SHORT STORY REX Year Two in Review 2024
YEAR TWO IN REVIEW: i am a poet and didnt know it
So last year i did a year-end roundup of all the stuff I’d recommended in the newsletter, and I figured I’d do the same this year. Without further ado, in alphabetical order by last name:
SHORT STORY REX:
J.L. Akagi. “Whale Fall”
J Billings. “The King of No”
Sean Padraic Birnie. “Black Water”
Sasha Brown. "Fuck Me in a Whale", "The Lightbulb Cannot Be Changed"
Can Xue. “Mei Bao’s World”
Robert Coover. “Going for a Beer”, “The Colonel’s Daughter”
Liliana Colanzi. ”The Cave”, “The Narrow Way”
Lydia Davis. "Five Signs of Disturbance"
Tyler Dempsey. “I went in my therapist’s office and she was dead”
Manuela Draegher. “The Kwak Race”
Hiron Ennes. “Our Best Selves”
R.T. Ester. “After Stasis”
Fábio Fernandes. “Hate: A Genealogy”
JF Gleeson. “Saurophaster in Oculus”
Camilla Grudova. “Nettle Tea”
Thomas Ha. “Alabama Circus Punk”, ”The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video”, “Grottmata”, “The Mub”, “House Traveller”, “The Sort”
Eric Horvitz. “A History of the Avodion in Five Artists”
Charlie Hughes. “Introduction to the Collection by Anonymous”
Ryan Kelley. "Scrape Runner"
Jack Klausner. “The Abandoned”, “Cardboard Faces”, “I'M NOT TRYING TO SELL YOU ANYTHING AND I'M NOT TRYING TO SCAM YOU”
Joe Koch. “These Are His Memories”, “We Were All in Agreement”
C.M. Kornbluth. “The Advent on Channel Twelve”
Ben Lockwood. ”About Face And”
Nick Mamatas. “The Green Wall Plot”
Men's Recovery Project. "Good Friday 2033”
Sarah S. Messenger. “The Clown Watches the Clown”
Spencer Nitkey. “Within the Dead Whale”
Christi Nogle. “Auxiliary, Supplementary, Inessential”
Sarah Pauling. “Letter from Mt. Monroe Elementary 3rd Grade”
Lee Pearson. ”Commander Boomerang’s Day at the Dentist”
Sam Rebelein. "We Never Went Away, We Just Hid Better"
Elena Sichrovsky. “Weather Report”
Charles O. Smith. “The Giraffe”
Cordwainer Smith. “A Planet Named Shayol”
R.L. Summerling. “The Knife Decides”
Eugénie Szwalek. "Dirt Retreat"
Aaron Thorpe. “Memories of Europa”
Debbie Urbanski. “An Incomplete Timeline of What We Tried”
Kay Vaindal. ”Pig House”
L.C. von Hessen. “The Passion of Pope Formosus”
Carson Winter. “In Haskins”
Addison Zeller. “Richard Brautigan”
Notes:
Last year I did all sorts of analysis with respect to the stated goals of the newsletter, to wit:
‘To share stuff from outside … the Known, Prestigious, frequently-Award-nominated venues of SFF’ okay you caught me, i couldn’t actually be arsed to run the percentages this time but yeah there’s only a few Clarkesworld stories (the Thomas Ha ones) and one from Strange Horizons
“recommending stories from a few months, maybe even a few years ago” - no idea, but considering that im permanently ‘behind’ on my reading i think i hit this target pretty much by default
sharing some more classic stories - didn’t do as much of this as last year (just the Cordwainer Smith and the CM Kornbluth story if im not mistaken)
self-promo - yep, did some of that as well
As for the leaderboard venue-wise, ergot. ran away with it, a whopping six stories, followed by Seize the Press with 4 (those of you paying attention will notice that they have switched positions on the podium compared to last year). In third place, meanwhile, The Baffler, The New Yorker, and Clarkesworld (again, the Ha stories) tied with three a piece. Fascinating stuff, I know!
NOT-SHORT STORY REX (Novels, novellas, collections, etc.)
The Box Man, Kobo Abe
The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington
Hopscotch, Julio Cortázar
Dr. No, Percival Everett
Owls Do Cry, Janet Frame
Star Shapes, Ivy Grimes
Glass Stories, Ivy Grimes
Children of Paradise and The Doll’s Alphabet, Camilla Grudova
NOT-STORY REX:
“Vital Transformation”, Mahavishnu Orchestra
“The Crunge”, Led Zeppelin
Blue, Joni Mitchell
Infinite Danger podcast
Typebar magazine (everything they publish but especially Gwen C. Katz’s "Science Fiction and the Death of the Sun”, and Simon McNeil’s “Nobody Wants to Buy the Future: Why Science Fiction Literature is Vanishing”)
“The Guy Who Invented Fire”, Shellac
“Creepy Smell”, Melvins
“Reality Check”, Schneider TM
“Moloch”, Man is the Bastard
HAVE I EVER TOLD YOU ABOUT ME EVER
Back in July, I did a round-up of all the stories of mine that had been published so far in 2024 aaaand I haven’t had anything published since so if by chance you want to know more about each story you could check out that July post but for convenience’s sake I’ll just link all 5 here anyways:
“Some Reflections on the Abstruse Campaign“ in Propagule
“Dorcas“ in Short Fiction
“Hank Eltz, the Singer“ in God’s Cruel Joke
“The Skullhole Panic” in Gamut
“Manywhere, Manyone, Manything“ in Seize the Press
Thanks for reading, subscribing, etc! See you again next year…