Grace Chan

Every Version of You

Ken Liu

Aliette de Bodard

Tade Thompson

Indrapramit Das

Vandana Singh

Rich Larson

Karl Schroeder

Hao Jingfang

Neil Clarke

Robert Reed

Hannu Rajaniemi

Anil Menon

Suzanne Palmer

Meg Elison

Octavia Cade

Mary Anne Mohanraj

Regina Kanyu Wang

José Pablo Iriarte

Gregory Norman Bossert

An Owomoyela

Kim Bo-young

Shiv Ramdas

Cooper Shrivastava

Ray Nayler

R.S.A. Garcia

Alice Towey

Shauna O'Meara

Erin Barbeau

S. Qiouyi Liu

A remote village is determined to keep their robot teacher from being fired. A poetry-loving AI controls the wastewater treatment facility, but a series of malfunctions are beginning to cause concern. The biggest pop idol of the twenty-second century is trapped on Enceladus, and deeply alone. Latchko can talk to the banned AIs and now that his secret is out things are about to get complicated. A former child soldier is raised by a plant-like species but struggles to understand them. Ice fishing on Europa just keeps turning up rocks and things just got worse ... something is changing the world, making it better, but for whom? Short fiction is the heart of science fiction, introducing new voices, experimenting with ideas and technique, and paving the way for the future of the field. Thousands of stories are published every year in the many genre magazines, anthologies, collections, podcasts, and websites, as well as other less common venues. Each year, Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning editor Neil Clarke sifts through the myriad of offerings to select works that represent the best and the brightest, report on the state of the field, and recommend additional stories for further reading. In this volume, covering 2021, you'll find works by Aliette de Bodard, Meg Elison, Rich Larson, Ken Liu, Ray Nayler, Suzanne Palmer, Hannu Rajaniemi, Robert Reed, Karl Schroeder, Vandana Singh, Tade Thompson, and many more.

The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 7

Annalee Newitz

Tobias S. Buckell

Leonard Richardson

Alastair Reynolds

Sarah Gailey

Premee Mohamed

Greg Egan

Julianna Baggott

Yoon Ha Lee

Naomi Kritzer

A.T. Greenblatt

Nian Yu

Chinelo Onwualu

Wole Talabi

Marie Vibbert

S.L. Huang

M. Bennardo

Jessica Reisman

Ai Jiang

Hannah Yang

Isabel J. Kim

Congyun "Mu Ming" Gu

J.C. Hsyu

For decades, science fiction has compelled us to imagine futures both inspiring and cautionary. Whether it's a cryptic message encountered by a survey ship, the discovery of alien life in the distant reaches of space, a window into a future Earth, or the adventures of well-meaning AI, science fiction inspires our imagination and delivers a lens through which we can view ourselves and the world around us. At the very heart of the genre is short fiction, the secret lab that has introduced many of the new ideas, techniques, and voices prominent across all other media. In The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Eight, Hugo and Locus Award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a comprehensive year-in-review of 2022's short fiction markets and selects thirty-one of its best stories from the wealth of magazines, anthologies, podcasts, and collections that make up the field. In these pages you'll find works by both the new and established authors who are setting the pace for science fiction today and into tomorrow. Start your journey here.

The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 8

'Asks what it is to be human. Visceral, mind-bending and tender.' - Inga Simpson In late twenty-first century Australia, Tao-Yi and her partner Navin spend most of their time inside a hyper-immersive, hyper-consumerist virtual reality called Gaia. They log on, go to work, socialise, and even eat in this digital utopia. Meanwhile their aging bodies lie suspended in pods inside cramped apartments. Across the city, in the abandoned 'real' world, Tao-Yi's mother remains stubbornly offline, preferring instead to indulge in memories of her life in Malaysia. When a new technology is developed to permanently upload a human brain to Gaia, Tao-Yi must decide what is most important: a digital future, or an authentic past. Never Let Me Go meets Black Mirror, with a dash of Murakami surrealism thrown in, this is speculative literary fiction at its best.

Grace Chan

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