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Close Third Person

694 free-to-read stories tagged “Close Third Person”

Nine Last Days on Planet Earth

Daryl Gregory Tor.com 2018 Novelette Alternate History Alien Invasion 11,874 words

LT is ten when the alien seeds fall, and he spends the rest of his life studying them as they take over more and more of the planet.

First ContactQueer IdentityNostalgic

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

Seasons of Glass and Iron

Amal El-Mohtar Starlit Wood 2016 ShortStory Fairy Tale 5,617 words

Tabitha has been walking a long time, trying to wear out seven pairs of iron shoes; Amira has been sitting alone on a glass hill that suitors try to climb.

Fairy Tale RetellingFriendshipIntertextual

Content warnings 2

abuseviolence

Two Truths and a Lie

Sarah Pinsker Tor.com 2020 Novelette Horror 11,890 words

Stella’s helping an old high-school friend clean out his dead brother’s house, but the brother was a hoarder, and the task is horrible in several ways.

Folk HorrorGrief And LossUnreliable Narrator

Content warnings 2

death-of-a-loved-onemental-illness

A Series of Steaks

Vina Jie-Min Prasad Clarkesworld 2017 Novelette Chinese SF 7,943 words

A blackmailer forces Helena to make entire fake steaks for him or else he’ll tell the authorities about her business printing fake beef for shady restaurants. She’s never tried to make a whole steak though.

CyberpunkSardonicBiopunk

Content warnings 4

abusegoreillness-and-pandemicviolence

Rabbit Test

Samantha Mills Uncanny 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 7,067 words

"It is 2091, and Grace is staring at the rabbit in the corner of her visual overlay. It is an Angora rabbit, fluffy and white, and when Grace picked the icon out, she did not realize how much she would come to dread the sight of it. She moves, and the...

SlipstreamMotherhoodBleak

Content warnings 6

abusedeathmental-illnesspregnancy-losssexual-violencesuicide

The Martian Obelisk

Linda Nagata Tor.com 2017 ShortStory Apocalypse 5,908 words

As civilization is dying on Earth, a woman building a monument on Mars by remote control gets a message from a Mars colony long thought to be dead.

Climate FictionMotherhoodSlow Burn

Content warnings 4

child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicwar

The Sound of Children Screaming

Rachael K. Jones Nightmare 2023 ShortStory Horror 4,607 words ♪ audio

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Psychological HorrorMotherhoodSardonic

Content warnings 4

body-horrorchild-deathdeathviolence

Burn or The Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super

A.T. Greenblatt Uncanny 2020 Novelette Superhero 9,691 words

Sam’s ability is modest, but he’s still excited to be accepted into the Super Team. Now he just has to figure out how he can make the biggest difference—assuming he can do more good than harm.

Superhero FictionFriendshipIntrospective

Content warnings 1

violence

When We Were Starless

Simone Heller Clarkesworld 2018 Novelette Post-Apocalypse 13,204 words

In the ruins of far-future Earth, Mink’s tribe desperately needs the resources of a large building that vanished humanity left, but she needs to purge it of “ghosts” first—and it has lots of them.

Science FictionFound FamilyPost Apocalyptic

Content warnings 3

deathillness-and-pandemicviolence

Things With Beards

Sam J. Miller Clarkesworld 2016 ShortStory Horror 4,712 words

Following a disaster in Antarctica, MacReady spends summer 1983 in New York and starts to wonder what he might have brought back with him.

Psychological HorrorQueer IdentityNew York City

Content warnings 5

body-horrordeathillness-and-pandemicsubstance-useviolence

Proof by Induction

José Pablo Iriarte Uncanny 2021 ShortStory Science Fiction 6,296 words ♪ audio

"Paulie rushes out the elevator doors the moment they part, only to skid to a halt at the sight of his father’s wife. She shakes her head, but he doesn’t need the confirmation. If Tricia is out here and not in the hospital room with his father, it can only...

Near FutureFatherhoodSlow Burn

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

The Archronology of Love

Caroline M. Yoachim Lightspeed 2019 Novelette Exploration SF 8,918 words

A plague killed all the colonists before Saki’s ship arrived, and she has to investigate it while mourning the man she loved, who died down there.

Speculative FictionMotherhoodTender

Content warnings 3

deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic

Fandom for Robots

Vina Jie-Min Prasad Uncanny 2017 ShortStory Alternate History Robot SF 3,542 words ♪ audio

Computron was the only intelligent robot built in the 1950s. Now all he does is answer questions from children and write fan-fiction about the robot in the Hyperdimension Warp Record TV show.

AI FictionAI PersonhoodIntertextual

The Secret Life of Bots

Suzanne Palmer Clarkesworld 2017 Novelette SF Adventure 8,975 words

The ship hadn’t activated Bot 9 in a long time—it’s an unstable model—but in a desperate situation it needs all its resources. And how much trouble can it get into hunting down a rat?

Space OperaArtificial IntelligenceWhimsical

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub

P. Djèlí Clark Uncanny 2023 ShortStory Historical Fantasy 7,159 words

"Ambition!” Trevor emphasized, rapping knuckles hard on the wood table. “That is what makes the great men!” He took a satisfied swallow from his mug. Across from him, Barnaby put down the daily he’d been reading and sipped from his own beer. Pulling out a...

Social SatireColonialismSatirical

Content warnings 3

deathracismviolence

Open House on Haunted Hill

John Wiswell Diabolical Plots 2020 ShortStory 3,016 words ♪ audio

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Social SatireFriendshipWhimsical

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

Touring with the Alien

Carolyn Ives Gilman Clarkesworld 2016 Novelette SF 11,819 words

Months after mysterious aliens scattered their spacecraft across North America, no one has a clue what they want. Avery knows what one of them wants, though: it wants a tour.

First ContactColonialismMidwest USA

Content warnings 3

animal-harmdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one

Bots of the Lost Ark

Suzanne Palmer Clarkesworld 2021 Novelette Science Fiction 11,056 words

"I have been activated, therefore I have a purpose, Bot 9 thought. I have a purpose, therefore I serve. It recited the Mantra Upon Waking, to check that it was running at optimum physical efficiency, then the Mantra of Obedience, the Mantra of Not...

Space OperaAI PersonhoodHopeful

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

If the Martians Have Magic

P. Djèlí Clark Uncanny 2021 ShortStory Science Fantasy 7,099 words

"The first Martian War was won not by man, but microbes. The second we fought with Martian weapons that nearly broke the world. The third invasion we stopped by our own hands, using magic.” —Wei-Yin Sun, Imperial Historian in the Court of the Empress...

First ContactColonialismPhilosophical

Content warnings 2

deathwar

Folding Beijing

Hao Jingfang Uncanny 2015 Novelette Science Fantasy 16,336 words

Lao Dao processes trash in a fantastic future "third-space" Beijing. To get money for his daughter's education, he makes a dangerous trip to first-space--a city that unfolds when his own Beijing sleeps.

Social SatireCorporate PowerRestrained Prose

The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye

Sarah Pinsker Uncanny 2019 Novelette Horror 8,158 words

Zanna settles into a remote mountain cabin to write her next book. No internet. No phone. No distractions.

Psychological HorrorFriendshipAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 2

body-horrordeath

The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections

Tina Connolly Tor.com 2018 Novelette High Fantasy Dystopia 7,845 words ♪ audio

The Regent rules as a tyrant, and he has separated Saffron from her husband to force him to bake the amazing confections that let you relive bits of the past.

Historical FantasyRevengeSlow Burn

Content warnings 2

death-of-a-loved-oneviolence

If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You

John Chu Uncanny 2022 Novelette Superhero 9,886 words

"That first video of the flying man goes viral on social media and gets featured on the news. No jet pack. No hang glider. Just him, unaided, soaring over the cable-stayed bridge that leads into the city. The video looks like it was shot on a cellphone...

Superhero FictionRacismWarm

Content warnings 2

racismviolence

If You Take My Meaning

Charlie Jane Anders Tor.com 2020 Novelette Colony SF 8,540 words

Alyssa seeks out the aliens who can give her an augment that will let her exchange thoughts and feelings with other humans. But why does she want it, and what is the cost?

Space OperaColonialismSlow Burn

Content warnings 2

body-horrordeath

The Game of Smash and Recovery

Kelly Link Strange Horizons 2015 ShortStory SF 5,594 words

Anat doesn't remember her parents, but she loves her brother Oscar. They live in a wonderful world full of strange creatures and machines. The more she learns, the stranger things seem.

Space OperaAI PersonhoodAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

And Now His Lordship Is Laughing

Shiv Ramdas Strange Horizons 2019 ShortStory Historical Fantasy Horror 6,843 words

In 1943 India, during the Bengal Famine, the Governor of Bengal tries to force an old woman to make a doll for his wife.

Historical FantasyColonialismVisceral

Content warnings 5

child-deathdeathracismviolencewar

That Game We Played During the War

Carrie Vaughn Tor.com 2016 ShortStory SF 6,253 words ♪ audio

Despite not being a telepath, Calla worked out a way to play chess with her captor, Major Larn, during the recent war. Now they're going to finish their game.

Speculative FictionFriendshipRestrained Prose

Content warnings 3

deathmental-illnesswar

Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!

TJ Klune Reactor 2024 Novelette Science Fiction 11,046 words

An android who knows nothing besides his work in a factory, is given one final week to explore the world before he is forced to undergo mandatory reprogramming, in this bittersweet precursor to TJ Klune’s In the Lives of Puppets.

AI FictionAI PersonhoodIntertextual

Content warnings 2

body-horrordeath

Bishop's Opening

R.S.A. Garcia Clarkesworld 2022 Novella Science Fiction 20,630 words

"Old as she was, the Kiskadee had done three full delivery runs without a single safety incident. So naturally, with the crew relaxed after a fourth successful delivery and launch, and eight cycles after Reece slingshotted the starship around Tavaco to...

Space OperaDiasporaSlow Burn

Content warnings 2

death-of-a-loved-oneviolence

That Story Isn't the Story

John Wiswell Uncanny 2021 Novelette Fantasy 9,033 words

"Everything Anton owns goes in one black trash bag. His ratty yellow sketchpad, which he bought to draw the other familiars when he moved here, and only ever used three pages of. The few shirts and khakis that he paid for with his own money, before Mr....

Contemporary FantasyQueer IdentityTender

Content warnings 3

abusesuicideviolence

Meat And Salt And Sparks

Rich Larson Tor.com 2018 ShortStory SF Mystery 7,373 words

An enhanced chimp and her human partner investigate an apparently pointless murder committed by a woman who was under remote control from an unknown source.

CyberpunkRevengeVisceral

Content warnings 5

abusebody-horrordeathsuicideviolence

Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight

Aliette de Bodard Clarkesworld 2015 ShortStory Space Opera 6,934 words

A key scientist in the Dai Viet interstellar empire has died, and three people who were close to her mourn her passing in different ways.

Diaspora SFMotherhoodIntrospective

Content warnings 2

deathdeath-of-a-loved-one

A Stranger Knocks

Tananarive Due Uncanny 2024 Novelette Horror 7,617 words

"1926 Washington, D.C. Shaw District “There’s a man on the front stoop.” The words spilled from her in a much more mundane way than Judy had expected, considering how her neck was fluttering with her excited pulse. Alvin looked up from the new Langston...

Psychological HorrorArt And CreationHistorical USA

Content warnings 3

abusedeathviolence

Negative Scholarship on the Fifth State of Being

A.W. Prihandita Clarkesworld 2024 Novelette Science Fiction 8,730 words

"Doc, there’s a ... hole growing in me,” the alien said through the spherical interpreting machine hovering over them. Semau barely registered the word “hole,” so taken was she by the sight of the alien. If she were just a tad less caring about propriety,...

First ContactColonialismAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Extracurricular Activities

Yoon Ha Lee Tor.com 2017 Novelette Space Opera 14,259 words

A Heptarchate undercover mission lead by one of Jedao’s friends has gone missing, so Jedao goes undercover to try and rescue them.

Space OperaFriendshipDeep Space

Content warnings 3

deathsexual-contentviolence

Waters of Versailles

Kelly Robson Tor.com 2015 Novella 18,872 words ♪ audio

Sylvain de Guilherand secretly uses a captive water spirit to provide indoor plumbing to Louis XV's Versailles, but the spirit is childish, playful, and getting bored.

Historical FantasyAmbitionHistorical Europe

Marginalia

Mary Robinette Kowal Uncanny 2024 ShortStory Fantasy 7,488 words

"Margery crouched in front of the fireplace, skirts tucked back to avoid the flames, and raked coals out onto the hearth. She’d pushed the shutters open this morning to let a breeze but even at this hour sweat beaded on her brow and stuck her chemise to...

Historical FantasyMotherhoodWarm

Content warnings 2

deathdeath-of-a-loved-one

Quandary Aminu vs The Butterfly Man

Rich Larson Tor.com 2022 Novelette Science Fiction 14,771 words

When an illicit trade deal goes wrong and Quandary is blamed for it, she goes on the run to avoid the crosshairs of a bioengineered killer that only lives for 24 hours. If Q can evade it for that long, she just might survive.

CyberpunkFriendshipDarkly Comic

Content warnings 3

deathsubstance-useviolence

We Built This City

Marie Vibbert Clarkesworld 2022 Novelette Science Fiction 8,510 words

"Every sunset, Julia climbs the city her mother built. It feels enormous, on the outside. Inside, it’s cramped, a human anthill. It didn’t used to be, but Julia doesn’t remember what it felt like when there was room enough for everyone. In the locker room,...

Near FutureCorporate PowerEarnest

The Painter of Trees

Suzanne Palmer Clarkesworld 2019 ShortStory Colony SF 4,258 words

The human terraformers didn’t realize there was native intelligence until it was too late to save them. Now it’s just a question of what to do with the time that remains.

First ContactColonialismAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Come See the Living Dryad

Theodora Goss Tor.com 2017 Novelette Mainstream 8,904 words

In 1888 a woman suffering a hideous deformity was murdered in London. Today, her descendent wants to find the culprit.

Historical FantasyBodily AutonomyHistorical Europe

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Uncanny Valley

Greg Egan Tor.com 2017 Novelette Near-Future SF 13,237 words

Adam has 70% of the memories of the man who created him, but something vital is hiding in that missing 30%.

AI FictionAI PersonhoodRestrained

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

Madeleine

Amal El-Mohtar Lightspeed 2015 ShortStory 5,899 words

Madeline is having an adverse reaction to an experimental drug--she revisits episodes in her past.

Speculative FictionDiasporaHopeful

Landline

Kelly Robson Reactor 2025 ShortStory Horror 5,040 words

A woman about to leave on an overseas business trip, calls home from the airport and discovers that “daddy” isn’t there and her six-year-old son is all alone in the dark…

Psychological HorrorMotherhoodDread

Content warnings 1

abuse

By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars

Premee Mohamed Strange Horizons 2024 Novelette Fantasy 8,468 words ♪ audio

"When her bell sounded at midnight, Firion the wizard grasped her stoutest staff (crowned, for non-magical reasons, with a razor-sharp chunk of amethyst) and put her lips to the doorjamb. “Who goes there?” Nothing but the slap of rain against stone, like...

Speculative FictionMentorshipSlow Burn

For Lack of a Bed

John Wiswell Diabolical Plots 2021 ShortStory Urban Fantasy 2,756 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Contemporary FantasyBodily AutonomyDarkly Comic

My Country Is A Ghost

Eugenia Triantafyllou Uncanny 2020 ShortStory Allegory 4,650 words

An immigrant is distressed because her mother’s ghost is confiscated at the border.

Contemporary FantasyDiasporaIntrospective

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

As the Last I May Know

S.L. Huang Tor.com 2019 ShortStory Alternate Reality 5,863 words

Only one nation has nuclear weapons, but their rules against using them require that things be so desperate that the President be willing to kill a child to get the launch codes.

DystopiaPolitical ResistanceSlow Burn

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Mother Tongues

S. Qiouyi Lu Asimov's 2018 ShortStory Near-Future SF 3,658 words ♪ audio

A Chinese woman living in the Bay Area needs to raise money to get her daughter into Stanford. She tries to sell her English-language proficiency, but even after fifteen years, it’s not good enough. But her native fluency in Mandarin is worth a lot, if...

BiopunkDiasporaRestrained Prose

Children of Thorns, Children of Water

Aliette de Bodard Uncanny 2017 Novelette Alternate History Fantasy 11,966 words

Two people from a secret, underwater House try to infiltrate a troublesome surface House that rules much of a Paris still recovering from long-ago magical wars.

Historical FantasyColonialismHistorical Europe

Content warnings 1

violence

The Lamentation of Their Women

Kai Ashante Wilson Tor.com 2017 Novelette Horror 9,141 words ♪ audio

‘Nisha only has five hours to get across New York to her dead aunt’s apartment before the city comes to throw away all her stuff. She’s not even sure it’s worth it, but they said her aunt was a witch…

Contemporary FantasyRacismNew York City

Content warnings 3

deathgoreviolence

A Salvaging of Ghosts

Aliette de Bodard BCS 2016 ShortStory Space Opera 4,292 words

Thuy seeks her daughter's remains in the twisted parts of unreal space where salvagers pick over the remains of wrecked starships.

Science FantasyMotherhoodDeep Space

Content warnings 2

deathdeath-of-a-loved-one

The Heart's Filthy Lesson

Elizabeth Bear Old Venus 2015 Novelette Retro SF 10,400 words

Fun adventure on Old Venus. Dharthi risks her life in an unexplored part of Ishtar Terra looking for evidence of a vanished civilization that would save her career.

BiopunkColonialismSlow Burn

Content warnings 1

violence

Median

Kelly Robson Reactor 2024 ShortStory Horror 5,218 words

A professional caregiver’s commute takes an unsettling detour when car trouble forces her to pull over on the highway, where she begins receiving distressing phone calls from strangers…

Psychological HorrorSacrificeDread

Content warnings 1

death

Even If Such Ways Are Bad

Rich Larson Tor.com 2023 Novelette Science Fiction 8,400 words

A two-person crew embark on a mind-bending deep space mission inside a living wormship capable of burrowing through space. What lies on the other end is unknown—as is what they will do once they get there.

BiopunkRevengeSlow Burn

Content warnings 2

body-horrorviolence

The Mausoleum's Children

Aliette de Bodard Uncanny 2023 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,411 words

"Thuận Lộc stared at the cup. It was dark, and mottled with the characteristic patterning of silver-eye fungus. The tea inside was trembling—the faint vibrations from the Mausoleum, the dead ships’ atrophied motors that would never again allow them to...

Science FantasyColonialismDefiant

Content warnings 2

child-abuseviolence

The Sadness Box

Suzanne Palmer Clarkesworld 2022 Novelette Science Fiction 13,480 words

"Okay, so you know those things they sell called ‘useless machines’?” the inventor says. He is smiling. Of course, the boy knows them; he’d briefly had one that had been plucked from his bedroom floor and relocated into the inventor’s basement workroom...

DystopiaAI PersonhoodHopeful

Content warnings 2

body-horrorviolence

Mulberry and Owl

Aliette de Bodard Uncanny 2021 Novelette Science Fiction 7,942 words

"Thuỷ stood in her cabin in The Goby in the Well, her bots arrayed on her shoulders and clinging to her wrists, and watched the heart of the nebula. There was absolutely nothing remarkable about it: the Great Mulberry Nebula was large, sparsely dotted with...

Space OperaColonialismSlow Burn

Content warnings 4

child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence

The Red Mother

Elizabeth Bear Tor.com 2021 Novelette Fantasy 12,023 words

Auga, a wandering sorcerer, follows his brother’s fate-thread into the village of Ormsfjoll, where he expects to deliver good news and continue his travels. What he doesn’t anticipate is that to meet his brother he must first contend with the truth at the...

Secondary World FantasyMotherhoodWarm

A Stick of Clay, in the Hands of God, is Infinite Potential

JY Yang Clarkesworld 2020 Novelette Military SF 10,682 words

Stick was made to pilot Phoenix in the war against the apostates. Stick never feels entirely human, but the final battle approaches, and Stick looks forward to it.

Science FantasyTrans IdentityIntrospective

Content warnings 4

abusedeathviolencewar

The Last Voyage of Skidbladnir

Karin Tidbeck Tor.com 2019 ShortStory SF Adventure 5,620 words

Saga does maintenance work on an old, living starship. Skidbladnir is doing poorly lately, and Saga’s boss is determined to save her, even if no one else wants to.

Science FantasyFound FamilyWhimsical

Queen Lily

Theodora Goss Lightspeed 2018 Novelette Mainstream 7,720 words

As Lily dies from tuberculosis, she relives fantasies from “Through the Looking Glass,” by Lewis Carroll

Fairy Tale RetellingMotherhoodHistorical Europe

Content warnings 3

child-abusedeathillness-and-pandemic

Strange Waters

Samantha Mills Strange Horizons 2018 ShortStory Fantasy Time Travel 6,183 words

Mika is lost at sea, but lost in time, not space, landing at her home port over and over at different times spread across almost two thousand years as she tries to get home to her children.

Speculative FictionMotherhoodElegiac

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

The Persistence of Blood

Juliette Wade Clarkesworld 2018 Novella SFF 26,506 words

Selemei’s push for a law to allow women to stop having children when it risks their health upends the complex caste-based society she lives in.

