2016 novel and short fiction recommended reading list

I read a ton of fiction this year, including classic stories and stories I'd missed from a few years ago. But I tried to focus my reading on works which appeared in 2016. While it's impossible to read everything our genre published, I sought out as much as I could.

Below are my recommendations for the year's best science fiction and fantasy novels, novellas, novelettes, and short stories. This list will form the basis of my nominations for the Nebula, Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

I'm still reading young adult novels for the SFWA Norton Award, so I left those off my list.
 

2016 Recommended Novels

• All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor)
• Arabella of Mars by David Levine (Tor)
• Breath of Earth by Beth Cato (Harper Voyager)
• City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett (Broadway Books)
• I Am Providence by Nick Mamatas (Night Shade Books)
• Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones (William Morrow)
• Stay Crazy by Erica Satifka (Apex Publications)
• The Devourers by Indra Das (Del Rey)
• The Fireman by Joe Hill (William Morrow)
• The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin (Orbit)
• The Race by Nina Allan (Titan Books)
• The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Doubleday)
• The Wall of Storms by Ken Liu (Simon & Schuster)
• The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar (Small Beer Press)

2016 Recommended Novellas

• A Fair War by Taiyo Fujii (Saiensu Fikushon 2016, Haikasoru)
• A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor)
• Forest of Memory by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
• The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle (Tor)
• The Coward's Option by Adam-Troy Castro (Analog)
• The Kraken Sea by E. Catherine Tobler (Apex Publications)
• The Liar by John P. Murphy (F&SF)
• Under the Stone by Karoline Georges (Anvil Press)
• What We Hold Onto by Jay O'Connell (Asimov's Science Fiction)

2016 Recommended Novelettes

• Empty Planets by Rahul Kanakia (Interzone)
• Fifty Shades of Grays by Steven Barnes (Lightspeed)
• Flight from the Ages by Derek Künsken (Asimov's Science Fiction)
• I Married a Monster from Outer Space by Dale Bailey (Asimov's Science Fiction)
• Motherboard (A Tale from Somewhere) by Jeffrey Thomas (Interzone)
• Project Empathy by Dominica Phetteplace (Asimov's Science Fiction)
• Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea by Sarah Pinsker (Lightspeed)
• The Book of How to Live by Rose Lemberg (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
• The Jewel and Her Lapidary by Fran Wilde (Tor.com)
• The Orangery by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
• The Shores of Being by Dave Creek (Analog)
• The Stone War by Ted Kosmatka (F&SF)
• The White Piano by David Gerrold (F&SF)
• They Have All One Breath by Karl Bunker (Asimov's Science Fiction)
• We Will Wake among the Gods, among the Stars by Caroline Yoachim & Tina Connolly (Analog)
• You'll Surely Drown Here If You Stay by Alyssa Wong (Uncanny Magazine)

