We’re nine days into 2025, and it’s already full of exhausting levels of controversy before we’ve even had a turnover in power in my home country of the United States. We’ve seen resignations of world leaders, wars continuing and getting worse and worse (you know where), the owner of Twitter continuing his tirade of lunacy and demonstrating why the billionaire class is not to be revered, California ablaze with a horrendous and large wildfire, right wing thinktanks developing plans to out and attack Wikipedia editors as any fascist-friendly organization would do, Meta rolling out and rolling back GenAI profiles on its platforms, and, just yesterday, the same Meta announcing sweeping changes to its moderation policies that, in a charitable reading, encourage hate-based harassment and abuse of vulnerable populations, promotion and support for disinformation, and other problems, all of which are so profound that people are talking about a mass exodus from the platform to…somewhere. It’s that last thing that brings me back to the blog today. Since the takeover at Twitter, social networks have been in a state of chaos. Platforms have risen and fallen — or only risen so much — and nothing I would call stability has formed. Years ago, I (and many others far more popular than me) remarked that we’ve ceded the territory of self-owned or small-scale third party spaces for massive third party platforms where we have minimal to no control or say and which can be stripped away in a tech-scale heartbeat. By putting all our ducks into a bin of unstable chaos, we’re also expending our time and energy on something that won’t last, requiring us to expend more time and energy finding alternatives, rebuilding communities, and then repeating the process again. In the present environment, that’s impossible to ignore.1 This is all rather reductive, but this post is not the place to talk about all the ways that social networks have impacted control over our own spaces and narratives. Another time, perhaps. I similarly don’t have space to talk about the fact that some of the platforms we currently have, however functional they may be, have placed many of us in a moral quagmire, as in the case of Meta’s recent moderation changes. Another time… ↩
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I’d say definitely Sinopticon by Xueting C. Ni
You mean the collection of Chinese SF stories? I’ve got that collection, and I’m really looking forward to it!
Unseelie Brothers, Ltd. by Fran Wilde! https://uncannymagazine.com/article/unseelie-brothers-ltd/
Kim Bo-Young’s hybrid novel/story collection I’M WAITING FOR YOU AND OTHER STORIES; Clelia Ferris’ short story collection CREATIVE SURGERY
M.A. Carrick’s The Mask of Mirrors. A twisty plot; multiple interesting and distinct viewpoint characters, with whose often contradictory goals I found myself immediately in sympathy; sound prose; above all, excellent worldbuilding that feels deep and rich without ever making the reader drink from the exposition bucket.
I would love it if you considered Arturo Serrano’s essay “I’m Colombian. Here’s What Encanto Means to Me” for Related Work. I’m obviously proud of everything we do at Nerds of a Feather, but the Encanto essay is next level good. Possibly the best thing we’ve ever published.
Arturo should also be considered for Fan Writer because holy balls he absolutely crushed last year.
http://www.nerds-feather.com/2021/11/im-colombian-heres-what-encanto-means.html
These Lifeless Things by Premee Mohamed- one of the best novellas I’ve ever read
Not for your reading list, but if you’re inclined to vote for Best Editor (Short Form), I’d like you to consider Air and Nothingness Press’ Todd Sanders – he delivers the goods for readers, with beautiful and impeccably edited books, but also takes very good care of his authors, for whom he goes above and beyond. AaNP is a labour of love for him, and he does a lot of work for it unpaid, but in his dealing with writers he’s as far from unprofessional as you can get. If you’d like to read a bit more about our experience with him, visit our blog (you can skip the bit in which we set our own stall out) -> https://turniplanterns.wordpress.com/2022/01/17/nominate-us-for-a-hugo/
Skyward Inn by Aliya Whiteley was one of the oddest but most compelling SFF novels that I read last year. It did particularly well at conjuring a genuine sense of the alien without falling back into any number of overworn tropes.
Elder Race and also Shards of Earth, Adrian Tchaikovsky
Obviously, Aliens. Jennie Goloboy
The Councillor,. EJ Beaton
Assassin’s Orbit, John Appel
RESET by SARINA DAHLAN (my favorite of the year probably)
She Who Became the Sun,. Shelley Parker-Chan
Here are some of the stories I enjoyed last year:
– SKYWARD INN by Aliya Whiteley (novel)
– ‘Samsāra in a Teacup’ by Lavanya Lakshminarayan (short story) | https://apex-magazine.com/short-fiction/samsara-in-a-teacup/
– ‘A Hollow in the Sky’ by Alexander Glass (short story) | http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2877438
– ‘Confessor’ by Yudhanjaya Wijeratne (short story) | https://www.amazon.com/Gollancz-South-Asian-Science-Fiction/dp/9391028624
– ‘The Traveller’ by Tashan Mehta (short story… I think) | https://www.amazon.com/Gollancz-South-Asian-Science-Fiction/dp/9391028624
There are others, but that is what pops to mind.
Philia, Eros, Storge, Agápe, Pragma by R.S.A. Garcia
The Abomination by Nuzo Onoh
The Unlikely Heroines of Callisto Station by Marie Vibbert
2021 Novelette
Babylon System by Maurice Broaddus
Breaching the Distance by Hannah Onoguwe
District to Cervix: The Time Before We Were Born by Tlotlo Tsamaase
Dreamports by Tlotlo Tsamaase
That Story Isn’t the Story by John Wiswell
2021 Short Story
A Taste of Unguja by Eugen Bacon
An Arc Of Electric Skin by Wole Talabi
Barefoot and Midnight by Sheree Thomas
By the Light of the Stars by N.R.M. Roshak
Comments on Your Provisional Patent Application For An Eternal Spirit Core by Wole Talabi
Deep in the Gardener’s Barrow by Tobi Ogundiran
Dontay’s Bones by Danian Darrell Jerry
Finishers by Christi Nogle
I Can Be A Hero Too by Carol Scheina
I Would by Benjamin C. Kinney
Inhabiters by Kingsley Okpii
Of Rights and Passage by Danian Darrell Jerry
Osu by Kingsley Okpii
Seven Steps to Immortality by Jennifer Brozek
Simbiyu and the Nameless by Eugen Bacon
Soulmark by Brandon Crilly
That Fish Sex Movie by Fiona Moore
The Boy With The Golden Arm by Danian Jerry
The Extermination Device of the Blacksmith by Solomon Uhiara
The Failing Name by Eugen Bacon
The Ghosts of Trees by Fiona Moore
The Tale of Jaja and Canti by Ogundiran Tobi
The Water Runner by Eugen Bacon
Things Can Only Get Better by Fiona Moore
Things From Our Kitchen Junk Drawer That Could Save This Spaceship by Marie Vibbert
What Makes You Forget by Victor Pseftakis
When the Water Stops by Eugen Bacon
2021 Games
O2 Arena by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki
https://apex-magazine.com/short-fiction/o2-arena/
I have a list of African sff stories you can consider here –
https://wtalabi.wordpress.com/2022/01/19/my-favorite-african-science-fiction-and-fantasy-short-fiction-of-2021/
The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry
Edited by Len Lawson, Cynthia Manick, & Gary Jackson (Blair Publications, 2021)
https://www.blairpub.com/shop/the-future-of-black