Short stories curated by Hugo Award for Best Short Story

Widely considered the premier award in science fiction, the Hugo Award is granted annually to a science fiction or fantasy story by the World Science Fiction Conventinon.

Listing 158 stories.

A middle-aged woman leads a traveling circus act through the Midwest featuring 26 monkeys who climb into a bathtub and disappear and then reappear on her bus after the show. The impending death of one of the key monkeys causes her to wrestle with the meaning of life.

A woman celebrates her daughter’s sixth birthday by volunteering at the women's center. As she assists other women, she recalls her own trauma and struggles with the constant reminders of it.

A young Shakespearean play actor finds himself stuck in 6 million year time loop being observed by high-school aged aliens. As John relives the same morning repeatedly--one where his wife leaves him--he becomes more aware of how important connections are as time is not as infinite as he assumes.

After her sister dies, an actress in New York uses her supernatural powers to manipulate time and try to save her sister, but each attempt causes uncontrollable side effects that threaten to destroy the world.

In an apocalyptic future, a team of undead time travel back to a doomed flight to rescue the passengers on board in a routine but elaborate mission. Getting the passengers through a portal is not easy without disrupting the fabric of space-time, but the passengers, healthy and alive, are the only hope to populate a desperate future world.

A routine inspection for a Space Navy ship leads to confusion over a vague item. A hasty fix before a military inspection causes more stress than intended.

A young man travels across a country in the midst of a race war that grows larger as different identity-based groups join the fight, until the sudden end of the conflict brings further confusion and strife.

In a universe where time travel has become the norm, an inexplicable suicide epidemic afflicts the people who successfully ventured to the past, leaving a grisly detective with a confounding mystery to solve.

After getting caught up in a barfight, a robot discusses his faulty plans for immortality with an engineering-savvy old man and his imaginative granddaughter.

A newscaster recently arrived in space receives ominous advice from a jaded engineer: whatever you do, leave space because getting attracted to aliens will be the death of us all.