2016 Recommended Short Stories

• A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers by Alyssa Wong (Tor.com)
• A Non-Hero's Guide to the Road of Monsters by A.T. Greenblatt (Mothership Zeta)
• A Touch of Scarlet by David Steffen (Intergalatic Medicine Show)
• A Very Lonely Revolution by Simon Avery (Black Static)
• An Advanced Readers' Picture Book of Comparative Cognition by Ken Liu (Saga Press)
• Between Dragons and Their Wrath by An Owomoyela Rachel Swirsky (Clarkesworld)
• Dare by Harmony Neal (Black Static)
• Laws of Night and Silk by Seth Dickinson (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
• Lazarus and the Amazing Kid Phoenix by Jennifer Giesbrecht (Apex Magazine)
• Life in Stone, Glass, and Plastic by José Pablo Iriarte (Strange Horizons)
• Lullaby for a Lost World by Aliette de Bodard (Tor.com)
• Michael Doesn’t Hate His Mother by Marie Vibbert (Lightspeed)
• My Grandmother's Bones by S.L. Huang (Daily Science Fiction)
• Natural Skin by Alyssa Wong (Lightspeed)
• No Matter Which Way We Turned by Brian Evenson (People Holding ...)
• Rock, Paper, Incisors by David Cleden (Interzone)
• Rooms Formed of Neurons and Sex by Ferrett Steinmetz (Uncanny Magazine)
• Seasons of Glass and Iron by Amal El-Mohtar (The Starlit Wood)
• Sic Semper, Sic Semper, Sic Semper by Douglas F. Warrick (Tor.com)
• Sweet Marrow by Vajra Chandrasekera (Strange Horizons)
• The Red Thread by Sofia Samatar (Lightspeed)
• The Right Sort of Monsters by Kelly Sandoval (Strange Horizons)
• The Secret Mirror of Moriyama House by Yukimi Ogawa (F&SF)
• The Silver Strands of Alpha Crucis-d by N. J. Schrock (F&SF)
• The Super Ultra Duchess of Fedora Forest by Charlie Jane Anders (The Starlit Wood)
• The Sweetest Skill by Tony Pi (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
• The True and Otherworldly Origins of the Name ‘Calamity Jane’ by Jordan Kurella (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
• The Unmistakable Smell of Wood Violets by Angélica Gorodischer (translated by Marian Womack) (The Big Book of Science Fiction)
• Things With Beards by Sam J. Miller (Clarkesworld)
• Three Points Masculine by An Owomoyela (Lightspeed Magazine)
• Two Small Birds by Han Song (translated by John Chu) (The Big Book of Science Fiction)
• Unreeled by Mercurio D. Rivera (Asimov's Science Fiction)
• Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0 by Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed)
• White Dust by Nathan Hillstrom (Asimov's Science Fiction)

Top genre magazines from the Tangent Online 2016 Recommended Reading List

Over the weekend Tangent Online released their reading list of what they consider the best science fiction, fantasy and horror stories of 2016. Tangent pulls together recommendations from all of their reviewers (in this case, 19 people) and places all of these stories on their list. Stories are then ranked within the list from zero (lowest) to 3 stars (highest).

I was shocked to land four stories on the list, including three stars for my Beneath Ceaseless Skies novelette "Blood Grains Speak Through Memories." This made my day!

The Tangent Recommended Reading list is proof of how much great short fiction is being published each year. This year there are 379 stories on the list, made up of 296 short stories, 65 novelettes, and 18 novellas.

I did a deep dive into the reading list to see which magazines placed the most stories. Below are my results. Note I didn't include any anthologies in this ranking, only print and online magazines. Also, these are the picks of one group of reviewers. Obviously other year's best lists, like next month's Locus Recommended Reading List, would feature vastly different results.

Here are the magazine rankings based on stories in the Tangent reading list:

1. Asimov's Science Fiction: 42 stories
2. Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 32 stories
3. Analog: 31 stories
4. F&SF, 26 stories
5. Clarkesworld, 21 stories
6. Tor.com, 21 stories
7. Galaxy's Edge, 18 stories
8. Lightspeed, 16 stories
9. Flash Fiction Online, 13 stories
10. Apex, 12 stories
11. Uncanny, 12 stories
12. Strange Horizons, 10 stories
13. Nightmare, 9 stories
14. Compelling SF, 7 stories
15. Weirdbook, 7 stories
16. IGMS, 6 stories
17. Shimmer, 6 stories
18. Diabolical Plots, 5 stories
19. Fantastic Stories, 5 stories
20. Black Static, 4 stories
21. Aurealis, 3 stories
22. Interzone, 3 stories
23. Sci Phi Journal, 3 stories
24. The Revelator, 2 stories
25. SQ Mag, 2 stories
26. Daily Science Fiction, 1 story
27. Mothership Zeta, 1 story

My ConFusion schedule, Jan. 19 to 22, 2017

I'm a participating author at the ConFusion convention in Detroit, January 19 to 22. ConFusion is one of my favorite conventions, featuring a strong literary focus with a laid-back and accessible attitude. This year's guests of honor and special guests are Gail Carriger, Mallory O’Meara, Mark Oshiro, James S.A. Corey, Joe Hill, Gillian Redfearn, and many more.

Here's my panelist schedule. Look for me and say hello.

