A few years ago, when I started publishing annual sci-fi/fantasy recommended reading lists, the proliferation of favorites lists dropping each winter would kick off a genuine reading flurry that made my late-February list substantially larger than my mid-December one. That’s the reason I started posting two versions of the list each year. 

But as I read more widely and get better at identifying the sorts of stories that might resonate, those other recommendation lists add much less material to my TBR. Most of the time, I’ve either seen and evaluated the recommendations before or have some independent reason (usually time or money) not to investigate too deeply. And so after reading 270 pieces of 2025-published fiction before posting my initial Recommended Reading List in December, I have read just seven more since. Granted, two of those were very, very good, so I do have a couple updates to make. But by and large, I haven’t spent much energy trying to find new things to recommend. 

But that doesn’t mean I’ve set aside last year’s fiction. Instead, my reading blitz has been mostly dedicated to rereads. Over the past weeks, I’ve reread more than twenty of my favorite short stories and novelettes in order to hone in on the absolute cream of the crop as it comes time to submit award ballots. And so, while this post still includes an update of my original list, that’s no longer the main focus. Instead, I’m sharing my 2025 Top Ten Sci-fi/Fantasy Short Fictions, hammered out with hours of reflection and rereads of the stories where I saw the biggest sparks of best-of-the-year potential. 

If you’ve already seen my Recommended Reading List, do note the additions of The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (Novel) and The Patron by Thomas Ha (Short Story, Honorable Mention). I see the former as truly the best novel on my recommendation list—it is not to be missed. Otherwise, take a closer look at my absolute favorites from all the short fiction I recommended last year. As always, the list is unranked, presented in alphabetical order by author last name. 

Short Fiction Top Ten

2025 was The Year of the Novelette. For the first time since I started posting these lists, I had more novelettes than short stories on my final consideration list. Given that I read almost thrice as many short stories as novelettes, that says a whole lot about the quality of the latter group. I’ve only included five here on this list, but even with a couple late cuts, that still represents the most novelettes I’ve ever included. I feel compelled to offer my apologies to “Never Eaten Vegetables” by H.H. Pak and “Four People I Need You to Kill Before the Dance Begins” by Louis Inglis Hall. Both were easily good enough to be among my top five in the category in a usual year. Alas, this was an exceptional year. To the Top Ten:

• Wilayat in Seven Saints by Tanvir Ahmed (short story, Kaleidotrope). A beautifully-layered, mythic tale about oppression and resistance glimpsed through the lives of the titular seven saints and a mysterious figure who insists on her interlocutor heeding their examples. The constituent stories are brief and to-the-point in a way that perfectly captures that folktale feeling, and the way they intertwine to exert increasing pressure on the story-collecting lead makes for a story that’s as powerful as it is magical. 
• Our Echoes Drifting Through the Marsh by Marie Croke (novelette, Beneath Ceaseless Skies). A story with moral and emotional complexity that allows no easy answers, featuring a society losing the magical ground that holds the echoes of their ancestors to the encroachment of enormous, carnivorous waders migrating from the north. Questions about whether to flee or to fight divide not just the community but individual families, drawing the lead into a conflict—partially of her own making—with those closest to her, the results of which could shape her society for generations. This one is eye-catching for its worldbuilding but exceptional for its heart-wrenching uncertainty. 
• In My Country by Thomas Ha (short story, Clarkesworld). An effortlessly haunting tale that shares a lot of DNA with the wave of dystopian literature published shortly following World War Two. But while there are copious hints and insinuations of a totalitarian surveillance state, this story pointedly avoids naming any particular target of its rhetoric. Instead, it lauds the weird, the unsettling, and the meditative, all while delivering a narrative that is itself weird, unsettling, and meditative. On the whole, a deeply atmospheric piece that delivers tension both within the lead’s family and between his family and his society, all while encouraging the audience to read between the lines. The reader who does will surely find echoes of myriad contemporary issues in an enthralling story that nevertheless refuses to limit itself to one target alone. 
• The Name Ziya by Wen-yi Lee (novelette, Reactor). An absolutely devastating portrait of someone trying to make her way at an imperial academy full of wealthy elites who see the deepest magics of her culture as little more than a novelty. There are plenty of excellent stories with similar setups, but this one is all the more powerful for the way it eschews some of the standard plot beats, instead leaning further into the lead’s internal turmoil, delivering some jaw-dropping passages on the way to a razor-sharp finish that can simultaneously look like complete triumph and utter failure. 
• The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead by E.M. Linden (short story, Podcastle). A short piece with a powerful, mosaic-like structure, this is the story of a small community forced to leave their sinking island home, told through the voices of the island-bound ghosts they’ve left behind. The myriad glimpses into individual lives are beautiful as they are brief, and they come together into an atmospheric, melancholy tale that runs the gamut between joy and heartache, longing and hope. 
• Barbershops of the Floating City by Angela Liu (short story, Uncanny). I was hooked by the expert second-person narration and exploration of haircut-based magic that unearths strands of memory—very much my brand (the second-person and memory magic, not the haircuts)—and became increasingly enthralled as the layers were further and further pared back. It’s a stomach-churning tale of classist abuses that’s also a tender family story of a daughter caring for her addict mother, and it hits all the harder with every new revelation. 
• Liecraft by Anita Moskát, translated by Austin Wagner (novelette, Apex). An absolutely audacious premise dramatically affects the storytelling, and the result is immersive as it is impressive. Set in a world that staves off destruction by the magical power of lies—the crueler, the better—it digs deep into the emotions of a lead scarred by the deceit of her own mother and into her struggles to inflict the same on her husband. The speculative conceit means that every reveal comes indirectly, with the physical reactions of the outside world telling both the readers and the characters which statements are true and which are not, creating a pairing of style and substance that’s both fascinating and devastating. 
• The Tin Man’s Ghost by Ray Nayler (novelette, Asimov’s). An alternate history nuclear proliferation story that does so much in a small space. While perhaps not the main plot focus, the overarching theme is an exploration of personhood and its perception, from the wartime mindset that dehumanizes enemies so as to better protect loved ones to the development of robot sentience and the way humanity simultaneously ignores and feels threatened by it. The ethical questions surrounding weapons research hit hard, but it’s just as remarkable for the way it draws the reader into the perspective of the people—human and otherwise—caught in the middle of it all. 
• New Niches by Jackie Roberti (short story, Reckoning). Both a meditative character study and a compelling case against climate-induced despair, this explores the shifting perspective of the solitary lead, from the disasters that shaped her pessimism to the fatalism that sank a relationship to the small successes that open her eyes to a new way of thinking. This wonderfully threads the needle between realism and optimism, mincing no words about the state of the world but offering an alternative to existential dread. 
• The Starter Family by Sage Tyrtle (novelette, GigaNotoSaurus). A nightmarish dystopian tale that sets itself apart from the subgenre by its choice of perspective: one of the men of privilege that the dystopia is designed to serve. The horrific world is on full display, but the horrors hit differently seen through the eyes of a figure struggling to decide whether honesty—let alone action—is worth the cost. A harrowing, sobering journey offering no easy answers. 

If you’re paying close attention, you may have noticed that my ten favorite short fictions of 2025 were published in ten different venues! That was not in the least bit intentional and indeed isn’t even something I noticed until after writing the list. But I can’t say I’m not pleased at the fruits of my attempts to read more broadly.