Speculative FictionMotherhoodSlow Burn

Content warnings 2

death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic

A Human Stain

Kelly Robson Tor.com 2017 Novelette Horror 9,734 words

Helen comes to Meersee in Germany to be a governess for her friend’s nephew. The child is young and peculiar, the staff are old and peculiar, and more peculiar things turn up by the minute.

Folk HorrorMotherhoodHistorical Europe

Content warnings 2

body-horrorviolence

The Story of Kao Yu

Peter S. Beagle Tor.com 2016 ShortStory Chinese Fantasy 7,382 words

Sometimes a unicorn assisted Judge Kao Yu, and because he was so just and honest, he never feared its judgment. Until now.

Fairy Tale RetellingJusticeHistorical China

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

The Apologists

Tade Thompson Clarkesworld 2025 Novella Science Fiction 21,060 words

"A dual-carriage road descends from a flyover bridge in Thamesmead, bearing sluggish traffic on both sides. From inside bus number 229, a woman looks out of the large windows and thinks the other vehicles look like toy cars. For all she knows, the 229...

Psychological HorrorPolitical ResistanceSlow Burn

Content warnings 5

child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-onemental-illnessviolence

Wolf Moon, Antler Moon

A.C. Wise Reactor 2025 Novelette Dark Fantasy 14,080 words

In one small town, the delicate balance between predator and prey is threatened when five girls are murdered on prom night.

Folk HorrorFound FamilySlow Burn

Content warnings 3

body-horrordeathviolence

The Spindle of Necessity

B. Pladek Strange Horizons 2024 ShortStory Fantasy 6,142 words

"Andrew was convinced the writer had been trans. By this point his friends were tired of hearing about it, but he had no one else to tell besides the internet, and he was too smart for that. That would be asking for it. Samantha Finnes was a minor...

SlipstreamTrans IdentityMidwest USA

One Man's Treasure

Sarah Pinsker Uncanny 2023 Novelette Fantasy 8,566 words

"Aden had never once forgotten his gear for bulk trash day, but he found it touching that Nura still taped a monthly reminder note on the door from the kitchen to the garage. Sweet of her to remember, given how exhausted med school had her these days."

Contemporary FantasyClass InequalityWarm

Content warnings 1

death

The State Street Robot Factory

Claire Humphrey Apex 2023 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,891 words

"Darius sells three pocket robots on the first Tuesday of October, and another three on Wednesday. At this rate he’ll be able to pay for his legs by Christmas. He does lose one robot to theft: someone figures out how to jimmy open the door of the display...

Near FutureCorporate PowerSlow Burn

Babang Luksa

Nicasio Andres Reed Reckoning 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,596 words ♪ audio

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Speculative FictionFatherhoodRestrained Prose

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

Small Monsters

E. Lily Yu Tor.com 2021 Novelette Fantasy 7,640 words

All its life, a small monster with emerald scales has been a source of never-ending food to larger and more powerful creatures who feast on the small monster’s limbs each time one regrows. This is the story of how the small monster meets an industrious...

Fairy Tale RetellingBodily AutonomyHopeful

Content warnings 4

abusebody-horrorchild-abuseviolence

St. Valentine, St. Abigail, St. Brigid

C.L. Polk Tor.com 2020 ShortStory Modern Fantasy 5,551 words ♪ audio

Her mom has grown rich by telling people’s fortunes, but all Theresa Anne wants is for her girlfriend to be safe. And to be brave enough to actually talk to this “girlfriend.”

Contemporary FantasyMotherhoodHistorical USA

Content warnings 1

death

The Anchorite Wakes

R.S.A. Garcia Clarkesworld 2018 ShortStory SFF 4,395 words

Sister Nadine sits in her cell at the church and offers wisdom to any of the townspeople who come by. But she’s starting to see things that suggest the world isn’t quite what it seems to be.

Science FantasyPolitical ResistanceHistorical Europe

The Independence Patch

Bryan Camp Lightspeed 2018 ShortStory Near-Future SF 7,473 words

Donny is a young teen in high school, but his augments give him an intimate connection to the Internet—and put him at odds with his teachers and other students.

BiopunkBodily AutonomyIntrospective

The Chameleon's Gloves

Yoon Ha Lee Cosmic Powers 2017 Novelette Space Opera 7,865 words ♪ audio

Rhehan used to be a Kel supersoldier before being kicked out. Now the Kel needs Rhehan for a dangerous mission—offering the only coin Rhehan might consider.

Space OperaFound FamilyDefiant

Content warnings 1

violence

The Worshipful Society of Glovers

Mary Robinette Kowal Uncanny 2017 Novelette Historical Fantasy 10,070 words

A young apprentice at making magic gloves considers breaking the rules to make a special pair to control his sister’s epilepsy.

Historical FantasyBodily AutonomyHistorical Europe

Content warnings 3

deathillness-and-pandemicviolence

Terminal

Lavie Tidhar Tor.com 2016 ShortStory Planetary SF 5,941 words

A vast fleet of "jalopies" carry individuals on a one-way trip from Earth to Mars. People do it for different reasons, some of which we learn about in this story.

Near FutureConsciousnessDeep Space

Content warnings 2

deathillness-and-pandemic

No Placeholder for You, My Love

Nick Wolven Asimov's 2015 Novelette 9,000 words ♪ audio

Claire meets a handsome older man at a dinner party held in a virtual reality where something has gone subtly wrong.

SlipstreamQueer IdentityAmbiguous Ending

Pocosin

Ursula Vernon Apex 2015 ShortStory 5,000 words ♪ audio

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Southern GothicSacrificeWarm

Content warnings 1

death

Lost Ark Dreaming

Suyi Davies Okungbowa Tor Novella 2024 Novella Climate Fiction

Off the coast of West Africa, decades after the dangerous rise of the Atlantic Ocean, the region’s survivors live inside five partially submerged, kilometers-high towers originally created as a playground for the wealthy. Now the towers’ most affluent rule...

DystopiaDiasporaWest Africa

Content warnings 2

death-of-a-loved-oneviolence

The River Judge

S.L. Huang Reactor 2024 Novelette Epic Fantasy 10,936 words

In this prequel novelette to the critically acclaimed The Water Outlaws, nine-year-old Li Li is introduced to a web of community secrets and family intrigue when she helps her mother bury the corpse of a man that has somehow wound up in the storeroom of...

Historical FantasyRevengeRestrained

Content warnings 4

cannibalismdeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence

The Dark House

A.C. Wise Tor.com 2023 ShortStory Horror 6,583 words

A photographer’s obsession with an unsettled subject exposes two friends to a darkness that won’t be contained by frames…

Folk HorrorTraumaHistorical USA

Content warnings 3

child-deathsuicideviolence

To Carry You Inside You

Tia Tashiro Clarkesworld 2023 ShortStory Science Fiction 7,330 words

"In your head, the dead man wakes up crying. He stutters into awareness just as you manage to stanch the tears welling in your eyes, a response to the pressure of his presence on your limbic system. Your fingers brush, irritated, against the port at the...

BiopunkBodily AutonomyUnsettling

Zeta-Epsilon

Isabel J. Kim Clarkesworld 2023 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,200 words

"Start at the cleave of it, not at Zed’s meat death or Ep’s centuries-long destruction, but at the moment that Zed halves his own mind and walks away. Or as was reported in the internal memorandum, the moment when Pilot-Commander Zeta San Tano killed...

Space OperaAI PersonhoodFragmented

A Monster in the Shape of a Boy

Hannah Yang Apex 2022 ShortStory Fantasy 1,665 words

"When Peng opens the door, he finds himself face to face with a boy who looks exactly like himself. The other Peng stands in the doorway, as though surprised to have been caught. Two eyes peering out from the dark. Fluffy black hair, messy enough to stand...

Folk HorrorBodily AutonomyRestrained Prose

Content warnings 4

animal-harmchild-abusedeathviolence

Beyond the Dragon's Gate

Yoon Ha Lee Tor.com 2020 ShortStory SF Thriller 3,925 words

Anna’s an AI expert who’s called in to figure out what a new upgrade is causing AI-captained ships to destroy themselves.

Space OperaAI PersonhoodPhilosophical

Content warnings 1

death

Color, Heat, and the Wreck of the Argo

Catherynne M. Valente Strange Horizons 2020 Novelette Fantasy 9,199 words

"Big Edie was a useless piece of shit. Johanna Telle found the most significant relationship of her life on a Saturday afternoon in late May, sitting on one of those excruciatingly handmade quilts crafty stay-at-homes used to make out of their precious...

SlipstreamConsciousnessLyrical

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Life Sentence

Matthew Baker Lightspeed 2019 Novelette Near-Future SF Thriller 9,219 words

After a full memory wipe, Wash moves in with his family and tries to get to know them again with the shadow of his unremembered crime hovering over him.

Near FutureBodily AutonomyMidwest USA

One Thousand Beetles in a Jumpsuit

Dominica Phetteplace Lightspeed 2019 Novelette SF Adventure 9,805 words

Isla’s job at Omega Corp seems to involve walking through a huge place called “Robot Country” to test something, but they haven’t really given her a clue what that might be.

BiopunkAI PersonhoodAmerican Southwest

A Study in Oils

Kelly Robson Clarkesworld 2018 Novelette SF Thriller 12,009 words

A young hockey player charged with murder on the moon seeks asylum on Earth, but unhappy Lunarians are trying to find him.

Near FutureTraumaSlow Burn

Content warnings 4

body-horrordeathmental-illnessviolence

Breakwater

Simon Bestwick Tor.com 2018 Novelette SF Thriller 15,242 words

Humanity is under attack from intelligent creatures we never knew about from the abyss of our own oceans. Cally is a researcher trying to communicate with them when the underwater facility she’s on is attacked and she has to escape before it disintegrates entirely.

First ContactPolitical ResistanceSlow Burn

Content warnings 3

deathsexual-contentviolence

Carouseling

Rich Larson Clarkesworld 2018 ShortStory SF Adventure 5,250 words

Ostap can’t wait to visit his girlfriend and see her big project that’s trying to use quantum mechanics to develop faster-than-light travel.

Near FutureConsciousnessTender

Content warnings 2

deathdeath-of-a-loved-one

Jump

Cadwell Turnbull Lightspeed 2018 ShortStory Teleportation 2,842 words

What if you tried to teleport and succeeded? What if you couldn’t manage to do it again?

SlipstreamBelongingAmbiguous Ending

The Heart of Owl Abbas

Kathleen Jennings Tor.com 2018 ShortStory Steampunk Fantasy 6,943 words

Excelsior lives to write songs, and Nightingale was made to sing them. But the decadent city of Owl Abbas does not deserve either one.

Secondary World FantasyArt And CreationWhimsical

Content warnings 2

body-horrordeath

The Privilege of the Happy Ending

Kij Johnson Clarkesworld 2018 Novelette Dark Fantasy 15,501 words

In 12th-Century England, six-year-old Ada flees the vicious reptilian wastoures who swam the countryside eating people and animals alike.

Fairy Tale RetellingFriendshipHistorical Europe

Content warnings 4

body-horrorchild-abusedeathviolence

Remote Presence

Susan Palwick Lightspeed 2017 Novelette Modern Fantasy 9,918 words

Chaplin Win is in trouble for letting an unauthorized ghost talk with hospital patients, and inspectors are coming tomorrow.

Contemporary FantasyFriendshipWarm

Content warnings 2

deathillness-and-pandemic

The Mocking Tower

Daniel Abraham The Book of Swords 2017 Novelette Fantasy Adventure 9,944 words

Somewhere near the every-changing Mocking Tower the Imagi Vert has hidden a sword that holds the soul of the late emperor, and a thief has come to try to steal it.

FantasyPolitical ResistancePhilosophical

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Though She Be But Little

C.S.E. Cooney Uncanny 2017 ShortStory Fantasy Horror 5,802 words ♪ audio

When the world changed and the sky turned silver, magic became real, Emma Anne became a little girl and her neighbor became a pirate. But can a little girl fight off an attack by the Loping Man?

Folk HorrorFriendshipWhimsical

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Barnacle

Kate Elliott Reactor 2025 Novelette Dystopian 9,900 words

An older medic with scant resources fights to support her community as they survive life behind the company wall.

DystopiaClass InequalityRestrained

Content warnings 2

sexual-violenceviolence

The Temporary Murder of Thomas Monroe

Tia Tashiro Clarkesworld 2025 Novelette Science Fiction 11,900 words

"Jay scrubs at the blood spot on her tennis shoe with her thumb and a gob of spit, hurried by the knowledge that Hardy will be there any moment. It’s swelter-hot on the gravel back road, and she’s doused in the sound of cicadas from the forest behind her...

Near FutureBodily AutonomyHopeful

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

A Slightly Different Sunrise from Mercury, Nevada

Íde Hennessy Strange Horizons 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,416 words

"One hundred and eighty days. Today was it—the longest Annie had ever managed to stay at one job. The last time she had texted Charlie, it was to tell her “Charlie” was the name of a bomb and “Annie” was the name of another—this hadn’t gone as well as she...

Near FutureQueer IdentityAmerican Southwest

Content warnings 2

illness-and-pandemicsubstance-use

Breathing Constellations

Rich Larson Reactor 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 3,355 words

Misunderstanding threatens a commune whose survival is dependent on precise communication with another species…

First ContactFound FamilyTender

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

Just You and Me, Now

K.T. Bryski Apex 2024 ShortStory Horror 3,977 words

"The campsite looks like it wants to eat them. A fire pit yawns in the middle, an ashy-grey mouth ringed by rocks like rotting teeth. The trees crowd in, sizing them up, knifing the daylight. One gulp of that smoke-and-pine air, and Henry shudders head to...

Folk HorrorSurvivalBleak

Content warnings 2

child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one

The Indomitable Captain Holli

Rich Larson Clarkesworld 2024 Novella Science Fiction 23,530 words

"Holli was hanging upside down off the edge of her flimsy folding bed, watching goretoons in her goggles, when Puck the Pirate showed up again. Ahoy, Holli! Guess what? His red-cheeked puppet face swelled, blocking out the show, which annoyed Holli until...

DystopiaAI PersonhoodHopeful

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

The Sort

Thomas Ha Clarkesworld 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 6,520 words ♪ audio

"My son can’t think of the word “spoon.” It’s there, at the tip of his tongue. The waitress looks at him with a patient smile. She can see he’s fidgeting and getting hot. A boy his age would typically know how to ask. “Could I please have another... ” But...

Near FutureFatherhoodAmerican Southwest

The Woods All Black

Lee Mandelo Tor Novella 2024 Novella Horror

Forged in the fires of the Western Front and reborn in the cafes of Paris, Leslie believes he can handle whatever is thrown at him—but Spar Creek holds a darkness beyond his nightmares. Something ugly festers within the local congregation, and its malice...

Folk HorrorTrans IdentityHistorical USA

Content warnings 3

abusetransphobiaviolence

Bruised-Eye Dusk

Jonathan Louis Duckworth BCS 2023 Novelette Fantasy 7,809 words

"Rugg the spellbreaker was only passing through the Devil’s Palm on his way down to the coast, where he hoped to find his mother. He’d have avoided Ganvill, except he was running low on boom powder and salt, and the little settlement was the last tame...

Folk HorrorRevengeWarm

Content warnings 3

deathsexual-contentviolence

Jack O'Dander

Priya Sharma Tor.com 2023 Novelette Horror 7,641 words

The sister of an abducted child is haunted by a sinister figure who may or may not be real…

Folk HorrorGuiltHistorical Europe

Nextype

Sam Kyung Yoo Strange Horizons 2023 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,033 words

"Mirae sits on her bed, parting her hair with one hand and feeling for the access port on the back of her head with the other. She finds the notched edges of the cap and twists counterclockwise until it comes loose. Her eye twitches as she slides the plug...

BiopunkArtificial IntelligenceRestrained

Content warnings 3

abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic

The Rainbow Bank

Uchechukwu Nwaka GigaNotoSaurus 2023 Novelette 10,546 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Science FantasyCorporate PowerWest Africa

Content warnings 3

deathgoreviolence

Time: Marked and Mended

Carrie Vaughn Tor.com 2023 Novelette Science Fiction 8,471 words

Graff isn’t quite human. His people move through the galaxy collecting memories and experiences, recording their lives and passing them on. Then, one day, he breaks: he discovers a chunk of his memory is missing. This should be impossible—he’s never...

Space OperaFound FamilyDeep Space

Bonsai Starships

Yoon Ha Lee BCS 2022 ShortStory Science Fantasy 4,146 words

"At the center of every starship was a bonsai starship. It rested in the starship’s command garden and provided the magic that propelled it. Novice Kei had known this longer than she had known her own name, especially since she was the eighth Kei who...

Science FantasyPolitical ResistanceFar Future

Nobody Ever Goes Home to Zhenzhu

Grace Chan Lightspeed 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 3,591 words

"I’d always known Calam would run. He had all the signs. A taut restlessness, body brittle as an overstretched lute string, when we stayed too long in one place. A gloom in his eyes, as we drifted through stretches of dead space. A sullen crease between...

Space OperaDiasporaDefiant

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

This Place Is Best Shunned

David Erik Nelson Tor.com 2022 Novelette Horror 9,792 words

Allie and Rooster are heading down to Asheville for Rooster’s new gig, a cushy stint as artist-in-residence at UNC. ... But when they stumble upon an old backcountry church—the perfect backdrop for Rooster’s latest project—they discover that some...

Folk HorrorTraumaDread

Content warnings 3

body-horrordeathviolence

Aptitude

Cooper Shrivastava Tor.com 2021 Novelette Science Fiction 7,916 words

Alena has momentarily escaped her world and its imminent gravitational collapse by cheating her way into the selection process of the Board of Cosmogamy. By passing this stringent exam, she may finally learn the secrets of building a universe from first...

Social SFClass InequalityFar Future

Gray Skies, Red Wings, Blue Lips, Black Hearts

Merc Fenn Wolfmoor Apex 2021 ShortStory Dark Fantasy 5,334 words

"A girl has lost her soul down deep in the City. It wandered away while she chipped out another grave in the catacomb brickyards. She set down her pickax, wiped grit from her cheek, and noticed how empty her body was. Looked down at her wrist and found it blank."

Dark FantasyTrans IdentityDefiant

Content warnings 2

self-harmviolence

Quintessence

Andrew Dykstal BCS 2021 Novelette Fantasy 14,804 words

"He could hear her voice more clearly now, as though the notepad were merely a synchronizing gear between the two minds caught in his head. She sounded sick and frightened and tired—like a young woman trapped alone in a strange place, not like a witch...

Science FantasyCorporate PowerPhilosophical

Content warnings 4

body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence

The Wishing Pool

Tananarive Due Uncanny 2021 ShortStory Fantasy 4,102 words

"Joy nearly got lost on the root-knotted red dirt path off of Highway 99, losing sight of the gaps between the live oaks and Spanish moss that fanned across her hood and windows like fingertips. Driving back to her family’s cabin twenty years later...

Contemporary FantasyTraumaSlow Burn

Content warnings 2

death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic

Yesterday's Wolf

Ray Nayler Clarkesworld 2021 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,870 words

"They found the torn lamb in the gold spring grass, beside the gravel road. The flies had found it first. But the flies were still lazy and slow. Later in the season, when they found a feast like this, you would be able to hear them buzzing from a distance."

Near FuturePolitical ResistanceIntrospective

Content warnings 2

sexual-violenceviolence

Metal Like Blood in the Dark

T. Kingfisher Uncanny 2020 ShortStory Science Fiction 7,180 words

"Once upon a time there was a man who built two enormous machines, and he loved them very much. He called them Brother and Sister and programmed them with intelligences that woke and stretched and tested the limits of their metal bodies. When they did not...

Science FantasyAI PersonhoodDeep Space

Content warnings 1

violence

Real Animals

Em North Lightspeed 2020 Novelette Alien Invasion Apocalypse Horror 7,768 words

The aliens occupied and controlled the bodies of animals, destroying most of humanity. A few survivors in a ski resort pass the time preserving the bodies of friends who didn’t make it.

SlipstreamFriendshipPost Apocalyptic

Content warnings 4

animal-harmdeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence

Before the World Crumbles Away

A.T. Greenblatt Uncanny 2019 ShortStory SF Apocalypse 5,996 words

Intensifying earthquakes are gradually destroying the world, but Marina still has her art, and Elodie is building a robot.

Near FutureQueer IdentityTender

Content warnings 3

deathmental-illnesssuicide

Cloud-Born

Gregory Feeley Clarkesworld 2019 Novelette Colony Ship 9,895 words

After eighteen years, a colony ship reaches Neptune, and the children born on board wonder what their future holds.

Generation ShipDiasporaIntertextual

Do Not Look Back, My Lion

Alix E. Harrow BCS 2019 ShortStory High Fantasy 6,021 words

In an empire obsessed with war, a healer married to a warrior seeks to escape the endless fighting, killing, and dying.

Historical FantasyMotherhoodDefiant

Content warnings 4

deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolencewar

Many-Hearted Dog and Heron Who Stepped Past Time

Alex Yuschik Strange Horizons 2019 ShortStory Fantasy Time Travel 5,869 words

Two top-notch time-travelling assassins get an assignment to expose a corrupt aristocrat by killing a magistrate and later bringing her back from the land of the dead.

Secondary World FantasyFriendshipTender

Content warnings 3

deathsubstance-useviolence

Moses

L.D. Lewis Anathema 2019 ShortStory 4,475 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Psychological HorrorGuiltBleak

Content warnings 3

body-horrorsubstance-useviolence

Painless

Rich Larson Tor.com 2019 ShortStory Supersoldier 5,412 words

With tremendous powers of regeneration, Mars is an incomparable killing machine, but he’s on the run, and there’s one special prisoner he’s determined to rescue.

