Year-To-Date
by Rating (Recommended stories grouped by RSR Rating)
Year-To-Date by Score (Recommended stories grouped by Score)
Year-To-Date by Magazine (Recommended stories grouped by Magazine)
Year-To-Date by Score (Recommended stories grouped by Score)
Year-To-Date by Magazine (Recommended stories grouped by Magazine)
Year-To-Date
by Rating
The year’s 5-star
and 4-star
stories recommended by Rocket Stack Rank are listed below like the monthly ratings.
The 3-star,
2-star,
1-star,
and Not
Rated stories are filtered to show only the ones recommended by
other reviewers.
Note: Campbell
Award-eligible writers are identified with a superscript denoting their
year of eligibilty.
Rating: 5
-> Hugo-worthy
Total Stories: 25; Estimated Time: 15h:51m (285K words)
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(Hard SF) Scientist studying flock
behavior of starlings gets astonishing results but struggles to get her paper
accepted.
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(SF) In a post-apocalypse US, Enid
investigates a household that is reportedly hosting an unapproved pregnancy.
Note: This story stands alone; it is not part 3 of anything.
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(Hard SF) About a century ago, aliens
distributed "the Blessing," which ended war by making people less
violent. But civilization collapsed, and it's proving difficult to rebuild.
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Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts By Ida Countess Rathangan
by Ian McDonald Time: 44m (13K words) Issue: Old Venus
Lady Ida's visit to Venus was
memorialized by the beautiful floral papercuts she made there, but this
sensational story reveals the secret of the real purpose of her visit.
Other
Reviews RSR
Mini-Review [5] Recommended By: RSR:5 LTilton SFRevu:5 GDozois RHorton NClarke JStrahan
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On Dray's planet, the natives in
Motherlove's village meet humans at an inconvenient time, for they are coping
with a number of challenges. Marta and Shipner mean well, but they have
problems of their own, and communication is difficult.
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A refugee from drowned New York City
tries to reconnect with his teenage son during a break from the menial work
he does on ice boats.
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Two teenage boys spend a weekend with
a friend who's just been "edited." The narrator struggles to accept
the changes in his friend and wonders if things can still be the same.
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An engineer on Earth in the 1980s
attempts a business deal with rather tiny space aliens.
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Alberto seems to be a caricature of a
bigot. He hates the family of spider-like alien refugees who've moved in next
door and won't give them a fair chance. But first impressions can be misleading--this
story rewards readers who persist.
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The 19-year-old heroine, who maintains
the cable that links her peaceful underwater city with the war-torn mainland,
finds something troubling during a routine repair.
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(SF) Eleven years ago, the Blue-Lily
plague devastated the Empire. Now Yen Oanh attends to unfinished business
with a dead mind-ship and a living survivor.
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In near-future Seattle, a basketball
scout finds an unusually talented high school senior, but there's one catch.
This story is uplifting and painful all at once.
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One of the last live bands struggles
to do performances in a mostly-online world.
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Penric, age 19, is accidentally
possessed by a demon meant for someone else. Demons can be useful, but they
are dangerous, and Penric has no idea what to do with one.
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In 1835, a mysterious young woman
washes ashore on an island off the Georgia/Florida coast where a group of
runaway slaves have built a community.
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During a flu epidemic, the narrator
uses her cooking blog to tell the world about how she and her family make do
on short rations.
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Symbiotic intelligences combining a
bird-like entity with a humanoid one suffer problems when progress allows
each bird to control multiple humanoids.
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In deep interplanetary space of some
other solar system, war is fought between squads of self-replicating robots
while their human operators engage in almost-friendly conversation.
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The situation on Vesta has reached the
point where certain people flee to Ceres in suspended animation. Anna, the
new Director of Ceres, tries to understand the refugees better as relations
with Vesta continue to deteriorate.
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On an arid planet, an former
musician--now a painter in his old age--attempts to help a damaged but
extremely talented young musician find the strength to heal herself.
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Jonah is a young man in a matriarchal
human society hiding at the bottom of an ocean on a far-future Venus whose
terraforming seems to be going wrong after thousands of years.
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If you are desperate, visit the
burned-out cottage by moonlight, find the forbidden well where the wet
gentleman lurks. If you give him a penny, he might grant your wish.
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The blight destroyed almost all plant
life, and Daniel and Vijay are seeking shelter with Daniel's family in Texas
who may have a way out.
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Mikkel isn't very bright, but he
cleverly supplements his janitorial job by scavenging useful items his
superiors discard and bringing them home to his wife--then one day he brings
home a mutant baby.
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Sylvain de Guilherand secretly uses a
captive water spirit to provide indoor plumbing to Louis XV's Versailles, but
the spirit is childish, playful, and getting bored.
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(Modern Fantasy) An English village
contains a barrier between worlds, and three very different women must work
together to protect it from destruction by a new supermarket.
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Rating: 4
-> Recommended
Total Stories: 69; Estimated Time: 32h:03m (577K words)
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Ashiban's attempts to negotiate peace
with the Sovereign of Gidanta get off to a bad start when someone shoots down
their flyer. They try to evade pursuit, having no idea which side staged the
attack.
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(Horror) A young American man wanders
into a gloomy English village where legend tells of a spectral black dog
which is the harbinger of death.
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(Military Fantasy) A magical military
company acquires some unwilling recruits, who may or may not be reliable when
they encounter real danger and real evil.
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A young man helping build the Brooklyn
Bridge in 1871 copes with a friend who's too interested in the fossils they
find on the riverbed.
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Nameless lady villain explains how
misguided Superman is for trying to stop her.
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Entertaining tale of a modern search
engine that achieves real artificial intelligence by accident and decides it
wants to be helpful to people.
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In a near-future, water-starved Phoenix,
AZ, Maria hides from the smoke of distant forest fires and thinks about
everything that went wrong.
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Zhou is an ad man for a Chinese
marketing firm, and he has to find a way to get people to buy a new photo
technology that has unusual capabilities.
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What if online shopping software was
so good it could ship what you needed before you even ordered it?
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(Soft SF) The government offers
freedom to prisoners who'll become cyborgs and spend 90 days destroying old
war machines.
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In the 1980s, when a young American
couple goes to Mexico to study Spanish, a Mexican-American friend warns them
to pay attention to the dogs.
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The narrator is senior VP for design
at a company that makes genetically-modified pets, and he likes to give them
as gifts to family members.
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One dreary day follows another for the
underemployed, middle-aged narrator until a mysterious figure in black
fleeing the police stops to trace a figure in the palm of his hand.
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(Urban Fantasy) Beatrice is dying, her
brass heart failing, her captor leering at her. To survive and escape, she
needs to remember how she got here.
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In 1937, Juney Walker was a young man
playing the blues with a band in the Louisiana bayou. He played with a man
named Jake Fell, who could play to raise the dead--and one time did. A very
moving story.
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A high-school girl's abusive boyfriend
comes back to school equipped with an anti-violence chip. No one understands
how despite everything she still loves him.
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An augmented human in a
post-apocalypse America delivers suspicious passengers up the Mississippi.
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(Horror) Meimei dates really bad guys.
Who want to use her. Who don't know what they're in for.
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When the souls of the suicides tumble
out of the low, gray clouds, the narrator is one of the ones who collect
them, contain them, and load them onto the train.
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The narrator, a blond American man,
works for a Mexican oil company and leaks information to the cartels. He
beats their lie detector tests using special implants in his face.
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In a steampunk New Orleans, Plaquette
works for miserly "Msieur" building watches and automata. The
"George" she's working on could gain her freedom, if it doesn't
ruin her first.
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Jack Shade, a supernatural
investigator in New York City, is stalked by his own duplicate.
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A young, pre-European Inuit girl and
her cousin witness a falling spaceship, and she insists they investigate,
wondering if it is a message from the spirits.
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Tilda is a middle-aged German
scientist researching technology to link human minds with animals--she's been
very successful, but today something goes very wrong.
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Lock Up Your Chickens and Daughters—H'ard and Andy
are Come to Town by Michael Swanwick and Gregory Frost Time: 29m (9K words) Issue: Asimov's 04.05|15
Andy and H'ard are magical con men who
offer to "help" a drought-ridden, depression-era, southwest town.
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Madeline is having an adverse reaction
to an experimental drug--she revisits episodes in her past.
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(Hard SF) In three days, Jorge's
processed asteroid arrives on Earth, and it will make him wealthy enough to
retire. But three days is a long time.
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(SF) Anika has a happy life in a world
where people switch to new bodies when they get tired of the old ones. But
someone is stalking her--maybe from her past, which she can't remember.
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Bunchess Taylor, a black musician in
Detroit, learns that someone or something is poisoning Detroit's music when
his assistant, "the white boy," buys an extra-sensitive piece of
equipment.
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A man remembers the good times he had
as a boy with his father, a US Naval officer. He remembers a strange crab
that bit his father, and how it changed their lives. The boy's love for his
dad feels very real.
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(SF) Layla, an expert on restoring the
memories of people suffering from Alzheimer's, finds herself restoring her
own memories--for better or for worse..
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Crowded into a huge, underground city,
survivors of a nuclear war can opt to take a one-way trip through a wormhole
and settle on another planet. But 5% of the pods get destroyed.
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Maggie, a former champion gymnast,
coaches a 16-year-old Uzbek, Sabina, who seems inhumanly focused on winning.
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Claire meets a handsome older man at a
dinner party held in a virtual reality where something has gone subtly wrong.
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In a near-future Pakistan, 19-year-old
Asma has to choose between a high-tech job in the city or staying home to
help her family. A complex story, and there is more to things than meets the
eye.
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On the Night of the Robo-Bulls and Zombie Dancers
by Nick Wolven
Time: 1h:10m (21K words) Issue: Asimov's 02|15
In a nightmarish near-future New York
where wake-up pills mean no one ever sleeps, Gabriel investigates strange
behavior by his financial trading company's AIs.
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(SF) when an Earth ship arrives at Se
after centuries with no contact, the locals struggle to understand their
strange, technophobic visitor.
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The ghost of a ten-year-old boy tries
to find his way to paradise.
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A man dedicated to helping people
increase their intelligence is threatened by a newspaper expose.
