Favorite short fiction of 2015

I decided this year to read at least one short story a day. I don’t recall how that New Year’s resolution came about, exactly, but it’s maybe the only one that I’ve really stuck to. I’ve only missed two three days since January 1, and I’ve read more than 400 440 short stories. (That’s on top of anything I read for Kaleidotrope or writing workshop.) Not all of these stories were brand new, but a sizable chunk were, and I’d say they’re all well worth your time.

January

• “I Can See Right Through You” by Kelly Link (McSweeney’s)
• “Vacui Magia” by L. S. Johnson (Strange Horizons)
• “Returned” by Kat Howard (Nightmare)
• “Cat Pictures Please” by by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld)
• “Covenant” by Elizabeth Bear (Hieoglyph)

February

• “The Floating Girls: A Documentary” by Damien Angelica Walters (Jamais Vu)
• “Makeisha in Time” by Rachael K. Jones (Crossed Genres) (Her story “Traveling Mercies” in Strange Horizons is also quite lovely.)
• “Chocolate Chip Cookies for the Apocalypse” by Claire Spaulding (Daily Science Fiction)
• “The Lion and the Unicorn” by A.C. Wise (Lackington’s)
• “Schrödinger’s Gun” by Ray Wood (Tor.com)
• “Marking Time” by Stephanie Burgis (Daily Science Fiction)
• “A Dweller in Amenty” by Genevieve Valentine (Nightmare Magazine)

March

• “Jackalope Wives” by Ursula Vernon (Apex)
• “We Are the Cloud” by Sam J. Miller (Lightspeed)
• “Sickly Sweet” by Evan Dorman (Lakeside Circus)
• “Sing Me Your Scars” by Damien Angelica Walters (Apex)
• “Where Monsters Dance” by Merc Rustad (Inscription)
• “The House in Winter” by Jessica Sirkin (Apex)
• “Wild Things Got to Go Free” by Heather Clitheroe (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
• “The Good Son” by Naomi Kritzer (Lightspeed)

April

• “All That We Carry, All That We Hold” by Damien Angelica Walters (Fantastic Stories of the Imagination)
• “I am Graalnak of the Vroon Empire, Destroyer of Galaxies, Supreme Overlord of the Planet Earth. Ask Me Anything” by Laura Pearlman (Flash Fiction Online)
• “Stay” by Daniel José Older (Fireside Fiction)
• “When the Circus Lights Down” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny)
• “Ishq” by Usman Malik (Nightmare)
• Among the Thorns” by Veronica Schanoes (Tor.com)
• “Come My Love and I’ll Tell You a Tale” by Sunny Moraine (Shimmer)
• “Among the Sighs of the Violoncellos” by Daniel Ausema (Strange Horizons)
• “The Sorcerer’s Unattainable Gardens” by A. Merc Rustad (Daily Science Fiction)
• “Dr. Polingyouma’s Machine” by Emily Devenport (Uncanny)

May

• “Time Bomb Time” by C.C. Finlay (Lightspeed) [though maybe less for the story itself than the skill with which Finlay pulls it off]
• “Remembery Day” by Sarah Pinsker (Apex)
• “The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury” by Neil Gaiman (Trigger Warning)
• “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family” by Usman T. Malik (Qualia Nous)
• “Elephants and Corpses” by Kameron Hurley (Tor.com)
• “Sun’s East, Moon’s West” by Merrie Haskell (Lightspeed)
• “Planet Lion” by Catherynne M. Valente (Uncanny)
• “Ossuary” by Ian Muneshwar (Clarkesworld
• “A Song for You” by Jennifer Marie Brissett (Terraform
• “Seven Commentaries on an Imperfect Land” by Ruthanna Emrys (Tor.com)
• “Two to Leave” by Yoon Ha Lee (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
• “Hunting Monsters” by S.L. Huang (The Book Smugglers)

June

• “The Three Feats of Agani” by Christie Yant (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
• “The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye” by Matthew Kressel (Clarkesworld)
• “The Fisher Queen” by Alyssa Wong (Fantasy & Science Fiction)
• “The Breath of War” by Aliette de Bodard (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
• “What Merfolk Must Know” by Kat Otis Flash Fiction Online)
• “In the Dawns Between Hours” by Sarah Pinsker (Lightspeed)
• “The Cure” by Malinda Lo (Interfictions)
• “Bucket List Found in the Locker of Maddie Price, Age 14, Written Two Weeks Before the Great Uplifting of All Mankind by Erica L. Satifka (Lightspeed)
• “The Deathbird” by Harlan Ellison (Deathbird Stories)
• “Voidrunner” by Rachael K. Jones (Daily Science Fiction)
• “Flash” by Lavie Tidhar (Daily Science Fiction)

July

• “Pirate Songs” by Nicolette Barischoff (Accessing the Future)
• “Courting the Silent Sun” by Rachael K. Jones (Accessing the Future)
• “Wendigo Nights” by Siobhan Carroll (Fearful Symmetries)
• “Episode Three: On the Great Plains, In the Snow” by John Langan (Fearful Symmetries)
• “The Magical Negro” by Nnedi Okorafor (Kabu-Kabu)
• “Hell Is the Absence of God” by Ted Chiang (Stories of Your Life and Others)
• “Shay Corsham Worsted” by Garth Nix (Fearful Symmetries)
• “Catching Flies” by Carole Johnstone (Fearful Symmetries)
• “The Button Bin” by Mike Allen (Unseaming)
• “Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear (Shoggoths in Bloom)
• “The Other Forty-Two” by Sean Williams (Daily Science Fiction)

