Recommended reading from 2020

Clearly I overprepared for Sunday's Capclave panel titled Best Fiction of 2020, as there were (gasp) other people on the panel, with even taller stacks. And I was silly to think we'd have time to talk non-fiction, too.

Here's the list of speculative-fiction titles I brought to the panel, only a few of which I got the chance to talk about. I will add to this list later, as I have a lot more reading to do. For example, I have barely begun to read the print magazines, a stack of which will comfort me in December, once the semester's over.

Short Stories (SFWA defines these as shorter than 7,500 words)

Ashley Blooms, “Little and Less,” F&SF, September/October

J.R. Dawson, “She’d Never Had a Name Before,” Lightspeed, January

Yohanca Delgado, “Evanescent Dolores,” MQR Mixtape, June

Yohanca Delgado and Claire Wrenwood, “The Blue Room,” Nightmare, May

Tegan Moore, “John Simnel’s First Goshawk,” Beneath Ceaseless Skies, February

Gabriela Santiago, “Martian Cinema,” Strange Horizons, May

Cooper Shrivastava, “Mandorla,” Clarkesworld, February

Kate Osana Simonian, “The Problematic Douchebag Collective,” North American Review, August (Summer/Fall issue)

Dan Stintzi, “The Faces Inside of Everyday Objects,” Heavy Feather Review, June

Dan Stintzi, “Invasion,” Hobart, January

Eugenia Triantafyllou, “My Country Is a Ghost,” Uncanny, January

Marie Vibbert, “Blue Eyes,” Nature, May

Jude Wetherell, “Dead Horse Club,” Reckoning, January

Claire Wrenwood, “Dead Girls Have No Names,” Nightmare, August

Claire Wrenwood, “Flight,” Tor.com, August

Novelettes (SFWA defines these as 7,500 words to 17,499 words)

Rebecca Campbell, “An Important Failure,” Clarkesworld, August

Justin C. Key, “The Perfection of Theresa Watkins,” Tor.com, September

Tegan Moore, “Strange Comfort,” Clarkesworld, July

Em North, “Real Animals,” Lightspeed, June (a first fiction publication!)

Sarah Pinsker, “Two Truths and a Lie,” Tor.com, June

Novellas (SFWA defines these as 17,500 words to 39,999 words)

Julian K. Jarboe, “Everyone on the Moon Is Essential Personnel,” Lethe Press, March (title story of their collection)

Novels (SFWA defines these as 40,000 words and longer)

Ashley Blooms, Every Bone a Prayer, Sourcebooks Landmark, August (a first novel!)

Christopher Brown, Failed State, Harper Voyager, August

Susanna Clarke, Piranesi, Bloomsbury, September

Maria Dahvana Headley, Beowulf: A New Translation, FSG Originals, August

N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became, Orbit, March

Single-Author Collections

Octavia Cade, The Mythology of Salt and OtherStories, Lethe Press, July

Julian K. Jarboe, Everyone on the Moon Is Essential Personnel, Lethe Press, March

Tenea D. Johnson, Blueprints for Better Worlds, counterpoise records, May

Michael Martone, The Complete Writings of ArtSmith, the Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, Edited by Michael Martone, BOA Editions, October

Anthologies

Bill Campbell, editor, Sunspot Jungle, Volume Two:The Ever Expanding Universe of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Rosarium Publishing, September

Theodora Goss, editor, Medusa’s Daughters: Magicand Monstrosity from Women Writers of the Fin-de-Siecle, Lanternfish Press, March

Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, editors, The Big Book ofModern Fantasy, Vintage, July

Comics

Alyssa Wong, Marika Cresta and Ray-Anthony Height, Star Wars: Doctor Aphra (Marvel)

Alyssa Wong and Greg Pak, Aero (Marvel)