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The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025
A collection of the year’s best science fiction and fantasy short fiction selected by award-winning author of Death of the Author and the Binti Trilogy, Nnedi Okorafor, and series editor John Joseph Adams.
The Best American series, launched in 1915, is the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction, and it is the most respected—and most popular—of its kind.
Nnedi Okorafor selects twenty pieces that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year and explores the ever-expanding and changing world of science fiction and fantasy today.
The Best American series, launched in 1915, is the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction, and it is the most respected—and most popular—of its kind.
Nnedi Okorafor selects twenty pieces that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year and explores the ever-expanding and changing world of science fiction and fantasy today.
416 pages, Paperback
First published October 21, 2025
About the author
Nnedi Okorafor
157 books18.4k followersNnedi Okorafor is a New York Times Bestselling writer of science fiction and fantasy for both children and adults. The more specific terms for her works are africanfuturism and africanjujuism, both terms she coined and defined. Born in the United States to two Nigerian (Igbo) immigrant parents and visiting family in Nigeria since she was a child, the foundation and inspiration of Nnedi’s work is rooted in this part of Africa. Her many works include Who Fears Death (winner of the World Fantasy Award and in development at HBO as a TV series), the Nebula and Hugo award winning novella trilogy Binti (in development as a TV series), the Lodestar and Locus Award winning Nsibidi Scripts Series, LaGuardia (winner of a Hugo and Eisner awards for Best Graphic Novel) and her most recent novella Remote Control. Her debut novel Zahrah the Windseeker won the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature. She lives with her daughter Anyaugo in Phoenix, AZ. Learn more about Nnedi at Nnedi.com and follow Nnedi on twitter (as @Nnedi), Facebook and Instagram.
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March 12, 2026
Review for The Forgetting Room by Kathryn H. Ross
By the author of Black Was Not a Label which I immediately added to my TBR after reading her brilliant short story as part of this collection. Some of the stories in 2025's collection were available in Amazon Originals, but some were not. This was one of those and it intrigued me enough to write it's own review.
⚛︎Quick Take-Away⚛︎
You Cannot sterilize your feelings
In this short the perfect family: mom, dad, son, and daughter do perfect things like eat breakfast together and read bedtime stories. They are concerned their perfect children are getting exposed to graphic content at school. Ironically, it's at home when their son walks in on his parents in bed.
The parents give in to purchase THE FORGETTING ROOM (product always in caps for some reason) which they heard advertised to be used to erase unwanted memories and can pinpoint precise events to erase. They decide, without much argument, that this is the thing to do for their son. Then they will feel safe. Are there some concerns? Sure, but overall they decide this is for the best. They discuss whether or not rules should be set on frequency of use, but ultimately decide they have excellent judgement and can play it by ear...
The tone feels sterile and I believe that's intentional to mock the attitude the parents take towards uncomfortable emotions and feelings. They are an unavoidable part of life whether we like it or not. We can't avoid witnessing difficult things but we can decide what to learn from them and how to grow. The parents are so uncomfortable letting their kids be exposed to life and learning resilience that they risk serious consequences.
Of course things go wrong with the FORGETTING ROOM. This is a new technology powered with electromagnetism and has not been fully studied in all capacities yet. It's horrific to think what can happen if people were given the power to control or erase emotions and feelings. One could argue the parents had 'good intentions' but it's undeniable what they paved their own path to h3ll.
A very interesting and strong short!
4.25⭐️
By the author of Black Was Not a Label which I immediately added to my TBR after reading her brilliant short story as part of this collection. Some of the stories in 2025's collection were available in Amazon Originals, but some were not. This was one of those and it intrigued me enough to write it's own review.
⚛︎Quick Take-Away⚛︎
You Cannot sterilize your feelings
In this short the perfect family: mom, dad, son, and daughter do perfect things like eat breakfast together and read bedtime stories. They are concerned their perfect children are getting exposed to graphic content at school. Ironically, it's at home when their son walks in on his parents in bed.
The parents give in to purchase THE FORGETTING ROOM (product always in caps for some reason) which they heard advertised to be used to erase unwanted memories and can pinpoint precise events to erase. They decide, without much argument, that this is the thing to do for their son. Then they will feel safe. Are there some concerns? Sure, but overall they decide this is for the best. They discuss whether or not rules should be set on frequency of use, but ultimately decide they have excellent judgement and can play it by ear...
The tone feels sterile and I believe that's intentional to mock the attitude the parents take towards uncomfortable emotions and feelings. They are an unavoidable part of life whether we like it or not. We can't avoid witnessing difficult things but we can decide what to learn from them and how to grow. The parents are so uncomfortable letting their kids be exposed to life and learning resilience that they risk serious consequences.
Of course things go wrong with the FORGETTING ROOM. This is a new technology powered with electromagnetism and has not been fully studied in all capacities yet. It's horrific to think what can happen if people were given the power to control or erase emotions and feelings. One could argue the parents had 'good intentions' but it's undeniable what they paved their own path to h3ll.
A very interesting and strong short!
4.25⭐️
October 22, 2025
This anthology is a pretty solid 4 stars, which is good for this type of book. Also, I snapped it up EVEN FASTER once I saw that Nnedi Okorafor was the guest editor this year. She is an amazing writer, and I’m already working my way through her catalogue.
Also, Joe Hill?? I just finished “King Sorrow”, and I’m always up for more Joe. “Ushers” is a great story, and the twist will make your heart drop into your stomach.
“The Audit” is a rambling journal of someone losing it, and it’s surprisingly funny. The premise is a fascinating one, and I do not want to participate in that program…at all..
“The Forgetting Room” ponders what might happen if you could erase some of your memories. My thought was, if you erase something bad that happened to you, how would you know to stay away from someone or something afterward? A significant amount of our memories keep us safe! No, thank you to the altering of my brain.
TJ Klune made me cry, again! “Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!” is achingly poignant.
FYI, there are a fair amount of short stories that veer into horror territory…but I like horror, so it didn’t bother me.
There’s more, but suffice it to say that this collection of stories is well worth your time. Ms. Okorafor has done an excellent job as guest editor.
Thank you to NetGalley and Mariner Books for the eARC! I’m writing this review voluntarily.
Also, Joe Hill?? I just finished “King Sorrow”, and I’m always up for more Joe. “Ushers” is a great story, and the twist will make your heart drop into your stomach.
“The Audit” is a rambling journal of someone losing it, and it’s surprisingly funny. The premise is a fascinating one, and I do not want to participate in that program…at all..
“The Forgetting Room” ponders what might happen if you could erase some of your memories. My thought was, if you erase something bad that happened to you, how would you know to stay away from someone or something afterward? A significant amount of our memories keep us safe! No, thank you to the altering of my brain.
TJ Klune made me cry, again! “Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!” is achingly poignant.
FYI, there are a fair amount of short stories that veer into horror territory…but I like horror, so it didn’t bother me.
There’s more, but suffice it to say that this collection of stories is well worth your time. Ms. Okorafor has done an excellent job as guest editor.
Thank you to NetGalley and Mariner Books for the eARC! I’m writing this review voluntarily.
January 25, 2026
I got my hopes up during the introduction to this collection, in which series editor John Joseph Adams explains the selection methodology: he himself read several thousand short stories of genre fiction published throughout a single calendar year, aiming to consume everything that possibly qualified, and picked eighty of his favorites -- forty science fiction and forty fantasy -- to pass to volume editor Nnedi Okorafor with their authorship redacted. She then read through those anonymous finalists and chose the ten she liked best from each category, resulting in the present publication.
I should have remembered that I had given three-star ratings to the two previous Adams-edited anthologies that I've read (Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse and A People's Future of the United States), suggesting in the most neutral of terms that he and I do not share identical tastes in the matter. In this book especially, I feel like he and/or Okorafor -- editing here for the first time -- are often too impressed by a distinctive speculative premise and not putting enough weight into the shape of the tale that follows and the writer's ability to deliver a satisfying ending.
(I have a few minor production critiques, too. Why put 2025 in the title when these pieces were all originally released from January through December 2024? Are we sure 'fantasy' is a more accurate label than 'horror' for certain selections? And why arrange the author notes by last name instead of order of appearance and stick them all together in an appendix far from the contents they describe? These aren't dealbreakers, but they're a little irksome regardless.)
Still, the work is more three-star solid than two-star subpar overall, and some of the entries are of course better than others. My own highlights would include:
"The River Judge" by S. L. Huang, in which an innkeeper's daughter loses her childhood and becomes a force to be reckoned with in cleaning up after her father's crimes;
"The Weight of Your Own Ashes" by Carlie St. George, in which an alien existing across multiple physical bodies dies in one, forcing a confrontation with her human girlfriend about the rest in a neat metaphor for more conventional bigotries;
"Yarns" by Susan Palwick, in which an older teacher learns how her perspective remains valuable even in a dystopian future that seems opposed to books and learning;
"A Stranger Knocks" by Tananarive Due, in which a Black couple in the Jim Crow south face off against a vampiric evil; and
"Ushers" by Joe Hill, in which a guy who gets premonitions of death has to explain to the FBI why he keeps narrowly avoiding mass-casualty events (somewhat similar to his dad's recent novella Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream, come to think of it).
It's a mix of familiar voices and ones new to me, whom I'll now need to either check out further or else know to avoid. And in the end, isn't that exactly what you'd hope for from a project like this?
[Content warning for racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexual assault, gun violence, and gore.]
Like this review? Find more of my writing on:
--https://www.goodreads.com/lesserjoke
--https://letterboxd.com/lesserjoke
--https://lesserjoke.home.blog
Or check out these ways to support me, if you'd like:
--https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke
--https://patreon.com/lesserjoke
I should have remembered that I had given three-star ratings to the two previous Adams-edited anthologies that I've read (Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse and A People's Future of the United States), suggesting in the most neutral of terms that he and I do not share identical tastes in the matter. In this book especially, I feel like he and/or Okorafor -- editing here for the first time -- are often too impressed by a distinctive speculative premise and not putting enough weight into the shape of the tale that follows and the writer's ability to deliver a satisfying ending.
(I have a few minor production critiques, too. Why put 2025 in the title when these pieces were all originally released from January through December 2024? Are we sure 'fantasy' is a more accurate label than 'horror' for certain selections? And why arrange the author notes by last name instead of order of appearance and stick them all together in an appendix far from the contents they describe? These aren't dealbreakers, but they're a little irksome regardless.)
