Return to 2016 Best SF/F Short Fiction
Best Stories
Novella
|
(Planetary SF) Mr. Costello's crackpot
moneymaking scheme promises entertainment to the rural community he sets down
in, but the narrator senses a threat.
|
|
(Military SF) Merlin's starship is one
of the best, but it needs repairs, and a derelict starship may have what he
needs. Or he can try a binary system where an interplanetary war has raged
for centuries.
|
|
(Alternate History) In 1950s London
after the Nazi's won WWII, a German man tries to find a girl he used to love
in response to her call for help.
|
Novelette
|
(SF; Lydia Duluth) The AIs contract
Lydia to check out an unusual planet and the secretive corporation that's
supposed to be developing it.
|
|
(Climate Change) Maggie has a plan to
reverse climate change by capturing methane up in the arctic and selling the
carbon.
|
|
(Hard SF) Anna’s grandmother died on
Europa, and her mother was traumatized for life, but she’s determined to go
there and finish the work they started.
|
|
(SF) The end of the world starts when
an ambitious marketing guy gets a cryptic assignment to create an ad campaign
to "make ugly sexy."
|
|
(Fantasy Science) About a thousand
years from now, two powerful AIs struggle to prevent the destruction of the
multiverse.
|
|
(SF) Disguised in the body of a dead
little boy, Fox needs to escape from the colony before the revolutionary
leaders find him. But the boy's brother may be a problem.
|
|
(Mind Uploading) Jix tells how her
twin sister left their planet and their god, starting with how they met a
handsome offworlder.
|
|
(Dystopia) Casey, a disabled vet in a
cheap, rebuilt body, tries walking to another city to find work, but trouble is
waiting out in the country.
|
|
(Near-Future SF) Benji was an ordinary
terrier until his master decided to have him sentientized.
Other
Reviews
RSR
Mini-Review [5] Recommended By: RSR+2 SFRevu+1 GDozois+2 RHorton+1 NClarke+2 Readers+0
|
|
(SF/Mainstream) The crew of the new
Mars mission are coming to the hotel where Emily works, and her mom is
starting to say strange things about her involvement with the last Mars
mission.
Other
Reviews
RSR
Mini-Review [3] Recommended By: GDozois+2 RHorton+1 JStrahan+2 Hugo+2 Locus+2 Sturgeon+2
|
|
(Near-Future Hard SF) Lita learned
Rob's obsession with alternate universes in college, but waning interest in
science made it hard for him to explore it.
Other
Reviews
RSR
Mini-Review [5] Recommended By: RSR+2 SFRevu+1 GDozois+2 RHorton+2 NClarke+2 JStrahan+2 Locus+2 Sturgeon+2
|
|
(Post Singularity) James seeks
fulfillment through his sculpture, even though it all seems pointless in a
perfect world run by Ais.
Other
Reviews
RSR
Mini-Review [5] Recommended By: RSR+2 SFRevu+1 GDozois+2 RHorton+1 NClarke+2 Readers+0
|
|
(Near-Future SF) The secretive
parthenogenetic women of Colinas Bravas usually don't allow outsiders into
their country, but they invite Ms. Vargas to fix a genetic problem with their
children.
|
|
(SF) Months after mysterious aliens
scattered their spacecraft across North America, no one has a clue what they
want. Avery knows what one of them wants, though: it wants a tour.
Other
Reviews
RSR
Mini-Review [4] Recommended By: RSR+1 GDozois+2 RHorton+1 NClarke+2 JStrahan+2 Hugo+2 Sturgeon+2
BASFF+1
|
|
(Time Travel; Martin & Artie) A
group of lost time travelers tries to make the fall of Nineveh happen in a
way consistent with the future they're trying to get back to.
|
Short Story
|
(Space Opera; Xuya) Thuy seeks her
daughter's remains in the twisted parts of unreal space where salvagers pick
over the remains of wrecked starships.
|
|
(SF) The destruction of the new Space
Elevator puts human expansion into space at risk.
|
|
Because Change Was The Ocean And We Lived By Her Mercy by Charlie
Jane Anders Time: 21m (ShortStory) Issue: Drowned Worlds 2016
(Post-Apocalypse) Pris abandons
22nd-Century Fairbanks and moves to a commune that floats above the ruins of
San Francisco.