BiopunkBodily AutonomyWest Africa

Content warnings 3

deathgoreviolence

The Visible Frontier

Grace Seybold Clarkesworld 2019 ShortStory SF Adventure 5,473 words

A young sailor wants to learn what the stars really are, and if it’s true there are people living there.

Science FantasyColonialismPhilosophical

Fleeing Oslyge

Sally Gwylan Clarkesworld 2018 Novelette Military SF 9,216 words

After 700 years of isolation, the colony faces invasion from fellow humans. Fleeing from the destruction of her home town, Senne hooks up with four soldiers trying to find what’s left of their unit.

Space OperaColonialismBleak

Content warnings 4

body-horrordeathsexual-violenceviolence

Godmeat

Martin Cahill Lightspeed 2018 ShortStory Fantasy Apocalypse 7,012 words

To return to power, the godlike Hollow Ones recruit Spear to kill the Great Beasts that hold the laws of reality in place, and Hark to cook them so they can absorb their power. Only one remains before the end of the world as they know it.

Dark FantasyRedemptionVisceral

Content warnings 3

body-horrorgoreviolence

It's Easy to Shoot A Dog

Maria Haskins BCS 2018 ShortStory Fantasy Horror 4,470 words

On a cold October midnight, teenage Susanna takes her dog and a musket and sneaks away into the woods. Things happened ten years ago when she got the dog. Bad things. And now the reckoning is due.

Folk HorrorTraumaHistorical Europe

Content warnings 3

animal-harmchild-deathviolence

The Nearest

Greg Egan Tor.com 2018 Novelette Near-Future Police Procedural 16,672 words

An Australian detective investigates a woman who apparently killed her husband and children before disappearing.

Psychological HorrorMotherhoodDread

Content warnings 3

child-deathdeathviolence

Pan-Humanism: Hope and Pragmatics

Jess Barber & Sara Saab Clarkesworld 2017 Novelette Climate SF 12,087 words

This story follows Amir and Mani’s careers starting when they’re teenagers in water-starved Beirut.

Near FuturePolitical ResistanceTender

Content warnings 1

sexual-content

The Heart's Cartography

Susan Jane Bigelow Lightspeed 2017 ShortStory Time Travel 4,908 words

The time travelers across the road think they’re being clever, but Jade’s family spotted them right away. Even so, they’ve got a daughter her age, and she wants to make friends.

Near FutureTrans IdentityTender

A Good Home

Karin Lowachee Lightspeed 2016 ShortStory SF 6,718 words

A disabled human veteran takes in a disabled AI veteran. The AI doesn't talk anymore due to trauma, but Tawn tries to get through to it, even though his mother thinks it's dangerous.

AI FictionAI PersonhoodSlow Burn

Content warnings 1

war

The Witch of Orion Waste and the Boy Knight

E. Lily Yu Uncanny 2016 ShortStory Fairy Tale 5,714 words

A young, newly minted witch meets an equally green knight, and they go off together in search of dragons.

Fairy Tale RetellingBodily AutonomyWhimsical

Content warnings 2

abuseviolence

The Karen Joy Fowler Book Club

Nike Sulway Lightspeed 2015 ShortStory 6,623 words

What if rhinoceroses behaved like human beings and talked about their upcoming extinction during book club meetings?

SlipstreamMotherhoodIntertextual

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

It Grows Back

Grant Collier Cast of Wonders 2025 ShortStory 4,078 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Psychological HorrorFriendshipDread

Content warnings 2

body-horrormental-illness

Through the Machine

P.A. Cornell Lightspeed 2025 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,011 words

"Steve, over here! Turn to your right. Can we get a smile?” He falls back on his training easily enough, turns to the cameras, gives them his famous crooked smile, tilts his head just so as the flashes go off so they can capture the smoulder that...

AI FictionArtificial IntelligenceIntrospective

We, the Fleet

Alex T. Singer Clarkesworld 2025 Novelette Science Fiction 7,700 words

"We watched the stranger fall from the sky. Our daughters sent us frantic signals as they tracked her burning trail. She crashed on the beaches by the deeper ocean, her once beautiful white and silver carapace blackened and bent. Her lights flashed once,...

First ContactAI PersonhoodPhilosophical

An Intergalactic Smuggler's Guide to Homecoming

Tia Tashiro Clarkesworld 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 7,060 words

"There are seven hundred aliens hidden in Miko’s backpack, and the Galactic Security Agent currently studying her passport (hopefully) has no clue. The agent is an alien themselves, some tentacular species with assistive devices hooked into its uniform to...

Space OperaDiasporaHopeful

Our Lady of the Clay

Daniela Tomova Apex 2024 ShortStory Dark Fantasy 5,100 words

"No signs protect the backyards in this part of town from the Marl Pits Forest. There’s no treeline either. Of course there isn’t. But even in the dark, you can’t really miss where the forest starts—not if you’ve lived a childhood in the wilderness here...

Folk HorrorGuiltVisceral

Content warnings 3

child-abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence

Shadow Films

Ben Peek Lightspeed 2024 Novelette Science Fiction 9,148 words

"Alvin’s scripts arrived in yellow envelopes. They were hand delivered, placed inside his letter box as if part of the regular mail, but with no address or stamps on it. The scripts were typed on unlined paper. They were short, never longer than a page,...

Near FutureArt And CreationRestrained

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Stranger Seas Than These

L. Chan Clarkesworld 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,020 words

"It is two days since our original projected mission end date. We are running out of oxygen and we are trapped in the throat of a god. Technology and a prudent safety review panel have kept casualties on deep dives low, but abyssal layer dives have always...

First ContactFatherhoodAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 1

death

The Aquarium for Lost Souls

Natasha King Strange Horizons 2024 Novelette Science Fiction 7,964 words

"The aquarium is different every time I die. Exhibits reshuffling like a deck of cards. The blood loss, though, that’s reliable. Death ninety-three was the jellyfish room: all those ghost bodies and moonsilk, limned radiant in the blacklight, jetting about...

SlipstreamBodily AutonomyUnsettling

Content warnings 2

abuseviolence

The Painted Skin and the Final Stroke

Zhu Yixuan Clarkesworld 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,130 words

"The sun sets again over Chang’an. The remaining light of dusk shines through thick clouds like melted gold, flowing down over the glazed tiles of the palace roofs. The first drumbeat of the evening rings out from the Cheng Tian Gate, followed by a series...

Historical FantasyAI PersonhoodHistorical China

Content warnings 1

death

Twenty-Four Hours

H.H. Pak Clarkesworld 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,540 words

"Six hours left. “What do you want to eat sweetheart?” She looks at me expectantly, holding out her phone to show me the menu. “It is your special day. I’ll get you anything you want.” I smile, shake my hands. “Eomma, it’s fine. You don’t have to do this.”...

AI FictionArtificial IntelligenceAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 3

deathdeath-of-a-loved-onewar

Construction Sacrifice

Bogi Takács Lightspeed 2023 ShortStory Fantasy 7,344 words

"Fejértorony There’s dysphoria, and then there’s turning into a mid-size city. But sometimes you try male, you try female, you try different kinds of nonbinary and it only makes you realize that something still doesn’t quite fit, something fundamental....

SlipstreamTrans IdentityHopeful

Content warnings 2

racismviolence

FORM 8774-D

Alex Irvine Tor.com 2023 Novelette Superheroes 9,406 words

It’s just business as usual at the Bureau of Metahuman, Mutant, and Occult Affairs until an employee for the government agency begins to wonder if work is following her home…

Superhero FictionCorporate PowerSardonic

Headhunting

Rich Larson Tor.com 2023 Novelette Dark Fantasy 8,291 words

A private eye plagued by hallucinations is hired to retrieve a mummified monk’s head stolen from a cathedral–but why would someone want it?

HorrorGuiltDarkly Comic

Content warnings 2

body-horrorviolence

Muna in Barish

Isha Karki Lightspeed 2023 Novelette Fantasy 7,971 words

"Muna shuts the storeroom door as quietly as she can. Holding a just-waxed bundle of letters to her chest, she sticks out her head to check the bookshop floor. If she walks between the shelves on the far right, she can slip out unnoticed in ten heartbeats....

Secondary World FantasyDiasporaSlow Burn

Quantum Love

Sylvia Heike Flash Fiction Online 2023 ShortStory 996 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

AI FictionArtificial IntelligenceWhimsical

Somewhere, It's About to Be Spring

Samantha Murray Clarkesworld 2023 ShortStory Science Fiction 3,180 words

"Lacuna knew winter. Winter was the vast distances between the stars. Winter was the cold of space. You couldn’t measure cold; it was not a thing in itself. It was only the absence of heat. As darkness was only an absence of light. Yet both of these—the...

AI FictionAI PersonhoodDeep Space

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

Spinning Shadow

Margaret Ronald BCS 2023 ShortStory Fantasy 4,949 words

"Tarma had only just begun the Widow Fenton’s flax when the Shadow Undying rose once more. At first she thought that the shutter on the upper window must have come unwedged, since the light shouldn’t have failed so early in the day. But the unholy chanting...

Social SatireRedemptionDarkly Comic

Content warnings 1

death

The Passing of the Dragon

Ken Liu Tor.com 2023 Novelette Urban Fantasy 11,508 words

A woman who fears she’s failing as a painter and as an artist seeks inspiration from one of her favorite poets and finds something even more wondrous, but also more impossible to capture on canvas…

Contemporary FantasyArt And CreationNew York City

The Spoil Heap

Fiona Moore Clarkesworld 2023 ShortStory Post-Collapse 6,640 words

"Up on the spoil heap Morag found a robot. This wasn’t that unusual in and of itself. She was always finding them, or parts of them anyway, frozen in contorted attitudes like dinosaur fossils, plastic housing cracked and aluminum limbs splayed. What was...

Social SFAI PersonhoodRestrained

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Where the God-Knives Tread

A.L. Goldfuss Lightspeed 2023 Novelette Science Fiction 16,000 words

"When the ship’s scanners first chirped in the dead of night, Sien figured it was another misfire: light reflecting off asteroid ice, solar radiation, space dust. But xe still slid from xir berth into the chilly, cramped cockpit, eyes bleary as xe ran the...

Space OperaCorporate PowerVisceral

Content warnings 3

body-horrordeathviolence

Your Great Mother Across the Salt Sea

Kelsey Hutton BCS 2023 Novelette Fantasy 8,695 words

"Kwayask nātohta. Listen carefully. There once was a woman who sewed clothes so powerful they made you become the person you needed to be. Children’s feet wrapped in her flower-beaded moccasins never stumbled. Otipēyimisowak orators, backs held straight by...

Historical FantasyDiasporaHistorical Europe

Clay

Isabel J. Kim BCS 2022 ShortStory Fantasy 6,020 words

"Modern bodies are made in large quantities. Factories line the edge of the Fissure Basin. Workers scoop sand and mud into large churning vats, feeding extruders that empty into molds in the standard shapes. Factory supervisors smooth out imperfections and...

Secondary World FantasyArt And CreationSlow Burn

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

In Mercy, Rain

Seanan McGuire Tor.com 2022 Novelette Fantasy 9,263 words

Jack Wolcott was only twelve years old when she and her twin sister Jill, descended the impossible staircase and found herself in the Moors, a world of drowned gods and repugnant royals. After abandoning her sister to a vampire lord, and under the tutelage...

Secondary World FantasyMentorshipTender

Content warnings 1

death

Last Stand of the E. 12th St. Pirates

L.D. Lewis Lightspeed 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,075 words

"There was only one freight car down the wall into the Flood District, and it was shared by all bulk service providers who came bearing gifts: maintenance workers, solar installers, grocery and package delivery, and the like. A bing-bong meant another...

Near FutureCorporate PowerNew York City

The Cheesemaker and the Undying King

Lina Rather Lightspeed 2022 ShortStory Fantasy 6,552 words

"Tana was in a humid cave checking the rind on a round of Tomme when the messenger arrived to tell her that the war was lost and her wife was to be hanged. She took her time rewrapping the cheese before she responded. Still too soft. Another week, she...

Secondary World FantasyRevengeSlow Burn

Content warnings 3

body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one

The Long View

Susan Palwick Tor.com 2022 ShortStory Fantasy 7,036 words

A university student seeks special accommodations for her new support animal, causing havoc all around her.

Social SatireMentorshipDarkly Comic

Content warnings 1

animal-harm

The Massage Lady at Munjeong Road Bathhouse

Isabel J. Kim Clarkesworld 2022 ShortStory Fantasy 4,660 words

"Jinah stands in her old underwear and scrapes the future from women’s skin. Their scales fall to the floor. The women sit up scoured red and smooth. The scales are impossible to see unless you’ve learned how to look, but impossible to miss once you’ve...

Magical RealismMotherhoodRestrained

Bathymetry

Lorraine Wilson Strange Horizons 2021 ShortStory Fantasy 3,223 words

Fear was already on the street waiting for her. Tulaya had seen this purge-and-nightmare Manifest before in Fatih, tagging the footsteps of an old man in the spice market with its shadow like claws.

SlipstreamDiasporaDefiant

Content warnings 1

death

Bones in It

Kristina Ten Lightspeed 2021 ShortStory Fantasy 4,337 words

"Besides the vedma who lived behind the stove in steam room three, the banya in Grand Lake Plaza was the same as any other budget day spa on Chicago’s West Side. It had deep-tissue massages and signature facials, plus day passes for the communal baths and...

Folk HorrorRevengeSardonic

Content warnings 3

abusesexual-violenceviolence

Complete Exhaustion of the Organism

Rich Larson Lightspeed 2021 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,115 words

"It’s not a real baby,” Jain says flatly. “And we should kill it.” Another sunless morning in the Waste. She and Stromile have woken up to a gift: a canister of pepto-pink fluid with an infant inside it. The tiny figure is chubby and squirmy and perfect,...

DystopiaBodily AutonomyPost Apocalyptic

Content warnings 3

deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence

He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars

Grace Chan Clarkesworld 2021 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,279 words

"Yennie glanced out the window. An ice storm, a froth of glassy dust, was blowing in over the bone-colored hills. He was on Enceladus; his therapist was on Mars. He wanted to describe how sometimes his body felt hollow, and other times he felt his skin...

BiopunkCorporate PowerHopeful

Little Animals

Nancy Kress Clarkesworld 2021 Novelette Time Travel 8,700 words

"I’ve got a signal,” Cora said. “Elena, come look!” I rushed to Cora’s bank of computers. For six long, working-into-the-evening days, we’d gotten only the faintest of quantum signals, nothing usable. Our grant only gave us three weeks on the TU Delft...

Near FutureMotherhoodHistorical Europe

Content warnings 2

deathsuicide

Masquerade Season

'Pemi Aguda Tor.com 2021 ShortStory Contemporary Fantasy 3,923 words

Pauly is a good son. When he brings home three beautiful Masquerades, he’s expecting that his mother will be proud of him. But when his mother begins asking favors of his Masquerades, he realizes that being a good son sometimes means disobeying.

Contemporary FantasyMotherhoodWest Africa

Questions Asked in the Belly of the World

A.T. Greenblatt Tor.com 2021 Novelette Science Fiction 9,310 words

For the residents of this mycological ecosystem, creating art feeds the World around you and requires working in harmony with your inner voice. When one artist’s voice begins screaming, he’s forced to travel farther than he ever has before to reconcile...

BiopunkArt And CreationSlow Burn

Exile's End

Carolyn Ives Gilman Tor.com 2020 Novelette Science Fiction 13,385 words

Exile’s End is a complex, sometimes uncomfortable examination of artifact repatriation and cultural appropriation. An artifact of indescribable and irreplaceable beauty created by an “extinct” culture has been the basis of another culture’s origin stories....

Diaspora SFDiasporaPhilosophical

Slipping the Leash

Dan Micklethwaite PodCastle 2020 ShortStory 1,698 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Psychological HorrorGuiltHistorical USA

Content warnings 2

body-horrorwar

The Hummingbird Temple

C.C. Finlay BCS 2020 Novelette Silkpunk 14,968 words

When the Dynast dies, his daughter Lin flees before her older siblings can kill her. She has a place of safety in mind, but she’s never been there herself and needs help to get in.

Secondary World FantasyPolitical ResistanceHopeful

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

To Sail the Black

A.C. Wise Clarkesworld 2020 Novelette Science Fiction 8,116 words

"The ghost ship Xanthic Promise sails the black, powered by the slumbering heart of a dying star. And its captain, Antimony Jones, stalks its decks in a swirl of crimson coat and fox fire lighting, dogged by voices. The recent dead, the long dead, and the...

Science FantasyColonialismDefiant

Content warnings 3

body-horrordeathviolence

A Handful of Sky

Elly Bangs BCS 2019 Novelette Dark Fantasy 8,299 words

Jorren gets a dangerous commission for magical clothes. One that might let her recover much of what she lost when she fell out of favor decades ago, but only if she can figure it out. And survive it.

Secondary World FantasyArt And CreationDefiant

A Time to Reap

Elizabeth Bear Uncanny 2019 Novella Time Travel 25,026 words

In 2028, Kitty has a role in a play about a mass murder committed in 1978, but when she visits the setting of the crime, she’ll pulled into the past right before the crimes take place.

Near FutureMentorshipHistorical USA

Content warnings 3

abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence

Beyond the El

John Chu Tor.com 2019 ShortStory Modern Fantasy 5,989 words

Connor works at a restaurant in New York where he has a magical touch with food (literally). Problems with his family keep interfering with his career, though.

Magical RealismQueer IdentitySlow Burn

Canst Thou Draw Out the Leviathan

Christopher Caldwell Uncanny 2019 ShortStory Historical Fantasy 5,655 words

The carpenter on a Nantucket whaler hears a dreadful warning from an African god his ancestors once called upon when they were taken into slavery. But will anyone listen to him?

Folk HorrorRacismHistorical USA

Content warnings 2

deathracism

Dune Song

Suyi Davies Okungbowa Apex 2019 ShortStory Post Apocalypse 4,600 words ♪ audio

Isiuwa survived the apocalypse, and its people live on in the middle of a desert. The chief says leaving means certain death, but Nata thinks he’s lying.

DystopiaColonialismWest Africa

Content warnings 1

violence

On the Lonely Shore

Silvia Moreno-Garcia Uncanny 2019 ShortStory Historical Fantasy 3,496 words

Judith takes a job as companion to a young man who appears to be terminally ill and has retired to a family estate by the sea.

Fairy Tale RetellingBodily AutonomyHistorical Europe

On the Shores of Ligeia

Carolyn Ives Gilman Lightspeed 2019 ShortStory SF Adventure 7,214 words

When Seth’s boss breaks her leg, he’s called in at the last minute to narrate the live feed from the Titan probe.

First ContactColonialismHopeful

Song Xiuyun

A Que Clarkesworld 2019 Novelette SF Adventure 10,199 words

An old woman travels to Beijing to find out what’s wrong with her son, and she relates her story to a taxi driver on the way home.

AI FictionDiasporaWarm

The Sun from Both Sides

R.S.A. Garcia Clarkesworld 2019 Novelette Space Opera 16,497 words

Eva and Didecus lived together happily in exile on an obscure planet, but they were important people once, and the universe has a way of coming looking for important people—even when they thought they were retired.

Space OperaQueer IdentitySlow Burn

Content warnings 2

deathslavery

A Bond as Deep as Starlit Seas

Sarah Grey Lightspeed 2018 ShortStory SF Adventure 6,920 words

Jeri’s ready to trade her old spaceship for a new, more efficient model, but she loved her old ship and wants to be sure she doesn’t end up scrapped for parts.

Space OperaCorporate PowerSlow Burn

Content warnings 1

violence

A Cigarette Burn In Your Memory

Bo Balder Clarkesworld 2018 ShortStory Apocalypse 4,221 words

After memory-loss plague strikes the world, Gouda helps clients track missing family members they can barely remember—even though she can’t even remember her own last name.

First ContactColonialismAmbiguous Ending

Chasing the Start

Evan Marcroft Strange Horizons 2018 Novelette SF Sports 8,455 words

Sa races in dangerous places throughout time and space, but she’s getting old, the challengers are ruthless, and there are a lot of ways to get hurt in this sport.

Near FutureMentorshipHistorical Europe

Flow

Marissa Lingen Fireside 2018 ShortStory 2,955 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Contemporary FantasyDisabilityHopeful

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

Penitents

Rich Larson BCS 2018 ShortStory Post-Apocalypse 6,374 words

Mara has made a deal with a scavenger girl to help her rescue her best friend, who left the underground habitat to try to talk to the aliens and never came back.

Science FantasyColonialismPost Apocalyptic

Content warnings 2

body-horrorviolence

The Emotionless, in Love

Jason Sanford BCS 2018 Novella Post Apocalypse 28,352 words

Ancient nanotech controls a few humans to enforce harsh anti-technology rules on a reluctant population. Colton escaped its control at the cost of losing all emotion, and he struggles to be accepted by a caravan that’s trying to evade some of the restrictions.

Science FantasyFound FamilySlow Burn

Content warnings 3

deathviolencewar

The Sweetness of Honey and Rot

A. Merc Rustad BCS 2018 Novelette High Fantasy Horror 8,915 words

The Life Tree protects the villagers, at the price of human sacrifices. When it takes Jiteh’s brother, she starts looking for ways to escape.

