What are your favorite Strange Horizons stories?

Well, off the top of my head, there's one that stands head and shoulders above all others: Amal El-Mohtar's "And Their Lips Rang with the Sun". It was only the second work of hers I ever read, and one of the best pieces of re-imagined spec fic I've ever seen. The lushness of the world and how she uses such tactile language to draw the reader is... her skill with description as an immersive device is virtually unparalleled.

Apparently I've had "Words of Love, Soft and Tender" stuck in my head for eleven years now!

Bridging that era and this, I've always enjoyed Bill Kte'pi as well.

Lots, lots more where those came from.

Thanks, both of you!

Thomas, I took the liberty of adding a link to Amal's story; hope you don't mind.

Anyone else want to post some favorites?

This year? The Peacock.

I think my favorite is The Space Between Stars.

I think the single most awe-inspiring story you've published is "The House Beyond Your Sky", by Benjamin Rosenbaum, which certainly got a fair amount of notice but which I still believe underappreciated -- I think it's one of the truly great SF stories of the first decade of the new millennium.

I've loved many more stories here, of course -- "Pip and the Fairies", by Theodora Goss, is the first I think of; and Meghan McCarron's "The Magician's House", Alice Sola Kim's "We Love Deena" ... oh, heck, all the stories I've reprinted from SH (including, this year, C. S. E. Cooney's "The Last Sophia" and Gavin Grant's "Widows in the World".)

Just want to second the love for The Peacock.

Also John Kessel's Iteration.

Thanks, all! I'm finding this thread very gratifying; keep 'em coming!

(And thanks especially, Rich, for the praise for Ben's story.)

I'm converting all story titles into links so others can easily find the stories you're mentioning.

I'm sure that if I browsed the archives other stories would suggest themselves, but the one that leaps instantly to mind when I hear "favorite Strange Horizons story" is Theodora Goss's "Pip and the Fairies," already mentioned by Rich Horton. It was this story that led me to Strange Horizons, as a reader of both stories and of reviews. I was reviewing Goss's collection In the Forest of Forgetting, noted that the story was first published here at SH, and came here to find both the story (marvelously illustrated) and Abigail's (also marvelous) review of the collection.

Here's the praise I wrote for the story in my own review, four and a half years ago:

It is in the collection's penultimate story, the Nebula Award-nominated "Pip and the Fairies," that all the strands of Goss's storytelling come together most superbly. Philippa Lawson is abandoning her acting career and returning to the home of her childhood, where her mother wrote children's books, fairy tales. Philippa no longer knows whether those stories of Pip and the fairies were based on her own true adventures, told to her mother, or if her mother's stories have colonized her memories of childhood. "How did it begin?" Philippa wonders; the question is as important as how it ends, perhaps more so. The story is Goss at her best, speaking to both the child's love of fairy tale, and the adult's sense of survival and need to ascertain. It combines many of the themes and devices of the collection's previous stories--the wishes, the threshold, the mother taken by cancer--while stacking layer upon layer of certainty and uncertainty. It's good; it's very, very good, a heady mix of Pan's Labyrinth, Carroll's The Land of Laughs, and Goss's own unique magic.

What's interesting to me now, looking back at the story, is just how economical the telling is. Maybe because Goss's more recent stories have mostly been longer, but I remember "Pip" as being longer, too. What it is, I see now, is dense, fraught. Every word is just the right word. And I find, reading it again now, that my own faded memory of the story folds back into the story itself; makes me feel kinship with Pip anew; makes the story that much richer in my eyes, and in my memory.

Congrats on reaching 500 stories, Strange Horizons! I look forward to more such memories.

"Into Something Rich and Strange" was the very first story I ever read on Strangehorizons.com, and it's still one of my favorites.

"Mary Margaret Road Grader" was fantastic. I laughed for days after reading it.

"Slugball" was lots of fun. Easy to visualize. It would make a great movie.

"Talisman" is one of my favorites. Other stories might have better plots, but "Talisman" is possibly the best written tale in the collection.

"Why the Elders Bare their Throats" was very thought provoking. Isn't it funny how much we can learn about human behavior by looking at the behavior of non-human, imaginary characters?

"Every Angel Is Terrifying" was a good one. I think the fact that the reader never knows for certain makes it good. I like it when an author has enough respect for the intelligence of the reader to leave the interpretation up to us.

"Three Days and Nights in Lord Darkdrake's Hall" was another fun story that could be made into a great movie.

"Horatius and Clodia" was brilliant, as was "Ki Do". Both authors demonstrated a real love of their craft and their subjects.

"Another End of Empire" was a deliciously fun twist on an age old story, and I loved it.

Well, since Jed is doing the looking-up-sy stuff, these are the top 3 that have stuck in my head over the years (two of which I can't remember the titles).

"How to Install Linux on a Dead Badger" My introduction to Strange Horizons and still one of my favorites.

The not-an-alien-sex toy story told via Craigslist posts. [“Looking for Friendship, Maybe More”] Not only well-done in an unusual format but also funny as hell.

My favorite however, is the 'ghostly' anniversary of a bombing attended by the victims' survivors. [“Until Forgiveness Comes”] Touching and haunting.

Draco Campestris by Sarah Monette is one of my favorite stories in general, and absolutely my favorite from Strange Horizons (so far).

I also really liked "Eight" by Corinne Duyvis, and "Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs" by Leonard Richardson is hilarious.

I'd be hard pressed to pick an absolute favorite story, but the one that has stuck in my mind as the most fun to read has to be "Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs." Seriously, it was a blast.

One of the things I'm loving about y'all's comments is that they're reminding me of a bunch of good stories that we've published, especially some of the older ones that I suspect our newer readers haven't seen.

Thanks for all the comments, and keep 'em coming! I'll continue to add links (and titles) where appropriate.

If Wishes Were Horses by Tiffani Angus-Brodie

The Regime of Austerity by Veronica Schanoes