Still, the work is more three-star solid than two-star subpar overall, and some of the entries are of course better than others. My own highlights would include:
"The River Judge" by S. L. Huang, in which an innkeeper's daughter loses her childhood and becomes a force to be reckoned with in cleaning up after her father's crimes;
"The Weight of Your Own Ashes" by Carlie St. George, in which an alien existing across multiple physical bodies dies in one, forcing a confrontation with her human girlfriend about the rest in a neat metaphor for more conventional bigotries;
"Yarns" by Susan Palwick, in which an older teacher learns how her perspective remains valuable even in a dystopian future that seems opposed to books and learning;
"A Stranger Knocks" by Tananarive Due, in which a Black couple in the Jim Crow south face off against a vampiric evil; and
"Ushers" by Joe Hill, in which a guy who gets premonitions of death has to explain to the FBI why he keeps narrowly avoiding mass-casualty events (somewhat similar to his dad's recent novella Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream, come to think of it).
It's a mix of familiar voices and ones new to me, whom I'll now need to either check out further or else know to avoid. And in the end, isn't that exactly what you'd hope for from a project like this?
[Content warning for racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexual assault, gun violence, and gore.]
Like this review? Find more of my writing on:
--https://www.goodreads.com/lesserjoke
--https://letterboxd.com/lesserjoke
--https://lesserjoke.home.blog
Or check out these ways to support me, if you'd like:
--https://ko-fi.com/lesserjoke
--https://patreon.com/lesserjoke
July 16, 2025
I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley.
We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read by Caroline M. Yoachim: Aliens that live at a timescale much faster than humans attempt to teach humans how to read their language, which contains multiple threads that need to be comprehended at the same time. An interesting experiment with form, but I want more alien details.
Also, the Cat by Rachel Swirsky: Three elderly sisters die, one after another and discover they're still stuck together haunting their old house. Well drawn characterizations that elicit sympathy for three old women who mostly enjoy being unpleasant to each other. Then there's the cat, which brought a tear to my eye.
The Audit by Olivie Blake: Our narrator participates in a program that estimates how much money you'll earn in your life and gives it to you to do whatever you want with it, only you have to pay it back as an adult. The narrator gets $40 million and spirals.
Country Birds by Kiji Johnson: The protagonist develops a spot in her vision that looks like a bird. As her life goes on, she thinks of all the aches and pains of her aging body as birds. Lyrical, but slight.
Fuck Them Kids by Tatiana Obey: Jaz goes home for a holiday only to find out that one of her nieces has stowed away on her rocket ship, leaving Jaz no choice but to take her along for the race she's competing in. A fun romp, and I always enjoy good auntie representation.
The River Judge by S.L. Huang: Li Li lives and works at her family's inn at a bend in the river. When her father starts solving problems with murder, Li Li and her mother are left to clean up the bodies. This works, until it doesn't, leaving Li Li with more dangerous problems to solve. While fantasy, this story has some undeniable horror elements, which I really enjoyed.
The Weight of Your Own Ashes by Carlie St. George: Yonder is a Myriad, a member of an alien species that has multiple bodies that share a consciousness. When one of their bodies dies, Yonder and their human girlfriend have some stuff to figure out. Some great aliens in this one.
An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow by Xavier Garcia: Tre is a talented rapper looking for his big break. Unfortunately he makes a deal with the devil to get it. Bloody and visceral, I'd consider this more of a horror story than fantasy, but that's more than fine.
The Forgetting Room by Kathryn H. Ross: A man and his wife buy a 'Forgetting Room,' to protect their child's innocence when he walks in on them having sex. Soon the wife is using it every day, tragedy ensues. Here's another one with a horror vibe.
Look at the Moon by Dominique Dickey: Yet more horror as a queer couple go to a stargazing party and stumble into a horrific cult ritual. The relationship between the couple is so sweet and well drawn that I totally forgive this for the unlikely coincidence that allows the story to happen.
Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim: A brilliant, angry response to Le Guin's classic "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." If Omelas was a real place and not a thought experiment, how would you react to it?
The Witch Trap by Jennifer Hudak: I love witches and stories about witches, but this one, told through different kinds of texts like scholarly articles along with narrative segments felt just a little undercooked for me. There's a creepy story here in the details of shoes under floorboards acting as 'witch traps,' but it never really clicked for me.
Yarns by Susan Palwick: This is one of those dystopian worlds that feels unpleasantly close to now. Irene is a teacher and knitter hiding from a gang with surveillance everywhere. It's like witness protection, but the algorithm recognizes you even with new fingerprints. Anyway, Irene charms the assassin sent to kill her by teaching him about knitting and becomes a grandmother figure to him. Dark with a touch of hope, this is about the value of kindness and community even at the end of the world.
The Wonders of the World by 'Pemi Aguda: This is a strange story, not sure I'd classify it as fantasy like the anthology does. Abisola goes on a class field trip to see a place where two rivers of different temperatures converge but don't mix. She spends some time with a boy from her class who claims to be a prophet who can heal people. She wants him to heal her of spells she has where she has trouble breathing and feels like she's floating away.
Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! by TJ Klune: A sweet and heartbreaking story of Douglas the android and the week he has with his human friends. Several tears were brought to both my eyes.
A Stranger Knocks by Tananarive Due: A Black couple in the 1920s get hired to drive a movie producer around to theaters for him to show his films. But the producer's film has a strange effect on people, and soon the couple realize they've bitten off more than they can chew. Some very creepy details, but this felt too much like a piece of a longer story.
The Sort by Thomas Ha: A man and his son are traveling and stop in a small desert town. The man and his son hide the fact that they communicate telepathically, and encounter a few weird sights in the little town, and the worldbuilding is well done and subtle, but the story didn't really go anywhere for me.
What Happened to the Crooners by Russell Nichols: A Black singing group take a wrong turn in the Appalachians, visit a very creepy diner, and stumble into a local legend. This has a very Twilight Zone vibe, but the ending is footnote formatted for some reason, which robs the story of some momentum.
The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics by Adam-Troy Castro: A story, told in almost one very long sentence, about how we created robots to be good slaves, and what one robot thinks as it's being left behind on a planet alone.
Ushers by Joe Hill: hey, I read this one already, (and WDWJKTKITOH) before this anthology. A policeman interviews a guy about a couple of accidents the guy was almost involved in. The guy eventually confesses to seeing beings that portend whatever tragedy is about to happen. Joe Hill is reliably great.
This year's anthology has an unusually high number of tales that I would call horror before anything else. That seems a little out of keeping with the theme of the anthology, but I'm guessing that Ms. Okorafor is a horror fan, which is great.
We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read by Caroline M. Yoachim: Aliens that live at a timescale much faster than humans attempt to teach humans how to read their language, which contains multiple threads that need to be comprehended at the same time. An interesting experiment with form, but I want more alien details.
Also, the Cat by Rachel Swirsky: Three elderly sisters die, one after another and discover they're still stuck together haunting their old house. Well drawn characterizations that elicit sympathy for three old women who mostly enjoy being unpleasant to each other. Then there's the cat, which brought a tear to my eye.
The Audit by Olivie Blake: Our narrator participates in a program that estimates how much money you'll earn in your life and gives it to you to do whatever you want with it, only you have to pay it back as an adult. The narrator gets $40 million and spirals.
Country Birds by Kiji Johnson: The protagonist develops a spot in her vision that looks like a bird. As her life goes on, she thinks of all the aches and pains of her aging body as birds. Lyrical, but slight.
Fuck Them Kids by Tatiana Obey: Jaz goes home for a holiday only to find out that one of her nieces has stowed away on her rocket ship, leaving Jaz no choice but to take her along for the race she's competing in. A fun romp, and I always enjoy good auntie representation.
The River Judge by S.L. Huang: Li Li lives and works at her family's inn at a bend in the river. When her father starts solving problems with murder, Li Li and her mother are left to clean up the bodies. This works, until it doesn't, leaving Li Li with more dangerous problems to solve. While fantasy, this story has some undeniable horror elements, which I really enjoyed.
The Weight of Your Own Ashes by Carlie St. George: Yonder is a Myriad, a member of an alien species that has multiple bodies that share a consciousness. When one of their bodies dies, Yonder and their human girlfriend have some stuff to figure out. Some great aliens in this one.
An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow by Xavier Garcia: Tre is a talented rapper looking for his big break. Unfortunately he makes a deal with the devil to get it. Bloody and visceral, I'd consider this more of a horror story than fantasy, but that's more than fine.
The Forgetting Room by Kathryn H. Ross: A man and his wife buy a 'Forgetting Room,' to protect their child's innocence when he walks in on them having sex. Soon the wife is using it every day, tragedy ensues. Here's another one with a horror vibe.
Look at the Moon by Dominique Dickey: Yet more horror as a queer couple go to a stargazing party and stumble into a horrific cult ritual. The relationship between the couple is so sweet and well drawn that I totally forgive this for the unlikely coincidence that allows the story to happen.
Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim: A brilliant, angry response to Le Guin's classic "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." If Omelas was a real place and not a thought experiment, how would you react to it?
The Witch Trap by Jennifer Hudak: I love witches and stories about witches, but this one, told through different kinds of texts like scholarly articles along with narrative segments felt just a little undercooked for me. There's a creepy story here in the details of shoes under floorboards acting as 'witch traps,' but it never really clicked for me.
Yarns by Susan Palwick: This is one of those dystopian worlds that feels unpleasantly close to now. Irene is a teacher and knitter hiding from a gang with surveillance everywhere. It's like witness protection, but the algorithm recognizes you even with new fingerprints. Anyway, Irene charms the assassin sent to kill her by teaching him about knitting and becomes a grandmother figure to him. Dark with a touch of hope, this is about the value of kindness and community even at the end of the world.
The Wonders of the World by 'Pemi Aguda: This is a strange story, not sure I'd classify it as fantasy like the anthology does. Abisola goes on a class field trip to see a place where two rivers of different temperatures converge but don't mix. She spends some time with a boy from her class who claims to be a prophet who can heal people. She wants him to heal her of spells she has where she has trouble breathing and feels like she's floating away.
Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! by TJ Klune: A sweet and heartbreaking story of Douglas the android and the week he has with his human friends. Several tears were brought to both my eyes.
A Stranger Knocks by Tananarive Due: A Black couple in the 1920s get hired to drive a movie producer around to theaters for him to show his films. But the producer's film has a strange effect on people, and soon the couple realize they've bitten off more than they can chew. Some very creepy details, but this felt too much like a piece of a longer story.
The Sort by Thomas Ha: A man and his son are traveling and stop in a small desert town. The man and his son hide the fact that they communicate telepathically, and encounter a few weird sights in the little town, and the worldbuilding is well done and subtle, but the story didn't really go anywhere for me.
What Happened to the Crooners by Russell Nichols: A Black singing group take a wrong turn in the Appalachians, visit a very creepy diner, and stumble into a local legend. This has a very Twilight Zone vibe, but the ending is footnote formatted for some reason, which robs the story of some momentum.
The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics by Adam-Troy Castro: A story, told in almost one very long sentence, about how we created robots to be good slaves, and what one robot thinks as it's being left behind on a planet alone.
