My 2024 short fiction recommendations video is live!

If you’d rather consume the content in written form, I summarise the collection and 4 original stories I had published in 2024, and then it’s on to the recommendations.

As usual, to qualify for this list, a story had to be:

• First published in 2024
• Shorter than novel length
• Free to read online
• And actually read by me (of course, I have only read a small fraction of the short fiction that was published last year)

With all of that said, here are 10 of my favourite stories from 2024:

_­1. The Best Version of Yourself by Grant Collier in Clarkesworld Magazine.
This is unique story about choosing whether or not to get nanobots in your brain, and that asks and deftly explores a lot of questions. Questions like: what makes someone human? Does being human require suffering in some form? How much can you change and still be yourself? And of course: would you get the nanobots in your brain? It’s excellently written, as well. I love a story that really makes me think.

2. Loneliness Universe by Eugenia Triantaffyllou in Uncanny Magazine.
A fascinating piece about a woman who finds herself physically disconnected from everyone she knows and cares about – they can be in the same house, they can text and email each other, but they can’t see each other, can’t hear each other, can’t call each other. “Loneliness Universe” has a lot of lovely things to say about human connection, and it made me tear up at the end.

3. Remembering Day by Vanessa Fogg in Uncharted Magazine
This is another tale about what makes us human, about the limits – and wonders – of experience within our current fleshy bodies in the 2020s, and about trying to maintain relationships when the gulf of experience is so wide. It’s told in Fogg’s signature poetic style, and it made me cry big fat tears.

4. Markets of the Otherworld by Rati Mehrotra in Uncanny Magazine.
I’m a sucker for a story about a magical market, and “Markets of the Otherworld” delivers in spades. Dense with delightful lore, and skilfully written, this is a metaphoric love letter to dedicating one’s life to the fantastic, and about what that might mean at the end of that life. Another one where I teared up at the end.

5. TORONTO ISN’T REAL AND OTHER METROPOLITAN ANOMALIES by A.D. Sui in Augur Magazine.
An intriguing, compelling story about the possibility that you live in a simulation, and the possibility of communicating with someone outside of it. The ending surprised me and then felt inevitable, as many good endings do.

6. Date Night by Jan Stinchcomb in Gamut Magazine.
A fast-paced, compulsive story that interrogates the trope of the slasher killer hunting the babysitter, and the (recurring) roles everyone plays in that sort of story. Gripping and precise, this felt like a fresh and unusual read.

7. The Red Queen’s Heart by Vanessa Fogg in Lightspeed Magazine.
Another story about a magical market (lucky me!), this time from the perspective of someone operating a stall rather than a visitor. Thoughtful and contemplative, it details the encounters of the stall holder and the titular Red Queen across centuries, and explores what we feel like we must give up to survive – and whether we can later get those things back.

8. Seven Ways to Find Yourself at the Transdimensional Multifandom Convention by Rachael K Jones in Flash Fiction Online.
A fun and thought-provoking piece about two versions of the same guy – from different dimensions – meeting up every year at a convention. A lovely flash fiction about being kind to yourself, and about the small realities that might occur when you can be friends with an altered version of yourself from a slightly changed world, where you’ve made different choices, but where any version isn’t necessarily better.

9. Everything in the Garden is Lovely by Hannah Yang in Apex Magazine.
Quiet and haunting, this one has an ambitious first line that it definitely delivers on. Our narrator has failed to give her society the children they expect, and thus her body is expected to ‘give back’ in another way: by transforming into a garden. This story documents that transition process in the steady, reluctant, realistic-feeling way that many of us adopt when faced with a negative change that feels inevitable.

10. Baba Yaga Goes North by Allison Wall in Crow & Cross Keys.
A very short, gentle and joyous story about giving up one’s old life and its associated societal expectations, and instead embracing the life you were meant to have. Wall writes in such a precise, beautiful way that makes Baba Yaga Goes North simultaneously uplifting and cosy; I found this so satisfying.

In my opinion 2024 was a very strong year for short stories, with many more that could’ve easily made it to this list. The strongest throughline amongst most of the 10 I ultimately picked was that of transformation – of one’s consciousness or body or world transforming wildly into something else – and often also of the human connections that we strive to and struggle to maintain while that happens.

Thanks for coming with me on this journey, and I look forward to reading lots more fantastic stories in 2025!