The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016

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e
ISBN
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v1.0916

“Rat Catcher's Yellows” by Charlie Jane Anders. First published in
Press Start to Play,
Vintage Books, August 2015. Copyright Â© 2015 by Charlie Jane Anders. Reprinted by permission of Charlie Jane Anders.

“Lightning Jack's Last Ride” by Dale Bailey. First published in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
Jan/Feb 2015. Copyright Â© 2015 by Dale Bailey. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Great Silence” by Ted Chiang. First published in
e-flux journal.
Copyright Â© 2015 by Ted Chiang. Reprinted by permission of Ted Chiang.

“Three Bodies at Mitanni” by Seth Dickinson. First published in
Analog Science Fiction and Fact,
June 2015. Copyright Â© 2015 by Seth Dickinson. Reprinted by permission of Seth Dickinson.

“The Thirteen Mercies” by Maria Dahvana Headley. First published in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
Nov/Dec 2015. Copyright Â© 2015 by Maria Dahvana Headley. Reprinted by permission of Maria Dahvana Headley.

“By Degrees and Dilatory Time” by S. L. Huang. First published in
Strange Horizons,
May 18, 2015. Copyright Â© 2015 by S. L. Huang. Reprinted by permission of S. L. Huang.

“Interesting Facts” by Adam Johnson. First published in
Harper's Magazine,
June 2015. From
Fortune Smiles: Stories
by Adam Johnson. Copyright Â© 2015 by Adam Johnson. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Penguin Random House LLC for permission.

“The Apartment Dweller's Beastiary” by Kij Johnson. First published in
Clarkesworld Magazine,
January 2015. Copyright Â© 2015 by Kij Johnson. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Things You Can Buy for a Penny” by Will Kaufman. First published in
Lightspeed Magazine,
February 2015. Copyright Â© 2015 by Will Kaufman. Reprinted by permission of
Lightspeed Magazine
.

“The Game of Smash and Recovery” by Kelly Link. First published in
Strange Horizons,
October 17, 2015, and reprinted in
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Ten
(Solaris Books) and
The Year's Best Science Fiction: 33rd Annual Collection
(St. Martin's Press). Copyright Â© 2015 by Kelly Link. Reprinted by permission of Kelly Link.

“The Heat of Us: Notes Toward an Oral History” by Sam J. Miller. First published in
Uncanny Magazine,
Jan/Feb 2015. Copyright Â© 2015 by Sam J. Miller. Reprinted by permission of Sam J. Miller.

“The Daydreamer by Proxy” by Dexter Palmer. First published in
The Bestiary,
Centipede Press, Cheeky Frawg Books, December 2015. Copyright Â© 2015 by Dexter Palmer. Reprinted by permission of Dexter Palmer.

“The DuniazÃ¡t,” adapted from the book
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
for
The New Yorker,
June 1, 2015. Copyright Â© 2015 by Salman Rushdie. From
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights: A Novel
by Salman Rushdie. Used by permission of Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited. Interested parties must apply directly to Penguin Random House LLC for permission.

“Meet Me in Iram” by Sofia Samatar. First published in
Meet Me In Iram/Those Are Pearls.
Copyright Â© 2015 by Sofia Samatar. Reprinted by permission of Sofia Samatar.

“Headshot” by Julian Mortimer Smith. First published in
Terraform,
March 2, 2015. Copyright Â© 2015 by Julian Mortimer Smith. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Foreword

W
ELCOME TO YEAR TWO
of
Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy!
This volume presents the best science fiction and fantasy (SF/F) short stories published during the 2015 calendar year as selected by myself and guest editor Karen Joy Fowler.

To say 2015 was a busy year for me is perhaps the understatement of all understatements. In addition to serving as the series editor for this volume, for which I read thousands of stories annually, I also read hundreds of books in my capacity as a judge for the National Book Award in the Young People's Literature category (much of which was SF/F). Late in the year, I also agreed to launch John Joseph Adams Books, a new SF/F imprint for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (the publishers of this fine anthology). In addition to all of that, I edited and published two monthly genre magazines (
Lightspeed
and
Nightmare
), had six anthologies published (including the 2015
BASFF
), and produced
The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy
podcast for Wired.com.

The fact that I still find myself continuing to say yes to taking on new projectsâto essentially filling all my waking hours with nonstop science fiction and fantasyâis a testament to the vitality of the field, and to the wonder and passion it inspires.

And all of that wonder and passion is on full display in this year's
BASFF
selections.

There is always some element of the unknown going into any editorial collaboration; even though on the surface two people might seem to have editorial tastes that line up well, in practice it's not always the case. Fortunately that was of no consequence during the assembling of
BASFF 2016,
as our guest editor, Karen Joy Fowler, and I turned out to have exceedingly similar tastes in SF/F. In the end, our collaboration was, for me, not only a painless experience but a richly rewarding one.

That may come as something of a surprise to those of you who perhaps know Karen only as the author of mainstream bestsellers and the winner of major literary prizes like the PEN/Faulkner Award. But though Karen now runs among the rarified halls of the literary elite, her forays into publishing started with genre fiction, with her first short stories appearing in core SF/F markets like
Asimov's Science Fiction
(then called
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
),
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction,
and
Interzone,
among others, before she eventually transitioned to writing mainstream literary novels like
The Jane Austen Book Club
and before that
Sister Noon.
Truth be told, however, even her first novel,
Sarah Canary,
clearly prophesied the direction her career would take and would return to postâ
Book Club.
And her subsequent novels
Wit's End
and
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves,
though generally considered mainstream novels, both bear the hallmarks of being written by someone intimately acquainted with genre fiction.

In addition to that extensive background in genre fiction, for the last several years Karen has been the president of the Clarion Foundation, the organization that runs the Clarion Writers' Workshopâan annual six-week intensive writing boot camp renowned among the field's creatives. So not only was Karen well prepared to dive into this role as guest editor due to her ample experience in the field as a writer; she was also perhaps as uniquely qualified for the job as any writer could be who doesn't also work as an editor.

Naturally our wonderful collaboration came as no surprise to meâI invited her to be guest editor, after allâand her choices for
BASFF 2016
certainly did not disappoint. From the quiet, elegiac, contemporary tale “Interesting Facts” to the far-future, deep-space saga of “Three Bodies at Mitanni,” from the brutal emotion and pain of “The Heat of Us” to the blistering depiction of modern warfare in “Headshot,” these stories demonstrate the vast spectrum of what SF/F aims to accomplish, displaying the full gamut of the human experience, interrogating our hopes and our fearsânot just of what we can accomplish or destroy
as a person,
but of what we can accomplish or destroy
as a people
âand throwing us into strange new worlds that can only be explored when we shed the shackles of reality.

The stories chosen for this anthology were originally published between January 2015 and December 2015. The technical 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 their home; (3) publication as text (audiobook, podcast, dramatized, 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 (i.e., self-published works are not eligible); and (8) publication as an original work of the author (i.e., not part of a media tie-in/licensed fiction program).

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The Perfect Landscape by Sigurðardóttir, Ragna

The Perfect Mess by K. Sterling

This Side of Evil by Carolyn Keene

Harry's Sacrifice by Bianca D'Arc

This Heart of Mine by Suzanne Hayes

Willow the lonely kitten by Tina Nolan

Black Bird by Michel Basilieres

Fear by Lauren Barnholdt, Aaron Gorvine

The Europe That Was by Geoffrey Household

Better to Eat You by Charlotte Armstrong