Outstanding SF/F Horror of 2016-2017

Update 10/16/18: Added 10 stories with addition of Shirley Jackson, British Fantasy, World Fantasy, and BSFA award finalists.

Although horror isn't our focus, we do review horror stories that turn up in our regular magazines, so in honor of Halloween, here are 36 outstanding science fiction & fantasy horror stories from 2016-2017 that were either finalists for major SF/F awards 🏆, included in "year's best" SF/F anthologies 📙, or recommended by prolific reviewers 👍 in short fiction (see Q&A). Each story shows a "Recommended By" list where a score is tallied from the +2, +1 or +0 after each recommendation.

Observations:

• 7 are Science Fiction and 25 are Fantasy. One is both and 3 are unknown (not reviewed by RSR but are Shirley Jackson award finalists).
• 21 are free online (click to see yellow highlights).
• The 5 from Lightspeed and 5 for Tor novellas, together, are over 1/4 of the total.
• Kathleen Kayembe and Maria Dahvana Headley each have two stories here.
• RSR recommended 14 of the stories and only recommended against 2 (with 3 not reviewed).

Outstanding High Fantasy of 2016-2017

Update 8/31/18: Added Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 and Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2018 and 2017.

Here are 51 outstanding stories of high fantasy from 2016-2017 that were either finalists for major SF/F awards 🏆, included in "year's best" SF/F anthologies 📙, or recommended by prolific reviewers 👍 in short fiction (see Q&A). That's 51 out of 166 high fantasy stories from those two years, and out of 470 outstanding SF/F stories from 2016 and 2017. Each story shows a "Recommended By" list where a score is tallied from the +2, +1 or +0 after each recommendation.

For our purposes, we define "high fantasy" as a fantasy story that takes place in a secondary world. That is, something like Lord of the Rings, where Middle Earth is clearly not in the past or future of our world.

We've included portal fantasies, provided the destination is a secondary world.

Observations:

• 31 are free online (click to see yellow highlights).
• 16 (almost 1/3) are from Beneath Ceaseless Skies.
• The most prolific author in this list is Lois McMaster Bujold with 3 novellas.
• RSR recommended 28 of the stories and only recommended against 2.

Outstanding SF/F by People of Color 2015-2016

Update 3/29/18: Removed reviewer CPayseur at his request. Also see discussion of request by Hugo finalist Camestros Felapton.

In the spirit of Lightspeed Magazine's famous People of Color Destroy Science Fiction series, here are 92 stories by people of color that had a combined score of 2+ from RSR's 2015 & 2016 Best SF/F lists. The two lists together contain the 440 most-recommended stories out of 1,481 reviewed, so the 92 stories by people of color make up around 21% of the best of 2015-2016.

Readers asked us to make it easy for them to find good stories written by authors with diverse racial backgrounds, and that’s what this list is meant to accomplish (author identity plays no role in our ratings). Note that this is for fiction from 2015 and 2016 (RSR started September 2015); and we’ll prepare a similar list for 2017 once the finalists for various awards have been announced—probably in July or August.

Outstanding LGBT Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2015-2016

Update 3/27/18: Replaced static table with dynamic table.
Update 11/26/17: Miscategorized bisexual story “Seasons of Glass and Iron” as lesbian. Updated both lists.

In addition to regular monthly ratings we’re going to start publishing occasional lists of highly recommended stories from particular subsets of Science Fiction and Fantasy (SFF). We’ve previously done this for Hard Science Fiction, and this month we’re doing it for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) stories.

Hard Science Fiction in 2016

It has been eighteen months since we explored the Health of Hard Science Fiction in 2015 (Short Fiction), so we're overdue to take a look at 2016. This report divides into three sections:

• A selection of 42 of the best hard SF stories of 2016 together with links to the ones that are free online. 
• A list of 21 controversial SF stories of 2016, where RSR disagreed with other reviewers.
• A detailed analysis of hard SF in 2016 with charts and graphs.

Annotated 2017 Sturgeon Award Finalists

Here are the annotated 2017 and 2016 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award Finalists for short fiction.

Annotations include time estimates, links to the story on the author’s website (if available), author links with Campbell Award-eligibility marked (superscript for year 1 or 2), blurbs for RSR-reviewed stories, links to reviews, and links to digital back issues (of print magazines) at eBookstores and library websites.

There are also the RSR annotated Locus Reading List, Nebula Award Nominees, and Hugo Award Finalists for short fiction.

Annotated 2017 Hugo Awards Finalists

Here is the annotated 2017 Hugo Awards Finalists list for short fiction.

