My Favorite Short SFF of 2018
Mar. 1st, 2019 06:44 amWell now its been 2019 for a a couple of months but I wanted to do a post about my favorite stories 2018 before the Hugo nominations close on March 15. 2018 wasn’t a great short fiction reading year for me. I got a new job mid-year and that slowed down my reading a whole lot. But I did read some really excellent stories that I want to share with people. So it no particular order here are the stories:
Short story
“Flow” by Marissa Lingen — This story is amazing! It's about disability and loss, but my favorite bit is how it addresses troupes about caring for each other and care taking. I loved how it addressed both taking care of people and taking care of the environment.
“Lines of Growth, Lines of Passage” by Marissa Lingen — A story about a soccer who finds herself trapped in a tree. Lingen does great job of describing what the feeling of being in a tree. But it's also a story about what she learns from that experience.
“50 Ways to Leave Your Fairy Lover” by Aimee Picchi — This super cute story in the form of letter form a grandmother to a granddaughter. I loved how it played with fairy tale tropes.
"The War of Light and Shadow, in Five Dishes" by Siobhan Carroll — This a rather dark story about war but it also a story full of food details and I really loved the way the food fit into the story.
Hunting On Ethera by M. Raoulee — This is a prefect me story featuring a mom, robots, and ecology!
A Compendium of Architecture and the Science of Building by Kate Elliott
— This is a prequel to Elliott’s Spiritwalker Trilogy but it can be read without knowing anything about the rest of the series. I liked it as story about non-toxic masiclincity and mentorship.
“Lava cake for the Apocalypse” by Wendy Nikel — A very short story about food, history and remembrance.
Four-Point Affective Calibration by Bogi Takács — Another quite short piece about emotion and communication.
Noveltete
”The Thing About Ghost Stories” by Naomi Kritzer — A lovely story about why we tell ghost stories and dealing with lost. (CN: dead mom, but I loved it anyways)
“If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again,” by Zen Cho — This charming story about an imugi and life not going the way you expect it to.
“Left to Take the Lead” by Marissa Lingen — A story about family both of origin and found. As always Lingen does great things with relationships between generations. I also really enjoyed the getting a spacer born person’s perspective on what it's like to live on Earth.
Novella
Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night by Katherine Fabian and Iona Datt Sharma — I just adored this. It’s quiet book full of things I love like magical London, a viewpoint character who is a mom, and queer found jewish family. The depiction of shabbat in this book really got at what Jewish ritual means to me. Just a really lovely story.
Exit Strategy by Martha Wells— The final Murderbot novella, though there is a novel coming in 2020. This was great series and particularly liked how it wrapped up. It's about a security bot who would really just like to be left alone to watch its media but has to constantly deal with humans in danger and evil corps. A big part of the delight of these books is Murderbots voice.
The Tea Master and the Detective Aliette de Bodard — A Xuya-verse re-imaging of Sherlock Holmes. A nice take on two prickly people learning to work together.
Spellswept by Stephanie Burgis The prequel novella to the wonderful Snowspelled — I loved this look a younger Cassandra and the romance it was super sweet!
The Flowers of Vashnoi
— A novella about one of my favorite fictional moms having and adventure involving bio-remedation? Yes please!
All and all 2018 was good year for short SFF and I’m sad I couldn’t read more of of the short SFF published last year. What where your favorites?
Short story
“Flow” by Marissa Lingen — This story is amazing! It's about disability and loss, but my favorite bit is how it addresses troupes about caring for each other and care taking. I loved how it addressed both taking care of people and taking care of the environment.
“Lines of Growth, Lines of Passage” by Marissa Lingen — A story about a soccer who finds herself trapped in a tree. Lingen does great job of describing what the feeling of being in a tree. But it's also a story about what she learns from that experience.
“50 Ways to Leave Your Fairy Lover” by Aimee Picchi — This super cute story in the form of letter form a grandmother to a granddaughter. I loved how it played with fairy tale tropes.
"The War of Light and Shadow, in Five Dishes" by Siobhan Carroll — This a rather dark story about war but it also a story full of food details and I really loved the way the food fit into the story.
Hunting On Ethera by M. Raoulee — This is a prefect me story featuring a mom, robots, and ecology!
A Compendium of Architecture and the Science of Building by Kate Elliott
— This is a prequel to Elliott’s Spiritwalker Trilogy but it can be read without knowing anything about the rest of the series. I liked it as story about non-toxic masiclincity and mentorship.
“Lava cake for the Apocalypse” by Wendy Nikel — A very short story about food, history and remembrance.
Four-Point Affective Calibration by Bogi Takács — Another quite short piece about emotion and communication.
Noveltete
”The Thing About Ghost Stories” by Naomi Kritzer — A lovely story about why we tell ghost stories and dealing with lost. (CN: dead mom, but I loved it anyways)
“If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again,” by Zen Cho — This charming story about an imugi and life not going the way you expect it to.
“Left to Take the Lead” by Marissa Lingen — A story about family both of origin and found. As always Lingen does great things with relationships between generations. I also really enjoyed the getting a spacer born person’s perspective on what it's like to live on Earth.
Novella
Sing for the Coming of the Longest Night by Katherine Fabian and Iona Datt Sharma — I just adored this. It’s quiet book full of things I love like magical London, a viewpoint character who is a mom, and queer found jewish family. The depiction of shabbat in this book really got at what Jewish ritual means to me. Just a really lovely story.
Exit Strategy by Martha Wells— The final Murderbot novella, though there is a novel coming in 2020. This was great series and particularly liked how it wrapped up. It's about a security bot who would really just like to be left alone to watch its media but has to constantly deal with humans in danger and evil corps. A big part of the delight of these books is Murderbots voice.
The Tea Master and the Detective Aliette de Bodard — A Xuya-verse re-imaging of Sherlock Holmes. A nice take on two prickly people learning to work together.
Spellswept by Stephanie Burgis The prequel novella to the wonderful Snowspelled — I loved this look a younger Cassandra and the romance it was super sweet!
The Flowers of Vashnoi
— A novella about one of my favorite fictional moms having and adventure involving bio-remedation? Yes please!
All and all 2018 was good year for short SFF and I’m sad I couldn’t read more of of the short SFF published last year. What where your favorites?
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