Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015
I’ve been enjoying reading the first volume in the new Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy series. The series is edited by John Joseph Adams and a different guest editor will be brought in each year to select the final table of contents from a selection of one hundred stories that Adams sends along. This year’s guest editor is bestseller author Joe Hill (Horns, 20th Century Ghosts, etc.). You can read his introduction at EW.com.
The table of contents for the first volume is below and it is fun to see what you can and can’t get here on Weightless — New Yorker and Tor links are offsite, otherwise they’re all local — and to look at it as one of the many Year’s Best snapshots of the genre in 2014:
- Foreword by John Joseph Adams
- Introduction by Joe Hill
Science Fiction
- The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever by Daniel H. Wilson
- from Carbide Tipped Pens—Eric Choi & Ben Bova, editors
- Each to Each by Seanan McGuire
- from Lightspeed, Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue—Christie Yant, editor
- How to Get Back to the Forest by Sofia Samatar
- from Lightspeed
- Sleeper by Jo Walton
- from Tor.com
- The Empties by Jess Row
- from The New Yorker
- The Relive Box by T.C. Boyle
- From The New Yorker
- Tortoiseshell Cats are Not Refundable by Cat Rambo
- from Clarkesworld
- We Are the Cloud by Sam J. Miller
- from Lightspeed
- Windows by Susan Palwick
- from Asimov’s
- How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps by A. Merc Rustad
- from Scigentasy
Fantasy
- A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i by Alaya Dawn Johnson
- from F&SF
- Cimmeria, from the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology by Theodora Goss
- from Lightspeed
- Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead 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 by Neil Gaiman
- from Rogues—George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois, editors
- I Can See Right Through You by Kelly Link
- from McSweeney’s
- Ogres of East Africa by Sofia Samatar
- from Long Hidden—Rose Fox & Daniel José Older, editors
- Skullpocket by Nathan Ballingrud
- from Nightmare Carnival—Ellen Datlow, editor
- The Bad Graft by Karen Russell
- from The New Yorker
- The One They Took Before by Kelly Sandoval
- from Shimmer
- The Thing About Shapes To Come by Adam-Troy Castro
- from Lightspeed
And some stats on sources and so on:
- 7 stories by men, 12 by women, 1 nonbinary
- all from North America (see title for clarification!)
- 5 from anthologies, 15 from magazines
- 8 from online magazines, 12 from print (although 5 of the print stories can also be found online)
- There are four stories from Lightspeed and three from The New Yorker
- The 13 other stories come from the usual mix for a Year’s Best:
— traditional digests: Asimov’s, F&SF
— well known editors: Nightmare Carnival—Ellen Datlow, editor; Rogues—George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois, editors
— popular and newer sf&f venues: Clarkesworld, Scigentasy, Shimmer, and Tor.com
— a genre-friendly literary journal: McSweeney’s
— and four high profile anthologies:
Carbide Tipped Pens—Eric Choi & Ben Bova, editors
HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects—John Joseph Adams, editor
Lightspeed, Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue—Christie Yant, editor
Long Hidden—Rose Fox & Daniel José Older, editors.