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Science fiction and fantasy enjoy a long literary tradition, stretching from Mary Shelley, H. G. Wells, and Jules Verne to Ray Bradbury, Ursula K. Le Guin, and William Gibson. In The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy award-winning editor John Joseph Adams delivers a diverse and vibrant collection of stories published in the previous year. Featuring writers with deep science fiction and fantasy backgrounds, along with those who are infusing traditional fiction with speculative elements, these stories uphold a longstanding tradition in both genres - looking at the world and asking, What if...?

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - by John Joseph Adams
• Introduction - by Joe Hill

Science Fiction

• The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever - short story by Daniel H. Wilson - from Carbide Tipped Pens - Eric Choi & Ben Bova, editors
• Each to Each - novelette by Seanan McGuire - from Lightspeed, Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue - Christie Yant, editor
• How to Get Back to the Forest - short story by Sofia Samatar - from Lightspeed
• Sleeper - short story by Jo Walton - from Tor.com
• The Empties - novelette by Jess Row - from The New Yorker
• The Relive Box - novelette by T.C. Boyle - from The New Yorker
• Tortoiseshell Cats are Not Refundable - short story by Cat Rambo - from Clarkesworld
• We Are the Cloud - novelette by Sam J. Miller - from Lightspeed
• Windows - short story by Susan Palwick - from Asimov's
• How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps - short story by A. Merc Rustad - from Scigentasy

Fantasy

• A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i - novelette by Alaya Dawn Johnson - from F&SF
• Cimmeria, from the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology - short story by Theodora Goss - from Lightspeed
• Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead - short story by Carmen Maria Machado - from HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects - John Joseph Adams, editor
• How the Marquis Got His Coat Back - novelette by Neil Gaiman - from Rogues - George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois, editors
• I Can See Right Through You - novelette by Kelly Link - from McSweeney's
• Ogres of East Africa - short story by Sofia Samatar - from Long Hidden - Rose Fox & Daniel José Older, editors
• Skullpocket - novelette by Nathan Ballingrud - from Nightmare Carnival - Ellen Datlow, editor
• The Bad Graft - novelette by Karen Russell - from The New Yorker
• The One They Took Before - short story by Kelly Sandoval - from Shimmer
• The Thing About Shapes To Come - short story by Adam-Troy Castro - from Lightspeed

From quiet, elegiac, contemporary tales to far-future, deep-space sagas, the stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor Karen Joy Fowler for The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016 demonstrate the vast spectrum of what science fiction and fantasy aims to illuminate, displaying the full gamut of the human experience, interrogating our hopes and our fears -- of not just what we can accomplish or destroy as a person, but what we can accomplish or destroy as a people -- and throwing us into strange new worlds that can only be explored when we shed the shackles of reality.

Table of Contents
(works which are available to read online for free are linked)

Editorial

• Foreword by John Joseph Adams
• Introduction by Karen Joy Fowler

Fantasy

• Meet Me in Iram by Sofia Samatar from Meet Me in Iram/Those Are the Pearls
• Interesting Facts by Adam Johnson from Harper's Magazine
• The Apartment Dweller's Bestiary by Kij Johnson from Clarkesworld Magazine
• The Mushroom Queen by Liz Ziemska from Tin House
• Tea Time short story by Rachel Swirsky from Lightspeed Magazine
• The Duniazát by Salman Rushdie from The New Yorker
• The Thirteen Mercies by Maria Dahvana Headley from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
• Things You Can Buy for a Penny short story by Will Kaufman from Lightspeed Magazine
• The Heat of Us: Notes Toward an Oral History by Sam J. Miller from Uncanny Magazine
• Ambiguity Machines: An Examination by Vandana Singh from Tor.com

Science Fiction

• The Game of Smash and Recovery by Kelly Link from Strange Horizons
• Planet Lion by Catherynne M. Valente from Uncanny Magazine
• By Degrees and Dilatory Time by S.L. Huang from Strange Horizons
• The Daydreamer by Proxy by Dexter Palmer from The Bestiary
• Headshot by Julian Mortimer Smith from Terraform
• No Placeholder for You, My Love by Nick Wolven from Asimov's Science Fiction
• Lightning Jack's Last Ride by Dale Bailey from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
• Rat Catcher's Yellows short story by Charlie Jane Anders from Press Start to Play
• Three Bodies at Mitanni (podcast) by Seth Dickinson from Analog Science Fiction & Fact
• The Great Silence by Allora & Calzadilla & Ted Chiang from e-flux journal

