It’s time for my favorite post of the year, where I share all the best sci-fi and fantasy I read from 2024. I write two versions of this post each year. The second comes out in late February, once I’ve had a chance to read works from everyone else’s Best of the Year lists. And the first comes out now, so that others can have a chance to read from mine. So let’s take a look at the holiday edition of Tar Vol’s 2024 Recommended Reading List. 

The only big change this year is that I’ve split each category into Top-Tier Favorites and Honorable Mentions. Both categories are still favorites, both are still highly recommended, but I’m just reading and recommending too many stories right now and need to make this list a little less overwhelming. So the Honorable Mentions are split off and get a little bit less word count on the mini-review. But they’re still great stories that are well worth reading. 

As always, I can only recommend things I’ve read, which is a lot, but which is not everything. I try to cast a wide net, especially in the shorter fiction categories, but there is so much out there that keeping up would be a full-time job. Right now, I’ve read 24 novels, 15 novellas, 61 novelettes, and 192 short stories that were published in 2024. My tastes are idiosyncratic, so just because I loved something does not mean you’ll like it, and just because I didn’t love something doesn’t mean you won’t. But I do my best in limited space to explain what stood out about each work to give other readers a sense of whether it may be for them. 

Each category is organized alphabetically by author last name, and the links go to full reviews or free copies, where applicable. 

Novels

Top-Tier Favorites

• The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden (Del Rey). This story of family, trauma, and grief set during WWI largely eschews combat scenes in favor of dealing with the fallout. A speculative element heavy on memory and questionable bargains dovetails wonderfully with the weight of war to make for a tremendous whole. 
• The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard (Atria). My favorite novel of the year, a literary time travel tale with a tight focus on an ordinary character dealing with foreknowledge of tragedy. Expertly portrays the mundane moments in a life, but with a time scale that allows it to explore long-term consequences of small decisions. 

Honorable Mentions

• Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi (Knopf). Low-magic, Italian-inspired historical fantasy series-starter, with a coming-of-age and plenty of backstabbing. 
• The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey). A fantasy mystery in a fascinating world that does justice to both the “fantasy” and the “mystery.” 

Novellas

Top-Tier Favorites

• It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over by Anne de Marcken (New Directions). This disorienting, plotless meditation on meaning and loss from the perspective of a sentient zombie is often confusing but always compelling, with some of the best individual scenes I read all year. 

• The Indomitable Captain Holli by Rich Larson (Clarkesworld). The child-perspective narrative voice absolutely steals the show in a thrilling and high-stakes post-apocalyptic adventure that keeps the tension high with secondary POVs from multiple sides of the conflict. 

• The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed (Tordotcom). This quest into an uncanny forest from which no one returns is exceptional purely for the atmosphere, with the lead’s past tragedy and present internal turmoil only adding to its depth. 
• Death Benefits by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Asimov’s). Takes the best parts of a mosaic story and an investigation tale, with a multitude of short segments from the perspective of those who lost loved ones in war, given structure and forward momentum by an investigation into one particular case where the soldier may not actually be dead. The plot is compelling, but the little character vignettes make this my top novella of the year. 

Honorable Mentions

• Spill by Cory Doctorow (Reactor). A story of a hacker and an activist fighting back against the villains behind an oil pipeline—it’s the character voices that make this. 

• The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler (Tordotcom). An angry but meditative anti-poaching novella with a variety of perspectives, including a scientist whose consciousness is implanted in a mammoth. 

• Proof of Concept by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Asimov’s). A murder mystery on a spaceship, with loads of pathos and excellent pacing. 

Novelettes

Top-Tier Favorites

• The Aquarium for Lost Souls by Natasha King (Strange Horizons). A wildly disorienting sci-fi slipstream tale about a woman repeatedly navigating unspace with a mortal wound and the embodiment of the Pacific Ocean as sometimes-ally, sometimes-enemy, all to tell a very personal, human story about coming to grips with relationships that aren’t quite what she thought they were. Ambitious and enthralling. 
• The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld). A quiet and compelling meditation on experience, memory, and preservation of imperfect moments. There’s a bit of a technothriller to give it some plot structure, but this is a favorite for the atmosphere and themes. 
• The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea by Naomi Kritzer (Asimov’s). A beautiful blend of science and fairy tale in a slow-building story of a summer research project in which the speculative and mundane elements dovetail wonderfully into a satisfying and pitch perfect finish. 
• The Robot by Lavie Tidhar (Uncanny). A series of slices-of-life in the centuries of caregiving, war-making, isolation, and friendship in the life of the titular robot. A lovely and touching story that effectively stands alone in the Central Station universe.
• Loneliness Universe by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny). A story that feels all too real despite the wild premise, in which friends and family suddenly lose the ability to perceive each other in real life and can only connect on social media. Featuring a lead who asks the questions you’d want her to ask when dropped into a bizarre speculative scenario, this one is exceptional more for the way it handles the emotions, examining interpersonal connections through the lens of their loss. 

