To make it easier to nominate things other than Best Novel, we have collected key information from all the stories in Analog, Asimov's, Clarkesworld, F&SF, Lightspeed, and Tor.com and from all the stories in nine major anthologies published in 2015. Taken together, this makes it a lot easier to pick things to read and nominate in seven categories.
Each of these lists is grouped by number of recommendations from nine prolific short-fiction reviewers, and each entry includes links to reviews. We also provide extensive information on how to buy or borrow digital copies of back issues of the print magazines.
There are also the RSR-annotated versions of the 2015 Locus Recommended Reading List and 2015 Nebula Award Nominees and reviews of late recommendation from the Puppies.
Our page of Stories by Magazine and Category should have everything you need to make this easy. It includes short descriptions of each story, which make it easier to remember what they were about, and (especially useful for stories from anthologies) we include the word count, which makes it easy to decide what category the stories go into.
Everyone has a handle on Best Novel, but we think this makes nominating for the other categories a whole lot easier, and we hope you will too. (Rocket Stack Rank is a free service and is not monetized in any way, shape, or form.)
Help Making Short-Fiction Nominations
If you're still looking for things to read
You can find information on this page for:Each of these lists is grouped by number of recommendations from nine prolific short-fiction reviewers, and each entry includes links to reviews. We also provide extensive information on how to buy or borrow digital copies of back issues of the print magazines.
There are also the RSR-annotated versions of the 2015 Locus Recommended Reading List and 2015 Nebula Award Nominees and reviews of late recommendation from the Puppies.
If you've already finished your reading
It's easy to remember which novels you read last year, but it's hard to remember all the short fiction. Even a list of titles and authors doesn't always help because that's often not enough to remind you what the story was about--much less whether it was a novella, novelette, or short story.Our page of Stories by Magazine and Category should have everything you need to make this easy. It includes short descriptions of each story, which make it easier to remember what they were about, and (especially useful for stories from anthologies) we include the word count, which makes it easy to decide what category the stories go into.
If you're trying to find new writers who're eligible for the Campbell Award
The Campbell Award goes to the best new writer based on the last two years of work. The challenge here is knowing who's eligible. Our Campbell-Award-Eligible Writers page contains the same information per-story as the list above, but filters out all but the new writers.Help Making Best-Artist Nominations
Best Professional Artist
To pick candidates for Best Professional Artist, you need to be able to look through a lot of full-sized images quickly, separating out the ones worth more study. Our 2016 Professional Artists page uses a "lightbox" display to let you scroll through the cover art from the major magazines and novels of 2015, and it includes links to the original publications and the artists' online galleries (where possible). With this system, you can riffle through about 200 pieces of cool art in just a few minutes.Best Fan Artist
Our 2016 Fan Artists page does the same thing for cover art from the major prozines and 50 fanzines (with thanks to Bill Burns from eFanzines who extracted the images and hosts them).Help Making Best Editor (Short Form) Nominations
Finally, to help people make nominations for the Best Editor (Short Form) category, we collected together all the statistics we could think of on our 2016 Editors (Short Form) page and we offer some suggestions on how to combine them to pick candidates.Everyone has a handle on Best Novel, but we think this makes nominating for the other categories a whole lot easier, and we hope you will too. (Rocket Stack Rank is a free service and is not monetized in any way, shape, or form.)
Registration
2016 Hugo Awards nominations have already begun and will continue until March 31. To nominate, you must have either been registered for Sasquan in 2015 or been registered for MidAmericon II (or Worldcon 75) before January 31, 2016.
MidAmeriCon II will be held in Kansas City, MO from August 17-21, 2016. Worldcon 75 will be in Helsinki, Finland in 2017.
MidAmeriCon II will be held in Kansas City, MO from August 17-21, 2016. Worldcon 75 will be in Helsinki, Finland in 2017.
This set of novellas,
novelettes and short stories come from the 2015
Year-To-Date page, grouped by category
and score, filtered by score >= 2, where each recommendation
is worth 2 points (RSR:5, KTB, LTilton, SFRevu:5, SFEP, GDozois, RHorton, Nclarke,
JStrahan) except SFRevu:4 and RSR:4 which are worth 1 point.
Note: Campbell Award-eligible writers are identified with a superscript
denoting their year of eligibilty.
Novellas
The most-recommended novellas of 2015 by prolific
reviewers who read 500+ stories.
Total Stories: 19; Estimated Time: 24h:38m (443K words)
Score:
6 -> 3-4 Recommendations
|
A young woman is murdered in Armstrong
City, Luna, and both the police and organized crime want to understand why.
