The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017

Foreword

Welcome to year three of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy! This volume presents the best science fiction and fantasy (SF/F) short stories published during the 2016 calendar year as selected by myself and guest editor Charles Yu.

After more than fifteen years working in the SF/F field, I found 2016 to be an entirely new challenge, as I threw myself into the world of novel-editing, launching my own imprint—John Joseph Adams Books—with the publisher of this fine anthology, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I’m very proud to have published novels by Hugh Howey, Carrie Vaughn, and Peter Cawdron thus far, and look forward to the publication of Molly Tanzer’s JJA Books debut in November. Those will be followed in 2018 by the release of books by Bryan Camp, Ashok K. Banker, and Todd McAulty, along with second books by Molly and Carrie.

So while for much of 2016 I’ve been immersed in the long form, it’s always a pleasure to return to my first love: short fiction.

Our guest editor this year, Charles Yu, is a writer I’ve been interested in for many years, ever since I first heard about his amazing novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, which came out in 2010 to major acclaim. It was published the same year I launched my magazine, Lightspeed—and much to my delight, when I reached out to him about writing a story for my fledgling magazine, he agreed, and sold me the superb tale “Standard Loneliness Package” (which you can read online at lightspeedmagazine.com); thus our collaborative relationship was born. His short fiction has also appeared in Playboy, Esquire.com, Wired Magazine and Wired.com, The Oxford American, and Vice.com, among other anthologies and magazines, as well as in two collections: Third Class Superhero and Sorry Please Thank You.

I’ve also published his work in a number of my own anthologies, including Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, and Press Start to Play. Fun fact: if you mashed up his stories in the latter two volumes, you’d basically get HBO’s hit TV show Westworld, for which Charlie worked as a scriptwriter and the story editor on season one.

I feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Charlie had a fantastic story in The New Yorker this year called “Fable,” which surely would have been on the best-of-the-year list I passed along to the guest editor if it weren’t written by that guest editor. If you like genre short fiction—and I know you do, since you’re reading not only this book but this foreword—then do yourself a favor and definitely check it out. (And lucky you, it’s available online on The New Yorker‘s website for free.)

Science fiction and fantasy, though they seem to be about the future or fictional worlds, are always at their core really about the problems and issues of today. Even in the best of times, genre writers find inspiration in injustice, or in the flaws found in an otherwise well-functioning system. In the worst of times… well, the one silver lining of living through the dystopian hellscape of contemporary American politics is that such strife tends to generate great art—and no one embraces the ability of literature to critique and debate our daily truths by considering it through a different lens more than writers of science fiction and fantasy.

If there’s one story in this book that I fully expected to resonate strongly with our guest editor—speaking of writers finding inspiration in injustice—it’s “The Venus Effect,” by Joseph Allen Hill. Like How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (and, erm, Charlie’s introduction to this anthology), “The Venus Effect” breaks the fourth wall and has the author intruding on his own story, to similarly great effect. Though it also should be completely unsurprising that Charlie loved this story because of the audacious brilliance of it and the way it tackles an extremely thorny issue—police brutality—with such aplomb while staying within the framework of a fun adventure story that is somehow both excessively clever and enormously poignant.

Charlie often employs other meta techniques in his stories as well, so it was an equally safe bet that he would also love the Nebula Award finalist “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0,” by Caroline M. Yoachim, which uses the structure of a choose-your-own-adventure-type narrative to critique and have some fun with the completely unfun health-care system.

“This Is Not a Wardrobe Door,” by A. Merc Rustad (also a Nebula Award finalist), and “Not by Wardrobe, Tornado, or Looking Glass,” by Jeremiah Tolbert, in addition to both having wardrobe in the title, are, unsurprisingly, both portal fantasies. Portal fantasy is a subgenre that is more or less illustrated by Jeremiah’s title, which references the Chronicles of Narnia (wardrobe), The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (tornado), and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (looking glass)—all three everyday things serving as portals to a magical otherworld. I’ve observed an uptick in portal fantasy recently—there are some great portal fantasies on the Notable Stories list—and I can’t help but wonder if it’s partially socially motivated: things are so bleak that many of us are literally imagining escaping to a fantasy world as our only way out of the mess we’re in.

“Caspar D. Luckinbill, What Are You Going to Do?,” by Nick Wolven, and “Openness,” by Alexander Weinstein, are two stories that would have felt at home in the great Netflix anthology TV series Black Mirror; both explore the dark side of technology—how, if we let it, it can take over and rule our lives… how (to quote Fight Club) the things you own end up owning you (or perhaps, in one of these cases, the things you own end up pwning you).

Other selections you’ll find here include stories about love, alien visitations, post-climate-change futures, revisionist fairy tales, virtual worlds and corporate malfeasance, and more.