August

• “Life on the Sun” by C.S.E. Cooney (Bone Swans)
• “Her Pound of Flesh” by Cassandra Khaw (Mythic Delirium)
• “And We Were Left Darkling” by Sarah Pinsker (Lightspeed)
• “A Wish from a Bone” by Gemma Files (Fearful Symmetries)
• “It is Healing, It is Never Whole” by Sunny Morraine (Apex)
• “Given the Advantage of the Blade” by Genevieve Valentine (Lightspeed)
• “Mount Chary Galore” by Jeffrey Ford (Fearful Symmetries)
• “The Atlas of Hell” by Nathan Ballingrud (Fearful Symmetries)
• “Suffer Little Children” by Robert Shearman (Fearful Symmetries)

September

• “Nothing Is Pixels Here” by K.M. Szpara (Lightspeed)
• “This Side of Time” by Sarah Gray (Fantastic Stories of the Imagination)
• “Five Drinks in Siltown” by Frances Rowat (Betwixt)
• “Ouroboros” by Casandra Khaw (Unsung Stories)
• “The Attic of Memories” by Sunil Patel Fantastic Stories of the Imagination)
• “And This Is the Song It Sings” by Megan Arkenberg (Nightmare)
• “Neuraugment, verb” by Felicia Davin(Nature)
• “Ten Stamps Viewed Under Water” by Marissa Lingen (Fantasy & Science Fiction)
• “Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World” by Caroline Yoachim (Lightspeed)
• “Murder Goes Hungry” by Margaret Ronald (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
• “Today I Am Paul” by Martin L. Shoemaker (Clarkesworld)
• “First Impressions” by Ricardo Sumalavia (Flash Fiction International)
• “Dustbaby” by Alix E. Harrow (Shimmer)

October

• “Solder and Seam” by Maria Dahvana Headley (Lightspeed)
• “Follow Me Down” by Nicolette Barischoff (Fireside Fiction)
• “Silencer, Head Like a Hole Remix” by E. Catherine Tobler (Interzone)
• “The Fresh Prince of Gamma World” by Austin Grossman (Press Start to Play)
• “The Shapes of Us, Translucent to Your Eye” by Rose Lemberg (Unlikely Story)
• “Soteriology And Stephen Greenwood: The Role of Salus in the Codex Lucis” by Julia August (Unlikely Story)
• “Crystal” by Ken Liu (Daily Science Fiction)
• “The Game of Smash and Recovery” by Kelly Link (Strange Horizons)
• “8 Steps to Winning Your Partner Back (From the Server)” by A. T. Greenblatt (Daily Science Fiction)
• “The Law of the Conservation of Hair” by Rachael K. Jones (Shimmer)
• “The Devil Is Beating His Wife Today” by Sandra McDonald (Daily Science Fiction)
• “The Lonesome Place” by August Derleth (American Supernatural Tales)

November

• “Wooden Feathers” by Ursula Vernon (Uncanny)
• “Werewolf Loves Mermaid” by Heather Lindsley (Lightspeed)
• “A Cup of Salt Tears” by Isabel Yap (Tor.com)
• “Last Drink Bird Head” by Daniel Abraham (Last Drink Bird Head)
• “Loving Armageddon” by Amanda C. Davis (Crossed Genres)
• “In Autumn” by Theodora Goss (Daily Science Fiction)
• “The Air We Breathe Is Stormy, Stormy” by Rich Larson (Strange Horizons)
• “What Wags the World” by Sarah Pinsker (Daily Science Fiction)
• “The Ape’s Wife” by Caitlin R. Kiernan (Clarkesworld)
• “The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill” by Kelly Robson (Clarkesworld)
• “The Sun, the Moon and the Stars” by Junot Diaz (This Is How You Lose Her)
• “Madeline” by Amal El-Mohtar (Lightspeed)
• “Let’s Tell Stories of the Deaths of Children” by Margaret Ronald (Strange Horizons)
• “Damage” by David D. Levine (Tor.com)

December

• “Tomorrow When We See the Sun” by A. Merc Rustad (Lightspeed)
• “When Your Child Strays From God” by Sam J. Miller (Clarkesworld)
• “The Judas Child” by Damien Angelica Walters (Nightmare)
• “At Whatever Are Their Moons” by Sunny Moraine (Strange Horizons)
• “Horror Story” by Carmen Maria Machado (Granta)
• “Request for an Extension on the Clarity” by Sofia Samatar (Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet)
• “In the Late December” by Greg van Eekhout (Strange Horizons)
• “To Fall, and Pause, and Fall” by Lisa Nohealani Morton (Fireside Fiction)
• “The Earth and Everything Under” by K.M. Ferebee (Shimmer)
• “So Sharp That Blood Must Flow” by Sunny Moraine (Lightspeed)
• “I Seen the Devil” by Alex Bledsoe (Uncanny)
• “Flying On Hatred of My Neighbor’s Dog” by Shaenon Garrity (Drabblecast)
• “Chasing Satellites” by Anthony Cardno (StarShipSofa)