News & Highlights

🗳️Ballots & due dates for Readers Awards, Hugos, Nebulas, etc.
🎨Pro Artists page available (300+ works, 100+ artists)

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

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

February 2019 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 13; Time & Words: [7h:55m] 💬143K
Recommended By Stories: → Due next month
Total Stories: 60; Time & Words: [24h] 💬443K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

Annotated 2018 Locus Reading List for Short Fiction

Update 2/11/19: Tagged 29 stories in NClarke's year's best anthology (click link to highlight). (More)

Update 2/10/19: Tagged 30 Analog & Asimov's readers polls finalists (click links to highlight their now-free stories).
Update 2/7/19: Tagged 6 Uncanny Poll winner/finalists.
Update 2/1/19: Tagged 6 Clarkesworld Reader's Poll finalists.

Here is the annotated 2018 Locus Recommended Reading List for short fiction, merged with RSR's 2018 Best SF/F list (aka our aggregated list of "outstanding" stories) for the first time, with stories from the Locus list highlighted in red, and sorted by score.

The combination lets us analyze the Locus list to see which stories that were broadly recognized as outstanding were left out, which magazines were over- or under-represented, which authors did particularly well (or not), how many were Campbell-eligible, 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.

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

Pro Artists from ISFDB Novels 2018

Based on some conversations on File 770 about better ways to find candidates for the Best Professional Artist Hugo Award, we decided to try using the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) as a source.  The result is spectacular, but maybe a bit overwhelming, so we decided not to try to integrate it with our regular Pro Artists page this year. Instead, we're treating this as an experiment and inviting feedback on how we might best use this wealth of data in the future to help people who're trying to find professional artists to nominate

SF/F Ballots For Stories From 2018

Here are links to ballots for various SF/F awards, 6 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 2018 Best SF/F 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.

2019 Professional Artists

To help people make nominations for the 2019 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.

Robots vs. Fairies, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe

[Anthology]

★★★★☆ Recommended

(Mixed) Not stories about robots fighting against fairies but rather a set of nine robot-themed stories interleaved with nine fairy-themed stories with the reader to judge which is the victor. (103,935 words; Time: 5h:46m)

Twelve Tomorrows 5, edited by Wade Roush

[Anthology]

★★★☆☆ Average

(Hard SF) A hard-sf anthology, aimed at reembodying “the best aspects of the hard-SF craft in the mode of Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke without bringing back its worst.” Plausible, hopeful stories with diverse characters. (82,995 words; Time: 4h:36m)

January 2019 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 18; Time & Words: [9h:51m] 💬177.3K
Recommended By Stories: 51; Time & Words: [24h] 💬436.9K
Total Stories: 90; Time & Words: [37h] 💬675K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

It's now 2019 and the stories you flag/rate here will be in the 2019 My Ratings page (except the anthologies Twelve Tomorrows and The Book of Magic, which are from 2018). However, the My Ratings tab will continue to be for 2018 stories until Feb 1, 2019.

Finding a Science-Fiction/Fantasy Magazine to Subscribe To

People interested in short science fiction and fantasy often ask for help picking an SF/F magazine to subscribe to, particularly at the start of the year when they're thinking in terms of New Year's resolutions. Different people have different tastes, of course, but after four years of reading and reviewing, Rocket Stack Rank is in a good position to offer some general advice.

Overview

First we're going to discuss why anyone would want to subscribe to magazines when so much is available online for free. Then we'll describe the eleven magazines that Rocket Stack Rank regularly reads and reviews. Next we'll briefly discuss what other magazines are out there and why we picked the eleven we follow. Finally, we'll wrap up with an invitation to readers (and editors) to share their thoughts about these magazines or others we didn't mention.

Bear in mind that the commentary strongly reflects the personal tastes of the author, although we've tried hard to include information helpful to readers with different tastes. In particular, our rankings are based heavily on the original fiction published by each magazine, even though magazines often have other content such as non-fiction articles, poetry, reprinted fiction, etc.

The Book of Magic, edited by Gardner Dozois

[Anthology]

★★★★☆ A Magical Experience

(Fantasy) Gardner Dozois's last original anthology explores all types of magic in all sorts of settings. (175,649 words; Time: 9h:45m)

Outstanding SF/F by People of Color 2017

In the spirit of Lightspeed Magazine's famous People of Color Destroy Science Fiction series, here are 59 stories by 47 people of color that had scores of 2+ from RSR's 2017 Best SF/F list. That list contains the 287 most-recommended stories out of 842 covered, so the 59 stories by people of color make up around 21% of the best of 2017.

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 second year we've done this list (2015-2016).

December 2018 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 3; Time & Words: [1h:25m] 💬25.8K
Recommended By Stories: 8; Time & Words: [2h:58m] 💬53.5K
Total Stories: 35; Time & Words: [16h] 💬301.1K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

November 2018 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 17; Time & Words: [9h:08m] 💬164.4K
Recommended By Stories: 49; Time & Words: [21h] 💬382.8K
Total Stories: 76; Time & Words: [30h] 💬548.2K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

Infinity's End, edited by Jonathan Strahan

[Anthology]

★★★★☆ All Good Things Must Come to an End; 4 RSR-recommended stories + 6 others out of 14

(SF) The final volume of the Infinity Project features stories that explore the question of what it means to operate on the scale of the whole solar system. (94,393 words; Time: 5h:14m)

October 2018 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 9; Time & Words: [8h:13m] 💬148K
Recommended By Stories: 19; Time & Words: [11h] 💬209.9K
Total Stories: 25; Time & Words: [13h] 💬239.9K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

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 Hard Science Fiction of 2017

Here are 33 outstanding stories of hard science fiction from 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 33 out of 95 hard science fiction stories from that year, and out of 279 outstanding SF/F stories from 2017. Each story shows a "Recommended By" list where a score is tallied from the +2, +1 or +0 after each recommendation.

Observations:

• 20 are free online (click to see yellow highlights).
• 7 (over 1/5) are from Analog Science Fiction.
• The most prolific authors in this list are Suzanne Palmer, Alastair Reynolds and Jay Werkheiser with 2 stories each.
• RSR recommended 15 of the stories and only recommended against 3.

September 2018 Ratings

5★ & 4★ Stories: 19; Time & Words: [9h:03m] 💬163.1K
Recommended By Stories: 52; Time & Words: [26h] 💬470.3K
Total Stories: 87; Time & Words: [36h] 💬658.4K
Read How to Use RSR on the sidebar or this link to use this post.

WorldCon 76 Takeaways

Swag we got as Hugo finalists.

Last month, Eric and I attended WorldCon 76 in San Jose, California. This is just a summary of things of interest that happened there.

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 evaluate the stories that actually won the awards. We offer our congratulations to all the winners.

Losers

Greg, Mike Glyer of File 770

Rocket Stack Rank itself was a nominee for Best Fanzine, finishing 6 out of 6 but beating No Award. Given the fallout from last year's events, this was actually better than we had expected. We do 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 File 770 and to all the other finalists.