Going through the archives of Strange Horizons for this special column has been a bit like exploring a treasure chamber. I’ve picked fifty stories. I could have picked hundreds. Meaning: I left a lot of wonderful fiction off the list. But the good thing is that the archives are easy to access for anyone. Just enter the year you want to look at, hit GO and there you are: twenty-five years of outstanding short fiction, as well as poetry and non-fiction, at your fingertips.
2000
“Triage” by Tamela Viglione is from the first issue of Strange Horizons, published on September 1, 2000. It’s a tense and raw story about a near future where the personal is tightly enmeshed with the political and those working in the triage wards must make terrible choices every day.
“Pvt. Parker, Missing in Action” by D. K. Latta is a war story, set on the battlefield in Vietnam. It’s also a ghost story that slips through time. What I particularly love about it is how Latta fits such carefully drawn characters and so much subtle emotion into a very action-packed short story.
2001
“With Open Eyes” by Cecilia Tan follows Louis, whose life seems to intersect with other peoples’ deaths in a way that can’t quite be explained. There’s a quiet, gentle vibe to this story as we, along with Louis, realize that what seems to be a curse might sometimes be used as a gift.
“Plenty” by Christopher Barzak is a subtle, compelling story about generosity and magic, and about a secret ritual glimpsed one night through a window.
2002
“Looking Back” by Corie Ralston puts a neat twist on the alien abduction trope, as a woman leaves her old life behind to explore the universe. The entire story has a beautiful, melancholy feel to it.
“Show and Tell” by Greg van Eekhout is a wonderful science fiction tale (with a sly sense of humour) about a classroom full of good students (who just happen to be different kinds of alien bugs) encountering a human grandfather with a very memorable tattoo.
2003
“Pan de los Muertos” by Dru Pagliassotti is the story of what happens when Take-Man, “whose teeth had the shine of razorwire and whose voice was the rattle of discarded brass casings on pavement,” comes to claim Los Angeles. He thinks the place will be easy pickings until he runs into an old lady at a bus stop.
And for a profoundly sad and gorgeously wrought flash fiction piece, read “Five Things of Beauty” by Patrick Samphire.
2004
“Installing Linux on a Dead Badger: User's Notes” by Lucy A. Snyder might possibly have the best title of any story in this retrospective. When you pair it with a smashing opening like this, you know it’s a must-read: “Let's face it: any script kiddie with a pair of pliers can put Red Hat on a Compaq, his mom's toaster, or even the family dog. But nothing earns you geek points like installing Linux on a dead badger.”
For science fiction with a grand scope that weaves myth and fairytale and folklore into the telling, read “Three Tales from Sky River: Myths for a Starfaring Age” by the incomparable Vandana Singh.
2005
“Pip and the Fairies” by Theodora Goss is the exquisite story within a story about Pip, aka Pipsqueak, aka Philippa Lawson, who was once a child and the main character in the books her mother wrote about the fairy realm. Pip is all grown up now, and she is trying to remember if she was really crowned by the Thorn King, or if that fairy world was all just stories she made up for her mother, all those years ago.
In “The Moon Is Always Full” by Charles Coleman Finlay, the aftermath of a death has reverberations among a group of friends.
2006
“The House Beyond Your Sky” by Benjamin Rosenbaum was the first Strange Horizons short story nominated for a Hugo. It’s an intricate, dizzying story, of universes and makers of universes, and it’s also the story of Sophie and her very special teddy bear.
Head to Ancient Greece in “Body, Remember” by E. Catherine Tobler, where Apollo’s oracle, the Pythia, waits for the god to return. At the shrine, there is also a man waiting for an answer to a question he’s been asking the Pythia for many years: when will his wife come home?
2007
In “The You Train” by N.K. Jemisin, the New Yorker narrator is haunted by trains that shouldn’t be there anymore: “Too many people look into those empty tunnels and expect to see something where nothing is. And the trains, maybe they hear all that. Maybe they think they're still needed. So maybe they stick around, waiting to be called.”
“Teinds” by Sonya Taaffe is a gleaming flash fiction gem where love, death, grief, and desire mingle in Taaffe’s gorgeous prose.
2008
“Nine Sundays in a Row” by Kris Dikeman takes place at the crossroads. The dark man’s dog watches a girl. The girl comes every Sunday night, and if she sticks it out for nine Sundays in a row, the dark man will meet her and teach her anything she wants to learn. Except, of course, there's a catch. I love stories told from a dog’s point of view, and Dikeman’s story has a wonderful folkloric quality to it.
In “Marsh Gods” by Ann Leckie, a girl named Voud learns the dangers, and rewards, of bargaining with gods like the brown crane, who are bound by the rules of the marsh accord, and much older gods that are more powerful and much more perilous.
2009
“And Their Lips Rang With the Sun” by Amal El-Mohtar is a tale within a tale that sings like only El-Mohtar’s prose can sing. Fourteen girls are chosen by the Sun Herself to guard her temple. We learn about a Sun-woman, named Lam, who met a hooded stranger and all the events that unfolded after that meeting.