Ushers by Joe Hill: hey, I read this one already, (and WDWJKTKITOH) before this anthology. A policeman interviews a guy about a couple of accidents the guy was almost involved in. The guy eventually confesses to seeing beings that portend whatever tragedy is about to happen. Joe Hill is reliably great.
This year's anthology has an unusually high number of tales that I would call horror before anything else. That seems a little out of keeping with the theme of the anthology, but I'm guessing that Ms. Okorafor is a horror fan, which is great.
October 31, 2025
My genre of choice is science fiction. And my format of choice is the short story. Which makes the choice to read this year's collection an easy one. I have most of the previous installments going back quite a few years, although I haven't read them from beginning to end. One thing I appreciate about picking up ARCs is that I feel obligated to read the entire collection, not just the authors I already know I enjoy. Which is a win for me because I get introduced to writers I would not have discovered otherwise. As for this year's collection, it was good. Some of the stories were great. It wasn't my favorite yet I enjoyed it very much. I appreciate all the work which goes into a collection like this. Thank you to the writers and narrators for their contributions, everyone involved in gathering, sorting, and choosing the entries, and NetGalley for the audioARC.
August 28, 2026
This was a decent, but unfortunately not great, collection of stories across the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres, although some of the stories included in this collection drifted closer to the Horror space than Fantasy, but I'm not complaining!
The reason I didn't rate this one higher was that there were several stories included in this collection that were really subpar for me: they either didn't seem to have a real plot, were hard to read, or just weren't interesting. A few stories did stand out, however, including "F--- Them Kids" by Tatiana Obey, "An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow" by Xavier Garcia, "Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!" by TJ Klune, and "What Happened to the Crooners" by Russell Nichols.
I think it boiled down to me and the editors of this year's collection (Nnedi Okorafor and John Joseph Adams) having differing tastes and qualifications for what constitutes a good short story, not the stories containing poor grammar, subject matter, or anything like that. Some stories were just not my cup of tea.
The reason I didn't rate this one higher was that there were several stories included in this collection that were really subpar for me: they either didn't seem to have a real plot, were hard to read, or just weren't interesting. A few stories did stand out, however, including "F--- Them Kids" by Tatiana Obey, "An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow" by Xavier Garcia, "Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!" by TJ Klune, and "What Happened to the Crooners" by Russell Nichols.
I think it boiled down to me and the editors of this year's collection (Nnedi Okorafor and John Joseph Adams) having differing tastes and qualifications for what constitutes a good short story, not the stories containing poor grammar, subject matter, or anything like that. Some stories were just not my cup of tea.
October 27, 2025
Once again, the guest editor for this series (this year it's Nnedi Okorafor) did an excellent job picking 20 stories out of the anonymous 80 submitted to her by the series editor. Since the guest editor doesn't know who wrote the stories, sometimes you'll see two stories by the same person, normally a taboo in 'year's best' anthologies. This year it didn't happen, though.
Some award winning stories are here, including the lead-off story 'We Will Teach You to Read / We Will Teach You to Read' by Caroline Yoachim, and Isabel Kim's 'Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole?'. There are some robot stories from T.J. Klune and Adam-Troy Castro, and a signature piece by Joe Hill closes out the book. The most affecting to me was Kij Johnson's meditation on mortality, 'Country Birds'. I think I had something in my eye at the end of that story.
Tananarive Due is here with a chiller of the horror story. The anthology also has a story by one of my recent 'finds', Thomas Ha, who had a story (not this one) short-listed for a Hugo this year.
Some award winning stories are here, including the lead-off story 'We Will Teach You to Read / We Will Teach You to Read' by Caroline Yoachim, and Isabel Kim's 'Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole?'. There are some robot stories from T.J. Klune and Adam-Troy Castro, and a signature piece by Joe Hill closes out the book. The most affecting to me was Kij Johnson's meditation on mortality, 'Country Birds'. I think I had something in my eye at the end of that story.
Tananarive Due is here with a chiller of the horror story. The anthology also has a story by one of my recent 'finds', Thomas Ha, who had a story (not this one) short-listed for a Hugo this year.
June 26, 2026
Interesting collection of short stories, though most of them weren’t really my cup of tea. I think maybe 3 stories stood out as what I thought was good and impactful, but the rest either all blurred into one or just didn’t really stick with me. Maybe it would be different if I had read the physical book rather than listen to it on audio.
Either way, overall 3/5 stars from me.
Either way, overall 3/5 stars from me.
February 4, 2026
as always you win some you lose some
October 16, 2025
I think I'm pretty forgiving with short story collections: I really just need one or two stories to dazzle me, and I happily give the whole thing five stars.
But I really did love this one. I thought it was an unusually strong collection with no real duds, and I loved the wide range of stories: the variety of authors was fabulous (from well-known to newer with diverse voices) and pretty much every story was a different subgenre.
My favorites were Carlie St. George’s The Weight of Your Own Ashes, Xavier Garcia’s An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Form, and Tananarive Deive’s A Stranger Knocks.
Thank you to NetGalley and Mariner Books!
But I really did love this one. I thought it was an unusually strong collection with no real duds, and I loved the wide range of stories: the variety of authors was fabulous (from well-known to newer with diverse voices) and pretty much every story was a different subgenre.
My favorites were Carlie St. George’s The Weight of Your Own Ashes, Xavier Garcia’s An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Form, and Tananarive Deive’s A Stranger Knocks.
Thank you to NetGalley and Mariner Books!
April 7, 2026
I liked Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim
and loved Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! by TJ Klune
and loved Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! by TJ Klune
January 25, 2026
Gary K. Wolfe writes in his Locus review of this anthology: "I came away remembering the characters and their problems more than the neat ideas and their ramifications, and while that might reflect some of Okorafor’s or Adams’s own distinct tastes, it’s not a bad development at all."
I *do* think it's a bad development. For stories with memorable characters and problems, I already have The Best American Short Stories 2025, which on the whole are more finely crafted than these and operate at a higher level.
I thought "Country Birds" by Kij Johnson was a masterpiece. I found Adam-Troy Castro's "The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics" compelling. Isabel J. Kim's "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole" was very good also, as was Susan Palwick's "Yarns." Those are the four stories I truly enjoyed from this batch of twenty.
I *do* think it's a bad development. For stories with memorable characters and problems, I already have The Best American Short Stories 2025, which on the whole are more finely crafted than these and operate at a higher level.
I thought "Country Birds" by Kij Johnson was a masterpiece. I found Adam-Troy Castro's "The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics" compelling. Isabel J. Kim's "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole" was very good also, as was Susan Palwick's "Yarns." Those are the four stories I truly enjoyed from this batch of twenty.
October 5, 2026
Like any collection, this one had some I didn't finish and others that made me want more from those authors, so, not exactly exceptional in its match between Okorafor's tastes and my own, but still well worth it for the good ones. Which were:
S.L. Huang's "The River Judge": grim, but driving. Do I want a whole book of it? Maybe!
Carlie St. George's "The Weight of Your Own Ashes." An excellent exercise in inhabiting a foreign mind.
Susan Palwick's "Yarns." Also grim, but a vein of humanity yet pulses.
Thomas Ha's "The Sort". A meditation on parenthood and alienation that almost didn't need the fantastical element.
S.L. Huang's "The River Judge": grim, but driving. Do I want a whole book of it? Maybe!
Carlie St. George's "The Weight of Your Own Ashes." An excellent exercise in inhabiting a foreign mind.
Susan Palwick's "Yarns." Also grim, but a vein of humanity yet pulses.
Thomas Ha's "The Sort". A meditation on parenthood and alienation that almost didn't need the fantastical element.
Read
January 16, 2026This was a really well rounded group of stories! Most short story collections have highs and lows, but I was engaged and excited about every story in this compilation. If asked my favorites I would give you at least half of them.
September 18, 2026
Oh boy, did I finish this one later than usual. Blame the year not the book.
As a whole there are quite a few highlights that will stick with me for a real long time both in positive ways and negative ways. Anyways, here are my reviews on the individual stories.
---
We will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read
By: Caroline M. Yoachim
“This is our story, simplified; Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration.” (1)
“We Will Teach You How to Read” is a story told in the form of a word optical illusion. It is trippy and you get out of it what you put in effortwise. I liked it and I enjoyed how the end neatly ties in with the beginning. However, if you like your stories concrete and not nebulous it may be a little struggle. I highly recommend reading this in one go instead of reading half one day and half another day like I did.
Also, the Cat
By: Rachel Swirsky
“Does this seem fair?” Rosie had asked her corpse. “It does not.” (19)
Three sisters Irene, Viola, and Rosalie are old, cranky and hate each other with unending passion. They live together in their childhood home stewing in hatred and bickering until they die one by one and find themselves trapped together in the afterlife too. This was a funny, beautiful story. Swirsky captures the human condition of bitterness in such a kind and brilliant way.
The Audit
By: Olivie Blake
“I wonder what makes me so valuable when I am unquestionably the most boring person in my life” (70)
This is a one week journal of an unnamed character. It is part of an audit for the Life Audit Program, where young adults can get a loan on the money they could potentially earn throughout their lives, so that they can enjoy their lives while they are still young instead of when they are broken down in their forties and fifties. Again I loved this. It captured all the anxieties that come with your twenties and how it feels at the moment when you are no longer scraping by. It speaks to my soul. For me, this is the most true to life depiction of what would happen if I won the lottery.
Country Birds
By: KIJ Johnson
“As she ages, the birds collect in her body, nestle into her hollowing bones.” (81)
This story is about Jan who catalogs all her ailments as birds. Jonson captures aging too well and makes this a bit of an uncomfortable read as I have a lot of trouble reading about medical issues. I wasn’t a fan of this one. It more muses on aging rather than having much happen. Maybe as I grow older it will resonate more.
Fuck Them Kids
By: Tatiana Obey
“But her niece’s words gave Jaz a terrible terrible idea. (95)
Jazz, a space ship drag racer, discovers a young stowaway in the back of her ship before a big race. This was funny and goofy and fun. I want more.
The River Judge
By: S. L. Huang
“Li Li imagined the men’s flesh decaying in the bog until their bones settled into the depths and crisscrossed atop each other. Like chopsticks thrown into the bottom of a basin to wash. Stacks of latticed chaos.” (112)
In rural China at a river delta there is an inn owned by Li Li’s father. Li Li’s father often leaves all the work for the “women” (Li Li and her mother) including cleaning up his messes, which include the corpses of local officials. As time goes on Li Li grows more bitter and bitter wondering what use does her father have. This is a badass story that is also very dark and gritty. I would classify this as a horror. Normally, I don’t go for stories this dark, but I love the power shift in the end.
