psocoptera (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
psocoptera) wrote2025-03-05 07:24 pm
psocoptera) wrote2025-03-05 07:24 pm
Entry tags:
2024 Short Stories
Here's all the short stories I recced this year!
Beneath Ceaseless Skies:
A Pilgrimage to the God of High Places, Marissa Lingen, BCS. A disabled archivist whose mother hopes for a cure.
A Magician Did It, Rich Larson, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Larson does love a heist or a con or that sort of thing and this is one.
Clarkesworld:
The Enceladus South Pole Base Named after V.I. Lenin, Zohar Jacobs, Clarkesworld. Alternate space history, people being people, and meanwhile history keeps going.
An Intergalactic Smuggler's Guide to Homecoming, Tia Tashiro, Clarkesworld. A smuggler finds herself helping alien refugees.
Rail Meat, Marie Vibbert, Clarkesworld. Pickpockets and yacht racing, sf style.
Lightspeed:
Inside the House of Wisdom, Tamara Masri, Lightspeed. A scene from a future memorial in Palestine.
Night Desk Duty at the Infinite Paradox Hotel, Aimee Ogden, Lightspeed. More of an extended math joke than a story.
Nothing of Value, Aimee Ogden, Lightspeed. A teleporter story about moving on, or not.
Reactor:
Breathing Constellations, Rich Larson, Reactor. Talking to orcas.
Median, Kelly Robson, Reactor. Car trouble and caregiving.
Strange Horizons:
The Jaxicans' Authentic Reconstruction of Taco Tuesday #37, Stephen Granade, Strange Horizons. The concept of authenticity, and the weirdness of being expected to represent it.
The Spindle of Necessity, B. Pladek, Strange Horizons. Very meta story about stories and identity and authenticity.
Other:
The Goddess of Loneliness and Misfortune, Anna Bendiy, khōréō. A return to a war-torn homeland.
Father Ash, Rachel Hartman, Sunday Morning Transport. A Goreddi folktale; a dad-with-dementia story with a twist.
Memories Held Against a Hungry Mouth, Ann LeBlanc, Three-Lobed Burning Eye. Memory and scholarship and obsession and epistemic decay.
Another Old Country, Nadia Radovich, Apparition Lit. The power of stories, and a high school student who just wants to go running.
Flannelfeet, Ursula Whitcher, Frivolous Comma. A story about portal fantasies and being practical about the fantastical. Very satisfying.
**
Zohar Jacobs, Tia Tashiro, Tamara Masri, and Nadia Radovich are all eligible for the Astounding.
**
I had a hard time picking. Jacobs, Robson, and LeBlanc pretty quickly, but then settling on the last two was harder. The Masri story had some beautiful writing but the speculative elements felt somewhat peripheral. I had read the Ogden teleporter story awhile ago and didn't even think I was going to rec it, but then I reread it and was like, no, dang, that's going to stay with me. That Granade story was outside the box in a great way. The Pladek story is such a neat meta-exploration of fans and authors and stories. I'm always a little suspicious of my affection for the last thing I read but that Radovich story was good, darn it.
The Robson, Leblanc, Masri, Ogden, and Pladek stories are on the Locus list, the Jacobs, Granade, and Radovich are not. Strategically I guess my vote is more likely to get one of the former onto the longlist, so I've marked Ogden and Pladek (I'm not giving up the Jacobs story), but I could still change my mind. Hm.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies:
A Pilgrimage to the God of High Places, Marissa Lingen, BCS. A disabled archivist whose mother hopes for a cure.
A Magician Did It, Rich Larson, Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Larson does love a heist or a con or that sort of thing and this is one.
Clarkesworld:
The Enceladus South Pole Base Named after V.I. Lenin, Zohar Jacobs, Clarkesworld. Alternate space history, people being people, and meanwhile history keeps going.
An Intergalactic Smuggler's Guide to Homecoming, Tia Tashiro, Clarkesworld. A smuggler finds herself helping alien refugees.
Rail Meat, Marie Vibbert, Clarkesworld. Pickpockets and yacht racing, sf style.
Lightspeed:
Inside the House of Wisdom, Tamara Masri, Lightspeed. A scene from a future memorial in Palestine.
Night Desk Duty at the Infinite Paradox Hotel, Aimee Ogden, Lightspeed. More of an extended math joke than a story.
Nothing of Value, Aimee Ogden, Lightspeed. A teleporter story about moving on, or not.
Reactor:
Breathing Constellations, Rich Larson, Reactor. Talking to orcas.
Median, Kelly Robson, Reactor. Car trouble and caregiving.
Strange Horizons:
The Jaxicans' Authentic Reconstruction of Taco Tuesday #37, Stephen Granade, Strange Horizons. The concept of authenticity, and the weirdness of being expected to represent it.
The Spindle of Necessity, B. Pladek, Strange Horizons. Very meta story about stories and identity and authenticity.
Other:
The Goddess of Loneliness and Misfortune, Anna Bendiy, khōréō. A return to a war-torn homeland.
Father Ash, Rachel Hartman, Sunday Morning Transport. A Goreddi folktale; a dad-with-dementia story with a twist.
Memories Held Against a Hungry Mouth, Ann LeBlanc, Three-Lobed Burning Eye. Memory and scholarship and obsession and epistemic decay.
Another Old Country, Nadia Radovich, Apparition Lit. The power of stories, and a high school student who just wants to go running.
Flannelfeet, Ursula Whitcher, Frivolous Comma. A story about portal fantasies and being practical about the fantastical. Very satisfying.
**
Zohar Jacobs, Tia Tashiro, Tamara Masri, and Nadia Radovich are all eligible for the Astounding.
**
I had a hard time picking. Jacobs, Robson, and LeBlanc pretty quickly, but then settling on the last two was harder. The Masri story had some beautiful writing but the speculative elements felt somewhat peripheral. I had read the Ogden teleporter story awhile ago and didn't even think I was going to rec it, but then I reread it and was like, no, dang, that's going to stay with me. That Granade story was outside the box in a great way. The Pladek story is such a neat meta-exploration of fans and authors and stories. I'm always a little suspicious of my affection for the last thing I read but that Radovich story was good, darn it.
The Robson, Leblanc, Masri, Ogden, and Pladek stories are on the Locus list, the Jacobs, Granade, and Radovich are not. Strategically I guess my vote is more likely to get one of the former onto the longlist, so I've marked Ogden and Pladek (I'm not giving up the Jacobs story), but I could still change my mind. Hm.