|
|
Dispatches From The Cradle: The Hermit -- Forty-Eight Hours In The Sea
Of Massachusetts
by Ken Liu Time: 22m (ShortStory) Issue: Drowned Worlds 2016
(Post Apocalypse) Around 2650 AD, the
narrator interviews a wealthy recluse who lives above the sunken ruins of
Boston.
|
|
(Near-Future SF) A refugee from a
drowned island nation works on the Antarctic peninsula, where he studies
mysterious stones with elven runes in his spare time.
|
|
(Far-Future SF) Irtholin visits her
friend Anketil to tell her that a long-lost starship has been found, and to
try to interest her in helping salvage it.
|
|
(Hard SF) Four Warm Currents leads a
project to drill through the ice at the Roof of the World to finally discover
what’s on the other side, but the closer he gets, the more opposition there
is.
|
|
KIT: Some Assembly Required
by Kathe
Koja and Carter Scholz Time: 15m (ShortStory) Issue: Asimov's 08|16
(SF AI) Christopher Marlowe thinks
he's been reincarnated as a 21st Century AI.
|
|
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
|
|
(SF) A police detective tries to cope
with an attractive female robot who confesses to murder.
|
|
(SF) A woman on death row is offered a
fortune for her children if she'll let another woman take over her body.
|
|
(Hard SF) In an near future when
everyone has brain implants, a computer virus can be a health issue.
Especially when it turns users into killers.
|
|
Sixteen Questions for Kamala Chatterjee by Alastair Reynolds
Time: 14m (ShortStory) Issue: Bridging Infinity 2016
(Far-Future SF) Kamala discovered an
alien artifact inside the sun, and she spent her life finding a way to reach
it.
|
|
(Planetary SF) A vast fleet of
"jalopies" carry individuals on a one-way trip from Earth to Mars.
People do it for different reasons, some of which we learn about in this
story.
Other
Reviews
RSR
Mini-Review [2] Recommended By: GDozois+2 RHorton+1 NClarke+2 JStrahan+2 CPayseur+2
|
|
(SF) Despite not being a telepath,
Calla worked out a way to play chess with her captor, Major Larn, during the
recent war. Now they're going to finish their game.
|
|
(SF) The narrator visits an alien
world to negotiate a trade deal with a race of alien predators who have a bad
reputation.
|
|
(SF) A woman appears to be helping a
child recover from some form of brain damage. His perceptions and memory are
off, but something is off about her too.
|
|
(Horror) Following a disaster in
Antarctica, MacReady spends summer 1983 in New York and starts to wonder what
he might have brought back with him.
Other
Reviews
RSR
Mini-Review [3] Recommended By: SFRevu+1 GDozois+2 RHorton+2 NClarke+2 JStrahan+2 CPayseur+2
Nebula+2 Sturgeon+2
BASFF+1
|
|
(Psionic SF) Ava recounts the visit of
the "Needlers" to Earth and her part in the attempts to communicate
with the aliens.
|
|
(Hard SF) The Chinese Mars base asks
old First-Expedition crew members Julia and Viktor for help with a problem
involving Mars's only large native life form.
|
|
(SF; Luna) Five Irish sisters enjoy a
celebration using money their aunt sends them from the moon.
|
Notable Stories
Novella
|
(Alternate History) A private
detective takes a job guarding Albert Einstein as he flees the Nazis on an
ocean-liner-sized airplane.
|
|
(SF) Khifi makes a good living as a
pilot, but she used to be a homeless kid on the Tanduou docks. So she cares
when she gets hints that something bad is happening--something involving
kids, aliens, and more.
|
|
(Time Travel) In 979 AD, the city of
Jinyang stands on the brink of destruction, but someone seems to be trying to
help it with technologies from the future.
|
|
(SF) In 2066 a woman struggles over
continuing life-support for her comatose mother and over what to do with the
things she's leaving behind.
|
Novelette
|
(Zombie) In modern India, Krishna
encounters (and ignores) a dead woman's body by the river just before the
dead start to walk. He feels guilty and determines to do something about it.
|
|
(SF Mystery) A professor and her
student investigating carnivorous plants on a colony world find the bones of
a teenager inside one of the plants.
|
|
(Military SF Horror) Elliot's squad of
convict-soldiers crash-lands in the middle of a swamp far away from help.
