Search Worlds Without End

"I'm cursed, haven't you heard?"

Outside the last city on Earth, the planet is a wasteland. Without the Archive, where the genes of the dead are stored, humanity will end.

Antigone's parents -- Oedipus and Jocasta -- are dead. Passing into the Archive should be cause for celebration, but with her militant uncle Kreon rising to claim her father's vacant throne, all Antigone feels is rage.

When he welcomes her and her siblings into his mansion, Antigone sees it for what it really is: a gilded cage, where she is a captive as well as a guest.

But her uncle will soon learn that no cage is unbreakable. And neither is he.

Fifteen years ago, five ordinary teenagers were singled out by a prophecy to take down an impossibly powerful entity wreaking havoc across North America. He was known as the Dark One, and his weapon of choice--catastrophic events known as Drains--leveled cities and claimed thousands of lives. Chosen Ones, as the teens were known, gave everything they had to defeat him.

After the Dark One fell, the world went back to normal... for everyone but them. After all, what do you do when you're the most famous people on Earth, your only education was in magical destruction, and your purpose in life is now fulfilled?

Of the five, Sloane has had the hardest time adjusting. Everyone else blames the PTSD--and her huge attitude problem--but really, she's hiding secrets from them... secrets that keep her tied to the past and alienate her from the only four people in the world who understand her.

On the tenth anniversary of the Dark One's defeat, something unthinkable happens: one of the Chosen Ones dies. When the others gather for the funeral, they discover the Dark One's ultimate goal was much bigger than they, the government, or even prophecy could have foretold--bigger than the world itself.

And this time, fighting back might take more than Sloane has to give.

WHAT'S RIGHT IS RIGHT.

Sonya Kantor knows this slogan--she lived by it for most of her life. For decades, everyone in the Seattle-Portland megalopolis lived under it, as well as constant surveillance in the form of the Insight, an ocular implant that tracked every word and every action, rewarding or punishing by a rigid moral code set forth by the Delegation.

Then there was a revolution. The Delegation fell. Its most valuable members were locked in the Aperture, a prison on the outskirts of the city. And everyone else, now free from the Insight's monitoring, went on with their lives.

Sonya, former poster girl for the Delegation, has been imprisoned for ten years when an old enemy comes to her with a deal: find a missing girl who was stolen from her parents by the old regime, and earn her freedom. The path Sonya takes to find the child will lead her through an unfamiliar, crooked post-Delegation world where she finds herself digging deeper into the past--and her family's dark secrets--than she ever wanted to.

Step into a city where monsters feast on human emotions, knights split their souls to make their weapons, and witches always take more than they give.

Pain is Dymitr's calling. To slay the monsters he's been raised to kill, he had to split his soul in half to make a sword from his own spine. Every time he draws it, he gets blood on his hands.

Pain is Ala's inheritance. When her mother died, a family curse to witness horrors committed by the Holy Order was passed onto her. The curse will claim her life, as it did her mother's, unless she can find a cure.

One fateful night in Chicago, Dymitr comes to Ala with a bargain: her help in finding the legendary witch Baba Jaga in exchange for an enchanted flower that just might cure her. Desperate, and unaware of what Dymitr really is, Ala agrees.

But they only have one day before the flower dies, and Ala's hopes of breaking the curse along with it.

Cyra Noavek and Akos Kereseth have grown up in enemy countries locked in a long-standing fight for dominance over their shared planet. When Akos and his brother are kidnapped by the ruling Noavek family, Akos is forced to serve Cyra, the sister of a dictator who governs with violence and fear. Cyra is known for her deadly power of transferring extraordinary pain unto others with simple touch, and her tyrant brother uses her as a weapon against those who challenge him. But as Akos fights for his own survival, he recognizes that Cyra is also fighting for hers, and that her true gift--resilience--might be what saves them both.

When Akos and Cyra are caught in the middle of a raging rebellion, everything they've been led to believe about their world and themselves must be called into question. But fighting for what's right might mean betraying their countries, their families, and each other.

When the time comes, will they choose loyalty or love?

The lives of Cyra Noavek and Akos Kereseth are ruled by their fates, spoken by the oracles at their births. The fates, once determined, are inescapable.

Akos is in love with Cyra, in spite of his fate: He will die in service to Cyra's family. And when Cyra's father, Lazmet Noavek--a soulless tyrant, thought to be dead--reclaims the Shotet throne, Akos believes his end is closer than ever.

As Lazmet ignites a barbaric war, Cyra and Akos are desperate to stop him at any cost. For Cyra, that could mean taking the life of the man who may--or may not--be her father. For Akos, it could mean giving his own. In a stunning twist, the two will discover how fate defines their lives in ways most unexpected.