“A Journal of Certain Events of Scientific Interest from the First Survey Voyage of the Southern Waters by HMS Ocelot, As Observed by Professor Thaddeus Boswell, D.Phil, MSc.; or, A Lullaby” (Part 1 / Part 2) by Helen Keeble has an irresistibly long title. The story, about a scientific expedition and the capture of a mermaid, reveals its dark, gleaming heart as we find out what happens when science meets the song of the ocean.
2010
“Salsa Nocturna” by Daniel José Older spins a tale of music, children, and dead people. Ernesto, aka Gordo, tells us about what happened one night in the boiler room where a boy named Marcos played, for the muertos and the muertecitos, “a mambo, but laced with the saddest melody I've ever heard—some unholy union of Mozart and Perez Prado.”
For an absolutely wonderful account of a meeting at The Society of Supercriminals' new headquarters, please read “Doctor Diablo Goes Through the Motions” by Saladin Ahmed.
2011
“Librarians in the Branch Library of Babel” by Shaenon K. Garrity opens with an apology to Borges. It’s a wonderful story that follows two librarians in Dublin, Ohio, working at The Library of Babel, “one of those extrusions of pure logic into our universe that you get sometimes, a library of infinite size containing all possible books.”
“The Yew's Embrace” by Francesca Forrest has an opening line that hits like a hammer: “We could still see the old king's blood in the cracks in the flagstones beneath the new king's feet when he announced to us all that this was a unification, not a conquest...”
2012
“Good Hunting” (part 1 / part 2) by Ken Liu, from the 2012 fundraising issue, won the WSFA Small Press Award. It’s the story of a boy trained to be a demon hunter and a girl who is really a hulijing, a shapeshifting fox spirit. Liu starts the story in what seems like familiar fantasy territory but twists the tale into something altogether unexpected at the end.
“Things Greater than Love” by Kel Bachus is the story of a group of people rock climbing on an exo-planet when a terrible accident happens. It’s also the story of Drake, who is an alien with wings. In the end, it might be a love story as well, and it broke my heart in the best way.
2013
“Selkie Stories Are For Losers” by Sofia Samatar was nominated for a Hugo Award, a Nebula Award, a World Fantasy Award, and a BSFA Award. It is a fierce, fiery, beautifully written story about selkies, and family, and about being trapped on the wrong side of magic.
Speaking of awards, “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind” (part 1 / part 2) by Sarah Pinsker won the Theodore Sturgeon Award. George is an architect, drawing and designing things both possible and impossible. In 1944, he meets and falls in love with Millie and builds a life with her. In 1951, the government orders him to go to New Mexico, and what happens there haunts him all the way to his deathbed many years later. With delicate precision, Pinsker fits an almost unspoken story about aliens into George and Millie’s life- and love-story.
2014
“Nkásht íí” by Darcie Little Badger, begins with Josie and Annie putting up their pink-paint-on-cardboard sign that says, “TELL US YOUR PROBLEMS TELL US YOUR STORIES TELL US ANYTHING. WE ♥ 2 LISTEN.” After that come the ghosts and the owl-woman, and a road trip to solve a mystery. It’s all delightfully dark and tender, and such a perfect slice of Darcie Little Badger’s storytelling magic.
For some sweetness in the darkness, read “Rib” by Yukimi Ogawa. A skeleton woman meets a young boy. He is looking for his dead mother, and the skeleton woman ends up doing something she didn’t think she was capable of anymore: helping.
2015
“The Game of Smash and Recovery” by Kelly Link from the 2015 fundraising issue won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. It’s a haunting science fiction tale about vampires and Handmaids, and about Anat and Oscar, a brother and sister waiting for their parents on the planet Home, a place where nothing and no one might be exactly what they seem.
“Telling the Bees” by T. Kingfisher is both dark and lovely. How can you resist a story that begins: “There was a girl who died every morning…”
2016
“The Right Sort of Monsters” by Kelly Sandoval is a painful, harrowing story about what we’re willing to sacrifice to get what we think we want, what we think we need. Viette wants a baby, but babies are hard to come by in her world, and sometimes they have crocodile teeth and lizard scales.
“Applied Cenotaphics in the Long, Long Longitudes” by Vajra Chandrasekera is structured as a q & a with a sci-fi author named Satka. Satka is dead, but lives on as a “simulation, programmed by Satka herself,” answering questions about her life and work. The story weaves through past and future, history and philosophy.
2017
“These Constellations Will Be Yours” by Elaine Cuyegkeng is a magnificent science fiction short story that has the feel and depth of a space opera. Here, people are bio-engineered to steer the great galleon ships across the celestial sea, their brains and nerves connected to the navigation systems.
“Krace Is Not a Highway” by Scott Vanyur is a deceptively simple story about a robot working away in a post-apocalyptic world. Vanyur builds this deeply moving tale with subtlety and precision.