Science fiction and fantasy can encompass so much, from far-future deep-space sagas to quiet contemporary tales to unreal kingdoms and beasts. But what the best of these stories do is the same across the genres--they illuminate the whole gamut of the human experience, interrogating our hopes and our fears. With a diverse selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor Charles Yu, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 continues to explore the ever-expanding and changing world of SFF today, with Yu bringing his unique view--literary, meta, and adventurous--to the series' third edition.

Table of Contents:

Editorial

• Foreword by John Joseph Adams
  
• Introduction by Charles Yu

Fantasy

• Head, Scales, Tongue, Tail by Leigh Bardugo
  • from Summer Days and Summer Nights
• I've Come to Marry the Princess by Helena Bell
  • from Lightspeed
• The Witch of Orion Waste and the Boy Knight by E. Lily Yu
  • from Uncanny
• Vulcanization by Nisi Shawl
  • from Nightmare
• Not by Wardrobe, Tornado, or Looking Glass by Jeremiah Tolbert
  • from Lightspeed
• This is Not a Wardrobe Door by A. Merc Rustad
  • from Fireside
• The Story of Kao Yu by Peter S. Beagle
  • from Tor.com
• The City Born Great by N.K. Jemisin
  • from Tor.com
• Successor, Usurper, Replacement by Alice Sola Kim
  • from BuzzFeed READER
• I Was a Teenage Werewolf by Dale Bailey
  • from Nightmare

Science Fiction

• Teenagers from Outer Space by Dale Bailey
  • from Clarkesworld
• Everyone From Themis Sends Letters Home by Genevieve Valentine
  • from Clarkesworld
• When They Came to Us by Debbie Urbanski
  • from The Sun
• Openness by Alexander Weinstein
  • from Beloit Fiction Journal
• The Future is Blue by Catherynne M. Valente
  • from Drowned Worlds
• On the Fringes of the Fractal by Greg van Eekhout
  • from 2113: Stories Inspired by the Music of Rush
• Smear by Brian Evenson
  • from Conjunctions: Other Aliens
• Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0 by Caroline M. Yoachim
  • from Lightspeed
• Caspar D. Luckinbill, What Are You Going to Do? by Nick Wolven
  • from F&SF
• The Venus Effect by Joseph Allen Hill
  • from Lightspeed

Today's readers of science fiction and fantasy have an appetite for stories that address a wide variety of voices, perspectives, and styles. There is an openness to experiment and pushing boundaries, combined with the classic desire to read about space ships and dragons, future technology and ancient magic, and the places where they intersect. Contemporary science fiction and fantasy looks to accomplish the same goal as ever--to illuminate what it means to be human. With a diverse selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor N. K. Jemisin, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 explores the ever-expanding and changing world of SFF today, with Jemisin bringing her lyrical, endlessly curious point of view to the series' latest edition.

Table of Contents:

FANTASY

• Loneliness is in Your Blood by Cadwell Turnbull
  from Nightmare Magazine
• The Resident by Carmen Maria Machado
  from Her Body and Other Parties
• Carnival Nine by Caroline M. Yoachim
  from Beneath Ceaseless Skies
• Rivers Run Free by Charles Payseur
  from Beneath Ceaseless Skies
  
• Tasting Notes on the Varietals of the Southern Coast by Gwendolyn Clare
  from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
• The Last Cheng Beng Gift by Jaymee Goh
  from Lightspeed Magazine
• You Will Always Have Family: A Triptych by Kathleen Kayembe
  from Nightmare Magazine
• Black Powder by Maria Dahvana Headley
  from The Djinn Falls in Love (ed. Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin)
• The Orange Tree by Maria Dahvana Headley
  from The Weight of Words (ed. Dave McKean and William Schafer)
• Church of Birds by Micah Dean Hicks
  from Kenyon Review