Recommended Reading List

Novel

Top-Tier Favorites

• The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami (Pantheon). A stunning, claustrophobic story of a woman caught on the wrong side of a policing algorithm, alternating between a kafkaesque detention that makes it nearly impossible to prove oneself ready for release and flashbacks to the travails of ordinary life that saw a well-educated woman with a stable family find herself detained. A difficult, powerful read with so much to say on the mundane ways that bias creeps into large systems and on how little it takes for an ordinary person to see themself become a threat.
• Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit). For returning Tchaikovsky fans, this will be a familiar sort of excellence: a survival tale on a hostile planet that leans hard into some fascinating xenobiology and the increasingly frayed mental state of the stranded pair. The anticapitalist commentary—again, a Tchaikovsky staple—is made more effective by the way it lingers in the background, letting the harrowing survival tale take center stage. 
• There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm (Ballantine). This rewrite of an indie cult favorite introduces beings of extraordinary power who remain hidden through psychological camouflage that prevents human minds from remembering them. This prompts the obvious question of how humanity can defend against something whose existence it cannot remember. More a conceptual tale than a character one—almost every chapter starts with the perspective characters having forgotten what came before—it’s both fascinating and gripping from start to finish. 

Honorable Mentions

• A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey). Fans of The Tainted Cup can expect more of the same in a sequel that sees the lead in a new region and solving a new mystery that’s intimately connected to the weirdness of the world. 
• The Memory Hunters by Mia Tsai (Erewhon). A thrilling tale of uncovering suppressed history with plenty of commentary on ownership of cultural artifacts, all in a gorgeous, Appalachian-inspired setting. 
• The Merge by Grace Walker (Mariner). A literary dystopian thriller that stands out from its subgenre in the way it plays with memory, this stars a mother/daughter pair exploring an experimental technology to cure the former’s Alzheimer’s, ultimately delivering a psychologically claustrophobic tale where even one’s own mind cannot be trusted. 

Novella

Top-Tier Favorite

• The Apologists by Tade Thompson (Clarkesworld). What starts as the investigation into a serial killer hides a deeper mystery underneath, slowly unspooling subtle hints that the London setting is not quite what it seems. The sense of uneasy anticipation makes this impossible to put down, and it comes together in a way that provides closure for both plot and characters. 

Honorable Mention 

• The Chronolithographer’s Assistant by Suzanne Palmer (Asimov’s). A tale of coming-of-age and working through grief, with long stretches that feel like slice-of-life before unfolding the time travel elements that lead to a high-stakes finish. 

