The Best SFF Short Stories of 2022 (so far)
My favorite science fiction and fantasy short fiction of the year, unranked and presented with much enthusiasm for your inspiration
I’m a huge fan of science fiction and fantasy short fiction, and I decided to save some of my favorite stories as I read them this year. This is a roundup of some of my favorites from January to June of 2022.
A bit about my methodology…
I don’t have a subscription to every single speculative fiction magazine, so the following stories are only from the few that I regularly read. All of them are free to read online, but I would highly recommend donating to the magazines if you enjoy the stories.
I decided to only have one story per magazine, but this is by no means a comprehensive list. Pretty much every story I read this year was good. These are just a few that really stood out to me upon reading them. I have no qualifications to say that they’re the best stories, despite my above title, but they’re some of the best in my opinion. They’re my favorites — stories I’ll be thinking about for a long time.
The Stories!
Slow Communication by Dominique Dicky
This stunning story, published by Fantasy in their February issue, revolves around themes of gender and family heritage. An alien leviathan visits members of Darla’s family once in their lifetimes, continuing the same conversation over hundreds of years. But it’s the conversation about change that keeps drawing me back to this story. Free to read online at Fantasy.
Bonus: An interview with the author in the same issue!
We, The Enchanted Castle by Mae Juniper Stokes
A fairytale told by an AI house, this genre-bending story is told in the plural first person and is such a delight. It raises questions about privacy, perfection, and what that might look like in a future close to our own. I’m personally very inspired by the narrative voice and the relationship between the narrator and its houseguests. Read it online at Strange Horizons in their April 18th issue, which features an illustration of the story!
This is I by KT Bryski
A historical story about the life and death of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, the actual historical muse for the famous Ophelia painting, this story weaves together the threads of her life with legend into a narrative that is both hopeless and full of light. Find it online in The Deadlands Issue Twelve.
A Record of Our Meeting with the Grand Faerie Lord of Vast Space and Its Great Mysteries, Revised by A. T. Greenblatt
The worldbuilding in this story is incredibly imaginative, and combines faerie court-inspired politics with a science fiction setting, and time travel! With the format involving in-document-revisions, this one took me more than one read to fully understand, but it was worth it to see the clever story come together. Free to read online at Beneath Ceaseless Skies in Issue #350.
The Path of Water by Emma Törzs
This is a fairytale retelling that is also somewhat of a fairytale in and of itself, but it is so nuanced and interesting, with (spoilers!) a twist that genuinely shocked me when I first read it. I don’t want to say more if you haven’t read it, so check it out in Uncanny Magazine’s Issue Forty-Five, free to read online.
Bonus: An interview with the author in the issue!
This is I by KT Bryski
A historical story about the life and death of Elizabeth Eleanor Siddall, the actual historical muse for the famous Ophelia painting, this story weaves together the threads of her life with legend into a narrative that is both hopeless and full of light. Find it online in The Deadlands Issue Twelve.
The Plastic People by Tobias S. Buckell
This science fiction story centers a group of rich, aimless teens visiting a dead, plastic-laden Earth for fun. I appreciate its environmental themes and accurate depiction of a far future where the rich flourish in space while Earth is full of, well, the titular ‘plastic people’. Find it in Lightspeed’s May Issue.
Bonus: An interview with the author here!
I hope you enjoyed these stories! Please let me know what you think — were any of them on your favorites too? Got something I overlooked? I’d love to read it.
Want more recommendations? I wrote a guide to what to watch after Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Want to know why I love short stories so much? I wrote an essay about that too.
Want something completely different? Here’s an article about a fried chicken restaurant capitalizing on nostalgia.
Thanks again, and keep on reading!