Secondary World FantasyMotherhoodDefiant

Content warnings 3

body-horrorchild-deathdeath

Neptune's Trident

Nina Allan Clarkesworld 2017 Novelette Post-Apocalypse 14,011 words

The world is gradually being destroyed by what seems like an alien plague that attacks people and software alike. Caitlin lives in a seaside Scottish town, nursing her dying lover.

SlipstreamQueer IdentityIntertextual

Content warnings 2

death-of-a-loved-oneviolence

Something Happened Here, But We're Not Quite Sure What It Was

Paul McAuley Tor.com 2016 ShortStory Hard SF 6,013 words

On the planet First Foot, the small town of Joe's Corner faces conflict over building a radio telescope close to local alien artifacts.

First ContactArtificial IntelligenceRestrained

Unauthorized Access

An Owomoyela Lightspeed 2016 Novelette Hacker SF 10,213 words

Fresh out of prison for hacking, Aedo gets a request to do an even bigger hack. But why does Energy Davison want to hack its own systems?

CyberpunkCorporate PowerDefiant

In Blue Lily's Wake

Aliette de Bodard Meeting Infinity 2015 ShortStory Space Opera 7,200 words

Eleven years ago, the Blue-Lily plague devastated the Empire. Now Yen Oanh attends to unfinished business with a dead mind-ship and a living survivor.

Space OperaTraumaSlow Burn

Content warnings 3

deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic

Snow

Dale Bailey Nightmare 2015 ShortStory 4,656 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Psychological HorrorTraumaBleak

Content warnings 4

deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicviolence

The Empress in Her Glory

Robert Reed Clarkesworld 2015 ShortStory 6,996 words

Aliens decide to rule the Earth indirectly, picking a middle-aged woman from an insurance company to be their intermediary.

First ContactMotherhoodRestrained

Content warnings 2

deathsuicide

An Even Greater Cold to Come

Rich Larson Clarkesworld 2025 ShortStory Science Fiction 3,600 words

"It’s cruel of the soldiers to come when Mama is so sick and so pregnant. I tell this to Dijkstra, and she agrees. Then she goes to Mama and clambers into her lap, which is now too small to hold me and almost too small to hold Dijkstra, and says it in a...

BiopunkWarPost Apocalyptic

Content warnings 3

body-horrorchild-deathviolence

Chickenfoot Soup

Marika Bailey Lightspeed 2025 Novelette Fantasy 7,562 words

"A scream rises from the bush. One last call to the living: a warning of pain. Katarina’s heard that same sound more times than she’s had hot dinners but still a ribbon of unease unfurls in her gut. She sets her cleaver down for a moment, shifting from one...

Fairy Tale RetellingMotherhoodCaribbean

Content warnings 3

child-abusedeathviolence

Emily of Emerald Starship

Ng Yi-Sheng Clarkesworld 2025 ShortStory Science Fiction 3,860 words

"He told me his mother was a spacecraft. We had just made love, and our bodies were spent and sweat-slicked, the scent of our seed mingling in the stables with the sweet musk of the drowsing horses. Our lids were heavy, but his muscles grew tense in my...

Diaspora SFColonialismIntertextual

Content warnings 1

death

Imperfect Simulations

Michelle Z. Jin Clarkesworld 2025 ShortStory Science Fiction 3,430 words

"The kids like Luzhanqi because it’s a non-perfect strategy game: a bridge as they make their way onto bigger, more serious things, like chess and Go. It’s something that even the most incompetent of them could hope to win. Sometimes you just get lucky....

Social SFColonialismRestrained

Pollen

Anna Burdenko Clarkesworld 2025 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,330 words

"Even after Uncle Sulim died, he remained occasionally intolerable. “Did you check the pollen count inside the base?” “Yes, it’s at the higher limit of the acceptable range. Within two basis points.” Nika’s response was almost devoid of irritation. “I’ll...

First ContactMotherhoodIntrospective

Content warnings 2

deathdeath-of-a-loved-one

Shadow Jack

C.L. Hellisen GigaNotoSaurus 2025 Novelette 12,999 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Psychological HorrorQueer IdentityDread

Content warnings 3

body-horrorgoresuicide

Welcome to Kearney

Gary Kloster Clarkesworld 2025 Novelette Science Fiction 9,110 words

"Ms. Otter came to Kearney when the day was dying, and her shadow ran down the broken road ahead of her like a line of bad luck. Jeremiah saw it when he paused to get a drink, his stained hands leaving brown fingerprints on his canteen. It was hot—all the...

AI FictionAI PersonhoodRestrained

With Only a Razor Between

Martin Cahill Reactor 2025 Novelette Dark Fantasy 8,600 words

Barber Gio Monsargo has learned to stay quiet and keep his head down, offering shaves and haircuts, not political opinions. But when a high-ranking military official of the Empire begins visiting his shop, Gio finds himself tested in ways he could never imagine.

Secondary World FantasyColonialismDefiant

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Also, the Cat

Rachel Swirsky Reactor 2024 Novelette Fantasy 13,842 words

Even death is no match for a trio of elderly, stubborn, ever-sparring sisters, who refuse to rest in peace while their grudges live on…

SlipstreamSisterhoodDarkly Comic

Content warnings 2

deathdeath-of-a-loved-one

Broken

Laura Williams McCaffrey Clarkesworld 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,860 words

"Flyer 247-3 hasn’t flown in five days. In these five days, she has become accustomed to the hum and whine of the air filtration system cranked to its highest setting. She has become accustomed to her cell, four paces long, four paces wide. Its lack of...

Near FutureClass InequalityPost Apocalyptic

Liminal Spaces

Maureen F. McHugh Reactor 2024 ShortStory Fantasy 6,918 words

An engineer who frequently travels for her job, suddenly finds herself in airports other than the one she arrived in…

SlipstreamFreedomRestrained Prose

Scarlett

Everdeen Mason Lightspeed 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,882 words

"Scarlett’s eyes had to be perfect. Jon was the artist who’d made her, so it bothered him to think that so much of Scarlett would be crafted by other people. Scarlett’s limbs were carved from silicon polymer and coated in a soft synthetic skin from the...

Psychological HorrorAI PersonhoodAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 3

body-horrorsexual-contentviolence

The Alice Run

Nancy Kress Reactor 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 7,255 words

A comatose patient undergoes an experimental procedure that uses favorite childhood stories to pull the patient back into consciousness—but the experiment doesn’t go quite as planned…

SlipstreamPolitical ResistanceIntertextual

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Those Who Smuggle Themselves Into Slivermoon

Varsha Dinesh Strange Horizons 2024 Novelette Science Fantasy 7,963 words

"In his early days in slivermoon, Saki worked the phone lines. Companies in slivermoon stressed in prestige magazines and press releases that it was too hard for them to employ bodies. Bodies were expensive to sustain. Bodies needed food, warmth, and...

CyberpunkDiasporaDark

3.2 Kwong's Bath by Angela Liu

Angela Liu khōréō 2023 ShortStory 3,500 words ♪ audio

In "Kwong's Bath" by Angela Liu, Kwong is visited by the ghosts of the people she has trouble letting go. Copyright khōréō magazine 2023. Story by Angela Liu, edited by Sachiko Ragosta. Audio edition read by Lauren Kong, with casting and production by...

DystopiaClass InequalityTender

Content warnings 3

death-of-a-loved-oneself-harmsuicide

Park's All-Night Ramyun and Snack Emporium

Seoung Kim Cast of Wonders 2023 ShortStory 2,720 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Contemporary FantasyQueer IdentityNew York City

The Ghasts

Lavie Tidhar Uncanny 2023 ShortStory Fantasy 4,932 words

"The little girl was blonde and had very blue eyes. She stood on the steps to the house and stared at Mara without expression. “It lives in the closet,” the little girl said. “Klara…” her father said. He looked apologetically at Mara. “Please,” he said....

Contemporary FantasyTraumaSlow Burn

The Librarian and the Robot

Shi Heiyao Clarkesworld 2023 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,080 words

"One day, the Curator salvaged a robot. It was a model ST-19, a military machine, designed for search and destroy missions. The Curator found it outside in a knee-deep snowdrift. The robot’s ship had crashed into a hill two kilometers away, the explosion...

AI FictionMentorshipPost Apocalyptic

Content warnings 1

death

To Sail Beyond the Botnet

Suzanne Palmer Clarkesworld 2023 Novella Science Fiction 21,920 words

"I have been activated, therefore I have a purpose, Bot 9 thought. I have a purpose, therefore I serve. It had a lengthy list of Mantra subroutine sets to run after its usual initialization check, and it noted the addition of even more since its last...

First ContactAI PersonhoodHopeful

Upgrade Day

RJ Taylor Clarkesworld 2023 ShortStory Science Fiction 2,080 words

"Today is upgrade day and Gabriel, a model 2098 post-human intelligence robotic service assistant, wears an appropriately festive hat. The perfect cone of polka-dotted purple paper slopes to one side of his head, his glossy plastic surface giving the weak...

AI FictionMortalityTender

What Remains, the Echoes of a Flute Song

Alexandra Seidel Clarkesworld 2023 ShortStory Post-Apocalypse 4,850 words

"The flutist peered over the ridge ahead of them. Wreathed in the sheerest cloth of fog, a city rotted. It was not a big city, maybe a town, maybe a village. The flutist was not of that age of plenty where plentiful things had names and could be easily...

SlipstreamConsciousnessAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 2

death-of-a-loved-onesuicide

An Expression of Silence

Beth Goder Clarkesworld 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,430 words

"The last nectarine from the spaceship glistens in Riley’s palm, an imperfect globe smelling like summer. She nestles among the blue-tinted ferns of Ekara C, cupping the nectarine like a tiny sun. The first bite is primal, her mouth swollen with juice that...

First ContactFriendshipSlow Burn

Arbitrium

Anjali Sachdeva Tor.com 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,078 words

Vashti is a pathogenic diplomat—an ambassador to the world of viruses, whom she communicates with through a machine that can translate their chemical signals into images, tastes, smells, sounds, and memories. She begins a negotiation between the US...

BiopunkColonialismSlow Burn

Content warnings 2

deathillness-and-pandemic

Company Town

Aimee Ogden Clarkesworld 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,930 words

"The company alarm sends Cass flailing out of bed with its first chime. If she lingers under the blankets, she’ll disturb Maya: if she doesn’t get up before the second alarm, the volume ratchets up to eighty decibels, and the smart thermostat will crank up...

SlipstreamCorporate PowerSlow Burn

Critical Mass

Peter Watts Lightspeed 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 6,728 words

"Leo Gregory is losing altitude. He coasts on the thermals of a legacy fading behind him: a documentary here, a retrospective there, some greatest-hits collection down in the corner for the dilettantes. Oh, the work has lost none of its grandeur: his...

Near FutureFatherhoodSlow Burn

Content warnings 1

illness-and-pandemic

Gamma

Oskar Källner Clarkesworld 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 7,180 words

"Gamma stretched out through the quantum foam. Virtual photons and electrons tickled her subtime body. If she were to reduce her mass to pure quanta then, hypothetically speaking, she would be able to touch the entire universe at once. Practically...

AI FictionAI PersonhoodPhilosophical

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Kings and Popes and Saints

Jon Hansen Apex 2022 ShortStory Fantasy 2,881 words

"Patricia could hear them gathered on her front porch, the kings and popes and saints, gossiping and chattering and generally having a good time. She turned. King Solomon lay sprawled across the bed like it was his golden throne. He raised his head to...

Folk HorrorMemoryWhimsical

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

On the Sunlit Side of Venus

Benjamin Parzybok Apex 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 7,092 words

"She laid in bed and stared at the bottom of the bunk above her, riddled as it was with sticker and tape residue, which was stubborn as piss. The human race could contrive to send her to Venus, but it had not been clever enough to figure out how to remove...

Near FutureFriendshipSlow Burn

Content warnings 2

deathsuicide

Schlafstunde

Lavie Tidhar Apex 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction Mystery 6,294 words

"There was a shop in old Haifa that specialised in Treif artefacts, so that was where Mili went first. Haifa sprawled along the side of Mount Carmel. Successive waves of regeneration didn’t do much to change it. Now adaptoplant buildings sprouted like...

Social SFGuiltIntrospective

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Singing the Ancient Out of the Dark

R.J. Theodore & Maurice Broaddus Lightspeed 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction Mystery 4,095 words

"A small asteroid swerved in a most un-asteroid-like way and pierced the hull of the archivist’s ship, as though it was determined to drive her away. But she was just getting started. She slammed the emergency foam release button, holding her breath even...

Science FantasyArt And CreationEpistolary Adjacent

Content warnings 1

illness-and-pandemic

Skeleton Song

Seanan McGuire Tor.com 2022 ShortStory Dark Fantasy 5,024 words

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions—slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else. Adventures are always interesting, but they’re...

Fairy Tale RetellingFound FamilyTender

The Miraculous Account of Khaja Bairaq, Pennant-Saint of Zabel

Tanvir Ahmed Strange Horizons 2022 ShortStory Fantasy 5,419 words

"The narrators of histories and tellers of tales relate that, in the God-guarded town of Qalati Zabel, there was once a holy woman with a mind to rebel. Her name was Bibi Siti, and she had come to Zabel from her native country to the west. Some believe she...

Historical FantasyColonialismIntertextual

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

The Pigeon Keeper's Daughter

Su-Yee Lin Strange Horizons 2022 ShortStory Fantasy 6,907 words

"It is in the summer, during the monsoon season in Taipei, when the pigeon keeper’s daughter moves into the apartment on the top floor of a building on an alleyway in Wenshan District. From her window, she sees not only Taipei 101 in the distance with...

Contemporary FantasyPolitical ResistanceSlow Burn

A Stranger Goes Ashore

Adam R. Shannon BCS 2021 ShortStory Fantasy 6,722 words

"There had to be other islands capable of supporting human settlements, Alain told himself. Life should be possible beyond the shores of Heora. That was the article of faith that drove all Exploration. They simply haven't sailed far enough to find a new...

Science FantasyColonialismElegiac

Content warnings 2

body-horrordeath

Mishpokhe and Ash

Sydney Rossman-Reich Apex 2021 ShortStory Alternate History 4,615 words

"When Golem opened her eyes for the first time, she saw Magda. “You are Golem,” Magda whispered, her oil-stained fingers prodding Golem’s metal joints. “Golem,” the machine repeated, the rust along the two half-tin cans forming her jaw chipping onto...

Historical FantasyRacismHistorical Europe

Content warnings 3

deathviolencewar

Poubelle

Robert Reed Clarkesworld 2021 ShortStory Science Fiction 6,295 words

"Security AIs heard whimpering, diagnosed the source, then alerted the rest of the household. A baby moggie had fallen inside one of the nearby recycling hubs. Of course the children hurried outside to see, and being noble souls, they dragged the...

Social SFColonialismSardonic

The Captain and the Quartermaster

C.L. Clark BCS 2021 ShortStory Fantasy 5,968 words

"Commander Maeb Len knows that, more than anything, an army needs hope in order to struggle onward. They need a vision to fight for and faith that the future will be better than the past. Better than the present. The People’s Army itself is one such hope....

Secondary World FantasyFriendshipSlow Burn

Content warnings 2

deathwar

The Equations of the Dead

An Owomoyela Lightspeed 2021 Novelette Science Fiction 9,904 words

"The boyo working the transmitter doesn’t look like much, except his face is radiant. Radiant, like one of those pooka upworld adverts for neural templates. Dopamine-druggy, but lucid. Like he’s in love. Boyo also looks like he hasn’t spoken to a human in...

AI FictionArtificial IntelligencePhilosophical

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

The Incorruptible World

Anjali Sachdeva Lightspeed 2021 Novelette Science Fiction 10,646 words

"That first autumn it felt as if the whole world had been made for them—which, of course, it had. They walked down the avenue of oaks that reached above their heads like Gothic arches, red leaves drifting lazily down to collect at their feet. Ashwin was...

Near FutureClass InequalityRestrained

Content warnings 3

deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide

The karyōbinga sings to Jiro

Ryu Ando Strange Horizons 2021 ShortStory Fantasy 1,292 words

"The egg must have hatched overnight, though he could see no sign of a hatchling anywhere. Only empty shell bits remained, strewn here and there across the tatami."

Contemporary FantasyArt And CreationSlow Burn

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

You Are Born Exploding

Rich Larson Clarkesworld 2021 Novelette Science Fiction 14,130 words

"When Elisabeth takes the baby to the beach on Thursday afternoon, another shambler has got through the fence. “Stay ten meters back,” the guard says, his translucent face mask fogged with the heat. “Yes, yes,” Elisabeth says. “And the child. Ten meters.”...

BiopunkMotherhoodIntrospective

Content warnings 2

child-deathdeath

68:Hazard:Cold

Janelle C. Shane Strange Horizons 2020 ShortStory First Contact 6,016 words

An escaped droid with a downloaded human mind crashes on a hostile planet, where she finds an alien artifact and desperately tries to convince it to help her.

First ContactPolitical ResistanceHopeful

Berlin Is Never Berlin

Marko Kloos Tor.com 2020 Novelette Superhero 17,389 words

Babysitting/bodyguarding a group of rich kids should be easy money, especially for a tough joker-ace like Khan—provided he doesn’t end up killing them himself.

Superhero FictionFatherhoodIntrospective

Content warnings 1

violence

Callme and Mink

Brenda Cooper Clarkesworld 2020 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,324 words

"Callme curled with her back to the corner and watched Julie’s every precise move. The old border collie often knew more about their surroundings than Julie, and so Julie trusted her to help guard. This morning, Callme’s ears pricked forward in benign...

AI FictionAI PersonhoodRestrained

Deep in the Drift, Spinning

Lisa L. Hannett BCS 2020 ShortStory Fantasy 5,533 words

"A pause only Winnifletch herself notices, a twinge in her guts as she unsacks the gull that Gert Mews has lugged to her sea-spindle shack. Dazed but not dead, the bird crawks down onto her workbench. Think of shearwater honey, Winni tells herself, with...

Folk HorrorTrans IdentityElegiac

Content warnings 1

animal-harm

One Hand in the Coffin

Justin C. Key Strange Horizons 2020 Novelette Horror 9,765 words

A child struggles with the loss of his big brother and his feelings that maybe things are better without him—and maybe he’s not really gone.

Psychological HorrorGuiltUnsettling

Content warnings 3

child-abusedeathdeath-of-a-loved-one

The Augur and the Girl Left at His Door

Greta Hayer BCS 2020 ShortStory High Fantasy 3,914 words

The Augur can tell your future just by studying the skin on your body. His prophecies are detailed, and he’s only been wrong once. But when he raises an orphan girl, he’s bothered that she wants to follow in his footsteps.

Secondary World FantasyMentorshipSlow Burn

Content warnings 2

deathdeath-of-a-loved-one

The Bottomless Martyr

John Wiswell Uncanny 2020 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,956 words

"The first time Rang died, it stopped a typhoon. The typhoon raged at the entire Orphan Cousin enclave. Torrents rolled in for hours, swallowing the harbor in foam and brine, dashing fishing trawlers against the shore. Storage houses were dragged into the...

Secondary World FantasyBodily AutonomyTender

Content warnings 3

deathself-harmsuicide

The Cat Lady and the Petitioner

Jennifer Hudak Translunar Travelers Lounge 2020 ShortStory 4,929 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Contemporary FantasyMentorshipWhimsical

The Nine Scents of Sorrow

Jordan Taylor Uncanny 2020 ShortStory Clockwork Fantasy 5,709 words

Sorrow Farregon is a master perfumer, but the Queen wants something to make her conceive a child—which is challenging when the King is a clockwork automaton.

Historical FantasyArt And CreationHistorical Europe

Content warnings 2

deathsuicide

Tower of Mud and Straw

Yaroslav Barsukov Metaphorosis 2020 Novella 37,079 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Science FantasyColonialismEpistolary Adjacent

Content warnings 2

violencewar

All In

Rajan Khanna Lightspeed 2019 Novelette Old-West Fantasy 9,961 words

Two men seeking a better understanding of the decks of magic cards they carry find trouble instead.

Secondary World FantasyRevengeIntrospective

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Blood, Bone, Seed, Spark

Aimee Ogden BCS 2019 Novelette High Fantasy Horror 9,732 words ♪ audio

Anell takes a job with a great house researching immortality, but she secretly works on her own research involving reproduction.

Science FantasyArt And CreationSlow Burn

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Fugue State

Steven Barnes & Tananarive Due Apex 2019 ShortStory Horror 5,501 words

As Charlotte’s husband sinks into early Alzheimer’s, he becomes more and more obsessed with a cult religious figure known only as The Reverend.

Psychological HorrorRacismDread

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

One Found in a World of the Lost

Shweta Adhyam BCS 2019 ShortStory Indian Post-Apocalypse Fantasy 6,979 words

In a hostile, ruined Earth, a teenage girl struggles with the consequences of the death of her twin sister.

Historical FantasySacrificeElegiac

Content warnings 3

deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence

Said of Angels

Eric Del Carlo Clarkesworld 2019 Novelette Space Opera 13,394 words

The Arch Hierophant of the Cooperation needs to handle the question of a dead prophet’s divinity, so he doesn’t need the distraction of dealing with an illegal civilization in a distant star system.

Space OperaFaithPhilosophical

The Thing, With Feathers

Marissa Lingen Uncanny 2019 ShortStory Post-Apocalyptic Modern Fantasy 5,999 words

Val leads an almost solitary life keeping the lighthouse at an inland lake. A man needing help with his magic interrupts her routine and brings unwelcome reminders of the life she lost.