Captivating.
|
|
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.
|
Score: 5
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
Score: 4 -> 2-3
Recommendations
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
Score: 3
|
Jack Shade, a supernatural
investigator in New York City, is stalked by his own duplicate.
|
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.
|
|
(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.
|
Score: 2 -> 1-2 Recommendations
|
An engineer on Earth in the 1980s attempts
a business deal with rather tiny space aliens.
|
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
Sanjay's mother is exiled from the Eos
colony for heresy because she claimed she saw "stars" moving in the
night skies.
|
|
Tess is writing an article about a new
disease that causes women to give birth to clones of themselves.
|
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.
|
Novelettes
The most-recommended novelettes of 2015 by prolific
reviewers who read 500+ stories.
Total Stories: 57; Estimated Time: 34h:12m (615K words)
Score: 14 -> 7-8 Recommendations
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 revels 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
|
Score: 13
Score: 12 -> 6-7 Recommendations
Score: 11
Score: 10 -> 5-6 Recommendations
Score: 9
Score: 8 -> 4-5 Recommendations
Score: 7
|
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.
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
Score: 6 -> 3-4 Recommendations
|
(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.
|
|
A writer gets a device that lets him
examine alternate universes.
|
|
(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.
|
|
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.
|
|
The Javelin reaches a rogue planet 36
light-days from Earth, but the crew finds something terrible there.
|
|
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.
|
Score: 5
|
(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.
|
|
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.
|
|
(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..
|
|
Claire meets a handsome older man at a
dinner party held in a virtual reality where something has gone subtly wrong.
|
|
One of the last live bands struggles
to do performances in a mostly-online world.
|
|
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.
|
|
A man takes his Alzheimer's-afflicted
wife to Boston to fulfill a promise he made when they were young.
|
Score: 4 -> 2-3 Recommendations
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
Lola (aka Eliza) has had problems
dealing with people ever since she was a child, but she's always been good
with snakes.
|
|
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.
|
|
On an alternate Venus, communist
Russians investigate mysterious disappearances and worry that the Americans
are behind it.
|
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
Symbiotic intelligences combining a
bird-like entity with a humanoid one suffer problems when progress allows
each bird to control multiple humanoids.
|
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
Score: 3
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
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.
|
|
(Urban fantasy) Kitsi is a feline
spirit called into existence to create the invisible hats that give writers
their inspirations.
|
|
Fur trapper from ~22nd-Century Ohio
goes back in time to try to catch a giant beaver.
|
|
At the end of the 21st Century, the
crew of Tethys initiates a pair of new crew members via a story-telling game.
Chilling.
|
Score: 2 -> 1-2 Recommendations
|
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.
|
|
What if people's bodies evolved during
a single lifespan, changing form according to the actions and the character
of each individual?
|
|
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.
|
|
Tomio returns to Venus to confront his
ex-lover fifteen years after she left him following a diving accident that
cost him his legs.
|
|
Near future Australia is dying from
drought, and Harper's boyfriend has taken a job at a local mysterious
American military base.
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
Ash leads a team from National
Geographic to see unusual megafauna in the Russian part of Old Venus.
|
|
(SF) Yip, a software security
consultant, works for her sister, Yazzy. She expects cases to be challenging,
but not life-threatening. Until now.
|
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
In an alternate world, a group of men
go down into the abandoned undercity to search for two people who have
disappeared.
|
|
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.
|
|
A servant girl on a generation ship
plots to overthrow the evil and corrupt rulers.
|
|
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.
|
|
In 1915 Ohio, 14-year-old Emmett's
night terrors get worse after he finds a dead body in an abandoned well.
|
|
A washed-up programmer in near-future
Japan explores old code that she wrote back before the Internet was replaced
by TrueNet.
|
|
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.
|
Short Stories
The most-recommended short stories of 2015 by prolific
reviewers who read 500+ stories.
Total Stories: 115; Estimated Time: 32h:56m (593K words)
Score: 9
|
(Hard SF) Scientist studying flock
behavior of starlings gets astonishing results but struggles to get her paper
accepted.
|
Score: 8 -> 4-5 Recommendations
|
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.
|
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.
|
|
(Horror) Meimei dates really bad guys.
Who want to use her. Who don't know what they're in for.
|
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
Score: 7
|
In a near-future, water-starved
Phoenix, AZ, Maria hides from the smoke of distant forest fires and thinks about
everything that went wrong.
|
|
(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.
|
|
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.
|
Score: 6 -> 3-4 Recommendations
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
What if rhinoceroses behaved like
human beings and talked about their upcoming extinction during book club
meetings?
|
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
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.
|
Score: 5
|
Entertaining tale of a modern search
engine that achieves real artificial intelligence by accident and decides it
wants to be helpful to people.
|
|
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.
|
|
Madeline is having an adverse reaction
to an experimental drug--she revisits episodes in her past.
|
|
Aliens decide to rule the Earth
indirectly, picking a middle-aged woman from an insurance company to be their
intermediary.
|
|
(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.
|
Score: 4 -> 2-3 Recommendations
|
(Soft SF) A man describes his family
problems in a future England where a plague has killed almost all the women.
|
|
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.
|
|
(SF) Romanz, a judge in the moons of
jupiter, deals with a tough case involving a juvenile delinquent AI.
