Announcing the Best of 24 in 24!

Sigh, we just added another book to 2025

Cedar explains…

We all come to science fiction and fantasy in our own ways. Mine? Well, I grew up with libraries and used bookstores being my sources for reading material, and being a voracious reader of very little financial means, that mostly meant libraries. Small, rural libraries which didn’t have a great budget, either. So while I was looking for fat books that would occupy my reading time, they were buying collections that gathered the best reading material into one book and saved them from buying many books. Which is, having been that child and that librarian much later in life, a match made in heaven. I found “The Best of...” year's annual science fiction collections, and through them, discovered so many authors I might never have encountered otherwise. It left a lasting mark on me as a reader.

What I never expected in my wildest imaginings was to one day be in a position to help a “Best of!” collection come into being. Until now. Until “Best of 2024 by Raconteur Press” came up in the author’s discord chats on the RacPress server, and I immediately decided that it must happen. I was far from alone in this, the whole Press was instantly on board with the idea even if it did add a lot of work to our to-do lists. It didn’t matter, we were doing it for the love of reading, of SFF, of our authors who deserve the recognition, and the meaning behind the continuity of a tradition. I may have been advocating for it from the start, but it would not have come into existence without a team of people working behind the scenes, and a very special thanks to Chris DiNote, Sam Robb, and Jim Bellinger - you know what you did. You must know, though, it’s the very special community of authors who pushed this forward into existence. They worked out the process, trying to keep the Press from being overwhelmed, and they took the time to read and carefully consider their peer’s work, in order to choose the best stories published by the Press. Without them, this couldn’t have come together the way it did, and we are so very grateful for their efforts.

The discussion of how to possibly choose from approximately 250 stories to only have ten of them in the “Best of 2024” anthology was a difficult one. While we editorial staff certainly have favorites, we decided the best way to do this was to have their author-peers vote on the stories, selecting 25 of them through ranked-choice voting. Those 25 would then be presented to someone to read, and choose the best ten, plus one of that person’s choice. Who could we possibly have in this important role of a reader and agent of selection?

Who other than Ben Yalow? We knew he is a very busy man, but any question not asked will never get an answer. We approached him. “I’m not a writer, nor an editor.” He pointed out very rationally, with that calm way of his. We knew this, it was just what we wanted. We wanted someone who is a reader, who is a fan, and who has links back to John Campbell and the nascent SFF genre. We may have made puppydog eyes at him, because with a little laugh and a smile, he said yes. We are honored, and want to thank him here and as many other times as he’ll let us, for the gift of his time, and his intellect, in reading 25 stories to choose the best of the best for inclusion in this volume. Having Ben highly rank these stories should be a meaningful badge of merit to these authors, he has high standards and rigor in his choices for exceptional short stories. We also asked, assuring him he could still say no, for an essay on “Why short stories?” from him, which you will find in the book when it comes out.

This, then, is the Best of 2024, and a remarkable list it is. We very much look forward to the book upcoming in May 2025, and more than that, we look forward to many more years of the “Best of...!” that may introduce young readers to these authors, to the wonder of science fiction, and the glorious panoply of imagination found in fantasy.

--Cedar Sanderson

Design, Raconteur Press

Tiny Town, Texas February 2025

Without further ado, here are the authors and stories featured in the Raconteur Press Best of 2024 anthology (in no particular order). Congratulations gang!