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Potential Side Effects May Include by Marissa Lingen and Alec Austin Time: 13m (4K words) Issue: Analog 07.08|15
A young woman in a trial of
anti-anxiety implants finds they work better than expected.
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In this amusing tale, Raffalon the
Thief accepts a job from Cascor, a minor magician who wants him to steal an
unknown object from Cascor's former employer.
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(SF) The narrator is a recluse who
lives with his dog, but today he's delivering a new sandsuit design to a
colony in what used to be Las Vegas.
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Rare (Off Earth) Elements (A Sam Gunn Tale)
by Ben Bova
Time: 18m (5K words) Issue: Mission: Tomorrow
(Hard SF) When Song-li arrives at
near-Earth asteroid 94-12 to claim it for China, she's surprised to find the
notorious Sam Gunn is already there.
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An old man, long in hiding on a
remote, tropical world, struggles to cope with the arrival of a figure from
the worst part of his past.
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The Adjunct Professor's Guide to Life After Death
by Sandra Mcdonald
Time: 23m (7K words) Issue: Asimov's 10.11|15
Ghost of an adjunct professor haunting
her department is inundated by victims of a campus shooting.
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The Astrakhan, the Homburg, and the Red Red Coal
by Chaz Brenchley Time: 25m (8K words) Issue: Lightspeed 61
A group of Englishmen sharing an
evening in a pub near a canal on "Old Mars" meet a stranger who
knows their secret and makes them an offer.
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(Dark Fantasy) Dora Rose's whole
family have been slaughtered. Maurice saves her because he loves her, and is
ready to help her get revenge. Even though he's a rat and she's a swan in
their true forms.
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A fantasy-world shipping clerk thinks
discrepancies in his accounts are the result of a curse, so he hires Cascor,
a sort of magic-using private detective.
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(Military Fantasy) In desperation, an
aging warrior and his son seek help from ancient witches to protect a
mountain pass against an enormous invasion force. A damned good read.
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Things from the deep ocean invade a
small American town, and a 16-year-old girl who can glimpse the future seeks
the cause of it all.
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(SF) Anat doesn't remember her
parents, but she loves her brother Oscar. They live in a wonderful world full
of strange creatures and machines. The more she learns, the stranger things
seem.
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French woman in the 1880s old West can
become invulnerable, at some cost, and makes a living as a stage
performer--until something goes wrong in Tombstone.
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A middle-aged knight in early
13th-Century France bringing his squire (and future master) to meet "The
Master of the Tides," reflects on the things he's done, variously brave,
cowardly, kind, and horrible, and those he's seen--including the terrifying
sup
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Bose is a project manager for the
"Magic 8 Ball," the world's first quantum computer. Desperate to
get it to work, they're ready to make some unorthodox changes.
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In this clever historical fantasy, set
in the Pleistocene, young Nudur gets called to serve Mantis, and Mantis sets
him a difficult task to prove himself.
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A scientist studies the stone-age
human survivors of a long-lost colony, and he finds there's something very
disturbing about them.
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A goblin craftsman who makes things of
beauty for his cruel elvish mistress learns to make her weapons from the
mundane world.
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What are the odds that two species at
roughly equal levels of development would meet in space and learn to trust
each other?
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The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn
by Usman Malik
Time: 1h:14m (22K words) Issue: Tor.com 04/22/15
Salman pursues the truth behind
stories his grandfather told him about an impoverished princess he used to
know back in Pakistan and the Jinn that protected her.
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On planet Tillal, the Arbolita
practically worship their margolo trees, and killing one is a crime--even to
save a life.
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(Fantasy) Gideon always destroys the statures he
carves. Analise (who both loves and hates him) decides to save one, not
expecting it to come to life.
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A middle-aged foreman whose crew does
menial jobs on planet Castellon finds something unusual during a routine job
cleaning statues meant to be unveiled the next day.
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A squad of US soldiers is trapped in
Hell, and every hour, a demon materializes and tries to kill them.
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This Is the Way the Universe Ends: with a Bang
by Brian Dolton
Time: 22m (7K words) Issue: F&SF 03.04|15
In the far future, near the end of the
Universe, Titus and the 92 remaining intelligences cope with the discovery of
something new.
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Fur trapper from ~22nd-Century Ohio
goes back in time to try to catch a giant beaver.
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(Hard SF) Karie's brother died in
Martian orbit, and NASA died with him. Ever since, she's been lobbying for
another mission, and now she has support from an unexpected quarter.
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At the end of the 21st Century, the
crew of Tethys initiates a pair of new crew members via a story-telling game.
Chilling.
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Uplifting story in which Dave, a
scientist who is losing his sight and hearing to Usher syndrome, attempts to
communicate with aliens that neither see nor hear.
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(High Fantasy) Twig's small band of
goblins has been captured by a larger group. They need to escape, but the
winter weather is bad, and Twig's magic is still "soft."
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Moving story about a woman who carves
mediocre decoy ducks and an old man who buys one every week.
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The 3-star,
2-star,
1-star,
and Not
Rated stories are filtered to show only the ones recommended by
other reviewers.
Rating: 3
-> Average
Total Stories: 105; Estimated Time: 42h:41m (768K words)
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(Military SF) An elderly pair of food
vendors in a near-future Seoul, Korea cope with increasingly troublesome
malfunctions in the city's cyber infrastructure.