The Weight of Your Own Ashes
By: Carlie St. George
“Alice wants to hold a funeral for me, which is disconcerting because I’m not dead. But humans, like all aliens–and certainly all single-forms–have their idiosyncrasies” (132)
Yonder is a myriad; an alien that shares one consciousness across three bodies. After Yonder loses their tertiary body to a bus accident they have trouble getting their girl friend to accept they are actually still alive albeit in a different form. I loved this. It is exactly what you hope for from science fiction (or speculative stories). It does some really cool and a little out there world building and has a strong story that you can connect to. More, please.
An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow
By: Xavier Garcia
“I want it. I need it. I’ll take it. It’s mine. I want it. I need it. I’ll take it. It’s mine.” (149)
Tre wants to be a famous rapper and will murder to do it. “After all everybody knows horror and hip-hop go hand in hand” (Garcia 382). Horror and blood and greed and desperation are all words to describe this story. It is violent and gruesome and beautifully crafted. I would not like to come back to this story for those very reasons. I need to take a bath now.
The Forgetting Room
By: Kathryn H. Ross
“With a click the door opened, and a message appeared: The Room is Ready for Use. Please Enter.” (169)
On his way to work Henry hears an ad on the radio about an amazing machine you can buy that can erase any pesky/embarrassing memory. He and his wife Anika decided to get one for their household so that they can erase any bad experiences they and their very young son have. It works as well as you can expect. Ross states that this story was inspired by thoughts on how all we really are are our memories and altering them alters who you are. When I read this I was much more interested in the thought of what happens to a person when you take all the uncomfortable stuff out of our lives. I have been thinking a lot about this as AI and tech gets better at doing the thinking for us more and more. I wonder at the end of this story, where is the line between difficult things “building character”, as Calvin’s dad would say in Calvin and Hobbes, and where you are just better off without the trauma of something awful?
Look at the Moon
By: Dominique Dickey
“For a long time, our love was the biggest thing I knew how to believe in.” (177)
Lou and his girlfriend travel to Joshua Tree national park to look at the stars, but instead find themselves caught in a horrific ritual. As the story unfolds Lou explores what religion and god mean to him and Holly as people. I don’t know how we got to a happy ending with this story. Is it a happy ending? Is it just twisted to look that way? I think this story works on so many levels that you can get something new out of it each time.
Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole
By: Isabel J. Kim
“Without the kid in the hole, Omelas was just a paradise. With the load-bearing suffering child, Omelas meant something” (204)
This is a response to, the grand dame of sci fi, Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” [This is where the city Omelas maintains itself as a paradise because a child in a hole is absorbing everyone's suffering]. In this, people decide to murder the kid in the hole with the philosophy that if that kid was your kid you wouldn’t be okay having a kid suffer for your paradise. I really need to dig deeper into reading more Le Guin because the reference was completely lost on me and I didn’t even know this was based on something until I read it. You do not need to have Le Guin’s short story to get understanding and meaning out of this. This makes you really think about how we almost cannot/will not sacrifice our comfort to create better living conditions for others. For example, I am sure nearly everyone in the USA is wearing something that was made in a sweat shop. It is impossible to escape, but most of us don’t even try. These thoughts also brought to mind thoughts I had back in “The Forgetting Room” where I wondered what we are sacrificing by taking away the rough edges of our lives. The people of Omelas cannot truly relate with what the suffering kid suffers because they have never suffered themselves, even a little.
The Witch Trap
By: Jennifer Hudak
“It isn’t just a shoe; in being hidden, it has been invested with a different meaning, become something other than what it was.” (217)
The Witch Trap is an exploration of all the different ways witches are treated in culture using separate scenes to put together a tapestry of what it is to be or seen as a witch. This was interesting and I liked it as much as I like most witch things (which is a lot). I think if this collection was any longer it would be a slog, but as it is it is pretty straight forward.
Yarns
By: Susan Palmer
“She’d succumbed to temptation, and she was going to die for it.” (220)
Irene tries to save a young boy from a rival gang and in turn needs to go into a kind of witness protection system. A year later she is tracked down because of a purchase of some yarn. There is an empathy for people seen in Irene that I don’t see as much in writing. She comes up with little backstories for the people she meets to find a possible connection with them. This story is about connecting with people over generations and finding kindness in a very unkind world. I liked those aspects of it even though the world was a bit too dark for me to want to revisit.
The Wonders of the World
By: ‘pemi Aguda
“Maybe Zeme could help her become one of those lit paper lanterns she saw in Mulan–a bright floating presence in their lives.” (254)
Abisola, while on a school trip, learns her classmate Zemi, who calls himself a prophet, may have healing powers that could help cure her depression and anxiety. I honestly think this story barely counts as fantasy. It has wiffs of fantasy, but is so ambiguous it really just reads as realistic fiction and I am not really here for it. Not much happens here and it is pretty slow.
Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!
By: TJ Klune
“He was fascinated by this, the idea that people need others to talk with. To laugh with. To dance, to eat, to walk, to argue with, to prove existence is real.” (272)
Douglas works in a factory. He has worked in the factory for nine years and 51 weeks. This is the story of Douglas’s one week off to see the world. There is a slow discovery process in this story. I think Klune does very well where you slowly discover what is going on and then Klune never straight out says what is happening he just assumes that you picked up the bread crumbs at the point things start happening. Expect a sad read.
A Stranger Knocks
By: Tananarive Due
“Still the proposal frightened her. He frightened her. But weren’t all important steps in life a bit frightening?” (301)
Judy and Alvin get an uninvited offer from a stranger; they will drive Mr. Cartier around the country and help him with his traveling picture film “A Stranger Knocks” as it travels between black theaters and he will pay them an obscene amount of money to do so. This offer is too good to pass up, but Judy rapidly feels they might have made a deal with a monster. This is a creeping slow horror story that is reminiscent of classic monster horror films. There aren’t really any huge surprises here and I was hoping for a bigger twist at the end, but otherwise not bad.
The Sort
By: Thomas Ha
“I think it is easy to feel like you’re in the wrong place. And I don’t think it ever feels natural for anyone. Everyone feels a little like that, even the people here. There’s no avoiding it.” (334)
A father and son have stopped at a small town in the desert on their way to Arizona and visit a local festival. They are not like other people in ways people may not think is good or safe. This story explores parenting in a place where you are the other. Not too much happens and there are more questions than answers in this short story.
What Happened to the Crooners
By: Russel Nichols
“Did we choose the wrong time or take a wrong turn,
or lose a sound mind on a bride that we burned?” (345)
Set in the late 50’s/early 60’s, the four man singing group, The Crooners, get lost on the way to their next tour location and stop at a diner to ask for directions. This reads as mostly a typical ghost story to me. It was fine.
The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law
By: Adam-Troy Castro
“if the only reasonable response to the order was compliance and also horror, of course,” (349)
A robot is cruelly told to stand and wait until its master returns even though the master knows full well that he will never return. So, the robot stares motionless for thousands of years. Castro, in this short story, expands on Asimov’s three laws of robotics and illustrates that when humans have total control over a being they also have freedom to express total cruelty. It is written in a very forward slant way with every thought starting with “if.” This gives the story a breathless oppressive feel which I can only imagine is very intentional.
Ushers
By: Joe Hill
“We forget that, you know [that death is part of nature]. It’s better to just be a mammal. You know, take long naked naps in the sun. Never miss a chance to splash in the tide.” (361)
Special Agents John Oates and Daryl Hall interview youth consoler Martin and his connection to narrowly avoiding both a school shooting and a train crash. This story is a bit noir gritty and told almost entirely in dialogue. I did not like the writing in this which makes or breaks a story for me. Martin sounds a lot younger than he actually is and I think his banter sounded a little like someone who is trying too hard to sound like a young person. I also found this story to be mostly just explanations over action and the ending was way too predictable.
As a whole there are quite a few highlights that will stick with me for a real long time both in positive ways and negative ways. Anyways, here are my reviews on the individual stories.
---
We will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read
By: Caroline M. Yoachim
“This is our story, simplified; Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration.” (1)
“We Will Teach You How to Read” is a story told in the form of a word optical illusion. It is trippy and you get out of it what you put in effortwise. I liked it and I enjoyed how the end neatly ties in with the beginning. However, if you like your stories concrete and not nebulous it may be a little struggle. I highly recommend reading this in one go instead of reading half one day and half another day like I did.
Also, the Cat
By: Rachel Swirsky
“Does this seem fair?” Rosie had asked her corpse. “It does not.” (19)
Three sisters Irene, Viola, and Rosalie are old, cranky and hate each other with unending passion. They live together in their childhood home stewing in hatred and bickering until they die one by one and find themselves trapped together in the afterlife too. This was a funny, beautiful story. Swirsky captures the human condition of bitterness in such a kind and brilliant way.
The Audit
By: Olivie Blake
“I wonder what makes me so valuable when I am unquestionably the most boring person in my life” (70)
This is a one week journal of an unnamed character. It is part of an audit for the Life Audit Program, where young adults can get a loan on the money they could potentially earn throughout their lives, so that they can enjoy their lives while they are still young instead of when they are broken down in their forties and fifties. Again I loved this. It captured all the anxieties that come with your twenties and how it feels at the moment when you are no longer scraping by. It speaks to my soul. For me, this is the most true to life depiction of what would happen if I won the lottery.
Country Birds
By: KIJ Johnson
“As she ages, the birds collect in her body, nestle into her hollowing bones.” (81)
This story is about Jan who catalogs all her ailments as birds. Jonson captures aging too well and makes this a bit of an uncomfortable read as I have a lot of trouble reading about medical issues. I wasn’t a fan of this one. It more muses on aging rather than having much happen. Maybe as I grow older it will resonate more.
Fuck Them Kids
By: Tatiana Obey
“But her niece’s words gave Jaz a terrible terrible idea. (95)
Jazz, a space ship drag racer, discovers a young stowaway in the back of her ship before a big race. This was funny and goofy and fun. I want more.
The River Judge
By: S. L. Huang
“Li Li imagined the men’s flesh decaying in the bog until their bones settled into the depths and crisscrossed atop each other. Like chopsticks thrown into the bottom of a basin to wash. Stacks of latticed chaos.” (112)
In rural China at a river delta there is an inn owned by Li Li’s father. Li Li’s father often leaves all the work for the “women” (Li Li and her mother) including cleaning up his messes, which include the corpses of local officials. As time goes on Li Li grows more bitter and bitter wondering what use does her father have. This is a badass story that is also very dark and gritty. I would classify this as a horror. Normally, I don’t go for stories this dark, but I love the power shift in the end.