The stories chosen for this anthology were originally published between January 1 and December 31, 2016. The criteria for consideration are (1) original publication in a nationally distributed American or Canadian publication (i.e., periodicals, collections, or anthologies, in print, online, or ebook); (2) publication in English by writers who are American or Canadian, or who have made the United States or Canada their home; (3) publication as text (audiobook, podcast, dramatization, interactive, and other forms of fiction are not considered); (4) original publication as short fiction (excerpts of novels are not knowingly considered); (5) story length of 17,499 words or less; (6) at least loosely categorized as science fiction or fantasy; (7) publication by someone other than the author (self-published works are not eligible); and (8) publication as an original work by the author (i.e., not part of a media tie-in/licensed fiction program).

As series editor, I attempt to read everything I can find that meets these selection criteria. After doing all my reading, I create a list of what I feel are the top eighty stories published in the genre (forty science fiction and forty fantasy). This year those eighty stories were sent to guest editor Charles Yu, who read them and then chose the best twenty (ten science fiction, ten fantasy) for inclusion in the anthology. Charles read all the stories blind, with no bylines attached to them or any information about where a story originally appeared. His selections appear in this volume; the remaining sixty stories are listed in the back of this book as “Notable Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories of 2016.”

As usual, in my effort to find the top stories of the year, I scour the field to try to read and consider everything that’s published.

Though the bulk of my reading typically comes from periodicals, I always also read dozens of anthologies and single-author collections. Here’s just a sampling of the anthologies that published fine work that didn’t quite manage to make it into the table of contents or Notable Stories list but are worthwhile just the same: Dead Letters, edited by Conrad Williams; Children of Lovecraft, edited by Ellen Datlow; Scary Out There, edited by Jonathan Maberry; In the Shadow of Frankenstein, edited by Stephen Jones; The Grimm Future, edited by Erin Underwood; The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu, edited by Paula Guran; A Tyranny of Petticoats, edited by Jessica Spotswood; Cyber World, edited by Jason Heller; Decision Points, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt; Clockwork Phoenix 5, edited by Mike Allen; Hidden Youth, edited by Mikki Kendall and Chesya Burke; Upside Down, edited by Jaym Gates and Monica Valentinelli; and several others (including the horror anthology What the #@&% Is That?, edited by Douglas Cohen and yours truly).

In addition to this, the anthologies Drowned Worlds, edited by Jonathan Strahan; 2113: Stories Inspired by the Music of Rush, edited by Kevin J. Anderson and John McFetridge; and Summer Days and Summer Nights, edited by Stephanie Perkins, contain stories represented in the table of contents, and stories on the Notable Stories list appeared in anthologies such as The Starlit Wood, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe; An Alphabet of Embers, edited by Rose Lemberg; Bridging Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan; Unfettered II, edited by Shawn Speakman; Humanity 2.0, edited by Alex Shvartsman; Genius Loci, edited by Jaym Gates; Astro Noise, edited by Laura Poitras; Strangers Among Us, edited by Susan Forest and Lucas K. Law; and You, Human, edited by Michael Bailey.

There were fewer eligible single-author collections with original material to consider, but new collections were published by Alexander Weinstein (Children of the New World), Caroline M. Yoachim (Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World and Other Stories), Patricia A. McKillip (Dreams of Distant Shores), Amber Sparks (The Unfinished World), Jeffrey Ford (A Natural History of Hell), Carlos Hernandez (The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria), Laird Barron (Swift to Chase), Livia Llewellyn (Furnace), and Tina Connolly (On the Eyeball Floor and Other Stories). Three collections contain stories included on the Notable Stories list: The Paper Menagerie, by Ken Liu; A Collapse of Horses, by Brian Evenson; and The Bed Moved, by Rebecca Schiff. Also of interest, but ineligible because it is made up entirely of reprints, was the debut collection from Carrie Vaughn, Amaryllis and Other Stories.

As always, I surveyed more than a hundred different periodicals over the course of the year, paying equal attention to major genre publications like The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Asimov’s Science Fiction and to new markets like Persistent Visions and Liminal Stories. I also do my best to find any genre fiction lurking in the pages of mainstream/literary publications such as The New Yorker, Tin House, and Granta.

The notable stories on this year’s list are drawn from forty-four different publications—twenty-nine periodicals, twelve anthologies, and three single-author collections—from forty-three different editors (counting editorial teams as a unit). The selections themselves are drawn from fourteen different sources—eleven periodicals and three anthologies—from thirteen different editors or editorial teams.

This year marks the first appearance of several periodicals on our table of contents, including Conjunctions, Fireside Magazine, Beloit Fiction Journal, BuzzFeed READER, and The Sun. Periodicals appearing on the Notable Stories list for the first time this year include Big Echo, Faerie Magazine, Fairy Tale Review, GigaNotoSaurus, People Holding…, The Sun, VQR Online, and ZYZZYVA.

Four of the authors whose work is included in this volume—A. Merc Rustad, Catherynne M. Valente, Dale Bailey, and Nick Wolven—have previously appeared in BASFF; thus the remaining fifteen authors (fifteen rather than sixteen because Bailey appears twice) are represented for the first time.

