Top Five Short Stories of 2024 That Speak to Me, a Disabled Leftist
….because reading a whole novel is hard
I have been reading a lot more short stories than novels lately. This is partially because fatigue prevents me from reading more than a little bit at a time, and my brain prefers completing the story in one sitting instead of having to pick up a book repeatedly. It is also because I found Reactor Magazine, and their published short stories (which are all free online) are SO DANG GOOD. Speculative fiction is my bread and butter. They only publish the best. Every night, catering to my insomnia, I read one short story of theirs before bed. Thus, I have read most of their short stories and novellas published in 2024, and I have had some wacky dreams thanks to them, too.
Not all the short stories on this list are published by Reactor, but most are. All were either published or republished in 2024 (or close enough), are free to read online, and gave me a fistful of EMOTIONS. They lingered. Some made me weep. Most of them made me feel that way because they had a lot to do with disability, poverty, loss, and our fun, capitalist system that makes all those things worse. One was just too damn funny not to share.
But first, an honorable mention….
“Radicalized” (the novella) by Cory Doctorow
Holy, CEO Killer. Talk about timely. This is the story of a man who, after his wife is diagnosed with terminal cancer, joins an online community that becomes more and more radicalized by the disastrous American healthcare system to the point of violence. No, it wasn’t published in 2024. No, it’s not available to read online (legally). I didn’t even finish it in 2024 (finished a week ago). But oh my….Cory Doctorow is Nostradamus on this one. Sure, in the book, it isn’t just one guy with a gun killing one health insurance CEO but multiple people over a few years with explosives. They target not only the CEO but also the company building and even a few lawmakers. However, the reactions to these events and the real-life counterparts from the media, the insurance executives, and the public are delicious to compare.
Doctorow also paints a viscerally evil picture of the for-profit healthcare system, proving just how deadly it is (something we American disabled folk are all too aware of).
#5 “I’m Not Disappointed Just Mad AKA The Heaviest Couch in the Known Universe” by Daryl Gregory
This. This is the funny one.
Sometimes you just need a silly alien story like you need a warm cup of hot chocolate on a cold day. At about 14,000 words, this strange novelette has everything: a sentient vacuum robot, an alien invasion, a VERY important couch, Earth in peril, stoner kids, a wacky aunt, Canada, and a spacefaring communist utopia. The author pauses the story two-thirds of the way through to let the readers (and the characters) know that this short story is a love letter to Ian M. Banks. However, I can see some Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams, too. If you love Sci-fi, this story is a necessary read.
Bonus points: while writing this I found out that the author teaches a Covid-conscious writing retreat that at the time of publishing, requires attendees to mask! Hell, yeah!
#4 “The Plasticity of Being” by Renan Bernardo
A company in Brazil finds a way to produce an enzyme that gives people nutrients from eating plastic. The narrator, someone who worked as a PR agent for that company for several years, finds her reckoning while interviewing a community that is the direct result of the company—a community in poverty that eats only plastic. This story paints a brutal picture of many concepts: The spectacle of poverty, how companies use vulnerable people as an example of their philanthropy and goodwill in the name of profit (usually leaving the people worse than when they began); and the guilt of not only contributing to that exploitative system but once believing in that system so much that you contributed willingly.
This one stayed with me like a ghost. The author does not shy away from the visceral hell that this community goes through, and it reminded me of the haunting images I had seen all year coming out of Palestine.
It made me question how I respond to other people’s suffering, and I think that’s important for someone privileged in more ways than one.
#3 “Become of Me” by Veronica Roth
This is technically a reprint, but I am including it anyway.
Ever since I became disabled, I have been fighting with the fact that I probably cannot have children. Pregnancy has a high chance of either making me permanently bedbound or killing me, and even if I could have a risk-free pregnancy, the high cost of living and my inability to hold down more than a part-time job means that we couldn’t afford one. We definitely couldn’t afford to adopt. I didn’t even know if I wanted kids before I got sick, but now that it is not my choice, I mourn them endlessly.
Enter this story. Written as a letter by an android to her newborn daughter, it soon becomes apparent that “having a child” in this world means physically taking apart the mother’s body to repurpose it into the child’s body, effectively killing the mother. This letter is written not by a mother anxiously waiting to meet her child but by a mother who is giving away her life so her child can be born—a child she will never see.
The mother dreams of what her daughter will look like, what her personality will be, and the feeling of watching her wake up. It is sad but hopeful.
I have had those daydreams many times over the years. Who my child would be. If they would have their father’s eyes or my own. As a person who cannot have a child without seriously risking death, I have never related to the experience of a robot more in my life.
#2 “The Year Without Sunshine” by Naomi Kritzer
I sometimes joke that my plan for the apocalypse or fall of civilization is a bullet in the head. Being disabled, I need a constant stream of medication and electricity to survive. Without that, like most people in the disabled community, things would take a turn for the worse quickly. Unfortunately, with climate change, wars, and fascism—the end of civilization seems less like a hypothetical and more like a reality. It already is a reality for some in the disabled community in places ravaged by climate catastrophe, war, or genocide. How can we survive when individualism reigns supreme? When our own family won’t even dawn a simple mask for us when we ask?
This short story tells us that there is still hope.
After a catastrophe that causes the sky to go dark from smoke and the collapse of the government, a small community bands together to help an elderly woman who needs an oxygen machine to survive. Instead of abandoning someone who could not physically provide for the community, they build a whole windmill system to make sure this woman has electricity and take turns powering it through manual labor. When other communities go through the crisis by only thinking of themselves, this community thrives.
It is a nice reminder that despite our individualist, selfish culture, people are still good at heart and willing to help those of us in need. Maybe at the end of the world, we won’t be abandoned.
“Because it is not, for you, the death of a friend but the death of a world. You must escape, because if you don’t you might not survive to mourn that world. And there is a larger world that needs you.” ~Chris Willrich
#1 “Nine Billion Turing Tests” by Chris Willrich
I am not sure why I rank my favorite stories by what made me cry the most, but this story made me wake up my husband while I bawled my eyes out at 11:30 PM. My husband having to live on without me is something I think about often, but I didn’t cry just because it brought up those feelings (although that probably helped). I cried because the characters are so real. The emotions are so real. If you have ever grieved a person, a pet, or anyone—this story will hit you hard. And the twist at the end? Utter gut punch.
A DoesTheDogDie.com warning: the cat does die.
I recommend reading this with tissues in hand.
….And that’s it! What were some of your favorite short stories in 2024? Let me know in the comments!