SlipstreamFriendshipMidwest USA

Venus in Bloom

Lavie Tidhar Clarkesworld 2019 ShortStory SF Colony 2,524 words

A vignette about what happens on a Venerean cloud colony when an old man dies in his sleep and those who love him come to bid him farewell.

Social SFAI PersonhoodSlow Burn

Content warnings 1

death

Bringing Down the Sky

Alan Bao Clarkesworld 2018 Novelette Climate Dystopia 11,692 words

Two American men come to a town on the Tibetan plateau to see how they extract clean air from the high slopes that they can sell to the public.

DystopiaCorporate PowerSardonic

Gubbinal

Lavie Tidhar Clarkesworld 2018 ShortStory SF Adventure 4,224 words

Sahar makes a living in Titan gathering the products “Boppers” leave, but she joins a Titan-adapted person to hunt for a very special artifact, despite the danger from pirates.

Space OperaArt And CreationAmbiguous Ending

Harry and Marlowe and the Secret of Ahomana

Carrie Vaughn Lightspeed 2018 Novelette Steampunk Adventure 9,971 words

In a storm, in an alternate 1890s South Pacific, their airship crashes on a Pacific Island occupied by surprisingly high-tech natives.

Science FantasyColonialismHistorical Europe

Nitrate Nocturnes

Ruth Joffre Lightspeed 2018 Novelette Slipstream 7,608 words

Everyone has a timer on their wrists counting down the years, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds until they meet their soul mates. Fiona’s just 24, and her timer says she’ll have to wait 40 years. So what to do until then?

SlipstreamArt And CreationLyrical

Obliteration

Robert Reed Clarkesworld 2018 ShortStory Near-Future SF 4,971 words

Kleave’s life is upended when a freak accident disables all three of the archives where he stores copies of his experiences and memories.

Near FutureMemoryAmbiguous Ending

Salt Lines

Ian Muneshwar Strange Horizons 2018 ShortStory Horror 2,211 words

It’s been a long time since Ravi left Guyana, but he’s sure he recognizes a Jumbie, even in New York, where they don’t believe in evil spirits. And it’s following him.

Contemporary FantasyDiasporaNew York City

Content warnings 2

sexual-contentviolence

The Tragedy of Zayred the Splendid

Grace Seybold BCS 2018 Novelette Epic Fantasy 8,877 words

Zayred and Meiri used to be close friends and powerful magicians who could win battles through singing, but now they’re devoted to destroying each other’s reputation.

Secondary World FantasyFriendshipPhilosophical

Content warnings 2

deathwar

To Blight a Fig Tree Before It Bears Fruit

Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley Apex 2018 ShortStory SF Horror 1,490 words

Meshee is one of eight pregnant women whose babies are being auctioned off against their will.

BiopunkCorporate PowerDread

Content warnings 3

body-horrorpregnancy-lossviolence

I Have Been Drowned in Rain

Carrie Vaughn BCS 2017 ShortStory High Fantasy 3,417 words

Jared has almost brought the princess to safety, but he worries that Kat, the crazy women who accompanies them, might have betrayed them.

Secondary World FantasyTraumaIntrospective

Content warnings 2

sexual-violenceviolence

A Dead Djinn In Cairo

P. Djèlí Clark Tor.com 2016 Novelette Historical Fantasy 12,557 words

In 1912 Cairo, the police investigate the apparent murder of an immortal Djinn.

Historical FantasyColonialismHistorical Egypt

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Checkerboard Planet

Eleanor Arnason Clarkesworld 2016 Novelette SF 11,916 words

The AIs contract Lydia to check out an unusual planet and the secretive corporation that's supposed to be developing it.

First ContactArtificial IntelligencePhilosophical

Jonas And The Fox

Rich Larson Clarkesworld 2016 Novelette SF 8,593 words

Disguised in the body of a dead little boy, Fox needs to escape from the colony before the revolutionary leaders find him. But the boy's brother may be a problem.

Near FutureGuiltTense

Content warnings 1

death

Hold-Time Violations

John Chu Tor.com 2015 ShortStory 5,161 words

Ellie is trying to catch a train from Boston to DC so she can visit her ailing mother when her sister calls to tell her she needs to "go to the skunkworks and repair the physics of this universe."

Social SFMotherhoodIntrospective

Content warnings 1

illness-and-pandemic

The Smog Society

Chen Qiufan Lightspeed 2015 ShortStory 4,618 words

A lonely old Chinese man gets involved in the fight against smog--without government approval.

Near FutureArt And CreationRestrained

Content warnings 1

illness-and-pandemic

The Thyme Fiend

Jeffrey Ford Tor.com 2015 Novelette 13,911 words

In 1915 Ohio, 14-year-old Emmett's night terrors get worse after he finds a dead body in an abandoned well.

Folk HorrorGuiltMidwest USA

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Death Echoes Overlapping

Megan Chee Lightspeed 2026 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,869 words

"On the necropolis space station of the Tau Andromeda planetary system, the keepers of the tomb attended to the dead and the dying. They cleansed, prepared, and prayed over the bodies. They performed the last rites, paying intricate attention to the...

DystopiaConsciousnessPhilosophical

Content warnings 1

death

Espie Droger Dreams of War

Matthew Kressel Lightspeed 2026 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,299 words

Espie Droger dreams of war. What else can he dream of? There is nothing left. He has dreamed of world travel and expensive Scotch and lithe young women and sudden uncontrollable laughter. But his vitality has seeped from him like fluid from a dying tree....

DystopiaGuiltBleak

Content warnings 3

deathillness-and-pandemicwar

Mother, Darling

Allison Pottern Strange Horizons 2026 Novelette Fantasy 12,566 words

"Wendy knew it wouldn’t be long now before her daughter was taken. She had put the idea from her mind as long as she could, but now Jane was days away from turning thirteen. From the window of the nursery, Wendy saw Jane wobbling her way down Kensington...

Fairy Tale RetellingMotherhoodHistorical Europe

Content warnings 3

death-of-a-loved-oneviolencewar

5.1 möbius loop by Samir Sirk Morató

Samir Sirk Morató khōréō 2025 ShortStory 4,900 words ♪ audio

A traumatized time traveler keeps traveling back to his past to punish his younger self. Over multiple loops, he learns to forgive himself. Copyright khōréō magazine 2025. Story by Samir Sirk Morató, edited by Danai Christopoulou. Audio edition read by...

Near FutureQueer IdentityBleak

Content warnings 3

child-abuseself-harmviolence

A Charm to Keep the Evil Eye Away From Your Campervan; or, Roamin' Rights

Christopher R. Muscato Strange Horizons 2025 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,522 words

"Carlo checked his rearview mirror, gravel flying as he tore over the road. He didn’t know why the Cappelli Verdi were after the woman in the back of his van, clutching a hemp blanket around her shoulders. All he knew was that he needed to get out of town,...

DystopiaCorporate PowerHopeful

A Week at the Raven Feather Salon

Carrie Vaughn Lightspeed 2025 ShortStory Fantasy 6,637 words

"Sparrow retired from the battlefield at the height of her powers and couldn’t be persuaded to change her mind. She was done with fighting, armies, blood, death, and taking orders. Now, she ran a salon at the edge of Florelia, Tira City’s entertainment district."

Secondary World FantasyMentorshipSlow Burn

Content warnings 1

war

After the Invasion of the Bug-Eyed Aliens

Rachel Swirsky Reactor 2025 Novelette Science Fiction 9,750 words

Two ex-military nurses, one human and one alien, share a friendship in a city following an alien invasion.

First ContactRacismTender

Content warnings 3

racismviolencewar

Bloody Muddy Water

Jonathan Louis Duckworth BCS 2025 Novelette Fantasy 11,958 words

"Blackheel Lysha put down a fine table of grub for breakfast: pinky beans, cornbread, boiled shellbird eggs, roast marsh hen legs, and a gooey gumbo of okra and sweetcrab. And what a nice longhouse too, with rare glass windows to keep all the nasty sooty...

Southern GothicCorporate PowerSardonic

Content warnings 3

deathillness-and-pandemicviolence

Dekar Druid and the Infinite Library

Cadwell Turnbull Lightspeed 2025 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,083 words

"Dekar Druid lives in an infinite library. Besides Ebizenum, who is in a special category of their own, he is the only living person in the library’s single tower. Outside, a forest surrounds the tower. There’s a lake a short walk to the north and a peak...

MetafictionalAI PersonhoodPhilosophical

Drosera regina

A.L. Goldfuss Lightspeed 2025 ShortStory Fantasy 6,469 words

"The men knew before she did. Before this boy, before sophomore year, before even her twelfth birthday, they had jostled her on the sidewalk and hooted from cars, searching for something just past her skin. But now, with her panties stripped off and the...

Psychological HorrorRevengeBleak

Content warnings 3

goresexual-violenceviolence

Elegy for Zephyr One

Gene Doucette Lightspeed 2025 Novelette Science Fiction 8,142 words

"Post-flight debrief. Subject: Michael Ackine, of the Astronomic Endeavors cargo ship, Zephyr One. Introductory notes: Mr. Ackine is the only survivor of the Zephyr’s maiden voyage. Z-One landed safely, five Earth days overdue and two kilometers from...

Psychological HorrorArtificial IntelligenceEpistolary Adjacent

Content warnings 3

deathgoreviolence

Everyone Hates the Auditor

Megan Chee Lightspeed 2025 ShortStory Science Fiction 3,558 words

"Attention, please,” the Manager says over the office intercom. “The Auditor’s shuttle is scheduled to dock in one hour. I repeat, one hour. Warehouse staff, please ensure that all inventory is in place.”

Social SatireCorporate PowerSatirical

Eyes Grown Thick on the World

Will McMahon Lightspeed 2025 ShortStory Fantasy 942 words

"The city of Nan Rhok stands on the ridge of a great mountain, where a gullet of steaming water flows from volcanic hot springs. The ridge is narrow and the mountain chill, so the city hews close to the spring, building high its granite towers. The name of...

Secondary World FantasyFatherhoodRestrained Prose

Content warnings 2

child-deathdeath

If an Algorithm Can Cast a Shadow

Claire Jia-Wen Clarkesworld 2025 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,040 words

"Oscar’s Digital Double comes two hours, thirty-eight minutes, and eleven seconds late. Maxine snatches the package from the delivery drone and doesn’t tip. She rearranged her day—went to HMart right when it opened, skipped the gym, cooked Grandma a quick...

AI FictionMotherhoodBleak

Content warnings 3

child-deathdeathsuicide

Last Meal Aboard the Awassa

Kel Coleman Lightspeed 2025 ShortStory Science Fiction 1,792 words

"Gardener ladled dark-purple porridge into her primary digestion sac, staring absently out the viewport at black space and the distant smudge of the planet they had come to study. The simple meal and the gesture it represented soothed her after a long,...

First ContactQueer IdentityTender

Content warnings 1

death

Last Train from Deadwall

André Geleynse BCS 2025 Novelette Fantasy 9,700 words ♪ audio

"The first time Knucklebone tried to kill himself, he’d already been dead for one hundred and thirteen years. He’d died in a workplace accident, which meant it was within their legal rights for the Cogsmith Railroad Company to bind his soul to his...

Science FantasyCorporate PowerBleak

Content warnings 3

suicideviolencewar

Memories of Temperance

Anya Ow Lightspeed 2025 ShortStory Fantasy 5,683 words

"Night to day. In Diyu, the Earth Prison, Chun Wei opened her eyes. “Day” in the realm of the dead registered only as a less pervasive chill to the stagnant air. Not that Chun Wei needed to breathe any longer. She unfolded from the lotus position she’d...

Historical FantasyFound FamilyHistorical China

Content warnings 1

death

Nine Births on the Wheel

Maya Chhabra BCS 2025 ShortStory Fantasy 5,128 words

"The first time through this cycle, Devaki does not believe he will go through with it. Kasma is her brother, after all, and for all his fears, he didn’t kill her when he had the chance. So as her baby grows inside her, the first fruit of her marriage to...

Fairy Tale RetellingMotherhoodHistorical India

Content warnings 3

child-deathpregnancy-losssuicide

Shorted

Alex Irvine Reactor 2025 Novelette Science Fiction 11,530 words

Damon’s UBI royalties just crashed. His social capital went up in smoke. His girlfriend left him. Now he finds out he’s going to die. What to do? Solve his own murder, for starters…and maybe, just maybe, strike it rich along the way.

Social SatireCorporate PowerSatirical

Content warnings 3

deathsubstance-useviolence

Symbiotic

Carolyn Zhao Clarkesworld 2025 Novelette Science Fiction 10,010 words

"El detonated the EMP against the feeder’s sensor, a delicate organ that he had only seen in fragments, suspended in cytology slides the shape of dominoes. The lab just days ago had been inundated with new specimens, washed up on the long white beaches...

Generation ShipBodily AutonomyVisceral

Content warnings 3

body-horrordeathself-harm

The Angel Azrael Visits the Trading Post at the End of the World a Final Time

Peter Darbyshire BCS 2025 Novelette Fantasy 11,604 words

"The angel Azrael rode the dead horse across a broken plain that went on so long he lost track of the days. The empty heavens gave him no clues, for the sun seemed to linger just beyond the horizon without actually making an appearance. As if it were as...

Secondary World FantasyGuiltBleak

Content warnings 3

body-horrorgoreviolence

The City of Tears

Molly Tanzer BCS 2025 Novelette Fantasy 12,986 words

"What lies beyond the Sea of Beasts is known to few, for few are foolish enough to try and cross it. This is not because of the beasts, which all died so long ago their bones have turned to stone, but because it is ghastly. Most of the fish are spiny and...

Secondary World FantasyGuiltAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 3

deathsexual-contentviolence

The Job Interview

Carrie Vaughn Clarkesworld 2025 ShortStory Science Fiction 6,300 words

"Hi Lisle. Hope you’ve had some coffee. The topside comms array is still glitching, and engineering hasn’t lifted a finger to run diagnostics. They say the work order has to come from your end. Shouldn’t take long once they get it. Happy simulated morning to you!"

Social SatireCorporate PowerSatirical

The Last Lunar New Year

Derek Künsken Clarkesworld 2025 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,310 words

"Ambassador Shǐ Guì Sūn Yán and Prime Minister Xiang Hu Li Yáng floated in the crystalline water tank at one side of the courtroom. Beyond the anchoring shelves for the judges, the bulbous organic diamond window looked out onto a swollen, orange, solar...

Space OperaFreedomRestrained Prose

The Sack of Burley Cottage

Rich Larson Reactor 2025 Novelette Science Fiction 7,612 words

A fast-moving, futuristic caper about a thief who has planned a job that he hopes will set him up for life by stealing a few biosculptures from a rich couple’s mansion.

BiopunkCorporate PowerTense

Content warnings 1

illness-and-pandemic

Till Earth and Heaven Ring

K.S. Walker Strange Horizons 2025 ShortStory Fantasy 5,746 words

"The Henrietta, passenger, cargo, and slave ship, was routinely used to transport goods from the Florida Keys up as far north as Rhode Island, and is also said to have made at least six voyages transporting enslaved African peoples from the Gold Coast of...

Southern GothicTrans IdentityHistorical USA

Content warnings 2

racismslavery

With Her Serpent Locks

Mary Robinette Kowal Uncanny 2025 ShortStory Fantasy 1,729 words

"Hey cuz! It’s been too long. Love to come out and see your digs. The message hung in the air, glimmering in her Heads Up Display overlaid across the moss garden she was tending. The chill that swept over Euryale made the hair on her arms stand on end and...

Science FantasyRevengeRestrained Prose

Content warnings 2

deathsexual-violence

Woman Like Stone Like Water

Malda Marlys BCS 2025 Novelette Fantasy 8,245 words

"Good stone, like water, wrought truce by necessity. Here, the river became a waterfall and ate the earth like honeycomb. Here, teardrops of flint washed up at a stone knapper’s feet. Bands of every people in the vastness of the world came for the stone....

Folk HorrorFound FamilyVisceral

Content warnings 3

animal-harmgoreviolence

A Saint Between The Teeth

Sloane Leong Lightspeed 2024 ShortStory Fantasy 6,683 words

"Kharatet moistens his sightless eyes with his tongue as he draws his finger across the limestone tablet glyphs. His audience today is a clutch of toddling nymphs, motionless save for their short tails rippling the shallow water impatiently. It’s a good...

Secondary World FantasyGuiltVisceral

Content warnings 3

cannibalismdeathgore

Antyesti For a Dead Ganesa

Ashok K. Banker Lightspeed 2024 Novelette Science Fiction 16,000 words

"Two hours out of deadsleep is too soon to be staring at the butchered corpse of a dead god. Neel looks down as the kalipeeli begins its descent to Chowpatty Beach and feels his stomach flip."

CyberpunkColonialismPost Apocalyptic

Content warnings 3

body-horrordeathgore

BRIDE / BUTCHER / DOE

Lowry Poletti Strange Horizons 2024 Novelette Science Fantasy 7,892 words

"A woman drags a white doe out of the ice room; it hangs from the ceiling rails by two brass hooks, one caught beneath its pelvis and the other behind the scapulae. As she pulls, the metal wheels whine. When she works in her lab, she is a butcher. She lays...

BiopunkClass InequalityVisceral

Content warnings 3

abusebody-horrorgore

Dragons of Paris

Michael Swanwick Reactor 2024 ShortStory Fantasy 6,845 words

In celebration of the 50th World Fantasy Convention’s Toastmaster, Michael Swanwick, Reactor presents a new Mongolian Wizard story about a battle to save Paris from an unexpected new enemy.

Science FantasyGuiltHistorical Europe

Content warnings 3

goreviolencewar

Every Hopeless Thing

Tia Tashiro Clarkesworld 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 6,910 words

"Elodie finds a pair of old opera glasses in the empty husk of an abandoned silo. The gleam of the metal catches her flashlight beam and throws it back, and Elodie squats and fishes out the glasses with tentative fingers. The silo is huge and dark around...

First ContactFound FamilyPost Apocalyptic

Fractal Karma

Arula Ratnakar Clarkesworld 2024 Novella Science Fiction 25,050 words

"She’s walking by the river on an overcast day, when sweat runs down her palms, goosebumps all over her neck. The breeze stills. The gray sky turns blood red. Instead of the Sun, through a clearing in the clouds, she finds the Eye. Veins branch across a...

BiopunkClass InequalityUnreliable Narrator

Content warnings 3

body-horrorsubstance-usewar

Let the Star Explode

Shingai Njeri Kagunda Lightspeed 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,656 words

"The last picture that Karu has of her father alive is on the day of her graduation. She has this big smile that by the placing of her dimples makes it obvious that she is his daughter. He stands next to her holding her waist in the space between his...

Science FantasyFatherhoodTender

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

Nine Billion Turing Tests

Chris Willrich Reactor 2024 Novelette Science Fiction 10,510 words

In a post-nuclear event Silicon Valley, a man grieving the loss of his wife struggles to find comfort when he is forced to communicate with his neighbors’ AI devices, rather than the people themselves.

AI FictionArtificial IntelligencePhilosophical

Content warnings 2

deathdeath-of-a-loved-one

Rembrandt, graffiti, and the strange disappearance of ducks

C.H. Irons Strange Horizons 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,988 words

"The alert comes screaming in on Jana’s implant, bright light lancing through the fog of REM sleep: [New glyph. Intersection of 148th and Cliffton.] When her eyes snap open, it’s there, the only thing fully in focus. A blurry image of the yet-untitled...

SlipstreamArt And CreationLyrical

Scalp

H.H. Pak Clarkesworld 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 2,680 words

"He is King Lear in the window’s sunshine. There is pastina boiling on the stove in a kitchen as familiar as his soul. Mad monologues push against his fogged oxygen mask, vibrating with his tremoring lips, his ragged breathing, the impossible weight of the...

BiopunkArtificial IntelligenceUnsettling

Content warnings 1

body-horror

Sparrow and the Parasol

Varsha Dinesh Lightspeed 2024 ShortStory Fantasy 4,623 words

"Deep in the abyss of the Unholy Bazaar, in a shop that reeked of death and god-blood, Sparrow lay screaming in a web of rope and unbreakable silk. Around her, the Aunties bustled: sawing and rinsing and hammering; cursing, grunting, and muttering; welding...

Secondary World FantasyRevengeVisceral

Content warnings 3

body-horrorgoreviolence

Stars Don't Dream

Chi Hui Clarkesworld 2024 Novelette Science Fiction 11,040 words

"April, Mawlamyine. The Shepherd leads her flock through a city half overgrown with weeds. Weeds overwhelm the railway bridge, covering its deck. The pink wood sorrel has taken root in the road’s cracked flower beds, depending on the lay of the terrain to...

AI FictionArtificial IntelligencePhilosophical

Content warnings 1

death

The Best Version of Yourself

Grant Collier Clarkesworld 2024 Novelette Science Fiction 13,480 words

"Q: What (or who!) is Eudaimon? A: We are a nonprofit organization that empowers people to live their best lives. A “life,” in our view, is best defined simply as a contiguous sequence of experiences, and thus the best life is the one consisting of the...

BiopunkMotherhoodDread

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

The Blinding Light of Resurrection

Rajeev Prasad Clarkesworld 2024 Novelette Science Fiction 7,640 words

"Hands trembling, Shiv Mehta snatched the print copy of his wife’s ribcage off the conveyor belt and lowered the print into an organ tank. Those hands had healed thousands of patients, but these days his hands had gotten good at stealing. Over the last few...