SCIENCE FICTION

• Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn by A. Merc Rustad
  from Humans Wanted (ed. Vivian Caethe)
• Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue by Charlie Jane Anders
  from Boston Review: Global Dystopias
• The Wretched and the Beautiful by E. Lily Yu
  from Terraform
• Destroy the City with Me Tonight by Kate Alice Marshall
  from Behind the Mask (ed. Tricia Reeks and Kyle Richardson)
• Justice Systems in Quantum Parallel Probabilities by Lettie Prell
  from Clarkesworld Magazine
• Cannibal Acts by Maureen F. McHugh
  from Boston Review: Global Dystopias
• ZeroS by Peter Watts
  from Infinity Wars (ed. Jonathan Strahan)
• The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant by Rachael K. Jones
  from Lightspeed Magazine
• The Hermit of Houston by Samuel R. Delany
  from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
• Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance by Tobias S. Buckell
  from Cosmic Powers (ed. John Joseph Adams)

This omnivorous selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and World Fantasy Award finalist Carmen Maria Machado is a display of the most boundary-pushing, genre-blurring, stylistically singular science fiction and fantasy stories published in 2018. By sending us to alternate universes and chronicling ordinary magic, introducing us to mythical beasts and talking animals, and engaging with a wide spectrum of emotion from tenderness to fear, each of these stories challenge the way we see our place in the cosmos. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 represents a wide range of the most accomplished voices working in science fiction and fantasy, in fiction, today -- each story dazzles with ambition, striking prose, and the promise of the other and the unencountered.

Table of Contents:

• Pitcher Plant - short story by Adam-Troy Castro (Nightmare Magazine)
• What Everyone Knows - short story by Seanan McGuire (Kaiju Rising II)
• The Storyteller's Replacement - short story by N. K. Jemisin (How Long ’til Black Future Month?)
• Poor Unfortunate Fools - short story by Silvia Park (The Margins Transpacific Literary Project, November 1, 2018)
• Six Hangings in the Land of Unkillable Women - short story by Theodore McCombs (Nightmare Magazine)
• Hard Mary - novelette by Sofia Samatar (Lightspeed Magazine)
• Variations on a Theme from Turandot - short story by Ada Hoffmann (Strange Horizons)
• Through the Flash - novelette by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Friday Black)
• Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie Sing the Stumps Down Good - novelette by LaShawn M. Wanak (FIYAH)
• The Kite Maker - short story by Brenda Peynado (Tor.com)
• The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington - short story by P. Djèlí Clark (Fireside Magazine)
• When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis - short story by Annalee Newitz (Future Tense Fiction)
• Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung - novelette by Usman T. Malik (Nightmare Magazine)
• STET - short story by Sarah Gailey (Fireside Magazine)
• What Gentle Women Dare - short story by Kelly Robson (Uncanny Magazine)
• Nine Last Days on Planet Earth - novelette by Daryl Gregory (Tor.com)
• Dead Air - novelette by Nino Cipri (Nightmare Magazine)
• Skinned - short story by Lesley Nneka Arimah (McSweeney’s #53, August 21, 2018)
• Godmeat - short story by Martin Cahill (Lightspeed Magazine)
• On the Day You Spend Forever with Your Dog - short story by Adam R. Shannon (Apex Magazine)
• Other Notable Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories from 2018

Today's readers of science fiction and fantasy have an appetite for stories that address a wide variety of voices, perspectives, and styles. There is an openness to experiment and pushing boundaries, combined with the classic desire to read about spaceships and dragons, future technology and ancient magic, and the places where they intersect. Contemporary science fiction and fantasy looks to accomplish the same goal as ever – to illuminate what it means to be human. With a diverse selection of stories chosen" by series editor John Joseph Adams and Diana Gabaldon, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 explores the ever-expanding and changing world of SFF today.