The Weight of Your Own Ashes
By: Carlie St. George
“Alice wants to hold a funeral for me, which is disconcerting because I’m not dead. But humans, like all aliens–and certainly all single-forms–have their idiosyncrasies” (132)
Yonder is a myriad; an alien that shares one consciousness across three bodies. After Yonder loses their tertiary body to a bus accident they have trouble getting their girl friend to accept they are actually still alive albeit in a different form. I loved this. It is exactly what you hope for from science fiction (or speculative stories). It does some really cool and a little out there world building and has a strong story that you can connect to. More, please.
An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow
By: Xavier Garcia
“I want it. I need it. I’ll take it. It’s mine. I want it. I need it. I’ll take it. It’s mine.” (149)
Tre wants to be a famous rapper and will murder to do it. “After all everybody knows horror and hip-hop go hand in hand” (Garcia 382). Horror and blood and greed and desperation are all words to describe this story. It is violent and gruesome and beautifully crafted. I would not like to come back to this story for those very reasons. I need to take a bath now.
The Forgetting Room
By: Kathryn H. Ross
“With a click the door opened, and a message appeared: The Room is Ready for Use. Please Enter.” (169)
On his way to work Henry hears an ad on the radio about an amazing machine you can buy that can erase any pesky/embarrassing memory. He and his wife Anika decided to get one for their household so that they can erase any bad experiences they and their very young son have. It works as well as you can expect. Ross states that this story was inspired by thoughts on how all we really are are our memories and altering them alters who you are. When I read this I was much more interested in the thought of what happens to a person when you take all the uncomfortable stuff out of our lives. I have been thinking a lot about this as AI and tech gets better at doing the thinking for us more and more. I wonder at the end of this story, where is the line between difficult things “building character”, as Calvin’s dad would say in Calvin and Hobbes, and where you are just better off without the trauma of something awful?
Look at the Moon
By: Dominique Dickey
“For a long time, our love was the biggest thing I knew how to believe in.” (177)
Lou and his girlfriend travel to Joshua Tree national park to look at the stars, but instead find themselves caught in a horrific ritual. As the story unfolds Lou explores what religion and god mean to him and Holly as people. I don’t know how we got to a happy ending with this story. Is it a happy ending? Is it just twisted to look that way? I think this story works on so many levels that you can get something new out of it each time.
Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole
By: Isabel J. Kim
“Without the kid in the hole, Omelas was just a paradise. With the load-bearing suffering child, Omelas meant something” (204)
This is a response to, the grand dame of sci fi, Ursula K. Le Guin’s short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” [This is where the city Omelas maintains itself as a paradise because a child in a hole is absorbing everyone's suffering]. In this, people decide to murder the kid in the hole with the philosophy that if that kid was your kid you wouldn’t be okay having a kid suffer for your paradise. I really need to dig deeper into reading more Le Guin because the reference was completely lost on me and I didn’t even know this was based on something until I read it. You do not need to have Le Guin’s short story to get understanding and meaning out of this. This makes you really think about how we almost cannot/will not sacrifice our comfort to create better living conditions for others. For example, I am sure nearly everyone in the USA is wearing something that was made in a sweat shop. It is impossible to escape, but most of us don’t even try. These thoughts also brought to mind thoughts I had back in “The Forgetting Room” where I wondered what we are sacrificing by taking away the rough edges of our lives. The people of Omelas cannot truly relate with what the suffering kid suffers because they have never suffered themselves, even a little.
The Witch Trap
By: Jennifer Hudak
“It isn’t just a shoe; in being hidden, it has been invested with a different meaning, become something other than what it was.” (217)
The Witch Trap is an exploration of all the different ways witches are treated in culture using separate scenes to put together a tapestry of what it is to be or seen as a witch. This was interesting and I liked it as much as I like most witch things (which is a lot). I think if this collection was any longer it would be a slog, but as it is it is pretty straight forward.
Yarns
By: Susan Palmer
“She’d succumbed to temptation, and she was going to die for it.” (220)
Irene tries to save a young boy from a rival gang and in turn needs to go into a kind of witness protection system. A year later she is tracked down because of a purchase of some yarn. There is an empathy for people seen in Irene that I don’t see as much in writing. She comes up with little backstories for the people she meets to find a possible connection with them. This story is about connecting with people over generations and finding kindness in a very unkind world. I liked those aspects of it even though the world was a bit too dark for me to want to revisit.
The Wonders of the World
By: ‘pemi Aguda
“Maybe Zeme could help her become one of those lit paper lanterns she saw in Mulan–a bright floating presence in their lives.” (254)
Abisola, while on a school trip, learns her classmate Zemi, who calls himself a prophet, may have healing powers that could help cure her depression and anxiety. I honestly think this story barely counts as fantasy. It has wiffs of fantasy, but is so ambiguous it really just reads as realistic fiction and I am not really here for it. Not much happens here and it is pretty slow.
Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!
By: TJ Klune
“He was fascinated by this, the idea that people need others to talk with. To laugh with. To dance, to eat, to walk, to argue with, to prove existence is real.” (272)
Douglas works in a factory. He has worked in the factory for nine years and 51 weeks. This is the story of Douglas’s one week off to see the world. There is a slow discovery process in this story. I think Klune does very well where you slowly discover what is going on and then Klune never straight out says what is happening he just assumes that you picked up the bread crumbs at the point things start happening. Expect a sad read.
A Stranger Knocks
By: Tananarive Due
“Still the proposal frightened her. He frightened her. But weren’t all important steps in life a bit frightening?” (301)
Judy and Alvin get an uninvited offer from a stranger; they will drive Mr. Cartier around the country and help him with his traveling picture film “A Stranger Knocks” as it travels between black theaters and he will pay them an obscene amount of money to do so. This offer is too good to pass up, but Judy rapidly feels they might have made a deal with a monster. This is a creeping slow horror story that is reminiscent of classic monster horror films. There aren’t really any huge surprises here and I was hoping for a bigger twist at the end, but otherwise not bad.
The Sort
By: Thomas Ha
“I think it is easy to feel like you’re in the wrong place. And I don’t think it ever feels natural for anyone. Everyone feels a little like that, even the people here. There’s no avoiding it.” (334)
A father and son have stopped at a small town in the desert on their way to Arizona and visit a local festival. They are not like other people in ways people may not think is good or safe. This story explores parenting in a place where you are the other. Not too much happens and there are more questions than answers in this short story.
What Happened to the Crooners
By: Russel Nichols
“Did we choose the wrong time or take a wrong turn,
or lose a sound mind on a bride that we burned?” (345)
Set in the late 50’s/early 60’s, the four man singing group, The Crooners, get lost on the way to their next tour location and stop at a diner to ask for directions. This reads as mostly a typical ghost story to me. It was fine.
The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law
By: Adam-Troy Castro
“if the only reasonable response to the order was compliance and also horror, of course,” (349)
A robot is cruelly told to stand and wait until its master returns even though the master knows full well that he will never return. So, the robot stares motionless for thousands of years. Castro, in this short story, expands on Asimov’s three laws of robotics and illustrates that when humans have total control over a being they also have freedom to express total cruelty. It is written in a very forward slant way with every thought starting with “if.” This gives the story a breathless oppressive feel which I can only imagine is very intentional.
Ushers
By: Joe Hill
“We forget that, you know [that death is part of nature]. It’s better to just be a mammal. You know, take long naked naps in the sun. Never miss a chance to splash in the tide.” (361)
Special Agents John Oates and Daryl Hall interview youth consoler Martin and his connection to narrowly avoiding both a school shooting and a train crash. This story is a bit noir gritty and told almost entirely in dialogue. I did not like the writing in this which makes or breaks a story for me. Martin sounds a lot younger than he actually is and I think his banter sounded a little like someone who is trying too hard to sound like a young person. I also found this story to be mostly just explanations over action and the ending was way too predictable.
July 16, 2026
8 months later, and with 4 months to spare until the next one!
I liked 7/20 stories, but I'm glad I read the whole thing for an oddly cohesive picture of what mid-2020s SFF sees as what it means to be human.
I liked 7/20 stories, but I'm glad I read the whole thing for an oddly cohesive picture of what mid-2020s SFF sees as what it means to be human.
March 19, 2026
This collection had varying effects on me. Some stories were incredible with deep philosophical questions. Others missed the mark or failed to keep my attention.
Overall, worth the read. Some incredible short stories. The meh or bad were few. Excited to read from other guest editors like R.F. Kuang and N.K Jemisin!
Overall, worth the read. Some incredible short stories. The meh or bad were few. Excited to read from other guest editors like R.F. Kuang and N.K Jemisin!
December 17, 2025
a couple good ones but most of this is zoomer bullshit. where are the rockets and weird aliens and monsters? it's all "oh my phone showed me something bad so I built an extension to my apartment" (The Forgetting Room) and "we're gay and we killed our whole family" (The River Judge). the 2024 anthology was so much better.
September 21, 2026
Buckle up for a long review, because with these collections, I feel like each story deserves its own mini-review, especially when each one has its own author and tone. Overall, there weren’t any stories I actively disliked here, but they range from 3 stars (a dud, not for me) to 5 (I’m going to be thinking about this for a while).
We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read: Cool concept, with one side (you’ll understand when you read it) ultimately sounding like the bass rhythm to the other side. Actually…listen to some of Laurie Anderson’s early experimental stuff—this is like that in written form. More like a poem than a story, but it didn’t overstay its welcome. 4/5
Also, The Cat: Arguably the most lighthearted of the stories here, a story about three sisters whose distaste for one another (and the world around them) persists into death. I’m sorry to say this one didn’t land for me—I think you need to find the sisters either likable or amusing, and none of them hit the mark for me. 3/5
The Audit: This one felt like it had twists coming that didn’t quite ever happen, but like WWTYHtR, I think the concept is a neat idea. It’s one that’s close to something I think about to a degree whenever I go into a PTO deficit—an extra week of vacation feels great until I remember my employer will claw back those hours one way or another, which makes me more conscientious on how I use my time. 4/5
Country Birds: Um, I don’t remember this one too well. I think for that, it gets a 3/5
F Them Kids: The Cool Aunt story with a galactic sci-fi twist. Maybe not the most introspective, but still fun. 4/5
The River Judge: Hearing this one is kind of in tandem with SL Huang’s novel intrigued me. A mystery with a lot to say about power and the role of women. For me it’s gonna be a 5/5
The Weight of Your Own Ashes: What happens when one conscious shares multiple bodies, and one of them dies? Can we even comprehend what that’s like? This one also made me think about our inner thoughts and dreams, and how hard it can be to explain them to others. 4/5
Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow: I admit I don’t necessarily understand musical terms nor tarot, but this one was the weakest story in the set for me. It’s also the one where I’m most likely to say “okay, this is fantasy, but it’s more horror.” 3/5 stars…maybe 2/5 stars if I’m feeling uncharitable.
