10 of the Best SFF Standalones from 2021

This is a collection of two pairs of science fiction stories. One set is about an engaged couple on separate missions trying to coordinate a return to Earth at the same time through the grace of relativity–and the Earth they return to will be profoundly different. The other pair of stories is about the interaction between humanity and the godlike beings that created it, and our different views on the necessity of rebellion.

Shizuka made a literal deal with the devil to escape damnation. The price? She has to convince seven of her fellow violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She’s managed to swindle six, but in her pursuit of the final soul, she runs into complications she could have never imagined: a retired starship captain who she can’t help but love and a runaway with a wild talent who all too quickly feels like family.

Myrra is a contract worker, and has been since she was five years old. In fifty years, she’ll be free… but until then, her life and labor belong to whoever is the highest bidder on her contract. She’s worked many jobs, but her latest, for the Carlyles, ends abruptly when she finds them dead. She must care for the orphaned daughter of her dead “employers” and face the secret they died to escape.

A pregnant woman escapes from a religious compound to give birth to her twins in the woods. But cults don’t let go easily, and she’s forced to fight against that community and the outside world to defend her family–a battle that begins an uncanny metamorphosis of her body that can only be understood by facing the past.

Jessamyn Teoh is closeted, broke, and jobless, so she’s moving back to Malaysia, a country she hasn’t seen since she was a toddler, with her parents. When she starts hearing a voice in her head, at first she assumes it’s stress… but then she finds out it’s the ghost of her grandmother, who in life was the avatar of a god called the Black Water Sister. Grandma wants Jess to help her settle an old score with a local business magnate… whether she wants to or not.

A new brain implant called a Pilot is sweeping the nation, quickly going from a curiosity to a necessity to keep up with school or work. Soon all people face a choice: get a Pilot or be left behind. The new technology divides a family, setting Sophie against her parents and her brother… and then against the powerful manufacturer of the device.

The Montoya family is one surrounded by inexplicable magic and mysteries they know better than to ask about. But when Orquídea Divina, the matriarch who refused to ever leave their home, even for weddings and baptisms, invites them to her own funeral, rather than answers or a direct inheritance, her transformation leaves them only with more questions. After seven years, this inheritance has manifested differently for each of her descendants… and put them in the line of fire of a mysterious enemy that seems determined to pick them off, one by one.

Andromeda has been training as an debtera, a special kind of exorcist that cleanses the Evil Eye… except her mentor threw her out before she could complete her training. Her only hope is to find a rich patron to vouch for her, so when Magnus Rorschach contacts her, it seems like her best opportunity. Only she arrives to find that he runs his house on a set of weird and capricious rules, and he’s gone through quite a few debtera before her…

Jordan has anything a woman could want in 1920s America: money, education, social clout, a great talent with golf. But as a Vietnamese adoptee who is also queer, she also gets treated like an exotic pet by her peers and finds many doors are closed to her. Her world isn’t just money and parties though–it’s also ghosts, magic, and infernal pacts. And Jordan has always been a fast learner.

Laina gets tragic news one October morning: Boston police have shot and killed her brother. But soon, this horror reveals something far stranger: monsters are real. And they’re coming out of the shadows now, looking for safety. This shift in the social fabric of the world leads to strife and protests. But the one question no one seems to be asking as society reshapes itself is: what has frightened the monsters so badly that they came out of the dark?