News & Highlights

🗳️Vote for SF/F Awards for Stories from 2020!
🔎Finding a Science-Fiction/Fantasy Magazine to Subscribe To

Diversity in Outstanding SF/F Short Fiction
Stories with 🌈LGBT people: 2019 2018 2017 2015-2016
Stories by 📚People of Color: 2019 2018 2017 2015-2016

Monthly Ratings & Annual Outstanding Selections
📅2021: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
🏆Best SF/F: 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015
🚀Hard SF: 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015
✨High Fantasy: 2019 2018 2016-2017
😱SF/F Horror: 2019 2018 2016-2017

April 2021 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 0; Time & Words: 💬0
Recommended By Stories: → Due next month
Total Stories: 27; Time & Words: [7h:02m] 💬127K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

March 2021 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 0; Time & Words: 💬0
Recommended By Stories: 30; Time & Words: 💬NaNM
Total Stories: 78; Time & Words: [27h] 💬493K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

February 2021 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 0; Time & Words: 💬0
Recommended By Stories: 7; Time & Words: [2h:09m] 💬39K
Total Stories: 29; Time & Words: [8h:05m] 💬146K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

Annotated 2020 Locus Reading List for Short Fiction

Update 4/13/21: Tagged 18 🏆Hugo Award finalists (click link to highlight).
Update 4/3/21: Tagged 10 stories from 📙Allan Kaster's year's best hard SF anthology (click link to highlight).
Update 4/3/21: Tagged 2 stories from 📙Ellen Datlow's year's best horror anthology (click link to highlight). (More)

Update 3/16/21: Tagged 14 and 16 🏆Readers Award finalists for Analog and Asimov's magazines, respectively, with new free links (click link to highlight).
Update 3/16/21: Tagged 18 🏆Nebula Award finalists (click link to highlight).
Update 3/15/21: Tagged 2 🏆Lambda Award finalists (click link to highlight).
Update 3/1/21: Tagged 1 🏆Clarkesworld Reader's Poll winner (click link to highlight). Update 2/22/21: Tagged 2 of 10 🏆Stoker Award finalists for long/short fiction (click link to highlight).
Update 2/21/21: Tagged 1 of 6 🏆BSFA Award finalists for short fiction (click link to highlight).
Update 2/16/21: Tagged 7 🏆Uncanny Reader's Poll finalists (click link to highlight).
Update 2/8/21: Tagged 27 stories from 📙Jonathan Strahan's year's best SF/F anthology (click link to highlight).

Here is the annotated 2020 Locus Recommended Reading List for short fiction, merged with RSR's 2020 Best SF/F list (aka our aggregated list of "outstanding" stories from 2020 that score 2 or more based on 👍reviewers, 🏆awards, and year's best 📙anthologies). All the stories are grouped by length and score, with stories from the Locus list highlighted in red.

The merge lets us analyze the Locus list to see which stories that were broadly recognized as outstanding were left out, which publications stood out, which authors did particularly well (or not), how many were eligible for the Astounding Award, and how RSR's own recommendations stack up with Locus reviewers in general.

As with every RSR annotated list, there are links galore to the stories, their authors, the magazines, any award nominations/wins or "year's best" anthology inclusions, and search-links to find other reviews.

Anyone can vote for the Locus Awards at this link. Due date is Thursday April 15, 2021.

If you want to skip the analysis and just start reading, click here (free stories highlighted).

SF/F Ballots For Stories From 2020

Here are links to ballots for various SF/F awards, 5 that are open to all, and 4 that are open to members of a convention or association. Highlighted awards are currently open for voting.

The magazine-specific awards come with a longlist link to all stories published by each magazine, with blurbs to help you remember the ones you've read and scores to guide further reading.

For the general awards, see the outstanding stories at the 2020 YTD page, grouped by length (novella, novelette, short story), by publication, by new writer (year 1, year 2), or by author.

January 2021 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 0; Time & Words: 💬0
Recommended By Stories: 37; Time & Words: [15h] 💬272K
Total Stories: 81; Time & Words: [26h] 💬483K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

Outstanding SF/F by People of Color 2019

In the spirit of Lightspeed Magazine's famous People of Color Destroy Science Fiction series, here are 67 stories by 60 people of color that had scores of 3 or higher from RSR's 2019 Best SF/F list. That list contains the 331 most-recommended stories out of 700+ covered, so the 67 stories by people of color make up around 20% of the best of 2019.

Some stories not reviewed by RSR are in the Best SF/F list because they were award finalists 🏆, included in year's best anthologies 📙, or recommended by other prolific reviewers 👍 (see Q&A for SF/F awards, year's best anthologies, and prolific reviewers followed).

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). This is the fourth year we've done this list (2018, 2017, 2015-2016).

