Favorite Short Stories 2024
The best tales of 2024
The short story is among literature’s most powerful formats. It forces the writer to pack in their best ideas to draw the reader’s attention from start to finish. The short story’s impact on our culture is not to be ignored, from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” to Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game,” from Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” to Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” from Isaac Asimov’s “The Last Question” to W.W. Jacob’s “The Monkey’s Paw,” from Terry Bisson’s “They’re Made of Meat” to Andy Weir’s “An Egg,” from Haruki Murakami’s “Drive My Car” to Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Red Headed League.” The short story has not only made writers into legends, but it has also put new writers onto the map. I try to make an effort to read the latest short stories when I can in order to keep updated on the freshest talents and newest trends in literature. The following were some of my favorites of 2024.
The Terrible Secret of the Immortal Bards by Adam-Troy Castro
Published in Lightspeed, this story is about a young writer who asks an older writer how he managed to live for over a century. It’s a story that makes you re-think success.
Dead Ringer by Ali Householder
From the opening sentence alone, I knew I was hooked: “A woman stands in my childhood bedroom, and she wears my face.” Published in Strange Horizons, the story is delves into haunted memories and lesbian desire. The prose is immaculate, particularly the surreal section on food in the grocery store.
Fish Fear Me, You Need Me by Tiffany Xue
Published in Clarkesworld, the story almost plays like a bleaker version of Kevin Costner’s Waterworld. It takes place after a great flood where nearly all the humans have gone through a horrifying change. Two men are stranded on an island together, each of them surviving in their own way, and, well, what’s left is gruesome.
The Wrong Time Travel Story by Melissa Lingen
Published in Uncanny, and written in the second person, this is a personal time travel narrative that doesn’t involve historical figures, but faded family memories. Things may not happen as you expect, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worthwhile.
Joy, Or A Humble Orbit Through The Celestial City by Will McMahon
Published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, this is not a story of a concrete or straightforward narrative. It describes some sort of planetary rebellion against the Sun. I honestly had hard time figuring out what was literal and what was metaphor, but prose was poetic in its beauty and visceral in its violence. A challenging, but worthwhile experiment.
Eight Things You’ll Never Be Now That You’re Slowly Turning Into A Giant Spider Creature by Alex Sobel
Published in Apex Magazine, this story is both funny and tragic. It’s funny when the narrator suggests adoption to his partner and she responds, “Yeah, no. I don’t think they let spider-people adopt children.” It’s also tragic that now that the narrator is turning into a giant spider creature, he will never truly be a suitable lover for his partner. After all, there are laws against bestiality.
Parasocial by Monica Byrne
Published in Future Tense Fiction, this story is an immersive, all too plausible look at the future of AI clones. An aging, out-of-work actor, decides to sell his persona to a company that can make a holographic version of him that anyone can interact with. This ranges from fans hoping to realize their fantasies to old flames looking for closure. “Parasocial” is funny, but also a disturbing examination of our preference for perfect fictions over imperfect realities.
In the Moon’s House by Mary Robinette Kowal
Published in Reactor Magazine, this is a rather small scale story about a female astronaut named Dawn. The story barely features space, and is more about Dawn’s anxieties about going to the Moon and fitting in with her colleagues. If anything, the story tells us that astronauts are just as human as the rest of us.
Piranhas and Us by Can Xue (translated by Annelise Finegan)
Published in Granta for their issue highlighting Chinese writers, “Piranhas and Us” was written by Can Xue, who remains a favorite for the Nobel Prize in Literature. It’s a sweet childhood story of growing up by the river and learning to live with piranhas.
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackened Husk of a Planet by Adeline Wong
Published in Strange Horizons, this story is bleak, but it is necessary reading for everyone on the planet. It is set far into a future where humanity has failed to meet the challenge of the climate crisis, and all we have left is blackened husk that our descendants observe from space on school trips. Like all great sci-fi, it leaves us to reflect and speculate. The words which will always haunt me are these, “It used to be so blue.”
Minimum Payment Due by Said Sayrafiezadeh
“Minimum Payment Due” was first published in the New Yorker. Most of us have debts, so most of us can relate to the story. It’s about a man drowning in debt with no easy way out. His credit cards are maxed out and his interest accrues with each day. He becomes intrigued by the motivational aura of Tony Robbins and starts to go down a strange path. More than the prison of debt, this is also about guilt. We all get into debt for foolish reasons, but we’re too ashamed to be honest about them.
Witch Way? by Lesley Imgart
A graphic story published in the Observer which will instantly be relatable to many liberal arts majors. It’s about a witch who pursues her dreams, but still isn’t quite able to make those dreams profitable.
LANSA Flight 508 by Elly Bazigos
Another graphic short from the Observer based on the true story of Juliane Koepcke, the sole survivor of the LANSA Flight 508 crash. I came away disturbed and impressed.
To Drive the Cold Winter Away by E. Catherine Tobler
Published in Strange Horizons, this is a sensuous narrative about a woman obsessed with restoring an island back to its natural state. It takes a while for the supernatural elements to appear, but when they do, they hardly feel out of place. She has and encounter that makes her re-think if her current state. Is it sufficient to properly fit in to the natural world?
We The People, Excluding I by Osahon Ize-Iyamu
Published in Lightspeed, this story is about a future Earth that is barren of plant life and has constant meteor falls due to a cruel Fox. What’s left of humanity lives underground in mines, but their leader believes that if one of them emerges and disappears from the Fox, then they will be saved. The trouble is that no one has ever successfully disappeared from the near-omniscient Fox before. Our narrator hopes to be the first.