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Modest, young Missouri man has
"friends" who bully him, a "girlfriend" who doesn't know
he likes her, and a time machine.
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Kim and Alana are two bodies sharing a
single mind, which makes them world-class gymnasts--as long as they keep it a
secret.
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Thirty years after a catastrophe in a
Mars mission simulation, a woman writes letters to her dead lover--the one
they call the Angel of death.
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The neighbors in their Russian village
fear and loathe the strange family in their whirring house, but the daughter
dreams of a better life.
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What if people's bodies evolved during
a single lifespan, changing form according to the actions and the character of
each individual?
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And the Winners Will Be Swept Out to Sea
by Maria Dahvana Headley
Time: 19m (6K words) Issue: Lightspeed 57
In the modern world, a water spirit
mourns the loss of her mortal lover.
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And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead
by Brooke Bolander
Time: 37m (11K words) Issue: Lightspeed 57
Rhye a bitter ex-supersoldier, fights
to rescue Rack, her hacker partner in crime, after the criminals they're
working for kill Rack's body while his mind is in cyberspace.
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Billy Tumult is a psychic surgeon, who
operates in virtual reality disguised as a wild-west cowboy.
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(Alternate History) The Russians in
WWII recruit women to fly crop dusters against the Germans, who call them
"witches."
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(SF) Katsumi's first night/she meets a
navigator/in the haiku room. The endless journey/of the generation ship/for
him, she brightens.
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Out in the Oort cloud, teen-age Tereza
and her sister just won a 4H club competition, but when the kids try to
return to the space station, no one answers.
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Tomio returns to Venus to confront his
ex-lover fifteen years after she left him following a diving accident that
cost him his legs.
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Bucket List Found in the Locker of Maddie Price, Age
14, Written Two Weeks Before the Great Uplifting of All Mankind
by Erica L. Satifka
Time: 02m (736 words) Issue: Lightspeed 61
Maddie's list of things to do before
the end of the world tells a sad, sweet story.
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By Frogsled And Lizardback To Outcast Venusian Lepers
by Garth Nix Time: 58m (18K words) Issue: Old Venus
Fifty-year-old Kelvin has a nice
business flying shuttle runs on Venus, but the Terran Navy calls him back to
service for a rescue mission in the heart of the Roar, the most dangerous
place on Venus. A fun, uncomplicated read.
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Capitalism In The 22nd Century Or A.I.r. by Geoff Ryman Time: 18m (6K words) Issue: Stories for Chip
Graça and Cristina want to leave Brazil
and go settle on another planet, but it's expensive, physically challenging,
and illegal.
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The narrator and her two sisters have
come to clean out their comatose mother's house and select items they might
want to remember her by.
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(SF) The narrator escorts an official
concerned about a disease that converts unlucky colonists into alien
creatures.
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A stranger from the spaceport visits
the house of a famous poet, preserved from the original terraforming of the
planet.
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Somebody is making a documentary about
Kamaria, who is a were-helicopter.
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Surreal tale of a young man who gets
off a bus in the middle of nowhere and the mysterious girl who follows him.
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A young girl lives with her
grandfather in a near-future totalitarian south-east Asian country whose
rulers use an airborne nanotechnology to track everyone's thoughts.
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Nev can jump to bodies of the freshly
dead, or to bodies he keeps on ice, but his latest acquisition causes no end
of trouble.
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Lerner Pong is an AI on a mission to
the outer solar system following a huge war between machines that has left
the inner solar system in ruins.
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An art connoisseur who specializes in
dynamic "evolutionary art" gets involved with the finest collection
there is.
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A writer gets a device that lets him
examine alternate universes.
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A man hits bottom and visits a soup
kitchen run by aliens pitching their own religion.
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Lola (aka Eliza) has had problems
dealing with people ever since she was a child, but she's always been good
with snakes.
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(Science Fantasy) Lao Dao processes
trash in a fantastic future "third-space" Beijing. To get money for
his daughter's education, he makes a dangerous trip to first-space--a city
that unfolds when his own Beijing sleeps.
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For Sale: Fantasy Coffin (Ababuo Need Not Apply)
by Chesya Burke
Time: 14m (4K words) Issue: Stories for Chip
In this fantasy story, eleven-year-old
Ababuo lives in modern-day Ghana. She's a "safe-journey" child,
which means she has a magical power but also bears a curse.
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In the far future, a military system
left-over from a war hides in a forest until a boy asks it for help.
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Two Turkish sisters struggle to
survive in an Alaska ravaged by giant mutant worms.
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A young woman with a bank job
appeasing spirits who haunt foreclosed homes meets an attractive young male
spirit who causes her to question the rules.
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A sensitive technician works with
heavily-bioengineered people (tough exos and the brainy endos inside them)
who hunt for pirates in the Oort cloud.
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Bartie (accompanied by his
accomplished butler Greeves) is shanghaied to Venus by an old school friend
who is studying the local wildlife and needs a bit of help.
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The narrator, a computational
linguist, has installed an advanced speech-and-gesture-recognition system to
let her deaf sister make video phone calls. But a stranger seems to be using
the system too.
