The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Volume 2:
The Saga Anthology of Science Fiction 2021 by Jonathan Strahan
09/28/2021|Saga

Jonathan Strahan‘s second Year’s Best Science Fiction collection arrives this month, and it’s chock full of the sort of stories that both expand the limits of science fiction (and your mind) and will keep you from getting anything done while reading it.  Strahan makes it clear that it’s not a continuation of Gardner’s work but acknowledges the DNA, especially evident in the genre summary at the beginning, which I look forward to each year. I’m less interested in who won what award than what stories got included here because science fiction isn’t any one thing. As one of the preeminent editors in the field, and Review Editor for Locus, Strahan is in a good position to deploy Damon Knight’s maxim: Science Fiction is what I point at when I say Science fiction, and this collection shows that he has the perspective to find the ten percent that’s good. Here you’ll find stories by well-known names like Alastair Reynolds, Pat Cadigan, Karl Schroeder, and Charlie Jane Anders as well as discovering many new (or new to you) as well.

Contents

Year in Review: 2020 – Jonathan Strahan
A Guide for Working Breeds – Vina Jie-Min Prasad
An Important Failure – Rebecca Campbell
Drones to Ploughshares – Sarah Gailey
The Pill – Meg Elison
The Mermaid Astronaut – Yoon Ha Lee
It Came From Cruden Farm – Max Barry
Schrödinger’s Catastrophe – Gene Doucette
Midstrathe Exploding – Andy Dudak
The Bahrain Underground Bazaar – Nadia Afifi
50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know – Ken Liu
Polished Performance – Alastair Reynolds
GO. NOW. FIX. – Timons Esaias
Burn or The Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super – A.T. Greenblatt
How Quini the Squid Misplaced His Klobučar – Rich Larson
The Final Performance of the Amazing Ralphie – Pat Cadigan
Yellow and the Perception of Reality – Maureen McHugh
Father – Ray Nayler Don’t Mind Me – Suzanne Palmer
The Suicide of Our Troubles – Karl Schroeder
Airbody – Sameem Siddiqui
The Transition of OSOOSI – Ozzie M. Gartrell
If You Take My Meaning – Charlie Jane Anders
Beyond These Stars Other Tribulations of Love – Usman T. Malik
A Mastery of German – Marian Denise Moore
How to Pay Reparations: a Documentary – Tochi Onyebuchi
Sparklybits – Nick Wolven
The Search for [Flight X] – Neon Yang
Recommended Reading: 2020 –

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William Butcher seems to have it made. Chiseled good looks, decorated Navy pilot, hero of the Miranda conflict where he turned the tide against alien invaders about to overrun a colony. He’s even about to propose to his gal. One thing you can count on in AfterLife, the debut outing for the writing team of Brandy and Lorne Craig, is that nothing is what it seems. William may seem to be the luckiest guy alive, but the reality is that fate has dealt him from the bottom of the deck at every turn, and just as he’s about to catch a break, a waiter stabs him in the neck, killing him instantly.

He doesn’t know it as the world fades from view, but his luck has just turned for the better. Continue reading →

We Have Always Been Here by Lena Nguyen | 07/06/2021|DAW

There are echoes of Alien and Forbidden Planet in Lena Nguyen’s debut novel, featuring the crew of a survey ship hastily dispatched to a remote planet in response to a distress call from a crashed mining ship. Not that the ISF (which may stand for Interstellar Frontier, but it’s never made quite clear) cares about miners, it’s just that there’s something strange and possibly valuable on the planet. Continue reading →