Annotations include time estimates, links to the story on the author's website (if available), author links with Campbell Award-eligibility marked (superscript for year 1 or 2), blurbs for RSR-reviewed stories, links to reviews, and links to digital back issues (of print magazines) at eBookstores and library websites.

There's also the Annotated 2016 Nebula Awards Nominees.

Annotated 2016 File770 List for Short Fiction

While we’re waiting for the Hugo administrators to produce the list of finalists, some fifty "Filers" (commenters from File770) shared their nominations, and we’ve used that to create a top-15 list for Best Novella, Best Novelette, and Best Short Story. In a couple of weeks, we can see how well they predicted the actual finalists.

In the lists below, "votes" is the number of Filers who nominated that work. A quick glance shows that these stories, for the most part, have been heavily recommended by reviewers, reader's polls, and anthologists. (Click on the links to see their reviews.)

Of the 55 stories below, RSR recommended 30 (average would be 10),  recommended against 6 (average would be 17), and never read 5, so this is an exceptionally strong selection of stories by our measure and by any measure.

Annotated 2016 Nebula Award Nominees

Update 2/20/17: Replaced Cat Rambo's Red in Tooth and Cog with Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam's The Orangery due to SFWA correction.

Here is the annotated 2016 Nebula Awards Nominees for short fiction.

Annotations include time estimates, links to the story on the author’s website (if available), author links with Campbell Award-eligibility marked (superscript for year 1 or 2), blurbs for RSR-reviewed stories, links to reviews, and links to digital back issues (of print magazines) at eBookstores and library websites.

There’s also the Annotated 2016 Locus Reading List for Short Fiction.

This is Not a Wardrobe Door, by A. Merc Rustad

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(Portal Fantasy) Ellie used to travel freely to the other world, but lately her door doesn’t work. In fact, all the portals are broken for some reason. (1,772 words; Time: 05m)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ Average

Recommended By: Nebula

Sabbath Wine, by Barbara Krasnoff

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(Modern Fantasy) Malka is a little Jewish girl living in Brooklyn in 1920. She likes her new friend, David, even though he’s older than her, black, Christian, and claims to be dead. (6,843 words; Time: 22m)

Rating: ★★★★☆ Beautifully detailed and deeply moving

Recommended By: Nebula

u wont remember dying, by Russell Nichols

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(Near-Future SF) A dying young black man writes notes for his future self. (1,582 words; Time: 05m)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ Average

The Bog Girl, by Karen Russell

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(Slipstream Horror) Fifteen-year-old Cillian finds the love of his life buried in the peat of an old bog where she died long, long, ago. (7,215 words; Time: 24m)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ Average

Screamers, by Tochi Onyebuchi

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(Horror) America has imported policemen from Nigeria to patrol black neighborhoods, and they’re struggling to solve cases where people seem to simply explode for no reason. (4,566 words; Time: 15m)

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ Not Recommended

Only Their Shining Beauty Was Left, by Fran Wilde

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(Slipstream Apocalypse) About the time botany student Arminae Ganit daydreams about how nice it would be to be a tree, people around the world start turning into trees for real. (4,068 words; Time: 13m)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ Average

Not Without Mercy, by Jeffrey Ford

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(Alien Invasion) At night, in the middle of a terrible snowstorm, Amy and Harry meet an alien on their drive home. (3,635 words; Time: 12m)

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ Needs Improvement

Ever Changing, Ever Turning, by Yukimi Ogawa

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(Japanese SF) On Shino’s island, women aren’t allowed to use artificial colors on their nails or skin, but her friend Tsukiko can change color at will. (4,888 words; Time: 16m)

Rating: ★★★☆☆ Average

The Life and Times of Angel Evans, by Meredith Debonnaire

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(Portal Fantasy) Consumed with guilt for being the sole survivor from her home dimension collapsed, Angel scrapes by in our world, living with a ghost, working as a janitor and doing limited magic on the sly. (9,864 words; Time: 32m)

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ Not Recommended

This Census-Taker, by China Miéville

[Single]

★★☆☆☆ Not Recommended

(Post-Apocalypse) At age seven, the narrator thought he saw his father murder his mother. But did he? (35,629 words; Time: 1h:58m)

Recommended By: 🏆Hugo+2 🏆Locus+2 👍JStrahan+2 (Q&A)

Innumerable Glimmering Lights, by Rich Larson

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(SF) Four Warm Currents leads a project to drill through the ice at the Roof of the World to finally discover what’s on the other side, but the closer he gets, the more opposition there is. (6,331 words; Time: 21m)

Rating: ★★★★★ Inventive and Exciting

Recommended By: GDozois:5 RHorton:5