Several excellent writers have emerged on the SF/ Horror scene in the last two years: Kai Ashante Wilson, Sam J. Miller, Alyssa Wong, JY Yang, Kelly Sandoval, Shannon Peavey, Isabel Yap, Henry Lien, Carmen Maria Machado, and Lara Elena Donnelly. Their work is important & impressive and I recommend that you explore all their available stories before nominating your favorite candidate (s) for whatever awards you’re nominating for.
I read quite a bit of fiction in 2014–mostly short, but I managed several novels by listening to the audiobooks. Below are listed some of my favorite works. I’ll try to keep adding to these as I read more. But the following, I believe, are some of the best works of Scifi, Fantasy, Horror, and Weird published in 2014.
2014 Novel
- Annihilation (Southern Reach Trilogy) by Jeff VanderMeer (FSG)
- Revival by Stephen King (Scribner)
- The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu) (Tor Books)
2014 Novella
- Claudius Rex by John Murphy (Alembical 3, Paper Golem LLC)
- Sleep Donation by Karen Russell (Atavist Books)
- The Mothers of Voorhisville by Mary Rickert (Tor.com)
2014 Novelette
- Reborn by Ken Liu (Tor.com)
- Passion Play by Malcolm Devlin (Black Static)
- Sleep Walking Now and Then by Richard Bowes (Tor.com)
- The Devil in America by Kai Ashante Wilson (Tor.com)
- The End of the End of Everything by Dale Bailey (Tor.com)
- The Magician and Laplace’s Demon by Tom Crosshill (Clarkesworld)
2014 Short Story
- A Stretch Of Highway Two Lanes Wide by Sarah Pinsker (F & SF)
- Combustion Hour by Yoon Ha Lee (Tor.com)
- The Husband Stitch by Carmen Maria Machado
- Floating Girls: A Documentary by Damien Angelica Walters (Jamais Vu)
- Married by Helena Bell (Upgraded anthology (Neil Clarke))
- Lovecraft by Helena Bell (Clarkesworld)
- Musée de l’Âme Seule’ by E. Lily Yu ((Upgraded ed. by Neil Clarke))
- Spring Festival: Happiness, Anger, Love, Sorrow, Joy by Xia Jia, translated by Ken Liu
- Patterns of a Murmuration, in Billions of Data Points by JY Yang (Clarkesworld)
- The Crone at the Meadow Gate by Tim Casson (Black Static #40)
- The Fisher Queen by Alyssa Wong (F&SF)
- Santos de Sampaguitas by Alyssa Wong (Strange Horizons)
- A Cup of Salt Tears by Isabel Yap
- The One They Took Before by Kelly Sandoval (Shimmer)
- Dogs from Other Places by Shannon Peavey (IGMS)
- What Glistens Back by Sunny Moraine (Lightspeed)
- Circa by Richard Butner (Interfictions)
- Without Faith, Without Law, Without Joy by Saladin Ahmad (Medium) (Addendum: the story was originally published in 2013 in Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales).