News & Highlights

🗳️Vote for SF/F Awards for Stories from 2019!
🔎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
📅2020: 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

March 2020 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 14; Time & Words: [9h:02m] 💬163K
Recommended By Stories: 32; Time & Words: [14h] 💬261K
Total Stories: 58; Time & Words: [21h] 💬388K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

February 2020 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 8; Time & Words: [6h:01m] 💬108K
Recommended By Stories: 26; Time & Words: [11h] 💬215K
Total Stories: 43; Time & Words: [20h] 💬371K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

Annotated 2019 Locus Reading List for Short Fiction

Update 4/7/20: Tagged 18 🏆Hugo Award finalists (click to highlight them). (More)

Update 3/13/20: Tagged 28 stories in 📙Jonathan Strahan's year's best anthology (click to highlight them).
Update 3/11/20: Tagged 1 🏆Lambda Literary Award finalist (click to highlight it).
Update 2/21/20: Tagged 18 🏆Nebula Award finalists (click to highlight them).
Update 2/11/20: Tagged 13 🏆Analog Readers' Award finalists (click to highlight them) with links to the now-free stories.
Update 2/11/20: Tagged 15 🏆Asimov's Readers' Award finalists (click to highlight them) with links to the now-free stories.
Update 2/10/20: Tagged 6 🏆BSFA finalists (click link to highlight).
Update 2/10/20: Tagged 5 finalists & 1 winner of the 🏆Uncanny Favorite Fiction Reader Poll (click link to highlight).
Update 2/6/20: Added 7 links to now-free stories from 📘Analog and 📘Asimov's in the Locus List (click link to highlight).

Here is the annotated 2019 Locus Recommended Reading List for short fiction, merged with RSR's 2019 Best SF/F list (aka our aggregated list of "outstanding" stories from 2019 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 Monday April 15, 2020.

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

2020 YTD, New Writers and My Ratings

Now that the January 2020 Ratings have been updated with recommendations by other reviewers and the 2020 YTD and (2020) New Writers pages are no longer empty, we've refreshed the tabs at the top of the home page by replacing the 2018 Best SF/F tab with the 2019 SF/F Ballots tab (use for award nominations and catching up on reading), and updating the 2019 YTD, (2019) New Writers, and (2019) My Ratings tabs with the 2020 YTD, (2020) New Writers, and (2020) My Ratings tabs, respectively.

Note: The (2019) New Writers and (2019) My Ratings pages are accessible from the Jump To... drop-down list above the table in any 2019 Ratings page. For older stories, the Best SF/F pages for 2018 through 2015 are linked from the "News & Highlights" pinned post at the top of the home page.

2020 Professional Artists

To help people make nominations for the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist, we have set up a "lightbox" system to let fans quickly flip through over 300 works by over 100 artists listed below and to set aside the ones they particularly liked. Here's how it works:

1. In the artist list below, click on a thumbnail image. The lighbox should open, showing a larger image of the work.
2. If you like the picture, ctrl-click (or long-press) the artist's name above it. That will reopen this page in a new tab with that artist's information at the top.
3. Press the right-arrow key (or tap the picture) to advance to the next picture.
4. Once you've looked at all the pictures, go through the tabs you opened. For most artists there's a link to their website where you can find a gallery of their work.
5. Browse the gallery and see if the picture you liked was representative of their work as a whole.
6. Close the tabs of the ones you liked least.

January 2020 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 8; Time & Words: [3h:47m] 💬68K
Recommended By Stories: 27; Time & Words: [12h] 💬233K
Total Stories: 56; Time & Words: [21h] 💬382K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

SF/F Ballots For Stories From 2019

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.

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 2019 YTD page, grouped by length (novella, novelette, short story), by publication, by new writer (year 1, year 2), or by author.

Awards in bold are currently available for voting.

Outstanding SF/F by People of Color 2018

In the spirit of Lightspeed Magazine's famous People of Color Destroy Science Fiction series, here are 65 stories by 53 people of color that had scores of 2 or higher from RSR's 2018 Best SF/F list. That list contains the 342 most-recommended stories out of 785 covered, so the 65 stories by people of color make up around 19% of the best of 2018.

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 third year we've done this list (2017, 2015-2016).

December 2019 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 4; Time & Words: [4h:35m] 💬83K
Recommended By Stories: 15; Time & Words: [9h:25m] 💬170K
Total Stories: 40; Time & Words: [19h] 💬360K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

Outstanding High Fantasy of 2018

Here are 39 outstanding high fantasy stories from 2018 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 39 out of 340+ best SF/F stories from 2018. 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 2019 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 11; Time & Words: [4h:20m] 💬78K
Recommended By Stories: 32; Time & Words: [13h] 💬238K
Total Stories: 76; Time & Words: [30h] 💬557K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

The Mythic Dream, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe

[Anthology]

★★★☆☆

(Mythological SF/F) A reimagining of 18 mythic stories with new perspectives and different settings. (107,092 words; Time: 5h:56m)

October 2019 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 3; Time & Words: [1h:08m] 💬21K
Recommended By Stories: 17; Time & Words: [5h:12m] 💬94K
Total Stories: 38; Time & Words: [13h] 💬249K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

Outstanding SF/F Horror of 2018

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 30 outstanding SF/F horror stories from 2018 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 30 out of 340+ best SF/F stories from 2018. 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).