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When Alexandria's propulsion unit
fails on a solo space mission, she knows she's going to die if she can't
think of something--it's just a matter of time.
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In the style of an old legend, this
story tells about what happened to Old Wise Woman's reflection, shadow, and
echo after she died.
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Ellie is trying to catch a train from
Boston to DC so she can visit her ailing mother when her sister calls to tell
her she needs to "go to the skunkworks and repair the physics of this
universe."
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Near future Australia is dying from
drought, and Harper's boyfriend has taken a job at a local mysterious
American military base.
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How to Walk Through Historic Graveyards in the Post-Digital Age
by Fran Wilde
Time: 21m (7K words) Issue: Asimov's 04.05|15
After a grave injury reporting on a
future US war, Eleanor's eyes were replaced with advanced prosthetics--but
now she seems to be seeing ghosts.
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At 16, freshly moved to an alien
planet, Sedgewick plans to meet some local boys for a midnight
challenge/initiation, but his 14-year-old brother tags along.
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In Panic Town, on the Backward Moon by Michael F. Flynn Time: 14m (4K words) Issue: Mission: Tomorrow
(Hard SF Mystery) Mickey works for the
Martian Port Authority on Phobos. When a mysterious artifact goes missing,
Mickey goes down to the surface to look for it.
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In 2139 Beiruit, Suraya sends a
sequence of e-mails that summarize her team's progress saving as many people
in Lebanon as possible from a coming global catastrophe.
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Cyborg struggles to prove he can fit
into society now that the war is over.
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A young woman is murdered in Armstrong
City, Luna, and both the police and organized crime want to understand why.
Captivating.
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Deeply disturbing story about Piedra,
a young woman whose body has been twisted into a work of art called a
"bone knot."
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(SF) Badly damaged in action, Qad's
ship barely makes it to a shipyard. Qad expects a reward for his efforts, but
things have changed since his last visit.
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In this very emotional story, to
distract himself from the wife and child he lost, Ethan buries himself in his
work on a AI system designed to teach children.
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When the Navy reports Jessie's father
is missing-in-action, life at school becomes very strange. Surreal.
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In a comfortable future world, a man
meets a woman from a past he doesn't remember.
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A lady time-traveler falls into bad
company in nineteenth-century Paris.
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In a near-future NYC, 14-year-old Paul
Jr. keeps running away from home, and Paul Sr. is willing to go to great
lengths to stop him.
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Julio, a young man visiting Hawaii
with his wife, explores his company's technology that modifies photos based
on the user's thoughts.
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On an alternate Venus, communist
Russians investigate mysterious disappearances and worry that the Americans
are behind it.
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(Hard SF) A fun story about a near
future where doctors can transplant your brain into a designer body, and a
woman whose son nevertheless manages to sustain life-threatening injuries.
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In an alternate Cold War, Marya works
on a secret genetics project for Stalin, but her goals aren't quite what the
Russians think they are.
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(Alternate History) In 1974, twenty
years after Mars was settled, Aaron tries to put on the first Martian
fireworks display--despite his mother's attempts to help him. A sweet little
story.
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Ash leads a team from National
Geographic to see unusual megafauna in the Russian part of Old Venus.
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On a distant planet, every few years,
two soldiers awake and try to kill each other. The locals think they're gods,
and no one seems to remember what the war was about.
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A single mom learns that the 50s-style
radio show her lonely young son loves listening to is coming from a radio
station that no longer exists.
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Neon White is a popular near-future
singer who needs something to keep her act fresh. She already uses a lot of
augments, but her publicist presses her to consider "machine
empathy," technology that would let her fans experience her emotions
directly.
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Scur, a soldier in an interstellar
war, wakes up from hibernation on a prison ship. The ship is failing, they
don't know where they are, and the prisoners are trying to kill each other.
|
|
In a magical, 2020s Texas, Lorna and
Vix sell sex, but they mostly trade emotions; they'll take what you don't
want, and sell the kind you do. As long as the law doesn't catch them.
|
|
In the near future, all the cool
Highschool kids wear "Kurzwailers" on their wrists, which play
music that's customized for them alone. Aisha's family is too poor for her to
have one, but she does have a gift for creating music.
|
|
(Military Fantasy) Fun tale about navy
seals (who really do turn into seals in the water) on a mission to destroy
potentially deadly steel-hulled ships the enemy has built.
|
|
In China, a failing student decides to
spend the summer with his grandmother, an eccentric scientist.
|
|
Heartwarming tale of a beggar girl in
a long-forgotten city who tells stories to the wind.
|
|
Two young sisters in a fantasy world
wait out a plague at home. One of them collects stamps to pass the time, but
what she really wants is to find a way to help find a magical solution.
|
|
In a humorous 1903 steampunk London, a
detective who specializes in the supernatural hunts a criminal mastermind who
has kidnapped his girl.
|
|
Bijou the artificer makes animated
skeletons, but she's never been asked to apply her magic to a dinosaur
skeleton before.
|
|
Sanjay's mother is exiled from the Eos
colony for heresy because she claimed she saw "stars" moving in the
night skies.