Extracting them doesn't seem to be a priority, but something seems to be
wrong with the swamp.
|
|
(SF Humor) Ruth, a 22-year-old Walmart
cashier, meets a very weird-and-scary-looking alien, who seems down on his
luck, and brings him home with her.
|
|
(SF) In a rude, career-ending memo to
his boss, Doug recounts a disaster that occurred on a company property in
Indonesia when they tried to evict a group of squatters and their charismatic
leader.
|
|
(Military SF) The enemy are up to
something in "blank" areas of space that sensors can't penetrate.
Devi takes a "single ship" into one to find out what's there, but
her ship has a mind of its own, and it's terrified.
|
|
(Competence SF) In the 2080s, Humanity
is abandoning Mars, and Steuby and his companions think they can make money
by looting the abandoned settlements at the last minute.
|
|
(Scientific Fantasy) The villages
falls slowly down the face of the mountain, trading with the people on the
ledges as they go, but is there a bottom, or does it just go down forever?
|
|
Taste The
Singularity At The Food Truck Circus by Jeremiah Tolbert
Time: 28m (Novelette) Issue: Lightspeed 75
(Near-Future SF) Nico's boring life as
an accountant changes when he meets an old friend who's involved with the
illegal food scene in Kansas City.
|
|
(High Fantasy; Raffalon) Raffalon the
thief's latest contract goes wrong when he's transported to a gray world that
he must figure out how to escape. Entertaining.
|
|
(Hard SF) Caitlin does data mining for
a presidential campaign, but her analysis is resulting in unusually precise
and downright strange predictions.
|
|
(Hard SF) After centuries of solitude
at his post on Pluto, Heimdallr has come to fear that humanity is extinct.
Then he receives a summons from the inner solar system.
|
|
(SF) In a colony on an almost
uninhabitable planet, the technologically-superior Su share power with the
humans, but some humans want independence.
|
|
(Dark Fantasy) Verena wants to stop
the killer who takes one local girl every year. And she's just barely old
enough to be a target herself.
|
|
(Hard SF) Mitchell was a navigator on
the Francis Drake, but something terrible happened. The doctors tell him he's
losing his mind, but he doesn't believe them. If only he could remember what
happened.
|
|
(SF) In 2040, Colin gets more than he
bargained for when he asks the AIs at tech giant PinPoint to track down
information about a mysterious great aunt who vanished in 1965.
|
|
(Fantasy Math) A strange student give
Professor Dunn a math problem whose solution will change the world.
Literally.
|
|
(Hacker SF) Fresh out of prison for
hacking, Aedo gets a request to do an even bigger hack. But why does Energy
Davison want to hack its own systems?
|
Short Story
|
(Historical Fantasy) Boswell recounts
a story of Dr. Johnson that he never revealed before. Involving a country
estate, a scandal, and a ghost.
|
|
(Post Apocalypse AI) Carver Seven
spends a lot of time talking to the Human Being and helps him make spears and
things. They each want something from the other, if they can manage to
express it.
|
|
And Then,
One Day, The Air Was Full Of Voices by Margaret
Ronald Time: 17m (ShortStory) Issue: Clarkesworld 117
(SF) Dr. Kostia spent thirty years
interpreting broadcasts from the Coronals for other people on Earth. The last
broadcasts have caused a lot of disruption, even in her own family.
|
|
(SF) Suzanne's worries about her aging
father are interrupted by her ex-husband, who left her two years ago to go
explore the frontier of the solar system.
|
|
(SF, ~2060) A man reviews drawings and
descriptions of animals he knew and loved during his life, updating them to
reflect recent changes. Very moving.
|
|
(Hard SF) Adia pursues a herd of
resurrected mammoths in Alaska. She seems to admire them greatly, so why is
she bringing a gun?
|
|
(Space Opera; Xuya) Dan Linh returns
from twenty-years exile to head up her old lab again. She’s a scientist, not
a politician; can she really make it work?
|
|
(Alien Invasion) You are building a
home on an alien world, despite the objections of the natives and the
complaints of your wife and children.
|
|
(Hard SF) A radio astronomer comes to
a conference prepared to deliver a shattering paper, but fully expecting to
die before he gets the chance.
|
|
(Near-Future SF) Christian returns to
Anguilla to say goodbye before an attempt to raise it covers the island with
lava.
|
|
(SF) Shi handles elderly clients who
are recruited to help steer starships through space. Her job is winding up,
and one of her last clients presents a special challenge.
|
|
(SF) Teenage Bess and Aline go to
comfort their friend Vera after a computer virus disabled her online
"Face."
|
|
(Climate Change) An AI tries to carry
out the last wishes of the last human governors to bring back snow and ice.
|
|
Not by
Wardrobe, Tornado, or Looking Glass by Jeremiah Tolbert
Time: 17m (ShortStory) Issue: Lightspeed 69
(Portal Fantasy) Rabbit holes open at
random, summoning people to fairy-tale universes where they are the heroes.