Vigilant by Cory Doctorow
Published in Reactor Magazine , Cory Doctorow whips up a terrifying tale relevant to an age in which ChatGPT has hijacked our public education. In this story, to prevent cheating on tests, students are intrusively monitored by their computer cameras. What happens when a brief mistake is misjudged? I don’t think it’s Doctorow’s intention to downplay the problems of AI in education, but to warn that a tough crackdown may make matters worse for students.
Hai Shan Swimming Pool by Yang Zhihan (Translated by Helen Wang)
Published in Granta, this is a story about girl’s first encounters with swimming and desire. The protagonist isn’t any good at swimming, but it’s her friend Yang Yang that keeps her coming back to the public pool. When we’re in the midst of childhood, we think that it’ll last forever, until it doesn’t. Then we look back with shock with how much things have changed to the point of being foreign.
Losing It by Anne E. Wood
Published in the Colorado Review, this story takes a long look at June’s girlhood and what she lost along the way. The narrative shifts seamlessly through time, streaming through June’s vivid memories and sharp observations.
The Leper by Lee Chang-Dong
Published in the New Yorker by film director Lee Chang-Dong, this is a haunting, isolating story about life under the far-right South Korean dictatorship. The protagonist learns that his father has been imprisoned under charges of espionage, and though the charges are likely trumped up, his Marxist father sees in them the sort of heroic martyrdom that he had been after his whole life.
Because Flora Had Existed. And I Loved Her by Anna Martino
Published in Samovar, this story is a little tricky to follow because it unfolds over a series of interview excerpts. It is about short story writer Pedro Zephyr, who has the ability to time travel through his dreams and falls in love along the way. An achingly beautiful story.
Inside the House of Wisdom by Tamara Masri
Published in Lightspeed, this is a moving, needed story by Palestinian writer Tamara Masri. It is set in a far off future, in a liberated and prosperous Gaza, where the terror of wars past exists only as a memory in a new library. In this library, we hear the recording of a Palestinian doctor passing on some personal words of wisdom to a newborn child he helped birth. These words are few, but stay with you long after the story has ended, because similar words have likely passed to many Gazan children who will never live to hear them. Nevertheless, I do admire how glimmers of beauty and hope can be found amidst the onslaught: “Under the round glass, you look like you’re in a lit-up space egg. You seem safe. Peaceful. I’m saying this because I want you to know that these kinds of moments can exist.”
Revision by Daisy Hildyard
Published in the New Yorker, this short opens with the gruesome image of a student poking their own eyes out with a pen. This shows us the pressures of examination at Oxford. Our protagonist, Gabriel, feels out of place here, wondering if he can ever truly succeed. The story brought me back to my most stressful periods of college life, though the teacher’s final coda also reminded me of its enviable freedoms.
The Plasticity of Being by Renan Bernardo
Published in Reactor Magazine, this story is about a Brazilian journalist who wants to do a story on a community of plastikeaters who live on a landfill and only eat plastic. They obviously aren’t here by choice, but they’re poor and have nowhere else to go. They’re able to do this through a special enzyme developed by a multi-billion dollar corporation to solve plastic pollution and world hunger in one fell swoop. This story made me think of a lot things: how eating is about more than hunger, the illusion that tech billionaires will save us, and the fact that plastic will be a difficult problem for generations to come.
Let Her Collect Stamps by Juniper White
It was not obvious to me that this story was about Gaza until I saw that the author, Juniper White, was Palestinian herself. Then I read it again and saw it in a new light. Published in Apex Magazine, “Let Her Collect Stamps” reminded me a lot of “The House of Wisdom” by Tamara Masri. Both are about Palestinian elders hoping to pass on their life and their legacy to their children. This child’s life will be unremarkable, but it’ll still have value: “A real person is steeped in minutiae. It makes a story, a life, more real. She better dance to musical soundtracks in the kitchen. She better read celebrity magazines. She better have a stamp collection. Not an exciting story, but real, true. Give her joy in the mundane. Let her collect stamps.” The presence of death is inescapable throughout the story, but it can also be overcome through the survival of our legacies. The story brought to mind the words of the slain Gaza poet Refaat Alareer, “If I must die, let it bring hope, let it be a tale.”
Speaking The Sun by Thomas Bales
This is a richly written story about a boy who is told from a young age that he must keep speaking, or else the sun will never rise. This protagonist is so busy controlling the rising of the sun, that he never gets to enjoy the warmth and beauty that the sun brings to others. His loneliness is interrupted by a man who comes to visit him every night and a forbidden love blooms between them.
Aishwarya Rai by Sanjana Thakur
Published in Granta, this is a story set in a shelter in India that houses mothers. Avni brings them here to live from whatever situations they were in. She grows attached to the Third Mother, whose snores comfort her at night because they remind her that she isn’t alone in the dark. Avni has poor relationship with her real mother and is searching for a surrogate. It’s implied that Avni’s real mother may have had demanding expectations for her daughter and resented becoming pregnant. It’s also clear, however, that Avni harbors glamorous expectations for her new mother figure. An ideal mother that’ll fix everything within a short time like the mothers on TV, and maybe she’ll even be pretty like Aishwarya Rai.
Abdication by S.C. Mills
Published in Miniskirt, this is an erotic and surreal retelling of the Leda and the Swan story from Greek mythology. A titillating read.