2018
“Toothsome Things” by Chimedum Ohaegbu is a brilliant and evocative re-telling of my favourite fairytale, Little Red Riding Hood; the wolf is not what you might think, and neither is the girl or the grandmother or the woodsman. Ohaegbu skillfully weaves together stories, lore, and memory into a luminous new pattern.
“The Glow-in-the-Dark Girls” by Senaa Ahmad won the Sunburst Short Story Award. It is one of those stories that has never really left me after I first read it. It’s about a group of girls whose destructive powers allow them to “have toppled buildings, laid waste to city blocks, upheaved countries, immolated hundreds of militants and the people around them.” Around them, things are destroyed, but together, they are still beautiful.
2019
“And Now His Lordship is Laughing” by Shiv Ramdas was a finalist for a Hugo, a Nebula, and an Ignyte Award. It’s a story about colonialism, resistance, and revenge, and it’s sharper than a razor. In Midnapor, an old woman named Apa makes magical dolls. The Governor of Bengal wants to buy one of her dolls for his wife, but Apa steadfastly refuses. It isn’t until her community is ravaged by starvation that Apa consents to making a doll for his Lordship. She has only one demand: that she must deliver it to him in person.
To break your heart, read “This Is How” by Marie Brennan, a story about the valravn, a terrible creature that drinks the blood of its victims and keeps their souls locked inside itself. Brennan tells us how a valravn is made, how it can be unmade, and maybe even re-made into something else entirely.
2020
“Renovation of a Finite Apartment” by Toby MacNutt is a profoundly strange, strangely profound, and utterly beguiling story about a being that lives among humans, in a human body, but who is decidedly not human inside that human skin. I love the way this story looks at human beings from the outside, and I love the quiet, piercing voice of the alien protagonist .
“12 Worlds Interrupted by the Drone” by Fargo Tbakhi is a story that I’ve thought about a lot ever since I read it in 2020. Particularly this line: “As the Drone hovers in its portal to the sky, and the room fills now with a smoke too acrid even for your lungs, you wish that you had talked to someone in this life—to God, to the doctor, the attendant, to anyone at all who might have listened—who might in some small way have understood.” (For a bonus track, pair this with Tbakhi’s “Balfour in the Desert” from 2021.)
2021
“The Center of the Universe” by Nadia Shammas from Strange Horizons’ special Palestinian issue was one of my favourite stories in 2021. I still think it’s one of the best short stories I’ve read about virtual reality, identity, politics, and AI. In many ways, it’s a story that resonates even more deeply today.
“Coiffeur Seven” by Kiran Kaur Saini is a gentle and incisive science fiction story about an AI hairdresser working in palliative care. The clients usually only get simple, short, easy-to-care-for haircuts, but when Veena Kaur Chan interfaces with Coiffeur Seven, the connection changes both Veena and Coiffeur Seven, and maybe even the palliative care system they both inhabit.
2022
The prose in “The Miraculous Account of Khaja Bairaq, Pennant-Saint of Zabel” by Tanvir Ahmed is lush and fierce. The story has the texture of fairytale, myth, legend, and history: “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.” It’s a story that feels brand new and ancient, all at the same time.
“The Pigeon Keeper|'s Daughter” by Su-Yee Lin describes a quiet life on the outskirts of society, haunted by the sounds of birds and the memories they evoke. Utterly beautiful and thoroughly devastating, full of shapeshifting and magic.
2023
“Nextype” by Sam Kyung Yoo is the story of Mirae, who has a neural implant paid for by her mother. The implant has made her one of the top students at university, but it has also taken things from her. It’s a quietly harrowing story about technology, adolescence, and family. It’s about the weight of expectations and how they can distort both relationships and souls.
Set on board a ferry in British Columbia, “Locavore” by Kim Harbridge gives an intimate view of the kind of monster that is usually only glimpsed in the shadows.
2024
“The Spindle of Necessity” by B. Pladek combines academia, surrealism, and incisive thoughts on art and gender. Along the way, Pladek explores how we, the readers, interact with the fiction we read and how we might try to fit writers from the past into our own views of identity and self-expression.
Time travel as tourism, and the possibly universe-bending implications of such travels, are at the heart of “A Slightly Different Sunrise from Mercury, Nevada” by Íde Hennessy.
2025
From this year, you might want to read about werewolves in “The Last Time Gladys Howled At the Moon” by Jennifer Hudak. Or you might want to read “A Charm to Keep the Evil Eye Away From Your Campervan; or, Roamin' Rights” by Christopher R. Muscatoone, one of five winners of the Stop Copaganda short story contest.
To quote Mary Anne Mohanraj from the first editorial in the first issue of Strange Horizons, published September 1, 2000: “These stories make us think. They critique society. They offer alternatives. They give us a vision of the future -- and warn us of the potential dangers therein. They help us understand our past. They are full of beauty, and terror, and delight.”