Readers
Rich Horton's Market Summaries:
Summary: Sci Fiction, 2005
This is a tough summary to write. Sci Fiction, without question the best online site for short SF ever, has been closed down effective the end of 2005. Editor Ellen Datlow established, from the start, an online source of free short SF that was the equal in quality (and, pretty much, in quantity) of the best SF magazines. One of the most important things she did was to publish long stories on the web, defying the conventional wisdom that readers would not tolerate more than a couple thousand words stories onscreen. (I confess, mind you, that I read my Sci Fiction stories in printout form.)
In 2005, Sci Fiction published about 387,000 words of new fiction. There were 2 novellas, 19 novelettes, and 25 short stories, a total of 46 stories. None of the short stories were under 2500 words, so no short-shorts.
Novellas
The two novellas were "The Emperor", by Sci Fiction regular Lucius Shepard, and "The Serial Murders" by Kim Newman. Of those two I much preferred Newman's story, a Richard Jeperson story in which he investigates several murders that seem to have been anticipated by a popular British soap opera.
Novelettes
I had three fairly clear favorites among the novelettes. These were "Panacea" by Jason Stoddard, "The King of Where-I-Go" by Howard Waldrop (another regular), and "Little Faces" by Vonda McIntyre. Stoddard's story is a clever alternate history in which Thomas Edison and Grace Murray (Hopper) feature -- an immortality treatment having been discovered, with unfortunate effects on technological progress -- and other progress. Waldrop's story is an affecting look at a boy and a girl growing up in Texas and Alabama in the 50s and 60s, and how polio affects their life. McIntyre's story is a very odd far future story about what seems to be an all-woman society living on living starships. It combines a real SFnal kick with an effective and moving relationship story.
The other novelettes that I particularly liked were M. K. Hobson's "Hell Notes" and Jeffrey Ford's "The Scribble Mind".
Short Stories
Again, three short stories stood out. Marc Laidlaw's "Jane" is a powerful and disturbing story that opens with a family living in isolation in the woods and ends in quite a different place -- all hinting at a momentous history and a momentous future. Steve Rasnic Tem's "Invisible" is a painfully moving story about a couple whose social invisibility becomes paralleled by actual invisibility. Pat Cadigan's "Is There Life After Rehab?" is a clever sharp story about someone in rehab for a rather different sort of condition.
Other top short stories included "The Starry Night" by Barry Malzberg and Jack Dann, Michael Bishop's "Bears Discover Smut", Robert Reed's "Man for the Job", Gavin J. Grant's "Heads Down, Thumbs Up", and "Rocket Fall" by David Prill.
