Tangent Online 2012 Recommended Reading List

As with previous years, this list is not meant as comprehensive, there being several items we were not able to acquire and there are always the few stray stories published in non-traditional venues which we did not see. As was the case last year we narrowed our focus (with rare exception) to those stories published in professionally paying markets as defined by SFWA (5c/wd.).

As is our custom, there are four sections to each length category. Those making the list in the short story, novelette, and novella lengths but having no stars, and those with either one, two, or three stars, according to how well the reviewer or reviewers valued a particular story. Quite often you will see more than a single reviewer’s initials following a given entry. We have placed the story in the category receiving the most stars. Thus, it is possible that while one reviewer merely placed a story on the list without any stars, another also placed it on the list but with one or more stars, thus elevating that story to the higher ranking. Where there are more than one reviewer’s initials following a story recommendation, they appear in no particular order.

TANGENT ONLINE RECOMMENDED READING LIST—2010

If my count is correct, there are almost 190 short stories, novellas and novelettes in the following list, not including those in Dave’s afterword. In spite of the fact that Tangent Online comprises more than a dozen regular reviewers and a number of occasional ones, that’s a pretty impressive reading list. And these are only the ones we recommend—for every story you see on this list, there are at least four others that didn’t make the cut. This is up from 170-plus in last year’s list.