The Forgetting Room: Stories involving memory and the option to willfully remember or forget experiences always do a number on me and I’m not sure why. This one is the one I’ve thought about most since reading it, often pausing to stare into space while making food. 5/5 easy
Look at the Moon: Feels a bit like horror and also like a Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green scenario (IYKYK). Messes with religion and gods, and I don’t want to say more or I’ll spoil things. 4/5 leaning towards 5/5
Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole: You need to read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas first, but this is the one I was most excited to read in the collection and it did not disappoint. Ask yourself, what if Omelas is part of the wider world, and what if Omelans decide there’s a third choice besides staying or leaving? What are the consequences? So, so good. Also, reading this in 2026 when there are an increasing number of people in the U.S. thinking we’re headed in the wrong direction (and even more outside thinking the same thing), this hit hard. 5/5 no question
The Witch Trap: This had a neat idea but felt underbaked. Like I turned the page, was on to the next story and thought “that’s it?”. Maybe it’s one of those stories I needed to engage with more, but this felt almost like being given a series of loose pages and being asked to cobble them into a narrative thread. Not my thing, 3/5
Yarns: Hello dystopia! They don’t hit me as hard as “memory related” stories (see above), but I do like stories that explore what we owe to each other from a philosophical standpoint. I thought some parts were a little on the nose, yet overall I liked it. 4/5
The Wonders of the World: I don’t remember this one super well either, though I do recall it being in the vein of “is there something supernatural going on here, or is this one person just not right in the head?” Looking back on it, though, it made me think, and that’s a good thing. 4/5
Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! : This is one of two or three stories that made me think about consciousness in this collection, and of the three it was my favorite. Beautiful and sad, and I can’t say anything more because this is a spoiler-free review. 5/5
A Stranger Knocks: This is straightforwardly horror, but as with Due’s other work I’ve read (The Reformatory), I really like the spin on a classic horror trope here in a way that’s arguably more terrifying than most works in the subgenre. A slow creeping dread, not a shock or jump scare. 4.5/5 - I’m cheating a bit, but horror is outside of my wheelhouse so cut me some slack
The Sort: Weird, unsettling, but in a good way. What’s going on here? is the question I kept asking. 4/5
What Happened to the Crooners: Historical meets horror in that “there are things out in the woods, but also there’s racism” kind of way. This story’s got layers, and a footnote that makes it all the more mysterious. 4/5
The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics: It’s told in a single sentence, which I’m not sure is to its credit, but reading this in September 2026, the entire time I was thinking “if we create actual AI, three laws aren’t going to be enough, and if we don’t give it rights, we’re going to be monsters, and we’re going to screw it up, aren’t we?” 4/5
Ushers: Stories like Final Destination or The Sixth Sense haven’t ever done anything for me, but I loved the sense of dread this inspired, like a train crash you know is going to happen but can’t do anything to stop. Very approachable, and it made me more interested in Joe Hill’s writing. 5/5
We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read: Cool concept, with one side (you’ll understand when you read it) ultimately sounding like the bass rhythm to the other side. Actually…listen to some of Laurie Anderson’s early experimental stuff—this is like that in written form. More like a poem than a story, but it didn’t overstay its welcome. 4/5
Also, The Cat: Arguably the most lighthearted of the stories here, a story about three sisters whose distaste for one another (and the world around them) persists into death. I’m sorry to say this one didn’t land for me—I think you need to find the sisters either likable or amusing, and none of them hit the mark for me. 3/5
The Audit: This one felt like it had twists coming that didn’t quite ever happen, but like WWTYHtR, I think the concept is a neat idea. It’s one that’s close to something I think about to a degree whenever I go into a PTO deficit—an extra week of vacation feels great until I remember my employer will claw back those hours one way or another, which makes me more conscientious on how I use my time. 4/5
Country Birds: Um, I don’t remember this one too well. I think for that, it gets a 3/5
F Them Kids: The Cool Aunt story with a galactic sci-fi twist. Maybe not the most introspective, but still fun. 4/5
The River Judge: Hearing this one is kind of in tandem with SL Huang’s novel intrigued me. A mystery with a lot to say about power and the role of women. For me it’s gonna be a 5/5
The Weight of Your Own Ashes: What happens when one conscious shares multiple bodies, and one of them dies? Can we even comprehend what that’s like? This one also made me think about our inner thoughts and dreams, and how hard it can be to explain them to others. 4/5
Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow: I admit I don’t necessarily understand musical terms nor tarot, but this one was the weakest story in the set for me. It’s also the one where I’m most likely to say “okay, this is fantasy, but it’s more horror.” 3/5 stars…maybe 2/5 stars if I’m feeling uncharitable.
The Forgetting Room: Stories involving memory and the option to willfully remember or forget experiences always do a number on me and I’m not sure why. This one is the one I’ve thought about most since reading it, often pausing to stare into space while making food. 5/5 easy
Look at the Moon: Feels a bit like horror and also like a Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green scenario (IYKYK). Messes with religion and gods, and I don’t want to say more or I’ll spoil things. 4/5 leaning towards 5/5
Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole: You need to read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas first, but this is the one I was most excited to read in the collection and it did not disappoint. Ask yourself, what if Omelas is part of the wider world, and what if Omelans decide there’s a third choice besides staying or leaving? What are the consequences? So, so good. Also, reading this in 2026 when there are an increasing number of people in the U.S. thinking we’re headed in the wrong direction (and even more outside thinking the same thing), this hit hard. 5/5 no question
The Witch Trap: This had a neat idea but felt underbaked. Like I turned the page, was on to the next story and thought “that’s it?”. Maybe it’s one of those stories I needed to engage with more, but this felt almost like being given a series of loose pages and being asked to cobble them into a narrative thread. Not my thing, 3/5
Yarns: Hello dystopia! They don’t hit me as hard as “memory related” stories (see above), but I do like stories that explore what we owe to each other from a philosophical standpoint. I thought some parts were a little on the nose, yet overall I liked it. 4/5
The Wonders of the World: I don’t remember this one super well either, though I do recall it being in the vein of “is there something supernatural going on here, or is this one person just not right in the head?” Looking back on it, though, it made me think, and that’s a good thing. 4/5
Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! : This is one of two or three stories that made me think about consciousness in this collection, and of the three it was my favorite. Beautiful and sad, and I can’t say anything more because this is a spoiler-free review. 5/5
A Stranger Knocks: This is straightforwardly horror, but as with Due’s other work I’ve read (The Reformatory), I really like the spin on a classic horror trope here in a way that’s arguably more terrifying than most works in the subgenre. A slow creeping dread, not a shock or jump scare. 4.5/5 - I’m cheating a bit, but horror is outside of my wheelhouse so cut me some slack
The Sort: Weird, unsettling, but in a good way. What’s going on here? is the question I kept asking. 4/5
What Happened to the Crooners: Historical meets horror in that “there are things out in the woods, but also there’s racism” kind of way. This story’s got layers, and a footnote that makes it all the more mysterious. 4/5
The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics: It’s told in a single sentence, which I’m not sure is to its credit, but reading this in September 2026, the entire time I was thinking “if we create actual AI, three laws aren’t going to be enough, and if we don’t give it rights, we’re going to be monsters, and we’re going to screw it up, aren’t we?” 4/5
Ushers: Stories like Final Destination or The Sixth Sense haven’t ever done anything for me, but I loved the sense of dread this inspired, like a train crash you know is going to happen but can’t do anything to stop. Very approachable, and it made me more interested in Joe Hill’s writing. 5/5
September 1, 2025
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy anthologies are always a highlight of my year and I'm immensely grateful to Netgalley and Mariner Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
For those unaware: each year, editors of this anthology ask a fantasy writer to be a guest editor and select "the best science fiction and fantasy" short form writing (novellettes, short stories, etc) from a pre-selected pool. Besides the guest editor's input, I want to acknowledge the work that it takes to prepare this selection: editors read through printed magazines, online magazines and anthologies, and anthologies of one writer's stories (i.e. a book in which a writer publishes their 5-6 short stories, a couple are published each year). As a reader, I love short-form fantasy and sci-fi; it allows me to glimpse into unique and weird stories and satisfies my appetite for reading on busy days when I can't commit to a longer novel. As a reader, however, I find it increasingly difficult to find short stories because there are too many outlets: I used to subcribe to a printed magazine which is now out-of-print and, despite being a millenial, find navigating online magazines a bit too overwhelming. "The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy" does all this work for me—someone already found the stories and hand-selected the most engaging ones and now I can devour them!
This collection offers a diverse mix of science-fiction and fantasy (divided roughly equally, though I found myself craving more fantasy: it may result from fantasy stories being a bit shorter or from my subjective preference for the genre), of various writers (some famous and known to me, like Olivie Blake and Joe Hill; some new to me; the table of contents does not include their names which is actually awesome and allows lesser-known writers to occupy the same space as their more famous peers) and themes.
It's difficult to sense an overarching theme of such a diverse collection but for me it was intimacy and loss: the stories that caught the most of my attention grappled with these topics. Rachel Swirsky and Kiji Johnson offered moving depictions of protagonists in an old age—their writing merged the sense of loss and disappointment with the gradual sense of acceptance (such stories sometimes depress me but elderly POVs are much needed!). Olivie Blake's "Audit" was a coming-of-age story and grasped the sense of being paralyzed by adulthood (in a dystopian world where youth and freedom seem limited) and craving for intimacy and love. Kathryn H. Ross' "The Forgetting Room" used a memory-altering device to offer a metaphor about family conflicts and struggles of everyday life, as well as coming to terms with grief. My very favorite story was "The Weight of Your Own Ashes" by Carlie St. George—it explored the dynamics of a relationship between an alien-who-pursues-graduate-studies-on-Earth and their human girlfriend, and the alien's gradual realization that the girlfriend's acceptance for their species (an excellent metaphor for racial or gender "otherness") is only superficial. These stories were my favorite to read and at some levels they are very sad and speaking to interpersonal difficulties in the modern era—but maybe it's what we need? In addition to those, there's plenty of weird styles and perspectives, sci-fi chases, witches, a vampire who parasites on movie pictures and Black audiences, and so on. A must for each sci-fi and fantasy lover (moreover, the stories I listed should be appealing regardless of genre; there's a lot of "subtle" supernatural in this collection), either to start with or to compare to previous editions.
For those unaware: each year, editors of this anthology ask a fantasy writer to be a guest editor and select "the best science fiction and fantasy" short form writing (novellettes, short stories, etc) from a pre-selected pool. Besides the guest editor's input, I want to acknowledge the work that it takes to prepare this selection: editors read through printed magazines, online magazines and anthologies, and anthologies of one writer's stories (i.e. a book in which a writer publishes their 5-6 short stories, a couple are published each year). As a reader, I love short-form fantasy and sci-fi; it allows me to glimpse into unique and weird stories and satisfies my appetite for reading on busy days when I can't commit to a longer novel. As a reader, however, I find it increasingly difficult to find short stories because there are too many outlets: I used to subcribe to a printed magazine which is now out-of-print and, despite being a millenial, find navigating online magazines a bit too overwhelming. "The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy" does all this work for me—someone already found the stories and hand-selected the most engaging ones and now I can devour them!