Table of Contents:

FANTASY

• "Thirty-Three Wicked Daughters" by Kelly Barnhill from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
• "Erase, Erase, Erase" by Elizabeth Bear from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
• "Canst Thou Draw Out the Leviathan" by Christopher Caldwell from Uncanny Magazine
• "The Freedom of the Shifting Sea" by Jaymee Goh from New Suns
• "The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt from Lucy Westenra's Diary)" by Gwendolyn Kiste from Nightmare Magazine
• "Up from Slavery" by Victor LaValle from Weird Tales
• "Shape-ups at Delilah's" by Rion Amilcar Scott from The New Yorker
• "Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island" by Nibedita Sen from Nightmare Magazine
• "Another Avatar" by S.P. Somtow from Amazing Stories
• "The Time Invariance of Snow" by E. Lily Yu from Tor.com

SCIENCE FICTION

• "The Bookstore at the End of America" by Charlie Jane Anders from A People's Future of the United States
• "Life Sentence" by Matthew Baker from Lightspeed Magazine
• "Bullet Point" by Elizabeth Bear from Wastelands: The New Apocalypse
• "The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex" by Tobias S. Buckell from New Suns
• "Sacrid's Pod" by Adam-Troy Castro from Lightspeed Magazine
• "Thoughts and Prayers" by Ken Liu from Future Tense Fiction
• "The Robots of Eden" by Anil Menon from New Suns
• "Between the Dark and the Dark" by Deji Bryce Olukotun from Lightspeed Magazine
• "A Brief Lesson in Native American Astronomy" by Rebecca Roanhorse from The Mythic Dream
• "The Archronology of Love" by Caroline M. Yoachim from Lightspeed Magazine

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

Today's readers of science fiction and fantasy have an appetite for stories that address a wide variety of voices, perspectives, and styles. There is an openness to experiment and pushing boundaries, combined with the classic desire to read about spaceships and dragons, future technology and ancient magic, and the places where they intersect. Contemporary science fiction and fantasy looks to accomplish the same goal as ever--to illuminate what it means to be human.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword (The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022) - essay by John Joseph Adams
• Introduction (The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022) - essay by Rebecca Roanhorse
• 10 Steps to a Whole New You - (2021) - short story by Tonya Liburd
• The Pizza Boy - (2021) - short story by Meg Elison
• If the Martians Have Magic - (2021) - short story by P. Djèlí Clark?
• Delete Your First Memory for Free - (2021) - short story by Kel Coleman
• The Red Mother - (2021) - short fiction by Elizabeth Bear
• The Cold Calculations - (2021) - short fiction by Aimee Ogden
• The Captain and the Quartermaster - (2021) - short story by C. L. Clark
• Broad Dutty Water - (2021) - novelette by Nalo Hopkinson
• I Was a Teenage Space Jockey - (2021) - short story by Stephen Graham Jones
• Let All the Children Boogie - (2021) - short story by Sam J. Miller
• Skinder's Veil - (2021) - novelette by Kelly Link
• The Algorithm Will See You Now - (2021) - short fiction by Justin C. Key
• The Cloud Lake Unicorn - (2021) - short fiction by Karen Russell
• Proof by Induction - (2021) - short story by José Pablo Iriarte
• Colors of the Immortal Palette - (2021) - novelette by Caroline M. Yoachim
• The Future Library - (2021) - novelette by Peng Shepherd
• L'esprit De L'escalier - (2021) - novelette by Catherynne M. Valente
• Tripping Through Time - (2021) - short fiction by Rich Larson
• The Frankly Impossible Weight of Han - (2021) - short fiction by Maria Dong
• Root Rot - (2021) - short story by Fargo Tbakhi
• Contributors' Notes (The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022) - essay by uncredited
• Other Notable Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories of 2021 - essay by John Joseph Adams

A collection of the year's best science fiction and fantasy writing.

Twenty pieces that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year and explores the ever-expanding and changing world of science fiction and fantasy today.

"These are dangerous stories. The kind that warp reality and threaten to change the world" warns guest editor Hugh Howey in his introduction. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024 promises a treasure trove of audacious characters, daring worldbuilding, and twisted realties. A sibling duo of supernatural hitmen. A traveling spellbreaker and his trusty alligator mount. Superheroes registering for work. Sentient spaceships with an AI-human interface grow up together with their human pilots. From a Korean folk-tale retelling about the goddess of shamans, to a car, resurrected from obsolescence via automancy, for a road trip from California to Maine, these are stories that, for Howey, "challenged my worldview, that made me exercise new mental muscles, and that brought me to tears."