SSR YEAR 3
Short Story Rex Year Three
Wow, three years of this, huh? I must be almost due for a performance review.
But first the short stories: presented to you in alphabetical order by author’s surname…
SHORT STORY REX 2025
Robert Aickman. “The Inner Room”
María Fernanda Ampuero. “Biografía”, “Subasta”.
Seán Padraic Birnie. “Circus Skills”, “The Toy”
Erin Brown. “The Night Market”
John Chrostek. “Inclement Weather”
Mário Coelho. “We Will Not Dream of Corals”
Z.D. Dochterman. “Ávila Beach”
R.T. Ester. “The Elevator Down”, “The Building Across the Street”
Percival Everett. “The Fix”
Ivy Grimes. “Green”, “Three Plagues”
Thomas Ha. “In My Country”, “The Cephalophore”
Theo Hill. “Hammerhead”
G.D. Holloway. “Collecting the Autographs of Pro Football’s Top Stars”
Zebulon House. “The Horse Hand”
Joe Koch. “Slowsand”, “How to Fuck a Genocide”, “Jar of Arms"
Fritz Leiber. “X Marks the Pedwalk”
James McPherson. “Tiger Driver ‘91”
Christi Nogle. “The Interior”
Uchechukwu Nwaka. “An Offering of Algae”
Silvina Ocampo. “El banquete”
Reggie Oliver. “The Skins”
Johnothan Pickering. “Hunigsuge”
Benjamin Robinson. ”Silencers”
Samanta Schweblin. “El ojo en la garganta”, “Towards Happy Civilization”
Samir Sirk Morató. “Poolhorse”, “Pearlescent Tickwad”, “sharp house”, “möbius loop”
Nelson Stanley. “Out of All of Them”, “Atch Ere Kokkero”
Margaret St. Clair. “The Island of the Hands”
R.L. Summerling. “The Dancer’s Dozen”, “Vanitas”
Steve Toase. “No Shelter Beneath the Seatchlights”
Kay Vaindal. ”The Things We Should Have Asked the Baby”
Howard Waldrop. “The Ugly Chickens”
Joy Williams. “The Country”
Maxine Sophia Wolfe. “This Movie Theater Sits on a Leyline”
Carolyn Zhao. “The Heartbreak Hotel on Plutonic Planet”
The stats
So, way back in January 2023, the introductory installment of this newsletter asked, among other things: “Why Short Story Rex?” My goals for doing this were four. And, unlike last year, this time I actually ran the stats to see how i’m doing on those fronts:
‘stuff from outside […] the Known, Prestigious, frequently-Award-nominated venues of SFF’. Of the 47 stories this year, only 7 (14%) appeared in what might be broadly be categorized as “pro-paying”, habitually awards-susceptible genre mags (ie 1 Clarkesworld, 2 Strange Horizons, 2 Nightmare, and 2 The Dark)
“rather than hitting you with only the latest, hottest, freshest new output each month, i will more often than not be recommending stories from a few months, maybe even a few years ago, in hopes of giving more exposure to work that may have already been consumed and filed away and forgotten” - hmm, seems as if this year i slacked off on this a little bit, as the majority of stuff I recommended had just come out that same month (27/47, 57%). Something to think about, I guess!
sharing some more classic stories - 5/47 (10.6%) Could also do better here. This year we saw stories from Fritz Leiber, Margaret St Clair, Silvina Ocampo, Howard Waldrop and Robert Aickman
self-promo - yep, did some of that. Hey while i’m at it there's even an interview I did earlier this year for Seize the Press’s Patreon which you could check out if you haven't already and are so inclined
Onto the individual accolades:
Samir Sirk Morató takes the gold for most story rex this year (4), followed by Joe Koch (3), and then a 8-way tie for third place between Maria Fernanda Ampuero, Sean Padraic Birnie, R.T. Ester, Ivy Grimes, Thomas Ha, Samanta Schweblin, R.L. Summerling, and Nelson Stanley (2 each). Venue-wise, I am counting Interzone as the champ (aggregating stories from Interzone, IZ Digital, and IZ Pod) with 5, followed by ergot. with 4, and God's Cruel Joke with 3.
Novels, collections, etc.
Kobo Abe. The Woman in the Dunes.
César Aira. Biografía, El pequeño monje budista, and La vida nueva
John Chrostek. Feast of the Pale Leviathan
William Gibson. Pattern Recognition
Haruki Murakami. Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Mónica Ojeda. Mandíbula
Karlo Yeager Rodríguez. A Series of Hauntings
Not-a-story rex:
Shelved by Genre podcast
No Map for these Territories (documentary)
Black Sabbath (just in general, but also specifically the songs “N.I.B”, “Hole in the Sky” and “Wheels of Confusion”)
“Offspring Are Blank”, Dirty Projectors
“Alley Pang”, The Skatalites
Samuel M. Moss. “Some column poems”
Vajra Chandrasekera. “Every Throne Will Fall”
Cesar Vallejo. “Un hombre pasa con un pan al hombro” (“A Man walks by with a Stick of Bread on his shoulder”)
^You Little Shits” and “Motorolla Scalatron”, Stereolab
Sasha Brown's Goodreads review of Goodnight Moon from seven years ago
Finally: in that very first SSR post, I also put forth what was less a goal per se than a resolution or mission statement and that was that things were gonna be ‘chill’. What did I mean by that?
Yes, I have an English degree but you won’t find anything in the way of academic rigor here. We won’t be getting too erudite with it. […]
Also this will be chill as in: don’t let the reference to ‘online discourse’[…] above frighten you. Those who know me know I don’t really go hard in the paint like that.
Also as in, informal. Frankly I can’t be bothered to respect most norms re capitalization, punctuation, spelling, etc. (unless I feel like it, in which case I will)
So yeah I reckon i’m still doing an OK job of all that. I hope that in the new year, no matter what awaits us in the next twelve months, everyone reading this will be afforded time and space to do things like read stories and be chill about it. Here's wishing peace of mind and clarity and strength to all for 2026
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