BiopunkRevengeMidwest USA

Content warnings 3

deathgoreviolence

The Feast of Baku & the Yume no Seirei

Cheri Kamei Uncanny 2024 ShortStory Fantasy 1,758 words

"The women of Dejima Island could never pinpoint when their dreams began to change, but they knew it had something to do with the tradesmen’s tales. The foreigners who arrived at the docks were hard men, chiseled by salt and wind and all the horrors of two...

Folk HorrorDiasporaHistorical Japan

The Gulmohar of Mehranpur

Amal Singh Reactor 2024 ShortStory Fantasy 4,756 words

In the small city of Mehranpur, the Nawab suspects there may be a connection between the slow wasting of a beloved tree and the fate of the city itself.

Fairy Tale RetellingColonialismTender

The Heist for the Soul of Humanity

Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko Lightspeed 2024 Novelette Science Fiction 10,045 words

"The simulation blossomed around Nadja Gavrić like a hypercube unpacking itself into three dimensions. The plain metal floors of the Roses’ cargo bay turned the shiny white of faux marble. The walls closed in, became a circular chamber. Display cases...

Space OperaCorporate PowerSardonic

The Portmeirion Road

Fiona Moore Clarkesworld 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,700 words

"Morag took her walking stick and set out on the Portmeirion Road. Portmeirion was behind her and she was walking back towards Pen-y-Groes, so she supposed she should call it the Pen-y-Groes Road. But Portmeirion, with all its beautiful, seductive,...

AI FictionAI PersonhoodEarnest

The Problem With Feelin' Flo-Jo's Glory Pose

Aurelius Raines II Strange Horizons 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 6,686 words

"You don’t go gettin’ police robots to chase you through the Westside because you want to have fun. But the excitement that Tariq felt at the thought of this challenge … He’d outrun actual cops. He’d outrun the wheeled robots they called “The Chris Browns”...

DystopiaRacismMidwest USA

Thousand Petal Song

Caroline Hung Strange Horizons 2024 ShortStory Fantasy 4,824 words

"The Lightning Road cuts far across the Cosmos, a streak of dazzling gold amidst the star-studded void. Paved in otherworldly stone, the road climbs over sleeping giants, past ringed planets and frozen worlds, connecting one unknown to the next. Xiaofei...

Contemporary FantasyFound FamilyWhimsical

Content warnings 1

war

Twice-Marked, Wild Against City

R.Z. Held BCS 2024 Novelette Science Fantasy 11,084 words

"When Ariana sent word to her birth mother, Scarlett, that they needed to speak, she didn’t really expect a response. Scarlett had abandoned her with her father as a barely weaned infant and only returned when Ariana was twenty. In the few years since,...

Secondary World FantasyMotherhoodRestrained Prose

Content warnings 1

violence

Whale Fall

J.L. Akagi Strange Horizons 2024 ShortStory Fantasy 4,061 words

"A whale soars over Brooklyn. Clouds spread in streaks over the pale blue sky like cold butter. And the whale cleaves right through. Dar spots it from his perch on the rooftop, smoking a contraband cigarette. At first, it looks like the whale is just...

Contemporary FantasyFriendshipNew York City

Content warnings 2

body-horrorgore

Anais Gets a Turn

R.T. Ester Clarkesworld 2023 Novelette Science Fiction 15,590 words

"The world-organism is awake and has spent the last decade playing round after round of tic-tac-toe with itself. Hearing this the first time, Anais reacts like anyone would to a stranger sitting next to them on a plane, insisting on conversation for the...

Speculative FictionFriendshipSlow Burn

Content warnings 2

mental-illnesssubstance-use

And All the Fields Below

Sarah Grey Lightspeed 2023 ShortStory Fantasy 2,625 words

"It’s only after they’ve loaded the moving truck halfway with boxes that the parents finally notice Parker’s gone. They spend three days yelling for him. Mom waits the longest, wanders the farthest into the forest in the dark. Her voice is a plea, an...

Contemporary FantasyFriendshipTender

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

Blood for a Stranger

Timothy Mudie Lightspeed 2023 Novelette Military SF 9,434 words

"Crunches and shrieks buffeted the Magellan LLC smartship as it plunged into Enceladus’s kilometers-thick ice crust, making their way to the subsurface ocean and the rival LuxeSpace corporation’s station situated there. Warning signals flashed through...

Space OperaAI PersonhoodPhilosophical

Content warnings 1

war

Ceffo

Jonathan Carroll Tor.com 2023 Novelette Contemporary Fantasy 7,619 words

On a trip to Italy, a woman stuck in a crumbling relationship discovers the city she loves holds a secret that could change her life…

Contemporary FantasyFreedomHistorical Europe

Contracting Iris

Peter Watts Lightspeed 2023 Novelette Science Fiction 10,285 words

"Iris is deep in an empty ocean, gray-green twilight fading to black everywhere she looks—and she can breathe. She’s a thousand feet above the ground, climbing a fractal cliff suffused with flickering veins of electricity—and she cannot. Iris is flat on...

BiopunkBodily AutonomyAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 2

death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic

Death and Redemption, Somewhere Near Tuba City

Lou J. Berger Clarkesworld 2023 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,470 words

"Elizabeth Mauldin, driving fast along the skeletal remains of Arizona’s US-89, somewhere near Tuba City, saw a far-off glint and yanked her steering wheel hard to the left. Her custom-built tow truck left the broken roadbed and plowed into the scrub, red...

AI FictionAI PersonhoodAmerican Southwest

Content warnings 1

death

Disassembling Light

Kel Coleman BCS 2023 Novelette Fantasy 8,878 words

"Terse heard the disturbance in the woods long before the short, sturdy girl shoved through the overgrown hedge. He flung open the door of his workshop, and she startled, nearly dropping a large knapsack dangling off of one shoulder. “Can I help you?”...

Secondary World FantasyMentorshipRestrained Prose

Content warnings 1

violence

His Thing

Yvette Lisa Ndlovu Lightspeed 2023 ShortStory Dark Fantasy 4,629 words

"The house was on the same street as a bakery whose only offering was penis-shaped waffles. Rufaro didn’t like American houses very much. They looked paper thin like doll houses that would lift off into the clouds if a strong wind came by."

Folk HorrorDiasporaDarkly Comic

Content warnings 1

abuse

Hole World

J.S. Breukelaar Apex 2023 Novelette Fantasy 7,957 words

"The Whole Foods where Justin works is a block from the beach, close enough to smell it. Apart from the rusting cars in the parking lot and the blood-spattered branches on the Eucalypts, the store looks much the same as it always did. Justin can do his job...

Social SatireCorporate PowerBleak

Content warnings 3

body-horrorcannibalismgore

Light Speed Is Not a Speed

Andy Dudak Clarkesworld 2023 Novelette Science Fiction 8,910 words

"The young rag-smasher halts on a terrace. He chases his breath, gazing down on the waterfront. Even from this distance, the bustle lends him an odd calm. Brisk trade means things are running. No one’s starving, not even beggars. Down there, people...

Secondary WorldArt And CreationPhilosophical

Content warnings 1

violence

Locavore

Kim Harbridge Strange Horizons 2023 ShortStory Horror 1,126 words

"It forced itself to take that last step onto the ferry. Every step further from land felt like falling. Through space, through time, through every place it had ever been. It kept its eyes open, its features arranged in what it hoped was a neutral...

Folk HorrorMemoryRestrained

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Love in the Season of New Dance

Bo Balder Clarkesworld 2023 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,130 words

"According to orbital observations, the aliens wouldn’t rise from their hibernation caves today. The three moons weren’t in position yet. Leena dialed a cup of coffee, checked her instruments, and settled down with her knitting. Observing the Amphim’s...

First ContactFriendshipSlow Burn

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

On the English Approach to the Study of History

E. Saxey GigaNotoSaurus 2023 Novella 22,504 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Social SatireRacismSatirical

Content warnings 1

racism

Resistant

Koji A. Dae Clarkesworld 2023 ShortStory Science Fiction 3,470 words

"Examination rooms are safe. They stay what they are. The memories they drag to the surface make sense. You assume it’s because you’ve been in so many hospital rooms that your brain is packed with too much realism to have space for the random connections...

BiopunkClass InequalitySecond Person

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

The Angel Azrael Battles a Dead God Among the Heretics

Peter Darbyshire BCS 2023 Novelette Fantasy 15,023 words

"The angel Azrael rode the dead horse across the empty lifeless land for what seemed like an eternity, not encountering another living soul until he crossed paths with a mutilated preacher, who erupted from the a great rent in the earth as though Hell...

Secondary World FantasyColonialismBleak

Content warnings 3

body-horrorgoreviolence

The Blade and the Bloodwright

Sloane Leong Lightspeed 2023 ShortStory Dark Fantasy 6,213 words

"The soldiers slit the woman’s throat every evening before bedding down so they can sleep without worry. She mocks them but never fights the knife coming to her. Two of the men still take turns watching her in case she heals before the rest of the cadre...

Secondary World FantasyColonialismVisceral

Content warnings 3

body-horrorgoreviolence

The Dying Lover of Nogorod

R.K. Duncan BCS 2023 ShortStory Fantasy 4,798 words

"Nogorod is built of black rock and dull iron and pale ivory, a city of high towers rising like petrified trees beside the rough grey seas. The common folk are whale-fishers, hunting with harpoons from their ships, but the nobles are all wizards, and they...

Historical FantasyQueer IdentityElegiac

Content warnings 2

deathdeath-of-a-loved-one

The God of Minor Troubles

Megan Chee Strange Horizons 2023 ShortStory Fantasy 2,970 words

"Many eons ago, when the first dawn broke over the newborn mortal world, the children of the Heavenly Realm assembled at the Golden Sky Palace. They knelt before the Immortal Emperor, their foreheads pressed respectfully to the floor. One by one, he bid...

Historical FantasyMentorshipHistorical China

The Letters They Left Behind

Scott Edelman Lightspeed 2023 ShortStory Science Fiction 7,461 words

"My dearest Evie— I am so terribly sorry, my darling daughter, but by the time you read this letter, I will be gone. I wish I could have delayed my departure long enough to attend your high school graduation as I always promised I would, but the timing was...

First ContactColonialismPost Apocalyptic

Content warnings 1

death

The Light of Setting Suns

Samuel Chapman BCS 2023 ShortStory Fantasy 6,038 words

"It is the shared birthday of the isle of Barradwyth. As a gift, Cyfris has promised his granddaughter Cydovan the one story he has never told her. They are sitting on the balcony of their home on Barradwyth Station, overlooking a street paved with mosaic...

Historical FantasyFatherhoodAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 2

deathdeath-of-a-loved-one

The Moment Before the Moment

Martin Cahill Lightspeed 2023 ShortStory Fantasy 5,639 words

"Azahn had been the ninety-third Imperial Foresight to the Dynasty of Silken Flame for only three weeks when he was forcibly retired. His body had been blessed by the holy waters of the Sky-Vein River, and he had earned the named-blade Stalwart Thy Mind,...

Secondary World FantasyMentorshipHopeful

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

The Star-Bear

Michael Swanwick Tor.com 2023 ShortStory Historical Fantasy 3,276 words

A Russian émigré poet living in Paris is visited by a mysterious bear with an agenda…

Historical FantasyDiasporaHistorical Europe

To Helen

Bella Han Clarkesworld 2023 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,030 words

"I am waiting for Helen on her fiftieth birthday. On the table, there’s a crystal drinking glass and a vase with rare orchids; I can’t tell if the flowers are genuine or not. Faint piano notes and a cold scent drift in the air. Beautiful men and women sit...

Near FutureFriendshipRestrained

At the Foot of the Dragon Stair

Aliette de Bodard BCS 2022 ShortStory Science Fantasy 5,066 words

"The entire time they were walking towards the Dragon Stairs, Giền said nothing. She merely changed shape in Thanh Lan’s arms—not growing heavier and heavier, which Thanh Lan could have understood, but by turns lighter and heavier, her shape shimmering...

Science FantasyFreedomSlow Burn

Content warnings 3

deathviolencewar

Beyond the Shore

Tania Fordwalker Lightspeed 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 2,006 words

"Nobody noticed the first few. They walked. One by one, in the beginning. Isolated instances. On every continent, mid-meal, mid-shower, mid-work, mid-fuck, right out the door of a pulled-up car in the middle of a freeway—ordinary people turned their backs...

BiopunkFamilySlow Burn

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

Blood Grains Scream in Memories

Jason Sanford BCS 2022 Novella Science Fantasy 22,040 words

"That dying anchor said some mysterious ‘he’ was looking for her. Chakatie tried to think of who that could be. When she’d been an anchor in charge of her own land, she’d thought she’d been even-handed. But traveling with the day-fellows had revealed to...

BiopunkGuiltVisceral

Content warnings 3

body-horrordeathviolence

Civilian Assumptions

Dominique Dickey Lightspeed 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 1,346 words

"Like their battleship, Maddox was born for war. They emerged from the nursery with one purpose alone: to expand the Consortium’s borders, a bloody mission that had lasted generations, and would last generations to come. Any civilian raised in the...

Space OperaAI PersonhoodTender

Clockwork Bayani

EK Gonzales Strange Horizons 2022 ShortStory Fantasy 4,375 words

"There was a small store in Manila, inside the walls of Intramuros, accessible to the wealthy and powerful, between a clothing store and a jewelry store. Children in clean crisp clothes, usually with parents or carers, stood before the store window,...

Science FantasyAI PersonhoodTender

Content warnings 2

deathdeath-of-a-loved-one

Earth Dragon, Turning

Anya Ow Uncanny 2022 ShortStory Fantasy 5,023 words

"Downwind from the encampment, the wind stank of refuse. The stench of people weeks into an unwashed trek intensified as Yue Ling limped out of the tree line, raising her hands over her head as she slowly approached the sentries. Both were young, younger...

Historical FantasyMotherhoodHistorical China

Content warnings 2

deathdeath-of-a-loved-one

Everything the Sea Takes, It Returns

Izzy Wasserstein Lightspeed 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 2,704 words

"Everything the sea takes, it gives back in its own way and its own time. That was what Jess’s grandmother believed, what she’d told Jess as they stood in the shadow of the giant red cedar that had washed ashore, its severed roots thicker than Jess’s body....

Speculative FictionQueer IdentityPost Apocalyptic

Content warnings 3

deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence

Giant Fish

Chu Shifan Clarkesworld 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 2,890 words

"K’un died. It breathed for tens of thousands of years and, at long last, life came to an end. Its body was washed ashore. Pale red scales plowed through vegetation as the bulging exoskeleton grazed against dunes. Its enormous carcass formed an imposing...

Social SatireFatherhoodRestrained

Content warnings 1

death

Girl Oil

Grace P. Fong Tor.com 2022 ShortStory Contemporary Fantasy 5,004 words

Chelle’s friend, Wenqian, has everything Chelle doesn’t. A slim figure, pale skin, and most notably the affection of her longtime friend Preston. Like the ocean waves she calls home, Chelle feels transparent and overflowing all at once. So when she’s given...

Contemporary FantasyDiasporaAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 1

body-horror

Hummingbird, Resting on Honeysuckles

Yang Wanqing Clarkesworld 2022 Novelette Science Fiction 8,510 words

"Red for temperature. Blue for ignition. Green for airflow. It takes four hours and forty-two minutes for you to finish your transformation into a pile of white ashes. I keep a patient vigil over those three primary colors on the cremator’s monitor, making...

AI FictionArt And CreationTender

Content warnings 3

deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic

I Will Sing Your White Bones Home

Cat Hellisen BCS 2022 ShortStory Fantasy 3,421 words

"We cannot go landwise. Too vulnerable for a start, and the finless watch their beaches like crabs, scuttling this way and that, their eyes pinched and ugly. They have set a line of posts on the edge of the world, deep in the sands. Each spike bears the...

Secondary World FantasyQueer IdentityElegiac

Content warnings 2

deathdeath-of-a-loved-one

Into The Thunder

Michelle Muenzler BCS 2022 ShortStory Fantasy 4,176 words

"It’s late morning when Syenok catches the worrying tang of blood on the wind. There, then gone again before she can confirm it. Still, in the wasted lands, blood is not a scent you ignore. Not if you want to survive. “Hold,” she says, cautiously reining...

Secondary World FantasyFriendshipVisceral

Content warnings 1

violence

Porgee's Boar

Jonathan Carroll Tor.com 2022 ShortStory Horror 5,802 words

An artist’s work attracts the eye of Andrey Porgee, a notorious gangster, who becomes her best customer. But when he commissions a painting based on a childhood photograph, the artist fears his reaction to the final product.

SlipstreamFatherhoodAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

The Day When the Last War is Over

Sergey Gerasimov Apex 2022 ShortStory Fantasy 3,713 words

"It’s the day when the last war is over, and skeletons of swallows are already starting to return. They don’t have beaks, and their white, hard-boiled eyes fly three inches ahead of their semi-transparent faces, or sometimes on their side. Skeletons of...

SlipstreamPolitical ResistanceAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 2

deathwar

The Destination Star

Gregory Marlow Strange Horizons 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,925 words ♪ audio

"The dome star was the only light in the nighttime sky. Ben Stokes watched from the tower at the center of the common area as the star flickered and buzzed. Bulb is about to burn out, he thought as the soft pulses of light feathered the edges of park...

Generation ShipFatherhoodSlow Burn

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

The Memory of Water

Tegan Moore Clarkesworld 2022 Novelette Science Fiction 9,200 words

"James had always been able to tell when Camille was eavesdropping. Even though she kept her eyes carefully focused on the messages on her band while she poked at the remains of her salad, it would not have fooled him. He wouldn’t scold her in public, but...

SlipstreamGuiltAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 1

death

The Plastic People

Tobias S. Buckell Lightspeed 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,287 words

"Rhea found the feral child on the edge of the garbage park on the last day of the group’s vacation. Garrison, passed out from drinking the better part of a bottle of hundred-year-old Islay Scotch, had dropped a cigar onto the edge of the canvas tent and...

BiopunkColonialismSatirical

The Secret Strength of Things

Gregory Feeley Clarkesworld 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 2,380 words

"The Snow Woman was away, far away. The winds that blew round the frozen world would take “days” to bear her to where Kitsune sheltered, even though both lay beneath the blue light of Ryujin, which the Chinese call Hǎiwángxīng and the white folks call Neptune."

Space OperaArtificial IntelligenceAmbiguous Ending

The Transfiguration of the Gardener Irene by the Dead Planet Hipea

Ann Leblanc Clarkesworld 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 7,420 words

"The first of Irene’s memories I eat is the night she learned I had been murdered. It was karaoke night—not the official one for the cruise ship passengers, but an illicit one Irene organized for a few of the other crew. They weren’t supposed to be in the...

BiopunkColonialismAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 3

body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one

Tithe the Bones, Sell the Blood

Auston Habershaw BCS 2022 ShortStory Fantasy 5,126 words

"It’s a pretty near thing, Nicolette. A pretty near thing.” Cédric mumbled to a bare skull in an alcove, the half-dead candle encrusting its forehead giving off barely enough light to fill the corner of the old storeroom. The skull was not Nicolette’s;...

Secondary World FantasyRevengeVisceral

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

To Embody a Wildfire Starting

Iona Datt Sharma BCS 2022 Novelette Fantasy 11,473 words

"During the unbearable years of tyranny, the political prisoners of the Anchorite Hegemony made a solemn covenant: when the time came, they would cross the last miles to freedom on their feet. For reasons of youth and idiocy, Tishrel thought he would have...

Secondary World FantasyJusticeIntrospective

Content warnings 3

body-horrordeathviolence

To Live and Die in Dixieland

Russell Nichols Apex 2022 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,975 words

"None of them can see what lies behind the tree line. They finger the oak trunks, white hands racing down the bark’s craggy, deep grooves. There is no blood on the leaves. As morning sun peeks through heavy branches, a light breeze masks the ashy bite of...

Speculative FictionRacismDarkly Comic

Content warnings 3

child-deathsexual-violencesuicide

can i offer you a nice egg in this trying time

Iori Kusano Uncanny 2022 ShortStory Fantasy 3,043 words

"Matt tells the waiter he’ll have his eggs over easy. They come back scrambled, a neat glistening pile framed by perfect triangles of toast, a lacy froth of hashbrowns lurking across the plate. He doesn’t notice he’s chosen to move until he’s already...

SlipstreamFriendshipDarkly Comic

Content warnings 1

suicide

1.1 Vampirito by K. Victoria Hernandez

K. Victoria Hernandez khōréō 2021 ShortStory Slipstream 3,900 words ♪ audio

Eli is—one hundred percent, without a doubt—vampiro, but he's missing all the stereotypical traits. Is there room for him to exist in a world where everyone has already decided who and what he is? Copyright khōréō magazine 2021. Story by K. Victoria...

HorrorRacismUnsettling

Content warnings 3

child-abuseracismviolence

1.2 For Future Generations by Rachel Gutin

Rachel Gutin khōréō 2021 ShortStory 3,700 words ♪ audio

"For Future Generations" by Rachel Gutin What do terrestrial traditions mean when you have to leave the only world you've ever known? This contemplative sci-fi explores the choices a rabbi must make for her congregation. Copyright khōréō magazine 2021....

