Outstanding Hard Science Fiction of 2020

Here are 26 outstanding hard science fiction stories from 2020 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 26 out of 240+ best SF/F stories from 2020. 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.

• 15 are free online (highlighted in default view), 7 have podcasts.
• Among 📚publications, it should be no surprise that Analog and Asimov's have the most hard SF stories here with 5 stories (19%) and 7 stories (27%), respectively.
• Among ️️✒️authors, none had more than one story in the list this year.