December 2020 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 0; Time & Words: 💬0
Recommended By Stories: 16; Time & Words: [4h:51m] 💬87K
Total Stories: 43; Time & Words: [12h] 💬216K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

Outstanding High Fantasy of 2019

Here are 35 outstanding high fantasy stories from 2019 that were finalists for major SF/F 🏆awards, included in "year's best" SF/F 📙anthologies, or recommended by prolific 👍reviewers in short fiction (see Q&A). That's 35 out of 330+ best SF/F stories from 2019. A story's score is the sum of the +n points in it's "Recommended By" list (click the Details link to see the awards, year's best, and reviewers and the points).

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.

November 2020 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 0; Time & Words: 💬0
Recommended By Stories: 26; Time & Words: [12h] 💬226K
Total Stories: 62; Time & Words: [23h] 💬418K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

October 2020 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 0; Time & Words: 💬0
Recommended By Stories: 14; Time & Words: [3h:56m] 💬71K
Total Stories: 42; Time & Words: [13h] 💬239K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

Outstanding SF/F Horror of 2019

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 28 outstanding SF/F horror stories from 2019 that were finalists for major SF/F 🏆awards, included in "year's best" SF/F 📙anthologies, or recommended by prolific 👍reviewers in short fiction (see Q&A). That's 28 out of 330+ best SF/F stories from 2019. A story's score is the sum of the +n points in it's "Recommended By" list (click the Details link to see the awards, year's best, and reviewers and the points).

September 2020 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 0; Time & Words: 💬0
Recommended By Stories: 30; Time & Words: [13h] 💬237K
Total Stories: 65; Time & Words: [22h] 💬411K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

Taking a Break

After five years of writing reviews for Rocket Stack Rank, I'm going to take an indefinite break. This month marks five years since we started the site, and so it seemed like a good time to pause. Eric will continue to operate the site, producing monthly lists of stories for 11 magazines (with blurbs from the publisher or a few sentences from the story) and aggregating recommendations from other sources (currently 6 reviewers, 16 awards, 7 year's best anthologies), but I won't be reviewing stories myself. Not for a while, at least.

Five years ago, in September 2015, Eric and I started Rocket Stack Rank as a response to the Sad/Rabid Puppy episode that ruined the 2015 Hugo Awards. As we said at the time, we wanted "to create a website to encourage readers of science fiction and fantasy to read and nominate more short fiction."

The response was very positive, and we've enjoyed steady support from readers. We quickly ramped up to a few thousand unique monthly users, with 20-30,000 monthly page views (we recently passed 1,000,000 total page views), and we're currently the #1 Google result for "short science fiction story reviews." Best of all, we were finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Fanzine three times (2017, 2018, 2019). Thank you for supporting us!

In the past five years, I've read and reviewed 3,979 stories, totaling 32,755,701 words of fiction or about the equivalent of 328 novels. In the process, I wrote 604,515 words worth of reviews--as much text as in six novels.

 

What I've not done is take a break. For five years, I've read and reviewed stories on a deadline--even on vacations--and every month on the 15th, we've produced our "Monthly Ratings," showing all the new short fiction for that month together with key information like the word counts and the recommendations of other reviewers. 

For a long time, that wasn't a problem; this was a labor of love, and Eric and I happily made it first priority. But over the last few months, it has become a burden, and I've had to force myself to read the stories and write the reviews. This isn't because the stories got worse--it's because we've found other things we want to spend time on. That being the case, it's time for me to stop, at least for a while.

We're still going to produce the Monthly Ratings, the Year-To-Date lists, and themed selections of outstanding speculative short fiction, but I'm going to stop reading and reviewing for the most part.

Greg Hullender

Outstanding Hard Science Fiction of 2019

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

August 2020 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 7; Time & Words: [5h:47m] 💬104K
Recommended By Stories: 11; Time & Words: [6h:47m] 💬122K
Total Stories: 28; Time & Words: [12h] 💬216K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

July 2020 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 7; Time & Words: [3h:54m] 💬70K
Recommended By Stories: 26; Time & Words: [11h] 💬199K
Total Stories: 65; Time & Words: [24h] 💬450K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

June 2020 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 5; Time & Words: [3h:22m] 💬61K
Recommended By Stories: 16; Time & Words: [8h:43m] 💬157K
Total Stories: 30; Time & Words: [12h] 💬231K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

Outstanding LGBT Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2019

June is Pride Month, and here are 31 outstanding stories with LGBT characters from 2019 reviewed by RSR 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). For earlier outstanding stories, click this link.

This list of stories and the recommendations for each story will be updated as award finalists/winners and the table of contents for year's best anthologies are announced. As long as an LGBT story scores 2 or more (even if it was not recommended by RSR), it will be included here.

As always, our focus is on the stories, not the authors. These are stories with memorable LGBT characters—not necessarily stories by noted LGBT authors. These include stories in which a key character merely happens to be an LGBT person as well as stories where the LGBT angle is crucial to the plot.