Honorable Mentions

• Something Crossing Over, Something Coming Back by Timothy Mudie (Clarkesworld). A mind-hopping spy returns to meet the man he once impersonated, with a deep dive into his psychology and a deliberately open ending. 
• Binomial Nomenclature and the Mother of Happiness by Alexandra Munck (Clarkesworld). A scientist becomes obsessed with research into visual perception of emotions, while frequently failing to perceive those around her. 
• Shadow Films by Ben Peek (Lightspeed). A fascinating tale of secret messages hidden in films, with forays into conspiracies, aliens, and internment camps. 
• Signs of Life by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny). Reconciliation of estranged sisters, with Pinsker’s trademark unsettling atmosphere and a slow-building speculative element. 
• Dead Reckoning in 6/8 time by Sabrina Vourvoulias (GigaNotoSaurus). A thrilling competition with the devil—think The Devil Went Down to Georgia, but with folk dance from Veracruz—that’s long on the power of community and solidarity. 
• Ol’ Big Head by Melissa A. Watkins (Lightspeed). A slow-building ghost story with an immersive vernacular narration that provides a quick and compelling hook.
• The Peregrine Falcon Flies West by Yang Wanqing, translated by Jay Zhang (Clarkesworld, originally published in Chinese in Science Fiction World). A strange but compelling mashup of a yearning for adventure, a love of birds passed from mother to daughter, and first contact. 

Short Stories

Top-Tier Favorites

• A Theory of Missing Affections by Renan Bernardo (Clarkesworld). Simultaneously a story of sisters trying to maintain a relationship despite vast physical and philosophical distance, plus research into a godlike departed race with a penchant for psychological torture devices. Unified by the exploration of different perspectives, this provides a compelling family drama and an utterly fascinating historical research storyline. 
• A Lullaby of Anguish by Marie Croke (Apex). An angry tale of disaster voyeurism, featuring a lead who only wants to move on from the sins of her childhood but a society who won’t let her, this delivers a cathartic clash with a sister’s toxic beau and some fascinatingly complicated family undercurrents. 
• Afflictions of the New Age by Katherine Ewell (Uncanny). A story of aging and memory in a world that can halt physical aging but can do little for the mind, told in disorienting snippets from various times that the lead is incapable of distinguishing. The plot is confusing in a way that serves the theme wonderfully—beautiful, unsettling, and deeply compelling. 
• Grottmata by Thomas Ha (Nightmare). A sci-fi/horror story of occupation and resistance, with compelling characters and layers upon layers of depth. Ha is an expert at building tension, and that’s on full display here in a piece that fully won me over despite my usual aversion to horror. 
• The Sort by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld). Again, the building tension of the uncanny stands out in this tale of a neurodivergent father and son visiting a small desert town as a road trip stopover. This feels like a piece of a larger story, but it so effectively explores the feeling of parenting someone who is just a little bit different (or being someone who is a little bit different) in a setting that perfectly walks the line between eerie and mundane. 
• Our Father by K.J. Khan (Clarkesworld). A story of family and sacrifice in long-haul space travel, told in second-person by a narrator who has only years after the fact begun to grasp the challenges faced on the journey. Extremely effectively builds connection to the characters in a very short space—I’m rarely enamored by stories under 2,000 words, and this may be my favorite ever at this length. 
• Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim (Clarkesworld). I love Isabel J. Kim’s entire oeuvre, but this one is particularly excellent. It’s a return to Ursula K. Le Guin’s famed “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” using the premise to explore social media responses to injustice in a way that’s often laugh-out-loud funny and mirrors Le Guin’s original in the way it explores questions without trying to lead the reader to pat answers. 
• A Move to a New Country by Dan Musgrave (Reckoning). A deeply personal story about allocating space on a generation ship, focusing in particular on an ecologist who can’t bear to leave his grandmother behind, regardless of her own wishes. Draws some compelling parallels to other forced relocation in Osage history, but it’s the family story amidst the backdrop of sweeping societal change that makes this so excellent. 
• Another Old Country by Nadia Radovich (Apparition). A mashup of a couple different folktales from different cultures, coming together in the life of a contemporary teen as magical figures begin intruding on her life. I’m not a big retelling guy, but this one grabbed me from the beginning and never let go, with its compelling narration and focus on translation and culture clash. And it gets even better on reread. 
• Driver by Sameem Siddiqui (Clarkesworld). A disorienting tale of an aging driver lamenting the way he’s commonly treated and intermittently reminiscing on various key figures in his life—often told in second-person to absent interlocutors. The narrative voice makes this well worth the read, but the mysterious actions of a strange repeat customer give this one a satisfying plot to go along with that narration. 
• An Intergalactic Smuggler’s Guide to Homecoming by Tia Tashiro (Clarkesworld). Pretty much what it says on the tin: an intergalactic smuggler returns to her home planet with highly restricted cargo and questions about whether to attempt reconciliation with the sister she’d left years prior. Perhaps not as formally daring as some of my other favorites (or as Tashiro’s appearance on my 2023 Recommended Reading List), but it’s so much fun that it doesn’t matter. 
• The Patron Saint of Flatliners by K.A. Wiggins (Mysterion). Another story with a great narrative voice, this one is told by a woman who died of overdose and has since found herself pulled to others on the brink of death. We see one particular attempt to claw a man back from the grave, interspersed with heartbreaking reflections on emotional isolation. A gripping read that never takes the easy way out. 