Debbie Urbanski, Brian Evenson, and Ken Liu tied with the most stories in my top eighty this year (three each), and several authors had two each: A. Merc Rustad, Alyssa Wong, Carmen Maria Machado, Caroline M. Yoachim, Dale Bailey, Dominica Phetteplace, N. K. Jemisin, Naomi Novik, Nick Wolven, P. Djeli Clark, Rich Larson, and Sofia Samatar.

I mentioned above that the BASFF 2017 stories “This Is Not a Wardrobe Door” and “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0” are finalists for the Nebula Award this year. Additionally, “The City Born Great,” by N. K. Jemisin, is a Hugo Award finalist. Notable stories that have received award recognition include “Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea,” by Sarah Pinsker (Nebula finalist); “You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay,” by Alyssa Wong (Nebula and Hugo finalist); “Seasons of Glass and Iron,” by Amal El-Mohtar (Nebula and Hugo finalist); “Things with Beards,” by Sam J. Miller (Nebula finalist); “A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers,” by Alyssa Wong (Nebula and Hugo finalist); and “The Jupiter Drop,” by Josh Malerman (Stoker finalist).

As I’ve noted in past forewords, I don’t log every single story I read throughout the year—I only dutifully log stories that I feel are in the running—so I don’t have an exact count of how many stories I reviewed or considered. As in past years, I estimate that it was several thousand stories, perhaps as many as five thousand, altogether.

Naturally, many of the stories I read were perfectly good and enjoyable but didn’t stand out enough for me to consider them among the best of the year. I did, however, end up with about a hundred additional stories that were at one point or another under serious consideration, including stories from publications not represented in this anthology, such as Amazing Stories, The Book Smugglers, Bracken Magazine, Catamaran Literary Reader, Daily Science Fiction, The Dark, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Flash Fiction Online, Futuristica, Galaxy’s Edge, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Lackington’s, Lenny Letter, Liminal Stories, The Lovecraft ezine, Nature Futures, Persistent Visions, and Slate, as well as the anthologies and collections named above.

This foreword mentions only a few of the great publications considered for this anthology; see the table of contents and the Notable Stories list to get a more complete overview of the top publications currently available in the field.

Given how many stories I have to consider every year, it’s probably obvious that I can do this only with a considerable amount of help. So I’d just like to take a moment to thank and acknowledge my team of first readers, who helped me evaluate various publications that I might not have had time to consider otherwise: Alex Puncekar, Robyn Lupo, Devin Marcus, Sandra Odell, Karen Bovenmyer, and Christie Yant. Thanks also to Tim Mudie at Mariner Books, who keeps everything running smoothly behind the scenes at Best American HQ.

If you’ve made it this far in the foreword, then maybe you’ve been introduced to some new publications to look for in the future or been reminded of a few that have fallen off your radar over the years and deserve a second look. Which brings me to one last point I’d like to take the opportunity to drive home.

We’re undoubtedly living in a golden age of genre—but not just in literature: also in TV and film. There’s more genre entertainment being produced today than any reasonable person would have any hope of keeping up with. That’s how it’s been with short stories and books for many years; it’s one of the reasons volumes like this one are useful and necessary. But now this is increasingly applicable to television and film as well. Though it’s probably still possible to keep track of all the genre movies coming out (though any one person is unlikely to do so, because of the quantity and the still wildly varying levels of quality), television is becoming more like publishing in the sense that even if you’re a deeply devoted genre fan, you’d basically have to be committed to watching television full-time in order to catch all the genre TV shows being produced. Overall that is a good thing—at least it is if, like me, you love television—even if it makes it harder to have that shared experience anytime you run into a fellow fan; and of course all that film and television (and video game!) entertainment leaves the deeply devoted genre fan with less time to spend on short stories than ever before.

The problem with any form of entertainment is that the more options there are, the harder it is for any one thing to be successful enough to stick around long-term. On television, for example, within the last year the terrific original genre series BrainDead and Incorporated were both canceled despite brilliant first seasons, and mind-bogglingly good, core genre shows like Syfy’s The Expanse are doing well enough to get renewed but sort of scraping by. Likewise, the magazines you love today may be gone tomorrow. (And indeed, several seem to have faded away this year—whether it’s for good or not, who can say?) Many of them operate on a shoestring, relying on Kickstarter, subscription drives, and support through Patreon.

It all boils down to this: we must support the things we love, whether it’s books, television, film, or stories—though I’d say especially books and stories! If you like an author or magazine, support it early and often. Word of mouth (including reader reviews at Amazon or Goodreads or the like) can go a long way toward helping an author’s career—or a fledgling zine—get off the ground and stay aloft. Short-fiction venues are often labors of love, and they need your support, in the form of readership, subscriptions, and signal-boosting. And it’s you readers, who care enough about short fiction to read this book (and this foreword), who are the standard-bearers, so if you love something, say something! Meanwhile, I’ll keep doing my part to try to find the best of the best every year, and hey, maybe somehow together, with the help of genre short fiction, we can find a way to transform this dystopian hellscape we’re in back into one of those better tomorrows.

Editors, writers, and publishers who would like their work considered for next year’s edition, please visit johnjosephadams.com/best-american for instructions on how to submit material for consideration.