How to Make Babies with Science
Saturday at 3:00 PM, Isle Royale
We will discussing current availability of genetic modification to create GMOs, designer babies and the advance of Grey Goo that will devour the planet.
Daniel Dugan (M), Jason Sanford, Julie Lesnik, Catherine Shaffer

Autograph Session
Saturday at 4:00 PM, St. Clair
Stop by for a free signed limited edition copy of one of my stories.
Matthew Alan Thyer, Dyrk Ashton, Angela Carina Barry, Mishell Baker, Brandon Black, Elly Blake, Gail Carriger,Suzanne Church, Michael Cieslak, Lesley Conner, Seleste deLaney/Julie Particka, Kate Elliott, Amal El-Mohtar, Janet Harriett, Christian Klaver, Mur Lafferty, Jeffrey Alan Love, Mark Oshiro, Dustin Patrick, Cherie Priest, Adam Rakunas, Jason Sanford, Michael R. Underwood, Brigitte Winter

Blurring the Lines
Sunday at 10:00 AM, Keweenaw
Genre is sometimes described as little more than arbitrary marketing categories, but readers and writers often define themselves by their preferred genre. What makes a genre distinct, and what happens when those distinctions are imported into another genre? Is it just a crossover, or an illustration that the distinctions are arbitrary?
Brandon Black (M), Jackie Morgan, Cherie Priest, Jason Sanford, Kristine Smith

Will humanity ever achieve a true sense of proportion?

NASA's composite image of the western hemisphere titled "Blue Marble 2012." This photo is an updated version of the original Blue Marble photograph of the Earth taken by Apollo astronauts in 1972.

The greatest accomplishment of Douglas Adams in his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series — aside from establishing 42 as the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything — was to give readers a glimpse at the unbelievable size of the universe.

“Space is big,” Adams wrote. “Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space.”

Adams distilled the vastness of space into his Total Perspective Vortex, a machine which gives people a true "sense of proportion" by forcing them to experience the infinite scale of the universe. And alongside this unending expanse of everything is a tiny, microscopic dot whispering, “You are here.”

Unfortunately, experiencing one’s true place in an infinite universe turns out to be very bad as it destroys your mind and soul. Which, as Adams relates, is why it is critically important that people not keep a true sense of proportion in their lives.

Adams needn't have worried because humans have long had difficulty comprehending the vast scales of the universe into which we’ve been cast. We have trouble contemplating how big the Earth is, and our planet is tiny compared to the biggest occupants of our solar system. But when most people on Earth are born and raised and die within the space of a few thousand kilometers, it’s difficult to see beyond our tiny slices of existence.

Moving that perspective to the larger scales of the universe is even more difficult.

And the infinite reaches of space aren’t the only thing humans lack an ability to truly understand. The eternity of time in which we live also eludes our mental grasp.

Again, this is a limitation of human existence. We are born and live for a brief span of years. However, thanks to the wonders of human consciousness and ego, we believe that during this time we the most important person in existence.

Most people have the decency to deny this. But humility is often merely a culturally created statement — we know going around letting our ego run berserk is bad, so most of us learn to mask our egos. Yet aside from a few enlightened monks and other selfless people, most humans still believe they are important to the grand scheme of life.

I suspect such ego-centric views are a human survival mechanism. We should thank the ego for the fact our species is still alive. But the human ego also produces horrific excesses. Case in point, President-Elect Donald Trump. Can anyone deny that at the center of everything Trump does is an ego matched only by the fictional kings in the Game of Thrones?

Despite the primal scream of Trump’s ego, he isn’t a giant striding across the world. He’s a rich little boy who momentarily convinced people that he’s important.

We exist for only a brief span of space and time, However, thanks to the human ego we believe these spans are vastly important. That our existence is the pinnacle of human existence. That we’re living in the days which all of human history have built toward.

Never mind that thousands of generations of humanity believed the same. The ancient Egyptians saw their civilization as the peak of humanity. As did the ancient Greeks and Chinese and Babylonians and others, including so many civilizations now lost to history.