Louisa keeps waiting for one to open for her.
|
|
(Superhero) Mary hasn't seen her ex-boyfriend
in eight years, but when she witnesses super-villain "Techhunter"
robbing a bank, she sees a strong resemblance.
|
|
(Far-Future SF; Great Ship) An ancient
robot tells a human how it helped build a planet-sized ship and what the
consequences were.
|
|
(SF) A science writer describes the
events that turned a rat experiment into a space-time disaster in downtown
London.
|
|
(SF) Badar has a 4-year contract sits
all alone at a salvage site on Kepler-186f.
|
|
(SF) Agatha wants a svelte replacement
for her plump body, but since she can't get one grown in a reasonable time,
she looks into an illegal swap.
|
|
(Far Future SF) Mia marks her
birthdays as powers of 7, which gives her lots of time to work out her issues
with her mother.
|
|
(Time Travel) Narrator, in 1983, takes
a job that involves going back to 1945 to do some dirty work, but she becomes
infatuated with her target.
|
|
Six Degrees of Separation Freedom by Pat Cadigan Time: 19m (ShortStory) Issue: Bridging Infinity 2016
(Transhuman) Recruiting people to live
in space is harder when they have to accept irreversable body modifications.
|
|
(Slipstream) Electricity does strange
things around Arthur, especially when he gets excited. He's excited about
Christina, so their first date is going to be a real adventure.
|
|
(SF) After an alien terrorist kills
Majd's little brother back on Earth, he struggles to accept it, and starts
making changes to his own life.
|
|
(Mainstream) Two women mourn the death
of a childhood friend and try to make peace with themselves by returning the
mysterious skeleton that tore them apart as teenagers.
|
|
(SF) An AI trying to establish a human
colony discovers there's an individual it cannot account for.
|
|
(High Fantasy; Stormwrack) Captain
Gale Feliachild and her handsome first mate, Garland Parrish, must find the
inscription for a spell that turns people's skins into glass. Entertaining.
|
|
(High Fantasy) The old magician rarely
takes students, but young Schmendrick has so much potential--if he could just
make his spells come out right.
|
|
(SF) Riley hacked his personal
teleporter to make illegal copies of himself. The police have found him out,
and he's trying to lead all 17 of him to safety.
|
|
(Modern Fantasy) In the near future,
Ben uses cryosleep for a side-effect: while he's under, he can meet his dead
wife. Trouble is, he has a new wife.
|
|
(Historical Fantasy) In 1961, Larry
joins the LA mob as an enforcer, keeping the wrong people from fixing the
horses. But does that include an old man who only talks to them?
|
|
The Voice in the Cornfield, the Word Made Flesh by Desirina
Boskovich Time: 17m (ShortStory) Issue: F&SF 09.10|16
(Present-day SF) An alien crash lands
in a cornfield. It tries to get help, but no one can see or hear it. Almost
no one.
|
|
(SF) A disfiguring illness drove Lilly
to leave Earth and live in a community of aliens who think she's beautiful.
Trouble is, they like her too much.
|
|
(High Fantasy Humor) A warrior woman
and a thief fleeing from the south meet a male warrior fleeing from the north
in the middle of a bridge. Then it gets complicated.
|
|
(SF Horror) EncelaCorp
"streams" the consciousness of explorers to distant parts of the
galaxy. Jonathan worries that the experience may have changed his wife somehow.
|
|
(SF) Noel's mom is trying to raise an
alien child. Noel, age 10, hates this alien "brother" but can't
seem to get that across to him.
|
|
(SF) On Ariel, some people have
modified themselves to fly. Other people can't accept that. Anna is going to
need to choose sides.
|
|
(Hard SF) The transmitter sends copies
of people to remote locations, but the copies don't want to do their jobs,
and Margery is in trouble if she can't figure out why.
|
No comments (may contain spoilers):
Post a Comment (comment policy)