway, even though he can't see the future. But he seemed to be cheating the system when he used sarcasm while also being aware that his sister might not read the sarcasm properly--that was right out cheating, IMO, and he should've gotten wet. Also, he seemed surprised that Gus's calling of the parents as "husband's father" and "husband's mother" would've produced water if it hadn't somehow been true but, for one thing, they weren't married yet, for another thing, Gus didn't know the meaning of the words at the time he said them--you can't lie in a language you don't speak.
Regarding Hugo genre:
The determination of genre for the Hugo awards is entirely at the discretion of the voters, so there's not really anyone to complain to if you don't like the choice. 43 people cast nominations for Short Story nominated this particular one, enough to get it on the final ballot. There were 2684 valid votes cast for the final vote for this category, which is more votes than have ever been tallied for this category in history (in large part because the overall voting numbers were much higher than usual this year because Wheel of Time and because controversies around other categories). So, if you don't like the choice, its the voting portion of fandom that's responsible for it. If you want to have your own affect on the voting, all it takes is a supporting membership the year of the awards--this is year it cost $40 and you get most of the fiction in a free electronic bundle.
That doesn't mean that voting-fandom can't make bad choices from time to time, like nominating a Hugo acceptance speech where the guy basically had an emotional breakdown as a dramatic short form category was ludicrous, but it was still on the final ballot. But to me, this particular story was a great choice.
That being said, I don't see how this story couldn't qualify as fantasy. Water falling from nowhere. That doesn't happen when I lie at least. Whether you think it's an integral part of the story or not, it is a part of the story, and it is provably something that doesn't happen in real life. So I don't see how this isn't fantasy--maybe not the kind of fantasy a particular person likes, but most definitely fantasy without a doubt.
