The winner of the 2014 Best SF Short Story Award is Michael Swanwick for his ‘Passage of Earth’ in Clarkesworld #91, April 2014, and which is online here.
You can read my full review of the story here.
And the following stories get Commendations (click on the title for the full review) :
Lavie Tidhar. Whaliens. (Analog April 2014) – ‘a clever piece of meta-fiction there is lot within the story that pokes fun at the SF writing community, and there are references to several SF books (and some quite pointed references) that are quite delicious’ (now online here)
Michael Blumlein. Success. (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nov/Dec 2013) – ‘a story about scientists and science, but the scientists are well drawn, believable people with characters and quirks, drives and desires, weaknesses and foibles. And the science is intriguing too’
Jeremiah Tolbert. In the Dying Light, We Saw a Shape. (Lightspeed Magazine #44) – ‘a classy story from Tolbert, that has some believable human characters, an intriguing First Contact scenario, a political dimension to it, clever use of social media, transcript and other items to break up the narrative, and which addresses a deeper human issue about our place in the universe’
William Jablonsky. Static. (Asimovs January 2014) – ‘a great little story. It doesn’t break any new ground, but it handles a chain of alternate/alternative futures well’
Suzanne Palmer. Fly Away Home. (Interzone #251) – ‘excellent SF from Palmer – if SF which includes spacesuits, colonies, evil corporations, religion, gender issues, and drama is the kind of thing that you like. Like what I do’
Caroline M. Yoachim. Five stages of grief after the alien invasion (Clarkesworld Magazine #95 – ‘a tight little story by Yoachim, featuring a husband and wife who have lost their baby due to a terraforming sporefall sent in advance of their arrival by aliens, and we follow them through Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance’
Kathleen Ann Goonan. Wilder Still, the Stars (Reach for Infinity) – ‘a lovely story from Goonan .. looking at the long life of woman whose love for space starts in 1954 as a toddler taken to the Naval Academy in Washington DC who looks back on this visit with her father, over a hundred years later, as she prepares to take the next step, her own very human decision, as humanity makes other decisions’
Jay O’Connell. Of All Possible Worlds (Asimovs August 2014) – ‘..a complex, detailed story with lots of layers and depth, and I’ll be looking out for O’Connell’s next stories’
Mark Watson
3rd January 2015