This collection offers a diverse mix of science-fiction and fantasy (divided roughly equally, though I found myself craving more fantasy: it may result from fantasy stories being a bit shorter or from my subjective preference for the genre), of various writers (some famous and known to me, like Olivie Blake and Joe Hill; some new to me; the table of contents does not include their names which is actually awesome and allows lesser-known writers to occupy the same space as their more famous peers) and themes.
It's difficult to sense an overarching theme of such a diverse collection but for me it was intimacy and loss: the stories that caught the most of my attention grappled with these topics. Rachel Swirsky and Kiji Johnson offered moving depictions of protagonists in an old age—their writing merged the sense of loss and disappointment with the gradual sense of acceptance (such stories sometimes depress me but elderly POVs are much needed!). Olivie Blake's "Audit" was a coming-of-age story and grasped the sense of being paralyzed by adulthood (in a dystopian world where youth and freedom seem limited) and craving for intimacy and love. Kathryn H. Ross' "The Forgetting Room" used a memory-altering device to offer a metaphor about family conflicts and struggles of everyday life, as well as coming to terms with grief. My very favorite story was "The Weight of Your Own Ashes" by Carlie St. George—it explored the dynamics of a relationship between an alien-who-pursues-graduate-studies-on-Earth and their human girlfriend, and the alien's gradual realization that the girlfriend's acceptance for their species (an excellent metaphor for racial or gender "otherness") is only superficial. These stories were my favorite to read and at some levels they are very sad and speaking to interpersonal difficulties in the modern era—but maybe it's what we need? In addition to those, there's plenty of weird styles and perspectives, sci-fi chases, witches, a vampire who parasites on movie pictures and Black audiences, and so on. A must for each sci-fi and fantasy lover (moreover, the stories I listed should be appealing regardless of genre; there's a lot of "subtle" supernatural in this collection), either to start with or to compare to previous editions.
December 27, 2025
After reading so much of Nnedi’s work, I wasn’t surprised to find stories here that seem to slip naturally into her imaginative territory. These were the ones that stayed with me:
– Yarns — Ken Liu (Uncanny, 2023)
– Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! Continued — Bruce Sterling (Twelve Tomorrows, 2023)
– The Weight of Your Own Ashes — Carlie St. George (Lightspeed, 2023)
– The River Judge — S.L. Huang (Reactor, 2023)
– Ushers — Joe Hill (Amazon Original Stories, 2023)
Excerpt in super fast-forward mode from:
Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! Continued
After another cycle of nine years, fifty-one weeks, Douglas has a week away from work to see the world around him more calmly.
With curiosity and a strong desire to learn and discover, he sets off on an adventure. And it is in the middle of that week that he makes friends who bring with them new sensations. These sensations, although short-lived, are significant in his desire to be more than he can be. The struggle continues, even if it is internal and silent!
Even after a hard reset, the feeling remains. Faint but resilient, a remnant of “humanity”.
– Yarns — Ken Liu (Uncanny, 2023)
– Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! Continued — Bruce Sterling (Twelve Tomorrows, 2023)
– The Weight of Your Own Ashes — Carlie St. George (Lightspeed, 2023)
– The River Judge — S.L. Huang (Reactor, 2023)
– Ushers — Joe Hill (Amazon Original Stories, 2023)
Excerpt in super fast-forward mode from:
Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! Continued
After another cycle of nine years, fifty-one weeks, Douglas has a week away from work to see the world around him more calmly.
With curiosity and a strong desire to learn and discover, he sets off on an adventure. And it is in the middle of that week that he makes friends who bring with them new sensations. These sensations, although short-lived, are significant in his desire to be more than he can be. The struggle continues, even if it is internal and silent!
[…] “Fuck the rules,” Jesse snaps at him. “They don’t help you. They "control" you.”
Douglas says, “Why do you like being alive?”
Jesse blinks. Then, “I . . . don’t—”
“I like birds,” Douglas says. “And the way light can change shape. I like music and Oz and walking. I like films and sitting down. I like the way people smile. I like leaves and the sound my shoes make on concrete.”
“Don’t you want that forever?” Jesse asks.
Douglas shrugs, something he learned from Simon. “Forever is a long time. How can I appreciate it if I always have it for the rest of time?”
[…]
Douglas says, “I don’t understand how the world works, but I think if there are people like all of you, it can’t be so bad, right?”
Jesse falls asleep on his shoulder, breaths slow, drooling just a little.
Later, when Douglas is the only one left awake, he thinks, "I wouldn’t change this moment for anything."
And with no one watching, he kisses the top of Jesse’s head. It’s not like how he’s seen in films or read about in books. It feels like more.
Like everything.
He leaves them sleeping. It’s easier this way. They will wake up and he will be gone, but he thinks maybe they will remember him. He hopes the memory makes them smile.
Before he leaves the apartment for the last time, he does something he’s never done before.
He leaves a note.
Thank you for teaching me how to be human. I had a wonderful week. If you ever miss me, please click your heels together three times and say, “There’s no place like home.”
Your friend,
Douglas
[…]
Even after a hard reset, the feeling remains. Faint but resilient, a remnant of “humanity”.
[…] “There’s no place like home,” it says for reasons it doesn’t fully understand, but the ache is real. It’s in its chest and it’s real. As it clicks its heels together three times, it repeats: “There’s no place like home.” […]
February 21, 2026
3.75 stars. I liked reading this eclectic collection because of the vastly different concepts and voices. I've been reading a lot of collections by a single author, so this was refreshing.
I only read the ones that Peter starred in the table of contents (thanks, Peter!).
The stand-outs: Rachel Swirsky's "Also, the Cat" (a playful story about 3 warring elderly sisters who become ghosts and find their destinies beyond the grave, guided by a cat); S. L. Huang's "The River Judge" (a mythic tale about a girl who enacts revenge on the controlling, patriarchal figures that come to the tavern she runs); Isabel J. Kim's "Why Don't We Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole" (strikingly smart, dark social commentary based on Ursula K. Le Guin's trademark story, set in the contemporary world with social media, newscasts, a booming tourism industry, etc.).
Others I enjoyed, but didn't hit me quite as hard:
- The Forgetting Room (emotional impact was blunted because P already told me the whole premise before starting)
- Look at the Moon (wack-ass, horror story about an astronomical cult in Joshua Tree...really creepy, kept me hooked, but didn't love the happy, HP "Chosen One" ending)
- Yarns (not usually a fan of pure sci-fi like this, but I liked the author's note: what cultural conditions would allow us to appreciate, rather than demean, elderly, unmarried women? I loved the relationships between the mc grandma, Irene, and the young boys she tutored in this violence-ridden world. It's not often that you read a redemptive story set in a dystopian world about an elderly woman saving a young boy, who then saves her life. Made me feel some hope for humanity.)
- Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! (robot is given a week in the human world after 10 years of working in a factory—this one brought up some logistical questions, like why would they let the robots leave after 10 years, if they enjoyed working so much? I found this story a bit heartbreaking, loved how the language became more imagistic as the robot became more entrenched in the human world, but I thought it came across as overly sentimental sometimes.)
- Ushers (Detective interrogates a kid who's under suspicion for avoiding multiple mass casualty events. Smart, sharp dialogue that evades as much as it reveals, with a tight two-act structure—can totally see why this was adapted into a film. I loved how the speculative element was introduced near the end: how the boy can see pigeon-eyed, pigeon-winged ushers who ferry the close-to-dead to the next realm. Don't usually read detective fiction, but I can see why this would be considered masterful in terms of building tension through dialogue and the deliberate drip of information.)
I only read the ones that Peter starred in the table of contents (thanks, Peter!).
The stand-outs: Rachel Swirsky's "Also, the Cat" (a playful story about 3 warring elderly sisters who become ghosts and find their destinies beyond the grave, guided by a cat); S. L. Huang's "The River Judge" (a mythic tale about a girl who enacts revenge on the controlling, patriarchal figures that come to the tavern she runs); Isabel J. Kim's "Why Don't We Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole" (strikingly smart, dark social commentary based on Ursula K. Le Guin's trademark story, set in the contemporary world with social media, newscasts, a booming tourism industry, etc.).
Others I enjoyed, but didn't hit me quite as hard:
- The Forgetting Room (emotional impact was blunted because P already told me the whole premise before starting)
- Look at the Moon (wack-ass, horror story about an astronomical cult in Joshua Tree...really creepy, kept me hooked, but didn't love the happy, HP "Chosen One" ending)
- Yarns (not usually a fan of pure sci-fi like this, but I liked the author's note: what cultural conditions would allow us to appreciate, rather than demean, elderly, unmarried women? I loved the relationships between the mc grandma, Irene, and the young boys she tutored in this violence-ridden world. It's not often that you read a redemptive story set in a dystopian world about an elderly woman saving a young boy, who then saves her life. Made me feel some hope for humanity.)
- Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! (robot is given a week in the human world after 10 years of working in a factory—this one brought up some logistical questions, like why would they let the robots leave after 10 years, if they enjoyed working so much? I found this story a bit heartbreaking, loved how the language became more imagistic as the robot became more entrenched in the human world, but I thought it came across as overly sentimental sometimes.)
- Ushers (Detective interrogates a kid who's under suspicion for avoiding multiple mass casualty events. Smart, sharp dialogue that evades as much as it reveals, with a tight two-act structure—can totally see why this was adapted into a film. I loved how the speculative element was introduced near the end: how the boy can see pigeon-eyed, pigeon-winged ushers who ferry the close-to-dead to the next realm. Don't usually read detective fiction, but I can see why this would be considered masterful in terms of building tension through dialogue and the deliberate drip of information.)
April 2, 2026
Originally posted on my blog Nonstop Reader.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025 is a well curated anthology curated and edited by Dr. Nnedi Okorafor. Released 21st Oct 2025 by HarperCollins on their Mariner imprint, it's 416 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links.
There are 21 stories by my count and they're from authors both familiar and new to me. The stories are varied, there were (as always) some which didn't grab me personally, but all were well written and competently plotted. They were mostly in the 3.5-4 star range with a a decent smattering of really standout stories. This is a well done anthology. The book also features an interesting and erudite foreword by series editor John Joseph Adams, as well as an introduction from Dr. Okorafor. It includes a lot of additional resource lists and top choices for genre publishing which will provide many hours of further reading list building.