Honorable Mentions

• Dreamer, Passenger, Partner by Colin Alexander (Radon). A short second-person story that starts as social commentary on algorithms and incarceration and grows into something more personal and unsettling. 
• We Shall Not Be Bitter at the End of the World by David Anaxagoras (Lightspeed). It’s the end of the world, and we’re having a party with family, aliens, and a host of various cryptids. An absolute riot with a delightful narrative voice. 
• Within the Seed Lives the Fruit by Leah Andelsmith (Reckoning). A bit of magical realism injected into a beautifully grounded story of a Black father and daughter trying to keep the family farm afloat. 
• Born Outside Polenth Blake (Clarkesworld). A strange and disorienting pod people story, told from the striking perspective of a six year-old pod person.
• The Lighthouse Keeper by Melinda Brasher (Diabolical Plots). A tense, atmospheric story of a woman shunned by friends and family, with few places to turn for respite. 
• The Lark Ascending by Eleanna Castroianni (Clarkesworld). A story about quiet subversions against a surveillance state, told from an AI perspective. 
• You Cannot Grow in Salted Earth by Priya Chand (Clarkesworld). The only flash fiction that made my favorites list (it takes a lot for flash to stick with me), a heartwrenching reflection on memory and regret from a survivor of the space exploration age. 
• The Coffee Machine by Celia Corral-Vázquez, translated by Sue Burke (Clarkesworld, originally published in Spanish in Maldita la Gracia). A short, lighthearted story about the rapid rise and fall of machine consciousness. Just plain fun. 
• Spread the Word by Delilah S. Dawson (Apex). A tense suburban horror starring an 80s tween who can anticipate each dark turn but can’t seem to prevent them. 
• Between Home and a House on Fire by A.T. Greenblatt (Reactor). A refreshingly honest look at an oft-ignored side of the portal fantasy trope. 
• A Black Spot Among the Chaos by A.T. Greenblatt (Beneath Ceaseless Skies). A cross between a smuggling story and a price of magic story, with themes of hunger and longing. 
• Behind the Gilded Door by Thomas Ha (Haven Spec). Ha’s signature tension-building in a fantasy story about growing up and finding you no longer fit in familiar places. 
• Fishing the Intergalactic Stream by Louis Inglis Hall (Clarkesworld). A compelling voice is the star of this story, featuring a complex character whose layers are unveiled slowly over the course of the nonlinear narrative. 
• And You and I by Jenna Hanchey (Sunday Morning Transport). A wistful series of glimpses into possible futures of a relationship, interspersed with its uncertain present. 
• Mirror Stages by Claire Jia-Wen (Clarkesworld). A disorienting nonlinear story of objectification, eating disorders, and their interaction with the tech industry. 
• Deep Space Has the Beat by Mary Robinette Kowal (Asimov’s). A “find the saboteur” story with great building of tension and a likable lead. 
• The Music Must Always Play by Marissa Lingen (Clarkesworld). A story of research into an alien language with the backdrop of both personal and societal tragedy. 
• Before We Were Born by Angela Liu (Logic). A clever use of split perspective in a heartwrenching family story in the midst of a horrifically ableist society. 
• Phantom Heart by Charlie B. Lorch (Diabolical Plots). A powerfully executed story about domestic violence and abuse of power from the perspective of a police AI. 
• Broken by Laura Williams McCaffrey (Clarkesworld). A compelling suppressed information story narrated in reverse chronological order. 
• Liminal Spaces by Maureen McHugh (Reactor). More vibes than plot, but expertly captures the feeling of encountering the strange and inexplicable. 
• Ecdysis by Samir Sirk Morató (Podcastle). A clever fairy tale subversion that opens into a compelling exploration of complicated family dynamics and being forced to change for social expectations.  
• A Gray Magic by Ray Nayler (Asimov’s). A quiet, reflective story from the perspective of a terminally ill woman with little support from society that yet still finds glimpses of hope.  
• The Last Great Repair Tech of the American Midwest by Ellis Nye (Reckoning). A tremendous character portrait with some sneaky good worldbuilding in a short tale formatted as an obituary. 
• Scalp by H.H. Pak (Clarkesworld). A story of disease and addiction with a short but excellent frame narrative surrounding a tale of low-wage workers trying to support ailing family in long-term care facilities.
• Median by Kelly Robson (Reactor). A dreamlike and atmospheric story of a woman who cannot call emergency services after a car accident—but who strangely begins to receive others’ emergency calls. 
• Eternity is Moments by R.P. Sand (Asimov’s). An expert portrait of a loving-but-fraught family relationship, built through a series of moments and a refrain that almost feels like poetry. 
• Totality by Brandi Sperry (The Deadlands). A touching story of loss and reunification in a world where people suddenly gain awareness and memory of past lives. 
• Jinx by Carlie St. George (Pseudopod). A slow-building domestic horror that expertly weaves a familiar speculative premise into a gripping tragedy. 
• The Weight of Your Own Ashes by Carlie St. George (Clarkesworld). Wonderfully strange aliens who experience life through multiple bodies at once in a story that digs deep into messy relationships
• Aktis Aeliou, or The Machine of Margot’s Destruction by Natalia Theodoridou (Clarkesworld). A beautiful, personal exploration story, featuring the discovery of the ineffable and subsequent reflection on all the ways past relationships had disappointed. 
• Everything in the Garden is Lovely by Hannah Yang (Apex). A beautiful and maddening feminist transformation story with a killer opening line—this would make a wonderful pairing with “The Lighthouse Keeper.” 

