Tangent Online 2020 Recommended Reading List

As with previous years, this list is not meant as comprehensive, there being a number of items we didn’t see. As has been the case for the last several years, of necessity (too many magazines, too few reviewers) we narrowed our focus (with some exceptions) to those stories published in professionally paying markets as defined by SFWA (including when the pro rate was set at 5 cents per word; it has now increased to 8 cents per word).

There are 350 stories on this year’s list (down 22 from last year’s 372): 292 short stories (down 21 from last year’s 313), 48 novelettes (up 3 from last year’s 45), and 10 novellas (the same as last year’s 10). As with any such list—especially ours with its ever-changing review staff—different reviewers bring different perspectives on how to approach stories, how they are thus measured, and of course the stories themselves are of different “quality” (up or down) if such a thing as quality can be measured by any objective standard. However, it does seem as if each year has its own nebulous, general level of quality, with some years being commented upon in retrospect as great years for quality fiction and others not so much. There are just too many variables to nail down as to why any given year—or recommended reading list—has more or fewer stories placed on it by a different cast of reviewers, each of whom brings their own individual set of standards to the fiction they read. Continue reading “Tangent Online 2020 Recommended Reading List”