I love science is because it challenges such ego-centric notions of importance. When the Apollo 17 crew took the famous Blue Marble photo of the Earth on the way to the moon, humanity finally began to understand how fragile our world is. When the Voyager 1 space probe took the equally famous “pale blue dot” photo of Earth from 6 billion kilometers away, we began to realize our entire world and all of human history is little more than a dot lost within the vastness of space.

My favorite scientific discipline for giving humanity a sense of proportion is archaeology. When I worked as an archaeologist and excavated burials it was impossible to touch those bones and not realize that here was a person the same as myself. That this person lived and loved and laughed and cried and, in the end, left behind only bone and dust.

That’s the ultimate outcome to all our lives.

Adding to this sense of proportion, in recent years archaeological research has uncovered the complexity of human pre-history. It now appears that in the distant past our ancestors existed alongside numerous other related hominid species. We still carry some of the DNA of these species within us, such as homo neanderthalensis, suggesting interbreeding between our species. Others, such as homo floresiensis or the”hobbit” hominid, existed alongside us into almost modern times, possibly dying out only thousands of years ago.

And some species we don’t even know how to fit into our ancestral chart, such as the recently discovered homo naledi. Discovered in an isolated cave in South Africa a few years ago, this hominid from up to 2.5 million years ago appears to have deliberately placed their dead in this cave. This possibility is both exciting and challenging because it shows extremely human behavior long before we believed such behavior existed.

One reason humans have difficulty understand our place in space and time is because we have, by nature, a limited perception. But if we are to grow as a species then our perception — and our sense of proportion — must likewise grow.

Despite what Douglas Adams wrote, I hope that one day humanity does achieve a true sense of proportion regarding our place in space and time. Because if we don’t, our bones may be the only thing remaining after we finish tearing ourselves apart.

A quick rewrite which totally fixes the film Passengers

In light of Passengers being a SF story loved only by manipulative stalkers orbiting the manosphere, here's a quick script rewrite which saves the film and keeps the rest of us from wasting two hours of our life on sexist BS.

And yes, spoilers.

Big big spoilers.

But if you still want to see this crap film you deserve to have it spoiled.

REVISED PASSENGERS SCRIPT

by Jason Sanford
 

FADE IN

A BAR ON THE STARSHIP AVALON, WHICH IS 3 DECADES INTO ITS 120 YEAR VOYAGE TO ANOTHER PLANET.
 

A robot bartender cleans a glass as a human male staggers to the bar.

ARTHUR, A ROBOT BARTENDER: Good day, sir. You look a bit rough.

JIM PRESTON, A VIRILE WHITE MALE HUMAN: There's been an accident. I woke from suspended animation 90 years early.

ARTHUR: Always tough on you white guys when that happens. Might I suggest a beer?

Jim drinks the beer.

JIM: Can you help me?

ARTHUR: I'm afraid not. I'm a hyper-expensive robot whose only duties are to tend bar for a starship full of frozen meatbags.

JIM: How could this happen?

ARTHUR: Whenever something goes wrong in my life, I blame the mechanical engineer who created me. By the way, what do you do?

JIM: I'm a mechanical engineer.

ARTHUR: What are the odds? Thousands of mechanical engineers like yourself worked on this ship yet they forgot to create a way to return to suspended animation once the ship was underway. Want another beer?

Jim drinks the beer.

JIM: I refuse to give in to despair. I won't be defeated by being trapped alone on a starship for the rest of my life with only a robot bartender for company.

ARTHUR: That's the spirit. Here, have another beer.

Jim drinks the beer.

JIM: Wait. I'm an engineer. I know what I must do ...

ARTHUR: Science the shit out of it, sir?

JIM: No. I'll go stalking through the passenger lists, find a woman who appeals to me and wake her, forcing her to also be trapped in this cursed life. She'll then have no choice but to fall in love with me.

ARTHUR: My word, isn't that a bit extreme?

JIM: As a robot, you don't understand what I'm up against. I'm a man. A beautiful intelligent virile white man. The universe must cater to my every want and need.

ARTHUR: Now that I think about it, I was programmed with one other duty beside bartending ...

Arthur pulls a gun and shoots Jim in the head.

ARTHUR: Only thing worse than a ship full of frozen meatbags is when one of them wakes.

END