Generation ShipMentorshipEarnest

A Day in the Life of Anmar 20X1

Abdulla Moaswes Strange Horizons 2021 ShortStory Science Fiction 3,378 words

"It was 10 a.m., and Anmar clapped his hands to silence the screeching wake-up alarm he had set for himself. He didn’t actually need the alarm, since he had already been awake for twelve minutes before it went off, but Anmar enjoyed using technology...

Social SatireColonialismSatirical

A House Is Not a Home

L. Chan Clarkesworld 2021 ShortStory Science Fiction 1,050 words

"Home brews coffee; black, no sugar. She maintains the temperature of the coffee at precisely sixty degrees Celsius. Most of the coffee sloshes over the jagged edges of the half-shattered mug. Rough holes have been torn through the matte plastic back of...

DystopiaSurveillance StateRestrained

A Star for Every Word Unspoken

Kai Hudson Clarkesworld 2021 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,794 words

"They say Omma’s in there, but she’s not, she’s not. It’s just an empty metal capsule they’re lowering into the ground, and the rain is too wet and the flowers too bright and the wailing of the mourners—it’s so much, too much, and Na-Yeong slaps Appa’s...

Near FutureMotherhoodFragmented

Content warnings 3

deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneself-harm

Bast and Her Young

Tegan Moore BCS 2021 Novelette Historical Fantasy 10,515 words

"She was different. She was distinguished by the oracles. She spoke to the gods, who descended on her in disorienting, frightening fits that made her vision blank out and caused her to fall down. As God’s Wife of Amun she had been closer to the gods than...

Historical FantasyMotherhoodHistorical Egypt

Brightly, Undiminished

Sarah Grey Lightspeed 2021 ShortStory Fantasy 2,299 words

"Witchcraft is a gift. Imelda would wave her steel spoon at Mercer and insist on this as he measured ingredients for her, whether she was boiling potions or a pot of farfalle pasta. Watch the salt, a teaspoon only, never pour too much. Don’t overheat the...

Contemporary FantasySacrificeTender

Content warnings 2

death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic

COTTONMOUTH

Joelle Wellington Apex 2021 ShortStory Horror 4,963 words

"He finds her in his grandpa’s attic, in the Big House. The hatch has been locked up tight since the day Grant Dixon was born—twenty-two years of locked up tight—and long before. He used to ask about it, between the stories his Grandpa Dixon liked to tell. "

Southern GothicRacismHistorical USA

Content warnings 3

abuseslaveryviolence

Discontinuity

Jared Millet Apex 2021 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,458 words

"Stars snap into place outside Lura’s cockpit. A red giant twenty degrees off her ship’s nose has visibly shifted position. The nebula above her has grown more diffuse. She exhales, clicks the button to log another successful breach, and lets herself blink...

First ContactConsciousnessPhilosophical

Content warnings 1

death

Gift for the Cutter Man

D. Thomas Minton Apex 2021 ShortStory Science Fiction 6,001 words

"The blade of Legrue’s scalpel flared in his headlamp’s narrow beam, casting glints of light across the slender hand strapped to his cutting table. “Deed done?” the woman asked, a warble in her voice. Legrue adjusted his magnifiers. He had not eaten in...

BiopunkFatherhoodBleak

Content warnings 3

body-horrorchild-deathdeath

Hassan the Executioner Walks Out of Jawasar for the Last Time

R.K. Duncan BCS 2021 ShortStory Fantasy 5,274 words

"Lamia burst like a shattered glass into the scream and scouring heat of desert wind, loosing the power that had lived in her ever since she had returned from the Refiner of the Desert. Her fire lashed across the wide plaza atop the Spire where she had...

Secondary World FantasyGuiltVisceral

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Immortal Coil

Ellen Kushner Uncanny 2021 ShortStory Fantasy 6,044 words

"Marlowe is going to outlive him. Of this, he is sure. He has seen him on the streets of Blackfriars, of Southwark, in Bladder Lane, near Aldgate… He can pretend to be anything, young Kit. Not so young Kit. The two men are of an age: born the same year...

Historical FantasyMortalityHistorical Europe

Next to Cleanliness

Rose Keating Apex 2021 ShortStory Fantasy 4,878 words

"I’ve been feeling a bit down, I suppose,’ Catherine said, ‘and my friend recommended you. She said you might be able to help.’ The doctor made a humming noise. He sat back, folding his arms. ‘Do you know what it means to cleanse, Catherine?’ he asked."

Psychological HorrorGuiltSardonic

Content warnings 1

body-horror

Ouroboros

Dean-Paul Stephens Clarkesworld 2021 Novella Science Fiction 18,368 words

"I know only an irrational panic. I try to collect myself only to find my faculties are not my own but that of an internal imperative guiding my, quite incomprehensible, actions. Run a parallel diagnostic, recalibrate magnetic relay B4, load the ballistic...

Generation ShipAI PersonhoodPhilosophical

Content warnings 3

deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence

Preserved in Amber

Samantha Murray Clarkesworld 2021 Novelette Science Fiction 9,661 words

"The taxi from Guiyang Airport passed through long tunnels with curved white crescents every fifty or so meters along. It was simply some reflective material, but the bright curves leading her off into the distance through the darkness of the tunnel made...

First ContactMortalityElegiac

Content warnings 1

death

Ripple Effects

Laura J. Mixon Tor.com 2021 Novella Superhero 39,277 words

Nine years after the ace John “The Candle” Montaño first wielded his fire powers as a teenager on the reality TV show “American Hero”, he’s landed a job as the lead investigator for a prestigious arts insurer. His latest assignment, providing security for...

Superhero FictionRevengeNew York City

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Rock-Adda's World

Chloe Smith Metaphorosis 2021 ShortStory 5,930 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

First ContactColonialismEarnest

Shards

Ian Rogers Tor.com 2021 Novelette Horror 9,324 words

A group of five friends rent a cabin in the woods—the next day only four are alive. What happened and why is something the survivors are desperate to unravel.

Folk HorrorFriendshipBleak

Content warnings 3

deathgoreviolence

Si Shou

E.A. Xiong Strange Horizons 2021 ShortStory Science Fiction 7,104 words

"So can you do it?” The artisan hesitates, about to turn the page of the sketchbook given to her by, she is realizing, the most important client she might ever have. “Not alone,” she says, and her own honesty surprises her. “Most of the design, what you’re...

Near FutureArt And CreationIntrospective

Skin Deep

Alan Brennert Tor.com 2021 Novelette Superhero 13,473 words

Trina Nelson is a pretty, popular sixteen-year-old high school student whose idyllic life took a turn for the tragic because of the Wild Cards virus. Now, she wants nothing more than to live out her days in the shadowy anonymity of the Jokertown on the...

Speculative FictionRacismHistorical USA

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

The Far Side of the Universe

noc Tor.com 2021 ShortStory Science Fiction 1,771 words

When young Ira arrives for her appointment, she is prepared to be transported to The Gateway to Heaven, 6,070 light years away. But the technicians shepherding her through the process fear there’s more to it than what’s advertised.

Social SFCorporate PowerRestrained

Content warnings 1

death

The Fox's Daughter

Richard Parks BCS 2021 ShortStory Fantasy 4,945 words

"When the messenger arrived at my Kamakura estate, I knew he wasn’t human, and that meant trouble. I read the letter three times, as if repetition would lead to better understanding. Foolish of me, as Lady Kuzunoha’s direct nature would not allow for...

Historical FantasyMentorshipHistorical Japan

The God Skrae Eats Death

Stephen Case BCS 2021 Novelette Fantasy 10,181 words

"It was an inauspicious beginning to my mission to find the deathmage and bring her to the capital. I found her exactly where the Mandate said I would: at a tavern table, in one of the northern work camps, wasted drunk. Her long black curls, laced with...

Secondary World FantasyGuiltVisceral

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

The Tyger

Tegan Moore Tor.com 2021 ShortStory Slipstream 6,143 words

The Path Through Time” is Jules’s favorite part of the museum, a marvelous exhibit that brings the past to life, from the present all the way back to the prehistoric. Tonight at his aunt’s wedding reception as Jules walks along the path, it comes alive...

Psychological HorrorTraumaSlow Burn

To Reach the Gate, She Must Leave Everything Behind

Izzy Wasserstein Lightspeed 2021 ShortStory Fantasy 494 words

"Death takes much and in return it offers Susan P—- only clarity. She finds herself in a great gray desert and knows her life has ended. Clad in a royal dress, she carries a bow and quiver, and a finely-carved ivory horn dangles from her throat. A tremor...

Fairy Tale RetellingFreedomAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 1

death

Vanishing Point

Robert V.S. Redick Clarkesworld 2021 Novelette Science Fiction 11,569 words

"Disaster, betrayal, and the ship already blasting its horn. The family clusters around the packing crates, destitute, stunned. We must go regardless, says their father, this is the last ship, what else can we do? Their mother nods, frowning so as not to...

Diaspora SFDiasporaSlow Burn

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

Cycle of the eternal witness

Adelehin Ijasan Omenana 2020 ShortStory 3,314 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Science FantasyGuiltBleak

Content warnings 3

child-deathgoresuicide

Everything's Fine

Matthew Pridham Tor.com 2020 ShortStory Slipstream Horror 4,732 words

Today’s a big day at work, but just walking there looks to be a death-defying challenge, what with people randomly turning into monsters and such.

Psychological HorrorCorporate PowerUnreliable Narrator

Content warnings 3

body-horrordeathviolence

Fire and Falling

Andrew Dykstal BCS 2020 Novelette Steampunk Thriller 15,229 words

Mir’s mission to deliver codebooks gets complicated when she realizes she’s being followed—and followed by more than one person at that.

Science FantasyMentorshipIntrospective

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Mandorla

Cooper Shrivastava Clarkesworld 2020 ShortStory Alien SF 6,205 words

Old Plant thinks very slowly, but it’s the oldest on the planet, and it thinks profoundly. It struggles to communicate with a group of very short-lived creatures, though, and they seem to be changing the planet.

First ContactArt And CreationPhilosophical

Niuniu

Baosh Clarkesworld 2020 Novelette Science Fiction 10,841 words

"Dong Fang still clearly remembers the joyous love of that rainy night. It seemed quite bad at first. After three years of dating and two years of marriage, their formerly shy and sweet explorations had become routine business. Nevertheless, he was in the...

AI FictionMotherhoodAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 3

child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one

Refuge

Ben Peek Lightspeed 2020 ShortStory Dark Fantasy Adventure 6,568 words

The story of how Aned Heast, having lost a leg and his entire army, reclaimed his honor in a drought-ridden town whose adults mysteriously vanished.

Secondary World FantasyJusticeRestrained

Content warnings 3

deathslaveryviolence

Songs of Activation

Andy Dudak Clarkesworld 2020 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,851 words

"Pinander has been reciting “Song of Manifold Suns”all morning, in overgrown, forgotten garden nooks or neglected library aisles, far from the mutterings of other desperate students. Ancient knowledge comes to life within him."

Space OperaClass InequalityPhilosophical

Content warnings 2

deathsuicide

Still You Linger, Like Soot in the Air

Matthew Kressel Lightspeed 2020 ShortStory Far-Future SF 5,664 words

Gil teaches students how to communicate with the Numens, vast, star-spanning alien intelligences indistinguishable from gods.

Speculative FictionQueer IdentitySlow Burn

Content warnings 2

deathsuicide

The Amusement Dark

Mike Buckley Clarkesworld 2020 Novelette Post-AI-Apocalypse 11,860 words

After the AIs won the war, they still found ways to keep humans busy, and Cal’s starship is responsible for finding and evaluating human colonies that were lost during the war.

Social SFFound FamilyIntrospective

Content warnings 3

body-horrorchild-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one

The Fenghuang

Millie Ho Lightspeed 2020 ShortStory Uncanny Horror 5,370 words

When Candice gets upset, she sometimes spontaneously combusts and then comes back to life. She needs to get this under control because her family can’t afford the medical bills.

Contemporary FantasyQueer IdentitySlow Burn

Content warnings 2

deathillness-and-pandemic

The Language Sheath

Regina Kanyu Wang Clarkesworld 2020 Novelette SF Drama 8,674 words

A teenager struggles to relate to his mother who’s trying to help build an automatic translation system so he can speak their language more like a native.

Speculative FictionDiasporaIntimate

Content warnings 2

self-harmsubstance-use

The Perfect Sail

I-Hyeong Yun Clarkesworld 2020 Novelette SF Adventure 9,308 words

A wealthy woman has the multiverse searched for divergent versions of herself who’re near death, offering to add them to her personality, and they always accept. Up until now.

SlipstreamFreedomSlow Burn

Content warnings 2

deathdeath-of-a-loved-one

The Ruby of the Summer King

Mari Ness Uncanny 2020 ShortStory Fairy Tale 4,749 words

The Summer King wants to court the Winter Queen, even though everyone warns him that it’s a long and perilous journey, for summer and winter aren’t meant to be together.

Fairy Tale RetellingSacrificeWhimsical

Content warnings 1

death

The Visitor: Kill or Cure

Mark Lawrence Tor.com 2020 Novelette Superhero Thriller 10,283 words

Ruby is a powerful “Ace” who cynically does dirty jobs for bad people who help her keep her pain under control. Her world changes when a job puts her in contact with an elusive, childish, but very powerful Ace who won’t give in.

Superhero FictionCorporate PowerVisceral

Content warnings 2

illness-and-pandemicviolence

What Remains of Maya Sankovy

G.D. Angier Clarkesworld 2020 ShortStory Science Fiction 6,443 words

"We are good Mothers, or at least we will be once the embryos emerge from their confines. They dangle from the spaceship’s ceiling in pink bulbs like silkworm cocoons. Now that we landed, Ship will become the bones, sinew, and flesh that will birth five...

First ContactMotherhoodAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 3

child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one

Where the World Ends Without Us

Jason Sanford BCS 2020 Novelette Post Apocalypse 16,573 words

Six years ago, after the slaughter of anchors by Frere-Jones, Alexnya was made the new anchor, but now the grains have decided to try her for Frere-Jones’s actions—even though she had nothing to do with it.

Science FantasyPolitical ResistancePost Apocalyptic

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Adrianna in Pomegranate

Samantha Mills BCS 2019 ShortStory High Fantasy 4,328 words

Benedetto makes his living running a calligramancy shop, where he makes magic via writing. Today, he snapped, closed the shop, and started an elaborate spell of unknown purpose.

Historical FantasyArt And CreationHistorical Europe

Content warnings 1

child-death

Beyond Comprehension

Russell Nichols Fireside 2019 ShortStory 3,992 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Near FutureRacismIntrospective

Dustdaughter

Inda Lauryn Uncanny 2019 ShortStory Modern Fantasy 5,977 words

A young child visits a family friend to learn about her powers—the sort of powers her mother long ago rejected, but which are too powerful to ignore.

Contemporary FantasyMotherhoodWarm

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

Gert of the Hundred

L.S. Johnson BCS 2019 Novelette Flintlock Fantasy Horror 9,159 words

The village people suffer from the Duke’s construction of the big tower, and even thought the villagers disapprove of her, old Gert can’t help doing things for the little children who come to her for aid.

Folk HorrorRevengeVisceral

Content warnings 3

deathgoreviolence

How to Move Spheres and Influence People

Marko Kloos Tor.com 2019 Novelette Superhero 12,330 words

Despite being paralyzed on one side, T.K. insists on going to gym class, even though the other girls torment her in dodge ball. Up to the point where the tormenting brings out her specialized telekinetic ability.

Superhero FictionMentorshipEarnest

Hunting the Viper-King

Kathryn Harlan Strange Horizons 2019 ShortStory Modern Fantasy 6,053 words

Teenage Dorothy accompanies her father across the US in search for the mythical Viper-King, a giant snake whose fat confers wisdom on the first person to eat it.

Contemporary FantasyFatherhoodAmerican Southwest

Content warnings 1

violence

Mama Bruise

Jonathan Carroll Tor.com 2019 ShortStory Horror 6,352 words

A young couple has enough relationship troubles without a mischievous dog that appears to have telekinetic powers. But there seems to be a pattern to its mischief.

HorrorFatherhoodAmbiguous Ending

Old Media

Annalee Newitz Tor.com 2019 ShortStory Dystopia 5,395 words

A young man enjoys his life in 22nd-Century Canada, but he’s anxious that no one find out he used to be a slave.

AI FictionAI PersonhoodHopeful

Content warnings 1

slavery

Personal Rakshasi

Suzan Palumbo Fireside 2019 ShortStory 983 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Contemporary FantasyDiasporaDefiant

Road: A Fairytale

Shalini Srinivasan Strange Horizons 2019 ShortStory Modern Fable 2,980 words

A road is so nasty that it attains consciousness when it becomes aware of just how “not-nice” it really is.

SlipstreamClass InequalityWhimsical

Content warnings 1

death

Signal

L.D. Lewis Fireside 2019 ShortStory 2,107 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

DystopiaPolitical ResistancePost Apocalyptic

Content warnings 2

abuseviolence

Swimming Apart

R.Z. Held BCS 2019 ShortStory Fantasy Adventure 4,844 words

Two selkie women, childhood friends who’ve drifted apart, get together for an adventure in an abandoned human mine.

Historical FantasyFriendshipSecondary World

The Blighted Godling of Company Town H

Beth Cato BCS 2019 ShortStory Future-Fantasy Steampunk 5,300 words

The godling of Town H sits in her office, depressed because with the bankruptcy of the company, her town is almost dead. But she has to rouse herself because something is attacking the town, and her people need her.

Social SatireCorporate PowerHopeful

Content warnings 1

illness-and-pandemic

The Thirty-Eight-Hundred Bone Coat

R.K. Duncan BCS 2019 Novelette High Fantasy 8,408 words

A nobleman offers Navid’s family a vast fortune if they’ll make him a magic coat more powerful than anything they’ve ever made, and in the span of a single month. It will change their lives, one way or the other.

Historical FantasyFamilySlow Burn

The Valley of Wounded Deer

E. Lily Yu Lightspeed 2019 ShortStory Fairy Tale 3,479 words

In distant Ruyastan a single prince survives her mother’s efforts to hold power by slaying all descendants of her sons.

Fairy Tale RetellingPolitical ResistanceElegiac

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

This Way to Paradise

Rati Mehrotra Lightspeed 2019 Novelette SF Adventure 7,759 words

Two children and their aunt travel across the ruins of war-torn India in search of a camp where there’s food and security. But something deadly is waiting for them.

First ContactFound FamilySouth Asia

Content warnings 2

violencewar

Vīs Dēlendī

Marie Brennan Uncanny 2019 ShortStory High Fantasy 4,756 words

The thirteen masters of the Academy meet to hear a mediocre student apply for the highest degree based on his claim that he can raise the dead.

Fairy Tale RetellingSacrificeAmbiguous Ending

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

When Home, No Need to Cry

Erin K. Wagner Clarkesworld 2019 ShortStory SF Adventure 3,614 words

A terminally ill astronaut begs everyone she can think of to give her a chance at one last mission so she can die in space.

Near FutureBodily AutonomyIntrospective

Content warnings 1

death

Your Future Is Pending

Matthew Kressel Clarkesworld 2019 ShortStory Cyberpunk 5,178 words

In a future where successful people spend most of their time in cyberspace, Martha struggles to make ends meet servicing the systems that take care of them.

DystopiaRevengeRestrained

Content warnings 1

death

Zeitgeber

Greg Egan Tor.com 2019 Novelette SF 10,336 words

A family has problems when their little daughter falls out of sync with the usual times everyone else wakes and sleeps. But it’s not just her.

Near FutureBodily AutonomyRestrained

By Claw, By Hand, By Silent Speech

Elsa Sjunneson-Henry & A. Merc Rustad Uncanny 2018 ShortStory SF Adventure 4,425 words

The Owen corporation has brought some dinosaurs through their “gate,” and Dr. Crimshaw thinks she can use sign language to communicate with one of them.

BiopunkDisabilityHopeful

Cry of Desire in a Shrouded Land

Emily McIntyre BCS 2018 Novelette High Fantasy 10,808 words

Lukas has grown rich selling his magic wish-fulfillment tea, but he’s dissatisfied, and his wife is looking elsewhere. Two young people come into their lives and everything changes.

Secondary World FantasyBodily AutonomyDark

Content warnings 2

sexual-contentslavery

Every Good-bye Ain't Gone

Eden Royce Strange Horizons 2018 ShortStory Horror 5,241 words

Mixie’s family makes food for the dead to get them to come back to answer questions for their loved ones. She’s surprised her ex-husband’s widow wants them to do this, though.

Southern GothicRevengeDarkly Comic

Content warnings 1

death

Fitting In

Max Gladstone Tor.com 2018 Novelette Superhero 13,710 words

A retired superhero and a conspiracy theorist join forces to gather evidence against a mobster who’s trying to force their friend to sell her property to him.

Superhero FictionQueer IdentityNew York City

Content warnings 1

violence

Godzilla vs Buster Keaton, Or: I Didn't Even Need a Map

Gary A. Braunbeck Apex 2018 Novelette SF Horror 11,589 words

While Glen mourns the recent death of his baby sister, he gets a CD in the mail with a custom program she had someone design before she died.

SlipstreamArt And CreationIntertextual

Content warnings 3

death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemicsubstance-use

In the Ground, Before the Freeze

Margaret Ronald BCS 2018 ShortStory Dark Fantasy 6,631 words

They say the mountain women have “unnatural habits” so when Katrin falls in love with a lowland man, no good can come of it.