Observations

• Holy wow, what a year for novellas! My Recommended Reading List has never had more than three novellas on it. This year, it has seven! More than 45% of the 2024-published novellas that I read ended up on my favorites list. That number was so staggering that I removed the publication date filter on my spreadsheet to see whether I was just especially soft on novella scoring this year. I wasn’t. It’s just that seven of my top eight novellas read in 2024 were also published in 2024. It was an amazing novella year, and I’m going to be annoyed if a few of these don’t find their way onto award shortlists. 
• Every year, I look out for authors who appear more than once on my favorites list—they’re people to pay special attention to in the future. This year, that list is led by Thomas Ha (four appearances), who also appeared multiple times on last year’s list. Ray Nayler appears more than once for a third straight year, and Isabel J. Kim surely would have if she hadn’t been so wrapped up in novel-writing that she only published one story. New to this year’s multiple-favorite list are A.T. Greenblatt, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Carlie St. George. And it does not escape my notice that two writers from last year’s multiple-favorites list, Naomi Kritzer and Renan Bernardo, ended up writing some of my top-tier favorites this year. 
• As usual, Clarkesworld is here a lot. That’s partially because they publish twice as many stories as most of the other popular genre magazines (at least if you exclude flash, which I do). It’s also partially because they’re just very good at what they do. And finally, it’s partially because I give them the most chances to pleasantly surprise me, regularly reading even the stories that don’t hook me in the opening paragraphs. 
• More than 20 different publications are represented on this list, but only two appear more than five times: Clarkesworld and Asimov’s. I read a lot more of Asimov’s this year than I had in the past, but with six appearances on the list and three in the top tier, it was a revelation.  
• Another pleasant surprise this year was Uncanny, a magazine I’ve read a lot in the past but appeared more times on my favorites list this year (four, with all but one in the top tier) than in any previous year. Not sure if they just had a good year, or whether being more intentional about searching for stories on my own instead of following social media buzz made a huge difference in my enjoyment. Perhaps both.
• As far as I can tell, 14 authors on this list are in their first two years of sci-fi/fantasy publishing and are eligible for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer: Leah Andelsmith, Anne de Marcken, Katherine Ewell, Scott Alexander Howard, Claire Jia-Wen, Natasha King, Charlie B. Lorch, Angela Liu, Ellis Nye, H.H. Pak, Nadia Radovich, Brandi Sperry, Tia Tashiro, and Melissa A. Watkins. Honestly that is a very impressive number.