Outstanding Hard Science Fiction of 2018

Here are 27 outstanding hard science fiction stories from 2018 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 27 out of 340+ best SF/F stories from 2018. 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 2019 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 19; Time & Words: [10h] 💬186K
Recommended By Stories: 51; Time & Words: [23h] 💬432K
Total Stories: 89; Time & Words: [35h] 💬642K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

Mission Critical, edited by Jonathan Strahan

[Anthology]

★★★★☆ Mission Accomplished!

Stories where people, human or otherwise, were working on a mission or plan and something went terribly wrong (129,331 words; Time: 7h:11m)

New Filtering and Simplified Highlighting

Filter stories with the Show drop-down.

You can now filter stories in a table to show only the ones recognized with SF/F 🏆awards, 📙year's best anthologies, or prolific 👍reviewers. Click the "Show:" drop-down list in the table header and choose one of the options (see image on the right). This is an easy way to dis-aggregate scores to see which stories received the most recognition by each type of recommendation for readers who favor one type over a combined score of all three.

Example: The image below shows the 2018 Best SF/F Novelettes filtered by 🏆Winners & Finalists (left), 📙TOC Only (center), and 👍Award Worthy & Recommended (right). The story "Nine Last Days on Planet Earth" is high in all three lists because it broadly appealed to award voters, year's best anthologists, and prolific reviewers, so it's marked with a red border to show how much the three lists differ in other stories.

Top of the award list is "The Only Harmless Great Thing", which didn't make the top of the year's best list or the reviewer's list possibly because it was sold as a "single" rather than part of a magazine. Top of the year's best list is "Intervention", which might have gotten less visibility for awards and reviews as part of an anthology rather than a magazine. Finally, the #2 story in the reviewer's list is "What is Eve?", whose absence from year's best anthologies or awards is a surprise.

Left: 🏆Winners & Finalists; Center: 📙TOC Only; Right: 👍Award Worthy & Recommended

Highlight Recommended By...

Another big change was moving the "Recommended By..." drop-down list from the hidden (expandable) part of the floating toolbar into the main "Highlight..." drop-down list (see image on the right). That'll reduce the clicks needed to highlight by recommender from 4 to 2 and also make it easier to find for new users.

Besides these two big changes, there are three smaller changes:

• The search box has been moved from the hidden part of the floating toolbar into the "Jump To..." drop-down list.
• The (Publication) link for non-RSR-reviewed stories (ones with no image) is now expanded by default to show the publication.
• When the Recommended By: list of 🏆📙👍 is expanded by clicking the Details link, there will be a Summary link to contract the list back to emojis-only.

Observations

The new filtering makes it easy to analyze the best SF/F short fiction from 2015-2018 and make a few observations (click on the links to see the the stories discussed).

• 🏆Winners Only: Since RSR started in 2015, the most awards won by a story is three (out of 13 we track), with two stories achieving that in 2016 and 2017. For 2018, five stories have won two awards each, with two winners left to be announced (British Fantasy in Oct, World Fantasy in Nov). We could get a 3- or even 4-award winner this year if "The Only Harmless Great Thing" (2 wins) or "The Tea Master and the Detective" (1 win) win one or both remaining awards.
• 🏆Winners & Finalists: Since 2015, the most award nominations earned by a story is eight, by "The Ballad of Black Tom" in 2016. This year we have 8 stories with 4 or more nominations (1 with 7), which is similar to 2017 (9 stories, 2 with 6), 2016 (7 stories, 1 with 8), and 2015 (7 stories, 1 with 6).
• 📙TOC Only: Since 2015, the most year's best TOC inclusions by a story is four (out of 14 we track). This happened to 5 stories in 2015, 2 stories in 2016, 4 stories in 2017, but no stories in 2018. The number is also down for inclusion in three year's best TOC, with just 2 stories this year versus 4-7 stories in previous years. One reason might be the absence of Gardner Dozois' year's best anthology if his choice of stories tended to overlap with Rich Horton's or Neil Clarke's.

Feel free give us feedback in the comments. Thanks.

Dublin 2019 Recap

Eric & Greg @ WorldCon 77 in Dublin, Ireland

Last month, Eric and I attended Dublin 2019 (the 77th World Science-Fiction Convention) in Dublin, Ireland. This was our fifth WorldCon, and, as a result, it marks the fourth anniversary of Rocket Stack Rank.

The Hugo Awards

Winners

Our function at Rocket Stack Rank is to make it easier for people to find good short fiction and other information that could help them make informed nominations for the Hugos and other awards. We are not here to tell people how to vote. For that reason, we didn't offer suggestions for the final vote--not even a "this is how we're voting" post. For the same reason, we aren't going to reevaluate the stories that actually won the awards. We offer our congratulations to all the winners.

Losers

Best Fanzine finalists. We're seated behind George R.R. Martin.

Rocket Stack Rank itself was a nominee for Best Fanzine, finishing 6 out of 6 but beating No Award. We weren't sure what to expect since we've had kind of a lazy year in terms of special articles, but we were proud just to be nominated. In particular, we enjoy the extra events and attention that come with being a finalist, and we thank our loyal fans who nominated and voted for us. You folks make it all worthwhile!

We offer our congratulations to Best Fanzine winner Lady Business, and to all the other finalists.