Spoiler Behind Cut, yo

[prog]

So that Vinge story is a complete port of one particular ST:TNG episode into a modern setting. One of my favorite episodes, actually, the one where the Enterprise blows up continuously in a time loop and the crew devises a way to pass information to their next iterations. I'm surprised it won a Hugo; maybe people were fondly recalling that show, and chose to give it a Hugo vicariously.

Comments

[prog.livejournal.com]

Common trope, but the specific hook used -- the "stuck" characters carry no memories (including the memory that they're stuck) between iterations, and have (re)-learn how to read and write information onto a "cookie" that lay outside the loop somehow -- was the same in both stories. The Vinge one was a little more plausible, with the cookie having a well-defined reason to exist, versus the typical Trek handwavitronic particles that Data ended up using in the show (IIRC).