Return to 2016 Best SF/F Short Fiction
Best Stories
Novella
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(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.
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Novelette
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(SF) In a future Australia, Irving
sells his memories for ready cash, hoping to put his life back together. To
the extent he still remembers it.
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(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.
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(SF Thriller) Every since she leaked
the secret of mind-expanding nanotech, Dyer has been on the run. And they're
getting close.
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(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.
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(Space Opera; Xuya) Da Trang earned
favor with the Empress because his remora, Pearl, feed him information. He
has lost Pearl, but cannot stop searching for it.
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(Near-Future SF) Benji was an ordinary
terrier until his master decided to have him sentientized.
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Sooner or
Later Everything Falls Into the Sea by Sarah
Pinsker Time: 25m (Novelette) Issue: Lightspeed 69
(Near-future SF) Bay lives alone and
subsists off things that wash ashore from cruise ships and such. Then Gabby
washes up, alive, and complicates her life.
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(Time Travel) Dora will do anything to
prove that a woman's 1928 execution for murder was a mistake.
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Ten Poems
for the Mossums, One for the Man by Suzanne
Palmer Time: 24m (Novelette) Issue: Asimov's 07|16
(Hard SF) Davin is spending a year
alone on Ekye to observe the local wildlife and, he hopes, to recover his
lost creativity.
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(SF) In a colony on an almost
uninhabitable planet, the technologically-superior Su share power with the
humans, but some humans want independence.
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(SF) A century from now, Tipper works
at an automated carnival, in a world with few jobs for humans. She falls in
with Luke, a boy trying to make an illegal manual car work.
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The Mighty Slinger
by Karen
Lord and Tobias S.
Buckell Time: 32m (Novelette) Issue: Bridging Infinity 2016
(Far-Future SF) Developers are
planning to resurface the entire Earth to create properties for people from
Mars and Venus. But can an old singer and his band rally the solar system
against it?
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(Mind Uploading) The prospect of
living forever through "iterations" is still new, and not everyone
likes it. Sonata wants to make a statement by declaring she will only upload
twice.
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(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.
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(Post Singularity) James seeks
fulfillment through his sculpture, even though it all seems pointless in a
perfect world run by Ais.
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(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.
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BASFF+1
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Short Story
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(SF) A disabled human veteran takes in
a disabled AI veteran. The AI doesn't talk anymore due to trauma, but Tawn
tries to get through to it, even though his mother thinks it's dangerous.
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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.
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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.
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(Climate Change) On the edge of the
ruined land, village people worship Orcas as gods. Unbeliever Kelb is up to
something, and Adze tries to help him because she loves him.
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(Chinese Post-Apocalyptic Slipstream)
Long after the fall of humanity, a dragon/horse robot wakes up and explores
the ruins of Beijing.
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(Post Apocalypse) When fan #6 fails,
the underground city's AI decides to abandon it, but an overachieving worker
is determined to fix it anyway.
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(Far-Future SF; Great Ship) An ancient
robot tells a human how it helped build a planet-sized ship and what the
consequences were.
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(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.
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(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.
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(SF Thriller) The narrator is a con
man in near-future Thailand, and he has a scheme that might net him enough to
retire.
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