Novelette

Top-Tier Favorites

• Our Echoes Drifting Through the Marsh by Marie Croke (Beneath Ceaseless Skies). Giant, carnivorous waders have driven the lead’s people out of the marshes where their ancestors’ memories remain visible, creating a simmering division between those who prioritize their safety and those who will take great risks to glimpse lost loved ones. The worldbuilding is tremendous here, but the show-stopper is the complicated conflicts that arise even within families, with an ending that’s all the more compelling for its moral ambiguity. 
• Four People I Need You to Kill Before the Dance Begins by Louis Inglis Hall (Clarkesworld). It’s titled like a revenge story, but the vast majority of the narrative is concerned with the explanation as to why the four people need killing. And doing so requires understanding a fascinating group of nonhuman protagonists, along with the axes of power and oppression in their icy world. The vengeance plot gives it closure, but it’s the world, atmosphere, and themes that make it exceptional.
• Something Rich and Strange by L.S. Johnson (GigaNotoSaurus). One of three or four 2025 tales impressive enough to break through my typical aversion to body horror to make my favorites list, this opens with the lead beginning a transformation she’d tried desperately to avoid, returning to her isolated hometown for a final confrontation with her mother. The horrifying beauty of the prose and sharp terror of the lead’s perspective make this a remarkably compelling read, but it’s the strange ambiguity of the ultimate transformation that makes it so memorable, as it wonderfully captures the feeling of dreading a change you cannot possibly understand until it’s done. 
• The Name Ziya by Wen-yi Lee (Reactor). Another wonderfully complicated novelette, featuring a lead who must carve the magic of her name from her body to fund her place at an elite school that provides rich opportunity while scorning her people as uncivilized. There are jaw-droppingly sharp passages on cultural appropriation, and yet the tale somehow maintains the uncomfortable balance between the lead hating a society that takes so much and yet loving the life it gives her. Tremendous, tremendous work. 
• Woman Like Stone Like Water by Malda Marlys (Beneath Ceaseless Skies). It’s a prehistoric tale starring a reclusive woman in the habit of hiding in the rocks and trees when various tribes visit the waterfall she calls home. Experienced readers can predict that the story will turn on an event that forces her out of solitude, but it’s the mythic voice and the gradual revelations of the truth behind her mysterious power over the stones that make this story exceptional. It reads like a legend and yet is thoroughly grounded in the perspective of a limited character who still doesn’t understand her own abilities. 
• Liecraft by Anita Moskát (Apex). Set in a world staving off poisonous air and crumbling buildings only through the magical power of lies, this spotlights a woman whose life work is to serve her city by inflicting a series of cruel deceits on her hapless husband. But her own growing feelings complicate the mission, building to an emotionally devastating conclusion only intensified by the ubiquitous lies forcing a small moment of questioning before any revelation hits home.
• The Tin Man’s Ghost by Ray Nayler (Asimov’s). A nuclear proliferation story in an alternate history where alien technology has enabled both teleportation and excavation of the memories of the dead, this dives both into the big, philosophical questions about weapons research and into the minds of those who might be able to do something about it. Nayler fans will recognize the setting and characters from other stories, but this serves as an effective standalone that both makes you think and makes you feel. 
• Never Eaten Vegetables by H.H. Pak (Clarkesworld). Set on a far-flung human colony trying to scratch out an existence decades after the disaster that slashed their population far below necessary levels, this features a lead trying to keep her people free from the tyranny of powerful, off-planet stakeholders, all while digging into the details of the tragedy that had shaped her world, plumbing the mind of the shipboard AI blamed for it all. The story slowly peels back layers of deception and moral dilemmas, yielding a tale with plenty of drama, a lot of heart, and fantastic AI characterization. 
• The Starter Family by Sage Tyrtle (GigaNotoSaurus). This is far from the first feminist nightmare in which society views women and children as disposable accessories to a man’s life, but it departs from the norm by being told exclusively from the perspective of one of the privileged, whose eyes are slowly opening to the systemic horrors perpetrated for the sake of his happiness. This breathes new life into an old story, creating a compelling crisis of conscience in the mind of the lead and lending a revolting sharpness to the narrative. 

Honorable Mentions

• Uncertain Sons by Thomas Ha (Uncertain Sons and Other Stories). A weird action-horror tale that’s harrowing and atmospheric, satisfying as a standalone but even better as the capstone of the collection named for it. 
• My Biggest Fan by Faith Merino (Asimov’s). A sci-fi/horror piece that plays fast and loose with time and expertly delivers a nightmarish atmosphere. 
• We, the Fleet by Alex T. Singer (Clarkesworld). A wonderfully executed first-contact story from a nonhuman perspective that slowly opens the leads’ minds to different ways of being. 
• The Temporary Murder of Thomas Monroe by Tia Tashiro (Clarkesworld). A murder mystery in which the resurrected victim slowly mines his own memory to piece together the details, delivering sympathetic characters and excellent, non-linear pacing. 
• Still Water by Zhang Ran, translated by Andy Dudak (Clarkesworld). A two-timeline story split between a boy’s life after an experimental ALS treatment and his mother’s determined efforts to enable that treatment. The two stories on their own are engaging, but the way they fit together makes them something more. 