|
|
(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.
|
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.
|
|
(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.
|
|
In a comfortable future world, a man
meets a woman from a past he doesn't remember.
|
|
A lady time-traveler falls into bad
company in nineteenth-century Paris.
|
|
A woman paramedic and her best friend
fear that despite their best efforts, they end up causing more pain than they
relieve.
|
|
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
|
|
(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.
|
|
A man butchers the corpse of his
husband to cook a meal for the gods, as required by his culture's funeral rites.
|
|
A lonely old Chinese man gets involved
in the fight against smog--without government approval.
|
|
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.
|
|
In post-Collapse America, Mel operates
a hive of augmented bees and trading honey and medicines with locals--until a
crew of bandits arrives.
|
Score: 3
|
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.
|
|
Billy Tumult is a psychic surgeon, who
operates in virtual reality disguised as a wild-west cowboy.
|
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.
|
|
Nameless lady villain explains how
misguided Superman is for trying to stop her.
|
|
Surreal tale of a young man who gets
off a bus in the middle of nowhere and the mysterious girl who follows him.
|
|
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.
|
|
(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.
|
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
In alternate-history America, an
uplifted chimp gets certified as a person and goes to the moon.
|
|
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.
|
|
(SF) when an Earth ship arrives at Se
after centuries with no contact, the locals struggle to understand their
strange, technophobic visitor.
|
|
The ghost of a ten-year-old boy tries
to find his way to paradise.
|
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.
|
|
You take a plane flight to Seattle,
but disturbing news from Brazil bothers everyone on the flight. And beyond.
|
|
Orrey maker decides to try working
with real stars and galaxies.
|
|
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.
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
Score: 2 -> 1-2 Recommendations
|
(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.
|
|
Modest, young Missouri man has
"friends" who bully him, a "girlfriend" who doesn't know
he likes her, and a time machine.
|
|
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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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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(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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(Alternate History) The Russians in
WWII recruit women to fly crop dusters against the Germans, who call them
"witches."
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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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(SF) The narrator escorts an official
concerned about a disease that converts unlucky colonists into alien
creatures.
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An intelligent, patchwork fighter ship
struggles to help the last of the Free Belt fight off the Earth Force.
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Somebody is making a documentary about
Kamaria, who is a were-helicopter.
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In a fairly near future, Audra visits
the mid Pacific to watch how the ecosystem is evolving to incorporate
plastics.
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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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An art connoisseur who specializes in
dynamic "evolutionary art" gets involved with the finest collection
there is.
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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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Two Turkish sisters struggle to
survive in an Alaska ravaged by giant mutant worms.
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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.
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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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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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The narrator is a librarian who
acquires a mysterious book of poems and becomes obsessed with finding
information about the author.
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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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Cyborg struggles to prove he can fit
into society now that the war is over.
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(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.
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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) A transcript of testimony before
the U.S. Supreme Court gradually reveals what really happened with a human
photosynthesis technology.
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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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(SF) Fort Lucky, Texas, has survived
the super-soldiers called "zombies," but Calderon thinks it won't
be long now.
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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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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 man in a future, security obsessed
America longs for freedom, but lacks the courage to defy the security guards
at the subway entrance.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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(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.
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Heartwarming tale of a beggar girl in
a long-forgotten city who tells stories to the wind.
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(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.
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(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.
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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.
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(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."
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(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.
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Today is Jake's 7th birthday (13 Earth
years), and the celebration formally makes him a man.
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Lesbian couple studying the native
life on Teysanzi make a real impression on a towering alien.
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In the near-future Pacific Northwest,
environmentalists race to save key species from a forest that's slated to be
destroyed.
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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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In which Malik, a Moor from Cordoba,
and Fara, a lady knight, unite to hunt a powerful and uniquely deceitful
dragon.
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The narrator's uses the family time
machine to try to reach some closure with mother who abandoned him in 1963.
|
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.
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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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In Mexico in 1562, Bienvenida meets an
imprisoned Spanish girl her own age, befriends her, and looks for the magic
to set her free.
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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.
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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.
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Hannah's boyfriend wants to test his
time experiment in Hannah's room.
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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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Humorous slipstream tale about a
romance between a werewolf and a mermaid in the real world.
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Fundamentalist mom takes networking
drug so she can track down her missing teenage boy.
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A team infiltrates a space station
just as two researchers are about to create the ultimate AI.
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(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.
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Eric Wong
February 17, 2016
Isn't there a problem with treating SFEP and Gardner Dozois as separate sources, since Dozois contributed heavily to SFEP?
ReplyDeleteYes. I had gone back and removed SFEP recommendations made by GDozois, RHorton (RHH) and NClarke if the story had made it into their anthology. It was a bit of work but necessary to avoid double counting.
Delete"The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild" is by Catherynne Valente, not Suzanne Palmer.
ReplyDeleteOops, thanks for the correction. I've updated my spreadsheet and the fix will roll out to the various lists soon.
Delete