The best science fiction short story collections

There’s something beautiful, and often something sad, waiting for us in Ken Liu’s The Hidden Girl. An incredible tapestry of narratives. While there’s no weak point to be found within the eighteen selections made available to readers inside its pages, what keeps bringing me back to it over and over are the handful of stories that, when put together, create a timeline of the end of humanity, as human beings slowly transcend into galaxy-spanning digital consciousness. And yet throughout these narratives, which a lesser writer might have made vast and cold, there is a warmth and love on display in every word.

Why do I cry when reading the story Altogether Elsewhere, Vast Herds of Reindeer? In this book, through narratives spanning millennia, Liu says something about the relationships between parents and children that has forever changed the way I feel about such relations in the world.

Honestly, if you haven’t read this book, I might ask where you’ve been for the last 20 years. Story of Your Life is a beautiful piece, warping time and space to ask questions about destiny, loss, and with some good aliens. Even if you have seen its film adaptation Arrival, you should still come back here and read what Chiang put down. And that’s not even all that this book has to offer! Such stories as Towers of Babylon, or Like What you See: A Documentary have always become such instant classics for me, that it feels like I’ve always read them, and can’t imagine a time when I didn’t know them.

The original “Fix Up novel”, short stories rewritten to all serve a single overarching narrative. Let me tell you a secret — this was the book of short stories that made me fall in love with the form. The concepts of connected stories found here were the template for how I approached continuity within my book What We See in the Smoke. When I want to teach someone what a good short story can do, I pick up my dogeared copy of this book, and I read There Will Come Soft Rains to them. I have done this several times. I’m sure people find it annoying by now.

What shall we do, when at last the intricate oppressions, we have built for ourselves are pushed plainly into view? Cory Doctorow’s collection of novellas bills itself not fictions of tomorrow, but stories of our present moment. Immigration, police brutality, tech monopoly, online radicalization, all bubble sharply and brilliantly to the surface here, in a world that, frankly, doesn’t seem that far from ours. What will you do, when your toaster tells you that the bread you bought is not a compatible product? Cory Doctorow might tell you. You might not like the answer very much. Either way, with stellar writing and keen insight, Radicalized is the best kind of political fiction, unapologetic, and empathic.

There’s a story in here about a former hockey player from the moon that had to move to Earth to try to avoid retribution after killing another player, and he gets stashed at an artist’s retreat. A big part of this list has been beautiful, but often very sad stories. Think, then, of Alias Space as a kind of antidote. If you have any familiarity with Robson from her published short fiction, this is a great collection to help you fill in the gaps in your collection. If you’ve never heard of Robson? Then this is a great dive into one of the best writers working in my hometown of Toronto!