Short Story

Top-Tier Favorites

• Wilayat in Seven Saints by Tanvir Ahmed (Kaleidotrope). A mythic tale in which a story-collector records the accounts of seven saints from a mysterious interlocutor who speaks as though she has firsthand experience, this is worth reading for the narrative voice but worth remembering for its exploration of the power of stories and the means of resistance even when in the grip of the most powerful tyrants.
• Nine Births on the Wheel by Maya Chhabra (Beneath Ceaseless Skies). This is a retelling of a Hindu religious account, and I cannot comment on its faithfulness to the traditional narrative, but I can certainly praise its emotional power. Even when both readers and characters know the inevitable fate of the lead’s children, her anguished perspective never allows the deaths to fade to a tragic footnote. 
• In My Country by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld). This feels like a dystopian political satire crossed with weird horror—it clearly has something to say, but it’s not going to draw any simplistic lines to real-world figures or policies. Instead, it’s wonderfully weird and atmospheric, set in a surveillance state with a strict ban on ambiguity, but with the means of surveillance being strange and fantastical instead of cold and technological. The lead is initially unaware of much of the injustice, with a compelling character arc seeing his understanding come only through watching his children’s budding subversion. 
• Cypress Teeth by Natasha King (khōréō). Almost everything I hate in short fiction is somehow pulled together here into something fantastic. It’s a revenge story (dislike) about gods (dislike) with grotesque imagery (dislike) that’s only a few hundred words beyond the flash borderline (dislike). And yet, the prose is lush and immersive, not lingering too long in the grotesque, telling a story of a rivalry that shaped a new land and building up to a possible next chapter in a story that had once seemed to be complete. 
• An Even Greater Cold to Come by Rich Larson (Clarkesworld). Another one with more than a pinch of the grotesque, this is a war story with a child perspective that keeps the reader slightly off balance, bringing the horrors of war to life while eschewing the ordinary descriptions one might expect from adults. The result is a piece that’s immersive and feels almost mythic, with a compelling lead and a conclusion that’s as satisfying as it is shocking. 
• The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead by E.M. Linden (Podcastle). A poignant, heartfelt, beautiful tale about a people forced to flee their island home and leave their ancestral ghosts behind. The narrative flits between perspectives, offering the reader tiny glimpses into pivotal moments in a variety of lives, all told with the voice of the abandoned dead. There are no heroes or villains here, but there’s both joy and heartache all the same. 
• Barbershops of the Floating City by Angela Liu (Uncanny). A standalone tale in the world of the exceptional “Kwong’s Bath,” and this one might be even better. It employs magical haircuts to explore addiction, familial love, and an exploitative class divide, slowly peeling back the layers to expose both horrific secrets and heartwarming sacrifices. An excellent story on so many levels. 
• Catch a Tiger in the Snow by Ray Nayler (Asimov’s). Another story that plays with memory in interesting ways, this features a lead entering into a romance with a woman in the memory-modification business. It’s meditative in the way I expect from Nayler, with very little action and plenty of pondering, both on the mechanisms and implications of memory modification and the intrarelationship class divide.  There’s a bittersweet tone that lends emotional weight to the philosophical elements and an ending that brings it all wonderfully home. 
• We Used to Wake to Song by Leah Ning (Apex). Another from the “how did I of all people love a body horror story” stack, this is written from the perspective of a mother who decades before had walked away from her family to become part of the flesh-and-blood reef that she hopes will help heal a dying Earth. The visceral imagery serves as the backdrop to a confrontation between mother and daughter, dead and living, diving into motivations that were much more complicated than just ecological altruism. 
• New Niches by Jackie Roberti (Reckoning). Another meditative tale (I have a type), this features a lead doing a solitary maintenance stint on an offshore wind farm. The loneliness gives her plenty of time to think, with much of the story a reflection on the way that her intense environmental pessimism had led to the end of a relationship with a more hopeful lover, all as the hazards of life at sea slowly open her mind to a new perspective. 

