Using the scores for 887 stories from the 2016 Best SF/F Short Fiction article and grouping the stories by author, here are the top authors by average score in 2016.
Top five authors with at least 2 stories by average score:
- Score 21; Stories 3; Avg Score 7.0: Sam J. Miller
- Score 14; Stories 2; Avg Score 7.0: Alastair Reynolds
- Score 14; Stories 2; Avg Score 7.0: N.K. Jemisin
- Score 23; Stories 4; Avg Score 5.8: Alyssa Wong
- Score 11; Stories 2; Avg Score 5.5: Peter S. Beagle
- Click here for a sortable table of 602 authors
For this analysis, a top author needed at least two stories to stand out because, as the pie chart shows, only 25% of authors had more than one story among the 887 surveyed.
Honorable mention goes to Rich Larson who had 15 stories with an average score of 2.3.
Honorable mention goes to Rich Larson who had 15 stories with an average score of 2.3.
There are several different ways to create this list, but we think this is the best one. Here are a set of other rankings and an explanation of our thinking.
Top five authors by total score:
- Score 34; Stories 15; Avg Score 2.3: Rich Larson
- Score 23; Stories 4; Avg Score 5.8: Alyssa Wong
- Score 21; Stories 3; Avg Score 7.0: Sam J. Miller
- Score 17; Stories 4; Avg Score 4.3: Carrie Vaughn
- Score 17; Stories 5; Avg Score 3.4: An Owomoyela
- Click here for a sortable table of 602 authors
Top five authors by average score:
- Score 15; Stories 1; Avg Score 15.0: Ian R. MacLeod
- Score 14; Stories 1; Avg Score 14.0: Amal El-Mohtar
- Score 13; Stories 1; Avg Score 13.0: Carolyn Ives Gilman
- Score 13; Stories 1; Avg Score 13.0: Victor LaValle
- Score 10; Stories 1; Avg Score 10.0: Kai Ashante Wilson
- Click here for a sortable table of 602 authors
That's when we made the pie chart (above) and saw a focus on authors with two or more stories made the list more exclusive and a better measure of broad quality.
For completeness, here are the rankings with minimum requirements of 3 to 5 stories.
- Score 21; Stories 3; Avg Score 7.0: Sam J. Miller
- Score 23; Stories 4; Avg Score 5.8: Alyssa Wong
- Score 14; Stories 3; Avg Score 4.7: Nina Allan
- Score 17; Stories 4; Avg Score 4.3: Carrie Vaughn
- Score 12; Stories 3; Avg Score 4.0: Dale Bailey
- Click here for a sortable table of 602 authors
- Score 23; Stories 4; Avg Score 5.8: Alyssa Wong
- Score 17; Stories 4; Avg Score 4.3: Carrie Vaughn
- Score 14; Stories 4; Avg Score 3.5: Suzanne Palmer
- Score 17; Stories 5; Avg Score 3.4: An Owomoyela
- Score 13; Stories 4; Avg Score 3.3: Catherynne M. Valente
- Score 13; Stories 4; Avg Score 3.3: Ken Liu
- Click here for a sortable table of 602 authors
- Score 17; Stories 5; Avg Score 3.4: An Owomoyela
- Score 34; Stories 15; Avg Score 2.3: Rich Larson
- Score 13; Stories 6; Avg Score 2.2: Seanan McGuire
- Score 11; Stories 5; Avg Score 2.2: Aliette de Bodard
- Score 11; Stories 5; Avg Score 2.2: Caroline M. Yoachim
- Click here for a sortable table of 602 authors
The Top 20% Gets the Most Love
Looking at the quintile distribution by author shows that the top 20% of authors got the vast majority of favorable attention from reviewers, anthologies, and awards.
Authors Table
- Click on a table header to sort that column.
- Click on an author name to see RSR reviews of their stories. Note the Recommended By list in the reviews are old (not the +2 and +1 style) and incomplete (missing Eugie, Locus, Sturgeon, BASFF, CPayseur, and some GDozois and RHorton +1s). Stale recommendations will be fixed when we move to WordPress and can use dynamic database-generated posts. For now, see the 2016 best novellas, novelettes, and short stories tables for up-to-date lists of recommendations.
- If the author link is short a story or two, it probably means it wasn't among the 830 stories reviewed by RSR but was included in the 887 stories scored because it was listed in the 5 awards or 5 year's best anthologies. You should be able to find those missing stories by looking in the 2016 best novellas, novelettes, and short stories tables.
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