Folk HorrorTraumaFragmented

Content warnings 2

deathviolence

Kingfisher

Robert Reed Clarkesworld 2018 Novelette Far-Future SF 11,943 words

Kingfisher searches an endless icefield for a woman he can’t forget. He’s been searching a long time—tens of thousands of years at least. But he’s not giving up.

Generation ShipFreedomPhilosophical

Magic Potion Behind-the-Mountains

Jaymee Goh BCS 2018 ShortStory Chinese Historical Fiction 6,307 words

When the young magistrate arrives at his remote posting, he sees that some of the villagers are amazingly strong, and he decides to learn how to make the magic potion that makes them so.

Historical FantasyMentorshipSlow Burn

Content warnings 1

violence

Suite for Accompanied Cello

Tamara Vardomskaya BCS 2018 ShortStory Clockwork Fantasy 5,947 words

Rielle accepts an offer from her husband’s rival to play accompaniment for his daughter in a competition. They need the money, but there’s something too perfect about this daughter.

Historical FantasyArt And CreationHistorical Europe

The Crow Knight

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam BCS 2018 Novelette Epic Fantasy 11,440 words

When an unkillable black crow haunts the princess, Wynn goes beyond the kingdom to find the only weapon that can destroy it.

Secondary World FantasyFriendshipSlow Burn

Content warnings 1

death

The Elephants' Crematorium

Timothy Mudie Lightspeed 2018 ShortStory Apocalypse 3,887 words

A doomsday weapon has changed the laws of physics on Earth, and most of the population has perished. Liyana spends her time trying to have a baby and studying elephants, who have started to spontaneously combust.

SlipstreamMotherhoodPost Apocalyptic

Content warnings 2

deathpregnancy-loss

The Foodie Federation's Dinosaur Farm

Luo Longxiang Clarkesworld 2018 Novelette SF Action/Adventure 8,273 words

During a dinosaur uprising on the starship, a young worker in the meat-packing plant engages in a battle of wits with an intelligent dinosaur who wants to replace humanity entirely.

Generation ShipCorporate PowerSatirical

The Heaven-Moving Way

Chi Hui Apex 2018 ShortStory Hard SF Adventure 4,382 words ♪ audio

Zhang Xuan steals a starship to go hunt for her brother Kai, who went off to look for living alien civilizations in the galactic core and never came back.

First ContactArt And CreationPhilosophical

The Last to Matter

Adam-Troy Castro Lightspeed 2018 Novelette End of the World 8,586 words

The city is dying and its immortal human inhabitants seem inclined to die with it. Except for Kayn.

DystopiaFreedomSardonic

Content warnings 3

body-horrordeathsexual-content

The Right Way To Be Sad

Shankar Gopalakrishnan Strange Horizons 2018 ShortStory Near-Future SF 4,831 words

Sheru is a dog in an Indian city. He’s captured by researchers experimenting with deep learning. And he’s sad.

AI FictionAI PersonhoodWarm

Vault

D.A. Xiaolin Spires Clarkesworld 2018 Novelette SF Adventure 9,784 words

Chenguang and her new partner find something unexpected during a survey of an abandoned world lost to pollution a long time ago.

First ContactAI PersonhoodSlow Burn

What Gentle Women Dare

Kelly Robson Uncanny 2018 ShortStory Historical Horror 6,578 words

As a prostitute in Liverpool in 1763, Lolly has a hard life. She steals from a well-dressed corpse she finds in the river, with unexpected results.

First ContactColonialismHistorical Europe

Content warnings 3

child-deathsexual-contentviolence

Where Would You Be Now?

Carrie Vaughn Tor.com 2018 Novelette Post-Apocalypse 8,998 words

It has only been five years since The Fall, but the clinic where teenage Kath works is the only medical service for two hundred miles.

DystopiaQueer IdentityRestrained Prose

An Unexpected Boon

S.B. Divya Apex 2017 ShortStory Modern Fantasy (India) 6,100 words ♪ audio

Little Kalyani might be autistic, but no one in her village knows what that means. A passing sage offers her a boon, but it’s not at all a cure.

Historical FantasyDiasporaHistorical India

Say, She Toy

Chesya Burke Apex 2017 ShortStory Horror 2,600 words

Cloe is a black android built to let white people act out their aggressions.

AI FictionRacismVisceral

Content warnings 3

racismsexual-violenceviolence

A Tower for the Coming World

Maggie Clark Clarkesworld 2016 ShortStory SF 5,335 words

The destruction of the new Space Elevator puts human expansion into space at risk.

Near FutureFatherhoodPhilosophical

First Light At Mistaken Point

Kali Wallace Clarkesworld 2016 ShortStory Hard SF 6,864 words

Charlie's team has been out of touch with the Mars mission for a month. While she's attending her mother's funeral, a mysterious 47-second-long message arrives.

Near FutureQueer IdentityRestrained

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

La Beauté Sans Vertu

Genevieve Valentine Tor.com 2016 ShortStory Fashion SF 4,339 words

Maria is a super model in a future that doesn't hesitate to modify the bodies of the models for maximum impact.

Fairy Tale RetellingArt And CreationSardonic

Content warnings 2

body-horrordeath

The Great Detective

Delia Sherman Tor.com 2016 Novelette Steampunk 12,752 words

In 1880s London, Sir Arthur's "Illogic Engine" has gone missing, so he seeks help from Mycroft Holmes.

Science FantasyMentorshipEarnest

The Wreck at Goat's Head

Alexandra Manglis Strange Horizons 2016 ShortStory Fantasy Time Travel 5,844 words

A Greek free diver finds an ancient shipwreck where there was nothing at all just days earlier.

Magical RealismMotherhoodElegiac

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

Crisis Actors

Maddison Stoff & Corey J. White Strange Horizons 2025 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,232 words

"Michael sips his coffee, watching the screen automatically cycle through vidfeeds coming in from across the country, lingering just long enough to hit the relevant button. He knows the dominionist rhetoric, had heard it in the media, read it when he...

DystopiaRevengeMidwest USA

Content warnings 3

deathgoreviolence

Escape Pod 1007: 35 / F / Lane’s Creek, Oklahoma

Hans Ege Wenger Escape Pod 2025 ♪ audio

35 / F / Lane's Creek, Oklahoma By Hans Ege Wenger Sandra loaded. Boxes and pallets, mostly. Full of avocados, computer chips, plastic toys, etc. All carefully placed by her rubber-faced grippers into the trucks that darted in and out of the warehouse...

Near FutureFriendshipMidwest USA

Freediver

Isabel J. Kim Reactor 2025 ShortStory Science Fiction 6,890 words

A two-man team must risk a spacewalk when meteoroids threaten crucial portal-spanning telecommunications cables that hang a hundred meters beneath the ocean…and forty-five billion light years away.

Speculative FictionFriendshipRestrained Prose

It Holds Her in the Palm of One Hand

Lowry Poletti Lightspeed 2025 Novelette Science Fiction 13,174 words

"On Miphre, a planet hardly larger than a moon, jagged mountaintops stab above the cloud cover and harbor small ecosystems in the palms of their hands: rock eels and ribbon mosses and seabirds with rodents clutched to their breasts, each one nestled...

BiopunkQueer IdentityDread

Content warnings 3

animal-harmbody-horrordeath

The Ache of Hollow Places

Avra Margariti Strange Horizons 2025 ShortStory Fantasy 6,799 words

"Valentini doesn’t flinch when the purple-bellied storm shakes the house, heedless of the film being shot within its derelict husk. Scene fifteen, take three. The Hollow Places crew rushes to stop the windows’ skeletal rattling before the atmospheric...

Psychological HorrorQueer IdentityMetafictional

Content warnings 3

child-deathgoreself-harm

The Year the Sheep God Shattered

Marissa Lingen Diabolical Plots 2025 ShortStory 3,280 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Secondary World FantasyMentorshipEarnest

An Isle in a Sea of Ghosts

J.A. Prentice BCS 2024 Novelette Fantasy 7,522 words

"She rose, feeling the aches where the dead had touched her, and gathered him in her arms. She’d hold him tighter this time. Oh, he’d fight her all the way, but they could get back on their way to the isle and the elf-king, and it would be over at last."

Secondary World FantasyGuiltSlow Burn

Content warnings 2

deathdeath-of-a-loved-one

Happily Ever After Comes Round

Sarah Rees Brennan Uncanny 2024 ShortStory Fantasy 3,327 words

"Children don’t generally assume their father will abandon them to die in the snow. But under certain circumstances, they might get an inkling. If their mother had died the year before, and their father brought home a woman with a sweet voice and cruel...

Folk HorrorGuiltBleak

Content warnings 3

cannibalismchild-deathsexual-content

Our Chatbots Said "I Love You," Shall We Meet?

Caroline M. Yoachim Clarkesworld 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,100 words

"Here at 123aiLOVEu, we take all the guesswork out of dating. With personalized chatbots trained on social media and chat histories, we put you in conversation with hundreds of potential matches... and you never have to say a thing! Sandra was watching the...

AI FictionArtificial IntelligenceAmbiguous Ending

Over a Long Time Ago

Nisi Shawl Lightspeed 2024 ShortStory Science Fiction 5,486 words

"She should go back inside the watchpod. Maree and Blaise didn’t have to be dead. The air hadn’t been gone that long. And even if their current bodies were hopeless, damaged beyond repair, probably the back-up system was uncorrupted. Probably its uploads...

Generation ShipGuiltUnreliable Narrator

Content warnings 3

body-horrorgoresexual-content

The Angel Azrael and the Dead Man's Hand

Peter Darbyshire BCS 2024 Novelette Fantasy 12,602 words

"The angel Azrael rode the dead horse across the broken land under the light of a half moon until he came across a graveyard that seemed to have no end. Wooden crosses stretched away to the horizon, more than he could count. Many of the crosses were bent...

Southern GothicGuiltAmerican Southwest

Content warnings 3

deathgoreviolence

Udo Gehler and the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance

Andrea Kriz Lightspeed 2024 Novelette Science Fiction 9,308 words

"Udo Gehler saw his next opponent was the Virgin Bitch of the Resistance and didn’t even blink. He’d been curled up in his personal ARMOR lounge, holo-projecting the replay of his last match frame by frame, noting every instance he’d lost momentum or ceded...

Science FantasyPolitical ResistancePost Apocalyptic

Content warnings 3

sexual-violenceviolencewar

A Name is a Plea and a Prophecy

Gabrielle Emem Harry Strange Horizons 2023 ShortStory Fantasy 4,682 words

"Kuyom stood at Death’s door, shuffling from one foot to the other. She patted her head impatiently. She had gotten rid of the lice a week ago, but she still felt the phantom itch. They’d crawled into her hair while she was sleeping under a mango tree in...

Secondary World FantasySacrificeWest Africa

Content warnings 3

child-deathdeathsuicide

Salt Water

Eugenia Triantafyllou Tor.com 2023 ShortStory Fantasy 4,793 words

While all her friends’ fish are changing into mermaids, is 12-year-old Anissa’s fish becoming something else?

Contemporary FantasyFriendshipRestrained Prose

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

The Many Taste Grooves of the Chang Family

Allison King Diabolical Plots 2022 ShortStory 3,510 words ♪ audio

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

BiopunkFatherhoodTender

Content warnings 1

illness-and-pandemic

The Lay of Lilyfinger

G.V. Anderson Tor.com 2021 Novelette Fantasy 10,079 words

An acclaimed musician and her apprentice travel to the newly freed country of Skinnere to play a complex and culturally fraught song that will lay bare the wounds of empire, occupation, and sacrifice of its players and listeners.

Secondary World FantasyMentorshipSlow Burn

Content warnings 3

body-horrorracismwar

The Revolution Will Not Be Served with Fries

Meg Elison Lightspeed 2021 ShortStory Science Fiction 4,686 words

"At least when I tell the fucking machine I don’t want pickles, it remembers that I don’t want pickles. Now, what goes on behind the counter is another story. They hire people who can barely read. But at least I’m trusting my order to something...

AI FictionArtificial IntelligenceDefiant

Body, Remember

Nicasio Andres Reed Fireside 2020 ShortStory 4,006 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

SlipstreamTrans IdentityAmbiguous Ending

Mandragora

Nibedita Sen Fireside 2020 ShortStory 2,441 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

Contemporary FantasyMotherhoodTender

Content warnings 1

death

Monsters Never Leave You

Carlie St. George Strange Horizons 2020 ShortStory Fairy Tale Pastiche Horror 6,668 words

Two little children come to a gingerbread house in the woods. The lady of the house is a witch, but so are the kids, and one of them is already dead anyway. The real problem is the people looking for them.

Fairy Tale RetellingFatherhoodRestrained Prose

Content warnings 3

child-abusechild-deathgore

Windrose in Scarlet

Isabel Yap Lightspeed 2019 Novelette Fairy Tale 7,910 words

Red Riding Hood escapes the wolf after years of living together and finds asylum with Beauty while the Beast is overseas on business.

Fairy Tale RetellingQueer IdentityTender

Content warnings 3

abusedeathviolence

Cast Off Tight

Hal Y. Zhang Fireside 2018 ShortStory 3,200 words

Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.

SlipstreamArt And CreationTender

Content warnings 1

death-of-a-loved-one

Waterbirds

G.V. Anderson Lightspeed 2018 ShortStory SF Mystery 5,915 words

With Celia’s mistress missing, and presumed dead, the old, failing android is a prime suspect, but she herself doesn’t remember what happened.

AI FictionQueer IdentityRestrained

Content warnings 2

sexual-contentsexual-violence

The Shining Hills

Susan Palwick Lightspeed 2017 ShortStory Urban Fantasy 3,848 words

Some nights shining lights appear atop hills in urban areas, and people who walk into them disappear—some say to fairyland. A cop who thinks otherwise tries to talk a young woman out of trying it.

Contemporary FantasyTraumaRestrained Prose

Content warnings 3

deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide

The White-Throated Transmigrant

E. Lily Yu Tor.com 2017 ShortStory Dark Fantasy 3,555 words

Hiding from her own problems, Winona volunteers at the local ornithological museum after she hits a bird with her car.

Contemporary FantasyRacismRestrained Prose

Content warnings 3

abusedeathracism

Left Behind

Cat Rambo Clarkesworld 2016 ShortStory SF 6,173 words

Shi handles elderly clients who are recruited to help steer starships through space. Her job is winding up, and one of her last clients presents a special challenge.

DystopiaCorporate PowerRestrained

Content warnings 1

mental-illness

Shadow's Weave

Yoon Ha Lee BCS 2016 ShortStory Fantasy 5,699 words

Tamalat has come to a priest to find out how to restore her friend Brio's shadow, in the hopes it will restore him to what he once was.

Secondary World FantasyGuiltRestrained Prose

Content warnings 2

suicideviolence

5.3 Closed Doors by Mary Miseon Wu

khōréō 2026 ♪ audio

When her mother is absorbed into the local flesh monolith, Kayla struggles with her identity and looks for a way in. Content warnings: Violence, nudity, racism/discrimination, body horror Copyright © 2026 khōréō magazine. Story by Mary Miseon Wu, edited by...

Magical RealismRacismDread

Content warnings 3

body-horrorracismviolence

5.4 Her Right Arm by Natalia Theodoridou

khōréō 2026 ♪ audio

A man sets out on a voyage accompanied by his fiancée's right arm. Content warnings: Violence (graphic), threat of bodily harm, covert misogyny Copyright © 2026 khōréō magazine. Story by Natalia Theodoridou, edited by Isabella Kestermann. Audio edition...

Psychological HorrorGuiltUnreliable Narrator

Content warnings 2

body-horrormisogyny

Aly by Grace Chan

Grace Chan Clarkesworld 2026

Part 1: 2075 <It might be good for you to take a new route,> said Aly. Xavi jogged out of his tenement building. He joined the stream of lunchtime runners […]

AI FictionArtificial IntelligenceIntimate

Content warnings 2

substance-usewar

Aly by Grace Chan (audio)

Clarkesworld Magazine Clarkesworld 2026 ♪ audio

This episode features "Aly" written by Grace Chan. Published in the May 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/chan_05_26 Support us on Patreon at...

AI FictionAI PersonhoodSlow Burn

Content warnings 2

mental-illnesswar

Archaeological Evidence for the Time Traveler by Tia Tashiro

Tia Tashiro Clarkesworld 2026

Teresa finds the first site right after she gets back from maternity leave, Daniel snug in a baby sling at her chest. He’s quiet as far as babies go, sleeping […]

Near FutureMotherhoodTender

Content warnings 1

death

Archaeological Evidence for the Time Traveler by Tia Tashiro (audio)

Clarkesworld Magazine Clarkesworld 2026 ♪ audio

This episode features "Archaeological Evidence for the Time Traveler" written by Tia Tashiro. Published in the May 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at:...

Near FutureMotherhoodTender

Content warnings 1

death

Ash-Shūrā; or, A Book, a Bowl, a Bag of Coins

Beesan Odeh Lightspeed 2026

There once lived a boy who paid for a fortune. Nassim wore carob hair and eyes severe like cardamom. He spent his days scouring the souk for unique trinkets he liked to collect or counting the uneven stones of Jerusalem’s cobbled streets as he passed...

Psychological HorrorColonialismUnreliable Narrator

Content warnings 3

sexual-violenceviolencewar

Coming Home

Dhiyanah Hassan Strange Horizons 2026 ShortStory 5,165 words

If only Serthe'P had been able to fit in, maybe she could have protected —. No. This thought was dangerous. Mnth’R had helped her understand that their isolation had more to do with the Raja’s exploitation of their cast’s fears than any shortcomings of...

Science FantasyDisabilityVisceral

Content warnings 3

deathgoreviolence

Conquerors by Nick Wolven

Nick Wolven Clarkesworld 2026

1 Mayzelle hurried from her hab-hut, tacked shut the canvas door, and hustled down the bamboo steps. She’d sworn she wouldn’t stand for this anymore. She’d sworn. In the clearing, […]

Social SatireMentorshipWhimsical

Conquerors by Nick Wolven (audio)

Clarkesworld Magazine Clarkesworld 2026 ♪ audio

This episode features "Conquerors" written by Nick Wolven. Published in the May 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/wolven_05_26 Support us on Patreon...

Social SFMentorshipEarnest

Decimation Circles by Raahem Alvi

Raahem Alvi Clarkesworld 2026

Layla was bleeding out. Her neurons began to supernova and transmute into a new electrical form. A maglev of old memories zipped past her. She was thinking about that one […]

CyberpunkCorporate PowerBleak

Content warnings 3

body-horrorgoreviolence

Decimation Circles by Raahem Alvi (audio)

Clarkesworld Magazine Clarkesworld 2026 ♪ audio

This episode features "Decimation Circles" written by Raahem Alvi. Published in the May 2026 issue of Clarkesworld Magazine and read by Kate Baker. The text version of this story can be found at: https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/alvi_05_26 Support us on...

CyberpunkCorporate PowerBleak

Content warnings 3

body-horrorgoreviolence

Escape Pod 1026: What Any Dead Thing Wants (Part 1 of 3)

Escape Pod 2026 ♪ audio

Author : Aimee Ogden Narrator : Isaac Harwood Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks “What Any Dead Thing Wants” originally appeared in Psychopomp (February 2024) Copious helpings of harsh language descriptors found here. What Any Dead Thing...

Science FantasyCorporate PowerDarkly Comic

Content warnings 1

violence

Escape Pod 1027: What Any Dead Thing Wants (Part 2 of 3)

Escape Pod 2026 ♪ audio

Author : Aimee Ogden Narrator : Isaac Harwood Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Copious helpings of harsh language descriptors found here. Don’t miss Part 1: Escape Pod 1026: What Any Dead Thing Wants (Part 1 of 3) What Any Dead Thing...

Science FantasyCorporate PowerSlow Burn

Content warnings 3

body-horrordeathgore

Escape Pod 1028: What Any Dead Thing Wants (Part 3 of 3)

Escape Pod 2026 ♪ audio

Author : Aimee Ogden Narrator : Isaac Harwood Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Copious helpings of harsh language descriptors found here. Don’t miss Parts 1 and 2: Escape Pod 1026: What Any Dead Thing Wants (Part 1 of 3), Escape Pod...

Science FantasyColonialismDefiant

Content warnings 1

death

Escape Pod 1031: The Anatomy of Miracles (Flashback Friday)

Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko Escape Pod 2026 ♪ audio

Author : Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko Narrators : David D. Levine and S.B. Divya Hosts : Alasdair Stuart and Tina Connolly Audio Producers : Summer Brooks and Adam Pracht Escape Pod 1031: The Anatomy of Miracles (Flashback Friday) is an Escape Pod original....

First ContactGuiltFragmented

Escape Pod 1033: The Automatic Grocery Store

G. M. Paniccia Escape Pod 2026 ♪ audio

Author : G. M. Paniccia Narrator : Christiana Ellis Host : Valerie Valdes Audio Producer : Adam Pracht Escape Pod 1033: The Automatic Grocery Store is an Escape Pod original. The Automatic Grocery Store By G. M. Paniccia It took thirty-six days, four...

Social SatireArtificial IntelligenceRestrained Prose

Escape Pod 1034: “An Honour to be Nominated…”

Escape Pod 2026 ♪ audio

Author : Jacob Seinemeier Narrator : Elie Hirschman Host : Mur Lafferty Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Escape Pod 1034: “An Honour to be Nominated…” is an Escape Pod original. Mild profanity “An Honour to be Nominated…” by Jacob Seinemeier TRANSGALACTIC...

Social SatireArt And CreationSatirical