|
The Citadel of Weeping Pearls by Aliette De Bodard Time: 1h:48m (32K words) Issue: Asimov's 10.11|15
The Empress of the Dai Viet
Interstellar Empire assigned a team to track down her rebellious daughter,
who disappeared thirty years ago. Now the scientist leading the investigation
as also disappeared.
|
|
In a future (~100 years) Mexico, out
in the desert, a transhuman young man helps out some normal people, even
though he's in peril from other transhumans who are hunting him. There seems
to be a well-developed world behind this little story, and it defini
|
|
Out of cash and out of luck, Colt is
playing cards in a Venusian saloon when a dying desperado, chased by robots,
breaks up the game and gives him a clue about a sunken treasure.
|
|
Aliens decide to rule the Earth
indirectly, picking a middle-aged woman from an insurance company to be their
intermediary.
|
|
Cute slipstream story about Morris the
barber, who takes on some rather non-traditional clients in order to raise
money to open his own shop.
|
|
(Hard SF) Interspersed with the
narrator's account of her work on an intelligent AI for a Saturn mission, she
describes how her daughter fell three kilometers on the moon.
|
|
(Military Fantasy) As one of the Empire's
masters of graphological magic, Kodai has assisted in many victories, but
winning today will require she give up her life--and more.
|
|
Fun adventure on Old Venus.
Dharthi risks her life in an unexplored part of Ishtar Terra looking for
evidence of a vanished civilization that would save her career.
|
|
(High Fantasy) The usurped king lives
in exile, guarded (and tortured) by an automaton--so people say. The truth
seems to be a bit more comfortable than that though.
|
The Last Surviving Gondola Widow by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Time: 19m (6K words) Issue: Clarkesworld 101
In an alternate history ~1880s
steampunk+magic Chicago, a woman detective for the Pinkerton's investigates
someone who might have been involved in a terrorist attack on Chicago.
|
|
(High Fantasy) Laburnum castle hosts
key nobles from across the kingdom as well as the king himself for an
enormous feast--a feast that's equivalent to a war.
|
|
Franden wants to be a writer, but he's
hoping to immigrate to a less populous, less competitive world. If he can
just fool immigration into believing he's really an artist.
|
|
The narrator, now a diplomat, returns
to a planet where she and other humans had allied with natives to win a
bloody victory. She's there to visit a new war museum and investigate
complaints about it.
|
|
In which Malik, a Moor from Cordoba,
and Fara, a lady knight, unite to hunt a powerful and uniquely deceitful
dragon.
|
|
The narrator's uses the family time
machine to try to reach some closure with mother who abandoned him in 1963.
|
|
A lonely old Chinese man gets involved
in the fight against smog--without government approval.
|
|
In a far-future Earth, a whole town
goes digging for treasure--the Arbiter is sure it's a scam, but who is behind
it?
|
The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill by Kelly Robson1
Time: 17m (5K words) Issue: Clarkesworld 101
In 2001, just before the attacks, a
girl out West has a very close encounter with space aliens.
|
|
In 1915 Ohio, 14-year-old Emmett's
night terrors get worse after he finds a dead body in an abandoned well.
|
|
In Mexico in 1562, Bienvenida meets an
imprisoned Spanish girl her own age, befriends her, and looks for the magic
to set her free.
|
|
All alone at home during bad winter
weather, Henry wants to get rid of the dead Christmas tree in the
living-room. It drops needles and ornaments and there just seems to be
something wrong with it.
|
|
(Urban fantasy) Kitsi is a feline
spirit called into existence to create the invisible hats that give writers
their inspirations.
|
This Wanderer, in the Dark of the Year
by Kris Millering
Time: 12m (4K words) Issue: Clarkesworld 105
A war reporter investigates a possible
alien landing in Hungary although her previous reporting has made her a lot
of enemies there.
|
|
Earth has sent a powerful starship to
find the colonies it established 1,000 years ago and to destroy any that pose
a threat to humanity.
|
|
A man takes his Alzheimer's-afflicted
wife to Boston to fulfill a promise he made when they were young.
|
|
A dysfunctional couple decides to make
a love potion to prevent themselves from breaking up.
|
We're So Very Sorry for Your Recent Tragic Loss
by Nick Wolven
Time: 32m (10K words) Issue: F&SF 09.10|15
In a world where everything is
connected, a bug causes the system to think that thirty-five-year-old Meg has
suffered a death in the family, and everything in her daily life, from her
pillow to the ads on the sidewalk, starts commiserating with her.
|
|
Humorous slipstream tale about a
romance between a werewolf and a mermaid in the real world.
|
What Has Passed Shall In Kinder Light Appear
by Bao Shu
Time: 1h:20m (24K words) Issue: F&SF 03.04|15
A Chinese man recounts his life, in
which the events of history as we know them appear to be coming in reverse.
|
|
A wealthy investor decides to pour
resources into the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, with unexpected
results.
|
|
Fundamentalist mom takes networking
drug so she can track down her missing teenage boy.
|
|
In post-Collapse America, Mel operates
a hive of augmented bees and trading honey and medicines with locals--until a
crew of bandits arrives.
|
|
(Hard SF) Yuanyuan has been fascinated
with bubbles ever since she was a baby, but her hometown is dying from
drought and needs water, not bubbles.