In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue-Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is-she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are-and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves... or it might destroy her.

Debut author Veronica Roth bursts onto the literary scene with the first book in the Divergent series-dystopian thrillers filled with electrifying decisions, heartbreaking betrayals, stunning consequences, and unexpected romance.

One choice can transform you-or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves-and herself-while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.

Tris's initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable-and even more powerful. Transformed by her own decisions but also by haunting grief and guilt, radical new discoveries, and shifting relationships, Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so.

New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth's much-anticipated second book of the dystopian Divergent series is another intoxicating thrill ride of a story, rich with hallmark twists, heartbreaks, romance, and powerful insights about human nature.

What if your whole world was a lie?

What if a single revelation - like a single choice - changed everything?

What if love and loyalty made you do things you never expected?

The explosive conclusion to Veronica Roth's #1 New York Times best-selling Divergent trilogy reveals the secrets of the dystopian world that has captivated millions of listeners in Divergent and Insurgent.

On the eve of Earth's destruction, a young scientist discovers something too precious to lose, in a story of cataclysm and hope by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Divergent trilogy.

It's only two weeks before an asteroid turns home to dust. Though most of Earth has already been evacuated, it's Samantha's job to catalog plant samples for the survivors' unknowable journey beyond. Preparing to stay behind and watch the world end, she makes a final human connection.

As certain doom hurtles nearer, the unexpected and beautiful potential for the future begins to flower.

This year's selection of science fiction and fantasy stories, chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and bestselling author of the Divergent series Veronica Roth, showcases a crop of authors that are willing to experiment and tantalize readers with new takes on classic themes and exchanges the ordinary for the avant-garde. Folktales and lore come alive, the dead rise, the depths of space are traversed, and magic threads itself through singular moments of love, loss, and the circulatory nature of life, death, the in-between, and the after. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 captures the all-too-real cataclysm of human nature, as it claims its place in the series with compelling prose, lyrical composition, and curiosity's never-ending pursuit of discovering the unknown.

Table of Contents:

FANTASY

• "Glass Bottle Dancer" by Celeste Rita Baker from Lightspeed Magazine Issue #119, April 2020
• "The Long Walk" by Kate Elliott from The Book of Dragons, edited by Jonathan Strahan
• "The Cleaners" by Ken Liu from Amazon Original Stories (Faraway Collection)
• "Tiger's Feast" by KT Bryski from Nightmare Magazine Issue #98, November 2020
• "Crawfather" by Mel Kassel from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2020
• "Two Truths and a Lie" by Sarah Pinsker from Tor.com, June 17, 2020
• "Let's Play Dead" by Senaa Ahmad from The Paris Review Issue #232, Spring 2020
• "And This is How to Stay Alive" by Shingai Njeri Kagunda from Fantasy Magazine Issue #61, November 2020
• "Our Language" by Yohanca Delgado from A Public Space Issue #29, Winter 2021
• "The Rat" by Yohanca Delgado from One Story Issue #270, October 2020

SCIENCE FICTION

• "One Time, a Reluctant Traveler" by A. T. Greenblatt from Clarkesworld Issue #166, July 2020
• "Skipping Stones in the Dark" by Amman Sabet from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2020
• "Brother Rifle" by Daryl Gregory from Made to Order: Robots and Revolution, edited by Jonathan Strahan
• "Schrodinger's Catastrophe" by Gene Doucette from Lightspeed Magazine Issues #126-127, November/December 2020
• "The Plague Doctors" by Karen Lord from Take Us to a Better Place: Stories, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
• "Survival Guide" by Karin Lowachee from Burn the Ashes: The Dystopia Triptych, Vol. 2, edited by Christie Yant, John Joseph Adams, and Hugh Howey
• "The Pill" by Meg Elison from the collection Big Girl
• "The Beast Adjoins" by Ted Kosmatka from Asimov's Science Fiction, July-August 2020
• "How to Pay Reparations: a Documentary" by Tochi Onyebuchi from Slate's Future Tense, August 29, 2020
• "Beyond the Dragon's Gate" by Yoon Ha Lee from Tor.com, May 20 2020

An intergalactic luxury cruise to a distant port is a world unto itself in this piercing short mystery by #1 New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth.

Traveling faster than light, the transport ship Redundancy is cut off from communication as effectively as an ancient ocean liner. The isolation suits crew member Ace Vance just fine--she's got nowhere else to be. But when a wealthy passenger turns up dead during a routine voyage, Ace will have to connect with the passengers and crew to uncover the truth. Tragedy will strike again--it's only a matter of time.