You should all know by now that Australians tend to do crazy things. One of those insane projects is Not If You Were The Last Short Story On Earth, a group blog for which the members try to read as much as possible of the SF&F short fiction published each year. The end result of all this furious reading is a few weeks in an asylum some end of year recommendation lists. You can see the choices of various members via these links: Alex, Alisa, Tansy, Mondy, Sarah. Because I’m biased, I’m going to single out the Clarkesworld-published stories that they mentioned.
- “The Book of Phoenix (Excerpted from The Great Book)” by Nnedi Okorafor (Alisa, Tansy)
- “Staying Behind” by Ken Liu (Tansy)
- “Frozen Voice” by An Owomoyela (Tansy, Mondy)
- “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees” by E. Lily Yu (Mondy)
- “Tying Knots” by Ken Liu (Mondy)
- “Diving After The Moon” by Rachel Swirsky (Mondy)
- “Ghostweight” by Yoon Ha Lee (Mondy)
- “Silently and Very Fast” I, II, III by Catherynne M. Valente (Sarah)
Thanks to all for some fine stories and dedicated reading.
The big discovery of the year appears to be Ken Liu who gets lots of mentions from several different venues. And the surprise anthology hit is Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling’s Teeth.