|
Rating: 2
-> Not Recommended
Total Stories: 46; Estimated Time: 18h:56m (341K words)
A Small Diversion On the Road to Hell by Jonathan L. Howard Time: 12m (4K words) Issue: F&SF 03.04|15
Humorous story about a bartender on
another planet having a slow day until a time traveler turns up.
|
|
Siobhan and Finn are chronomancers,
who can manipulate the passage of time. Former lovers, they hate each other
now, and use their magic against each other.
|
|
The sole survivor of a colony ship
nevertheless raises a host of rather strange children, and today he hosts a
special ceremony at "the worm farm."
|
|
Intergalactic policeman enforces
Einstein's speed limit, but suffers the side effects of violating it himself.
|
|
In a future authoritarian America that
doesn't tolerate cultural or linguistic diversity, Tabitha Hoarse Raven
returns to the pueblo of Acona to finish the sacred dance her father died
trying to complete.
|
|
At the end of the 21st century, when
climate change has shattered the US and much of the north has joined Canada,
three people are affected by what appears to be a terrorist attack.
|
|
An intelligent, patchwork fighter ship
struggles to help the last of the Free Belt fight off the Earth Force.
|
Down Please: The Only Recorded Adventure of Lars Fouton, Captain's Lift
Operator on the Starship Magnificent by Adam-Troy Castro Time: 13m (4K words) Issue: Analog 04|15
An alien general takes an interest in
the unfortunate Lars, who has the dullest job on the starship.
|
|
(Soft SF) A man describes his family
problems in a future England where a plague has killed almost all the women.
|
|
(SF) Romanz, a judge in the moons of
jupiter, deals with a tough case involving a juvenile delinquent AI.
|
|
Repeated runs of a simulation in which
women from fairy tales fight to the death with knives.
|
|
With Earth falling apart, a secret
group launches a mission to Alpha Centauri in 2041. Launching is only half
the problem; getting there is the real challenge.
|
|
Headwater Bottled Refreshments sells
bottled water with literally magical properties. Yoko works in the home
office and knows that the mythical, aquatic, Kappa on the logo isn't so
mythical.
|
|
(Hard SF) Cynthia mines the asteroids
alone except for her robot companion, Harry. They respond to a distress call,
although something seems wrong about it.
|
Islands off the Coast of Capitola, 1978
by David Herter Time: 44m (13K words) Issue: Tor.com 07/08/15
You are a lonely ten-year-old boy
living in an old house with your mom when a man claiming to be your uncle arrives
and strange things start to happen.
|
It's All Relative at the Space-Time Café by Norman Birnbach1 Time: 06m (2K words) Issue: F&SF 11.12|15
Bohr meets his ex, Jenny, at the café,
where they reminisce about love and science in terms of puns.
|
Kaiju maximus: 'So Various, So Beautiful, So New'
by Kai Ashante Wilson
Time: 24m (7K words) Issue: Fantasy 59
(Fantasy) Tonight the hero risks her
family to battle the Kaiju Maximus, one of the enormous aliens that drove
most of humanity underground.
|
|
In alternate-history America, an
uplifted chimp gets certified as a person and goes to the moon.
|
|
(SF) Fort Lucky, Texas, has survived
the super-soldiers called "zombies," but Calderon thinks it won't
be long now.
|
|
In the 24th Century, Major Okonkwo
investigates the suspicious death of her husband in the context of research
on a secret portal that links 11 years into the past and the future.
|
|
A man in a future, security obsessed
America longs for freedom, but lacks the courage to defy the security guards
at the subway entrance.
|
|
All the imaginary creatures a young
person could want to make apartment life more pleasant.
|
|
The Javelin reaches a rogue planet 36
light-days from Earth, but the crew finds something terrible there.
|
|
You take a plane flight to Seattle,
but disturbing news from Brazil bothers everyone on the flight. And beyond.
|
|
(SF) Anzhmir supervises the data
stores on an interstellar spaceship. The people encoded in the data are
asleep, but Anzhmir thinks there's a stowaway.
|
|
Today, little Fift will attempt the
first gate of logic. She's excited, but some of her fathers and mother are
worried that she's not ready.
|
|
(SF) In the wake of a war fought
against uploaded humans who called themselves "gods," teenage
Maddie is approached by an AI claiming to be her "sister."
|
|
What if rhinoceroses behaved like
human beings and talked about their upcoming extinction during book club
meetings?
|
|
A man butchers the corpse of his
husband to cook a meal for the gods, as required by his culture's funeral
rites.
|
The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild by Catherynne M. Valente Time: 51m (16K words) Issue: Clarkesworld 102
Surreal tale about the loves and
losses of Violet Wild, a girl from the purple country, who crosses the
spectrum accompanied by a unicorn, a sorrow, and a herd of time squirrels.
|
|
Today is Jake's 7th birthday (13 Earth
years), and the celebration formally makes him a man.
|
|
Lesbian couple studying the native
life on Teysanzi make a real impression on a towering alien.
|
|
In the near-future Pacific Northwest,
environmentalists race to save key species from a forest that's slated to be
destroyed.
|
|
Tess is writing an article about a new
disease that causes women to give birth to clones of themselves.
