Outstanding Hard Science Fiction of 2019

Here are 19 outstanding hard science fiction stories from 2019 that were finalists for major SF/F 🏆awards, included in "year's best" SF/F 📙anthologies, or recommended by prolific 👍reviewers in short fiction (see Q&A). That's 19 out of 300+ best SF/F stories from 2019. A story's score is the sum of the +n points in it's "Recommended By" list (click the Details link to see the awards, year's best, and reviewers and the points).


Observations:
Click the links to highlight the stories discussed.

• 10 are free online (highlighted in default view), 5 have podcasts.
• Among 📚publications, it should be no surprise that Analog has the most hard SF stories here with 7 stories (37%), followed by the anthology "Mission Critical" with 3 stories.
• Among ️️✒️authors, 3 stories are by Greg Egan, followed by 2 stories by Marie Vibbert.
• Hard SF stories seem under-represented (8%) among SF/F 🏆awards with only 8 stories (and only 2 stories for major awards like Eugie and Locus) out of 99 total award-nominated stories from the 2019 Best SF/F. The only winner was "Sacrificial Iron" for the magazine-specific Asimov's Science Fiction Readers' Award.
• They did about the same (8%) among "year's best" 📙anthologies with 10 stories out of 122 total included stories from the 2019 Best SF/F. Alan Kaster's anthology has 8 of the 10, followed by Neil Clarke's anthology with 4.
• They did slightly better (9%) among prolific 👍reviewers with 9 stories out of 105 total award-worthy stories from the 2019 Best SF/F. Rich Horton thought 3 of the 9 were award worthy.
• As for RSR, we recommended 7 stories (3 award worthy), were neutral on 8 stories, and recommended against 4 stories (view by RSR rating).