Honorable Mentions

• In Luck’s Panoply Clad, I Stand by Phoebe Barton (Clarkesworld). An arresting portrait of survivor’s guilt, with commentary both on anemic gestures of aid and on the cognitive dissonance of seeking to help without taking up any space. 
• Pollen by Anna Burdenko, translated by Alex Shvartsman (Clarkesworld). A dizzying tale of survival on a hostile planet, opening with a lead hearing the ghosts of her dead family and pushing forward into her struggles to survive in a climate that turns her very mind against her. 
• (Redacted) by Tara Calaby (Kaleidotrope). A short, sharp, and complex piece about a woman suffering a depressive episode and investigating the inexplicable childhood memory gap that may have the answers. 
• Bits and Pieces on the Floor by Eric Del Carlo (Clarkesworld). The story of the evacuation of a planet turns into a complicated family tale that refuses to tie everything into a neat bow. 
• Hi! I’m Claudia by Delilah S. Dawson (Uncanny). A dark chatbot story with nary a likeable character to be found, this one twists where I expected and then does one better. 
• The Patron by Thomas Ha (Sunday Morning Transport). An uncertain and uncanny parenthood story—very much in Ha’s wheelhouse—featuring an actor paid to serve as a temporary father, but with little clue about who had hired him. 
• Numismatic Archetypes in the Year of Five Regents by Louis Inglis Hall (Clarkesworld). A tale of political upheaval from the perspective of a coinmaker, this is emotionally sharp and makes excellent use of an unusual structure. 
• Highway 1, Past Hope by Maria Haskins (The Deadlands). A revenge story, but a compelling and well-executed one that wonderfully ties its two subplots together. 
• Steel Holds the Heat’s Memory by Rick Hollon (Kaleidotrope). A heartfelt, bittersweet tale about a girl slowly coming to understand the ways her father has shielded her from the cruelty of those monopolizing the world’s magic, with just enough hope for the future to balance the injustice of the setting. 
• Abstraction Is When I Design Giant Death Creatures and Attraction Is When I Do It For You by Claire Jia-Wen (Clarkesworld). A complex interpersonal tale that sees the lead torn between supporting the career of a gladiatorial lover and aiding the sister who seeks to expose the dark secret behind the monsters. 
• Imperfect Simulations by Michelle Z. Jin (Clarkesworld). A sci-fi scarcity story centering a character with unnatural foresight, with the conflict largely an internal one between his desire to find the optimal path forward and his complicated relationships with the loudest voices in his society. 
• Freediver by Isabel J. Kim (Reactor). The story of a high-stakes diving mishap that shines for its portrayal of a single-minded character who struggles to trust and another who yearns to take on the most dangerous missions. 
• The In-Between Sister by Monte Lin (Translunar Travelers Lounge). An “only one person remembers the disappeared sister” story that exposes the messy family drama underneath. 
• Jackie and Xīng Forever by Wil Magness (Apex). A multiverse story featuring a romance between two people from very different societies who meet in the middleworld. It’s fraught with communication difficulties and builds to a stunner of a finish. 
• The Library of the Apocalypse by Rati Mehrotra (Clarkesworld). A mystical library in a post-apocalyptic world poses questions about what people are living for—and whether the lead will help their compatriots even if it means losing them. 
• Whale Fall of Yours by M.M. Olivas (Uncanny). A non-linear tale about a romance doomed by illness and selfishness…and the opportunity to process grief alongside a dying space leviathan. 
• Codewalker by G.M. Paniccia (The Map of Lost Places). A beautiful, atmospheric nightmare about exploring indie virtual reality programs—even knowing that some sims can kill. 
• Silence, in the Doorway, with the Gun by Nadia Radovich (Flash Fiction Online). A flash fiction about the constraints put on women, making wonderful use of a non-traditional format to play so many possible iterations against each other. 
• Landline by Kelly Robson (Reactor). A tense, atmospheric horror story that sees a mother desperately scrambling to make it home to a child left alone by the mysterious disappearance of his father. 
• Houyi the Archer Fights the Sun by Cynthia Zhang (Podcastle). This is a “legendary heroes deal with 21st century problems” story that’s an absolute joy to read purely for the banter between the titular archer and his wife.