|
|
The narrator is a magician who helps
debunk con men, but he gets involved in serious, high-tech efforts to uncover
the truth and predict the future.
|
|
Orrey maker decides to try working
with real stars and galaxies.
|
This Evening's Performance by Genevieve Valentine Time: 55m (17K words) Issue: The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk
(Steampunk) The last three human
actors struggle to find roles in a post-WWI world where automata have
replaced people on the stage.
|
|
A key scientist in the Dai Viet
interstellar empire has died, and three people who were close to her mourn
her passing in different ways.
|
|
Alzheimer's patient's family can't
visit her very often, so they buy a robot to fool her into thinking they're
visiting her. The robot tells the story.
|
|
A unit of an intelligent alien parasite
in a human brain finds evidence that the host's immune system is on to them.
|
|
Surreal science fantasy, in which
three goddesses come to Paris, prince of a mathematical Troy, and ask him to
decide to whom to award an apple.
|
|
A washed-up programmer in near-future
Japan explores old code that she wrote back before the Internet was replaced
by TrueNet.
|
|
Del and his friend Zep are near-future
surf bums living in Hawaii. Zep finds them work with a wealthy developer
using nanotechnology to create programmable waves.
|
|
Three vignettes about what happens
when two swordsmen meet.
|
|
A team infiltrates a space station
just as two researchers are about to create the ultimate AI.
|
|
Laurel is starting highschool in a new
town, and although she's smart enough not to talk about her telekinetic
ability, she can't resist using it sometimes.
|
Rating: 1
-> Needs Improvement
Total Stories: 10; Estimated Time: 4h:05m (74K words)
|
In a fairly near future, Audra visits
the mid Pacific to watch how the ecosystem is evolving to incorporate
plastics.
|
Mrs.
Griffin Prepares to Commit Suicide Tonight by A. Que Time: 24m (7K words) Issue: Clarkesworld 104
In 2335, a lonely old woman tries to
get her robot to help her commit suicide.
|
|
(SF) A transcript of testimony before
the U.S. Supreme Court gradually reveals what really happened with a human
photosynthesis technology.
|
Seven
Wonders of a Once and Future World by Caroline M. Yoachim
Time: 20m (6K words) Issue: Lightspeed 64
Young scientist trying to develop time
travel encounters an alien intelligence that lives outside of time.
|
|
(SF) Yip, a software security consultant,
works for her sister, Yazzy. She expects cases to be challenging, but not
life-threatening. Until now.
|
|
In a future Tokyo, Shinsuke Takinami
is an outcast because he can't use the augments that normal people use to
communicate with each other--he has to talk.
|
|
In an alternate world, a group of men
go down into the abandoned undercity to search for two people who have
disappeared.
|
|
An aircraft crashes in the desert on
an unpopulated planet, and the passengers struggle to survive.
|
|
A servant girl on a generation ship
plots to overthrow the evil and corrupt rulers.
|
|
Hannah's boyfriend wants to test his
time experiment in Hannah's room.
|
Rating: Not
Rated
Total Stories: 5; Estimated Time: 1h:53m (34K words)
|
In his old age, a TV writer reflects
on a show he worked on fifty years ago--the only work he's really proud
of--and the almost supernatural way it came to an end.
|
|
In 1925, a young woman assistant works
on the set of a silent movie about World War I.
|
|
The narrator is a librarian who
acquires a mysterious book of poems and becomes obsessed with finding
information about the author.
|
|
A woman paramedic and her best friend
fear that despite their best efforts, they end up causing more pain than they
relieve.
|
Unearthly Landscape
by a Lady by Rebecca Campbell Time: 11m (4K words) Issue: Beneath Ceaseless Skies 184
(Literary) From childhood, Flora,
painted disturbing paintings, and her nurse fears the young lady carried this
obsession into adulthood.
|
Not Yet Rated
Eric Wong
January 22, 2016
I particularly like the tactic of highlighting all the "other reviewer" recs here. It makes it a very useful resource.
ReplyDeleteThanks. We had hoped it would be. We'll probably write an article at some point that looks at the differences between reviewers. In particular, it's surprising that any one-star stories got recommended by anyone, but about a quarter of them have been.
DeleteSurprised you omitted the novelette "Sacred Cows: Death and Squalor on the Rio Grande" by A. S. Diev, published at Giganotosaurus in May. On IO9 in June, K. Tempest Bradford called it one of the best science fiction stories of the year, and reviewed it very positively in her blog. http://io9.gizmodo.com/what-are-the-best-short-stories-of-the-year-so-far-ju-1713433313
ReplyDeleteGiganotosaurus isn't on our radar at the moment. What about the story appealed to you?
DeleteMmm, it's about a rock and roll journalist trying to get her job back by reporting on a murder trial in Mexico involving genetically-modified farm animals, a big corporation, and a hint of the drug cartels. I may have misunderstood your site - I thought everything recommended by your prolific reviewers gets listed here (in this case, KTB http://io9.gizmodo.com/io9-newsstand-the-best-stories-from-the-week-of-may-3-1703080879); I didn't realize you only cover certain magazines. No big deal. Thanks for your site, very helpful.
Delete