Favorite Short Stories 2025

Best new tales of 2025

By Unknown author — see above, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10503159

The short story is among literature’s most powerful formats. It forces the writer to pack in their best ideas, in order to keep 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 on 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 2025.

Brainstem Disco, 2191 by Angela Liu

This was a surreal, literary story that takes place far in the future, with the narrator reminiscing over their disco escapades in space or maybe inside their own head. The journeys throughout the solar system serve only as a backdrop for the love they have for another character and their inability to let go. The story has many lovely passages, but my favorite one is this: “I once told you that there is a magical moment in every club when everyone is dancing to the same song and no one feels like a stranger anymore. That music is the equivalent of shared memory.”

Finding Love in A Time Loop: A How To Guide by Leah Cypess

Say you’re caught in a time loop but still want to date. How do you go about it? This story by Leah Cypess tries to provide some advice. She recommends not worrying too much about humiliation or rejection, as “In less than twenty-four hours, it will have never happened.” Of course, there’s the problem of finding success and falling in love with someone who’s memory of you will vanish by the end of the day. A suggested solution is to try and find someone who is also stuck in a time loop, but of course there’s the problem of what happens when both of you get out. When I reflected on this story, I realized how much of dating, particularly through the apps, can feel like a time loop. Going through the same ritual of introduction, conversation, and planning, only for it to reach a dead end. Many of us are still trying to find a way out.

Every Ghost Story by Natalia Theridoridou

This story is set in a time when ghosts have revealed themselves to the point where no sane person can deny their existence. Thus, a new field of study opens up and this particular story takes place in a camp for these curious researchers. I love Theridoridou’s description of the colorful cast who attends the camp, the exploits of any one of which could make for an interesting story in and of itself. For instance, there’s Connor, who believes the ghosts are leftist propaganda, Jeff, a real estate developer trying to make money from the ghosts, and Poppy, who can’t see the ghosts but pretends to.

A Shaky Bridge by Marissa Lingen

Elon Musk wants every to try out his Neuralink brain implants. He doesn’t want you to consider the consequences of letting a corporation have such intimate access to your body. This story is about such an implant that is used to heal people who have suffered from a stroke. However, it also has strange side effects, such as causing the user to praise the implant corporation and its founder. A necessary story for an upsetting time.

Wire Mother by Isabel J. Kim

What happens when we enter a post-generative AI world? Where GenAI has been adopted into every aspect of our lives? What if your mother was completely digital, perfectly formed to fit your father’s fantasies? Could you still love her like a mother? What of your father, who uses a sex worker with a headset to make love to this wire mother? What happens when all our films, past and present, can be altered by GenAI to suit any person’s needs? What happens to boys who are raised on GenAI girlfriends when they get intimate with real women? What would it mean to resist in such a world? Like Marissa Lingen’s “A Shaky Bridge”, Isabel J. Kim’s “Wire Mother” presents a plausible future where techbro fantasies run rampant because the critics were dismissed as Luddites.

Risk, Discipline by Andrew Martin

"Risk, Discipline," by Andrew Martin

Fiction by Andrew Martin, the author of "Early Work" and "Down Time": Despite our best efforts, we were going to be, in the end, two more thirtysomethings from Brooklyn getting married in the Hudson Valley.

This was a strange, meandering story about a man and woman who decide to get married, and rather casually at that. You expect their marriage to fall apart at any point over something trivial like whether or not Bob Dylan died, but the real temptation comes from Chelsea, a woman who has figurines of women with dog heads and has an interest in polyamory and BDSM. I sensed that the man has certain sexual desires not quite fulfilled by his marriage, but will he risk it?

FAQ on My Vagina Dentata by Jarune Uwujaren

This story by Jarune Uwujaren is relentlessly funny. It’s about a girl who has vagina dentata, which refers to a common theme in Western myth and folklore where some women have teeth inside their vagina. The unnamed girl starts a blog about what living with vagina dentata is like, from how the teeth first grew in and how sex partners have reacted. While it does has aspects of the grotesque, it also has an uplifting note of body positivity.

The Hungry Mouth at the Edge of Space and the Goddess Knitting at Home by Renan Bernardo

Renan Bernardo has graced us with another hit. This tale opens with a space mission gone wrong. The crew have all died. The captain is still around, but the problem is that he's a ghost. As he lingers in space, trying to figure out how all of friends died, memories flash of his grandmother. A spiritual matriarch who prayed to many gods and in fact may have been one herself.

Tomorrow. Today. by R.T. Ester

This is father and son story about a boy named Malcolm who can't quite seem to grow up. This is because Malcolm has to have his body replaced every two or three years. This transition is a challenge, as each time some memories are hazy and take some time to recover. Malcolm can't even recognize his own photos at first. Malcolm is like a lost boy in Neverland. He can choose to never grow up and remain a twelve-year-old forever, cycling through new bodies every couple of years. His father, of course, is desperate to keep his only alive, but can it still be called parenting when the child is repeatedly reborn?

Six People To Revise You by J.R. Dawson

Six People to Revise You is set in the near future, where based the written recommendations of people who've known you, a company can revise you accordingly both inside and out. Not just the erasure of your cosmetic imperfections, but also changes to your personality and interests. The narrator of this story, Liz, is in therapy and unsatisfied with herself, so she decides to subject herself to this judgement, to have her every flaw and imperfection scrutinized. Liz reflects on her complicated relationships, which have often been far from perfect, ruminating over what she hides and over her regrets. The story is so true and visceral to the self-loathing that we've all felt, that I don't think I've ever been this moved by a short story before.

Ten Visions of the Future; Or Self-Care For The End of Days by Samantha Mills

This is a tragicomic story that finding joy in the apocalypse. Words like "self-care" are used so often as to feel selfish and frivolous. When faced with climate breakdown, the rise of Cthulu, or a zombie apocalypse, of what value is self-care? Everything, it turns out. Finding a little things to do with the people you love, it keeps you grounded, keeps you human. With the ongoing climate crisis tearing our world in two, we could all use a little joy and maybe a little love and friendship to keep ourselves sane and strong.

Missing Helen by Tia Tashiro

What if you gave over the rights for yourself to be cloned? What if your clone started dating your ex? What if you had the chance to speak to this clone? What would you say? This was quite the provocative piece, but it's written in the second-person so it's a little hard to follow. The core of the story is less about the cloning and more about learning to accept yourself (literally) after a breakup.