One reason I like collections and anthologies is that short fiction is really challenging. It's spare and the author doesn't have a wealth of wordage to develop characters or the plotting. Well written short fiction is a delight. I also love collections because if one story doesn't really grab me, there's another story just a few pages away. The guest editor for this volume provides a well written intro and commentary and, as always, the background comments are interesting and informative. I enjoyed and used the honorable mention lists included in the volume for even more good recommendations for further reading.
Four stars on average. It's a diverting and worthwhile read to be savored like a box of chocolates. This would make a good selection for public library acquisition as well as for home readers looking for a solid anthology of stories which will also likely serve as an introduction to lots of new authors to search out, which is the best part of anthologies; reference hunting the contributors later.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025 is a well curated anthology curated and edited by Dr. Nnedi Okorafor. Released 21st Oct 2025 by HarperCollins on their Mariner imprint, it's 416 pages and is available in paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links.
There are 21 stories by my count and they're from authors both familiar and new to me. The stories are varied, there were (as always) some which didn't grab me personally, but all were well written and competently plotted. They were mostly in the 3.5-4 star range with a a decent smattering of really standout stories. This is a well done anthology. The book also features an interesting and erudite foreword by series editor John Joseph Adams, as well as an introduction from Dr. Okorafor. It includes a lot of additional resource lists and top choices for genre publishing which will provide many hours of further reading list building.
One reason I like collections and anthologies is that short fiction is really challenging. It's spare and the author doesn't have a wealth of wordage to develop characters or the plotting. Well written short fiction is a delight. I also love collections because if one story doesn't really grab me, there's another story just a few pages away. The guest editor for this volume provides a well written intro and commentary and, as always, the background comments are interesting and informative. I enjoyed and used the honorable mention lists included in the volume for even more good recommendations for further reading.
Four stars on average. It's a diverting and worthwhile read to be savored like a box of chocolates. This would make a good selection for public library acquisition as well as for home readers looking for a solid anthology of stories which will also likely serve as an introduction to lots of new authors to search out, which is the best part of anthologies; reference hunting the contributors later.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
December 16, 2025
In contrast to the Short Story collection from this year, this Science Fiction and Fantasy collection was chock full of authors and stories that I noted down in my "look for more stuff by this person" list; this year I marked 8 (so nearly half) of the stories I read. There was an impressively broad range of styles and subgenres here which allowed for a lot of extremely affecting and memorable stories.
The 8 stories that stood out to me:
We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read by Caroline M. Yoachim -- an incredibly inventive story with a bit of experimental form that is ostensibly about an alien race but also about the ways we think and learn and conceptualize ourselves as human
The River Judge by S.L. Huang -- just a really fun feminist ghost story about a girl helping her family run an inn by a river
The Weight of Your Own Ashes by Carlie St. George -- another great sci-fi story ostensibly about an alien's complex relationship with a human but clearly a metaphor for identity (I got the distinct impression it was specifically speaking to the relationship of a queer person to someone more...I don't want to say "naive" or "conservative" but definitely someone a bit less open minded in certain aspects)
An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow by Xavier Garcia -- an extremely visceral and arresting horror story about sacrifices made for art and maybe more specifically wealth and fame
Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim -- an absolutely hilarious response to the famous Le Guin story where the author imagines activists mercy killing the kid in the Omelas hole and the escalating results
The Witch Trap by Jennifer Hudak -- a incredibly cleverly structured story about an old folk practice of hiding an old shoe in a houses floorboards/walls to trap witches, told from multiple points of views including the trapped witch, the homeowner whose contractor discovers the shoe during a remodel, and even a professor giving a lecture on the practice
Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! by TJ Klune -- a heartbreaking story about a robot who gets a week to live a after a decade of constant work and makes friends and learns what it means to be alive
Ushers by Joe Hill -- not necessarily as emotional powerful as some of the others but a story with a clever twist, about a kid who survives two mass death scenarios (first a school shooting when he was in high school and then a train derailment) and two police officers who question him about it
The 8 stories that stood out to me:
We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read by Caroline M. Yoachim -- an incredibly inventive story with a bit of experimental form that is ostensibly about an alien race but also about the ways we think and learn and conceptualize ourselves as human
The River Judge by S.L. Huang -- just a really fun feminist ghost story about a girl helping her family run an inn by a river
The Weight of Your Own Ashes by Carlie St. George -- another great sci-fi story ostensibly about an alien's complex relationship with a human but clearly a metaphor for identity (I got the distinct impression it was specifically speaking to the relationship of a queer person to someone more...I don't want to say "naive" or "conservative" but definitely someone a bit less open minded in certain aspects)
An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow by Xavier Garcia -- an extremely visceral and arresting horror story about sacrifices made for art and maybe more specifically wealth and fame
Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim -- an absolutely hilarious response to the famous Le Guin story where the author imagines activists mercy killing the kid in the Omelas hole and the escalating results
The Witch Trap by Jennifer Hudak -- a incredibly cleverly structured story about an old folk practice of hiding an old shoe in a houses floorboards/walls to trap witches, told from multiple points of views including the trapped witch, the homeowner whose contractor discovers the shoe during a remodel, and even a professor giving a lecture on the practice
Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! by TJ Klune -- a heartbreaking story about a robot who gets a week to live a after a decade of constant work and makes friends and learns what it means to be alive
Ushers by Joe Hill -- not necessarily as emotional powerful as some of the others but a story with a clever twist, about a kid who survives two mass death scenarios (first a school shooting when he was in high school and then a train derailment) and two police officers who question him about it
January 16, 2026
Full review at: https://readingourshelves.wordpress.c...
Obviously, with a work like this, there is a lot of variety. I can’t say every story was my cup of tea, but they all had some interesting elements. There were a few ghost stories in here. Also a lot of stuff that I could see being made into Jordan Peele productions. I’ll highlight just a few.
We had one story that was literally a space race. A racer, whose underage niece stowed away on her ship, tries to pass the niece off as her co-pilot so she can still run the race. This was a fun, female-led action jaunt with no scary elements. Just my speed.
Another one that stuck in my mind was about a family who bought a memory-erasing device… because their young son had walked in on the parents being intimate. This tech had existed in their world for a short while, but they were not interested in it until this event happened. I felt that this set-up was great, because the situation is easily one that occurs in real life now… but with one small technology existing in this world that we don’t (yet) have in ours.
In one story, one main character is of an alien species who has several bodies living at the same time. They are on different planets, even, although we are initially following the body living on Earth. This iteration is in a romantic relationship, with someone who presents as being cool with all this… but still refuses to meet her partner’s other bodies.
One story involves an old lady who likes to knit, and eventually bonds with a gang member as she teaches him the long-lost skill. There’s one about a robot who tastes freedom for a few days before being “recycled” – but also, maybe this isn’t his first time through the system? In another, people get their lives audited, to find out how much earning potential they have – and then they get to spend it while they’re still young, instead of waiting until retirement age to travel and have fun.
Obviously, with a work like this, there is a lot of variety. I can’t say every story was my cup of tea, but they all had some interesting elements. There were a few ghost stories in here. Also a lot of stuff that I could see being made into Jordan Peele productions. I’ll highlight just a few.
We had one story that was literally a space race. A racer, whose underage niece stowed away on her ship, tries to pass the niece off as her co-pilot so she can still run the race. This was a fun, female-led action jaunt with no scary elements. Just my speed.
Another one that stuck in my mind was about a family who bought a memory-erasing device… because their young son had walked in on the parents being intimate. This tech had existed in their world for a short while, but they were not interested in it until this event happened. I felt that this set-up was great, because the situation is easily one that occurs in real life now… but with one small technology existing in this world that we don’t (yet) have in ours.
In one story, one main character is of an alien species who has several bodies living at the same time. They are on different planets, even, although we are initially following the body living on Earth. This iteration is in a romantic relationship, with someone who presents as being cool with all this… but still refuses to meet her partner’s other bodies.
One story involves an old lady who likes to knit, and eventually bonds with a gang member as she teaches him the long-lost skill. There’s one about a robot who tastes freedom for a few days before being “recycled” – but also, maybe this isn’t his first time through the system? In another, people get their lives audited, to find out how much earning potential they have – and then they get to spend it while they’re still young, instead of waiting until retirement age to travel and have fun.
February 11, 2026
This particular edition of the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy didn't do it for me quite as much as most of the series. I had a few more misses than average.
To be sure, there were some award winning stories here, but I didn't love them as much as I've enjoyed other short stories that have won awards in the past. "We Will Teach You How To Read/We Will Teach You How To Read" tried to teach me to read in a way that I didn't want to learn. "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole" had a lot of rage in it and rightly so, but I didn't take much more than that away from it. (Is it me?) "Also, The Cat" was about unpleasant people gradually learning to be less unpleasant after they were dead. Too bad they didn't figure it out earlier than that. "The River Judge" was dark and affirmed that I don't think that S.L. Huang is for me. "The Forgetting Room" felt like my head was hit by a hammer, so hard and obvious was the message of the story. Same with the TJ Klune story, I just don't think he's for me either.
There were some hits for me too! "Fuck Them Kids" is great for a person who's ambivalent about the cuteness of precocious kids but is ultimately a warm and enjoyable story with a spaceship race in it. "A Stranger Knocks" is a good period piece and vampire story. "Ushers" is one of those stories you can kind of see coming but the craft of the story is such that you really enjoy the ride.
When I look back on the collection as a whole, it's quite dark. And I'm avoiding that in my headspace right now, so that's probably why this one didn't hit for me.
To be sure, there were some award winning stories here, but I didn't love them as much as I've enjoyed other short stories that have won awards in the past. "We Will Teach You How To Read/We Will Teach You How To Read" tried to teach me to read in a way that I didn't want to learn. "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole" had a lot of rage in it and rightly so, but I didn't take much more than that away from it. (Is it me?) "Also, The Cat" was about unpleasant people gradually learning to be less unpleasant after they were dead. Too bad they didn't figure it out earlier than that. "The River Judge" was dark and affirmed that I don't think that S.L. Huang is for me. "The Forgetting Room" felt like my head was hit by a hammer, so hard and obvious was the message of the story. Same with the TJ Klune story, I just don't think he's for me either.
There were some hits for me too! "Fuck Them Kids" is great for a person who's ambivalent about the cuteness of precocious kids but is ultimately a warm and enjoyable story with a spaceship race in it. "A Stranger Knocks" is a good period piece and vampire story. "Ushers" is one of those stories you can kind of see coming but the craft of the story is such that you really enjoy the ride.
When I look back on the collection as a whole, it's quite dark. And I'm avoiding that in my headspace right now, so that's probably why this one didn't hit for me.
November 5, 2025
I appreciated the diverse voices and styles in this anthology of 20 speculative fiction short stories published in 2024. The stories are fairly evenly split between sci-fi and fantasy with a couple of horror stories thrown in. I didn’t enjoy all the stories, but collections like this are a great way to step outside your literary comfort zone and discover new authors.
Some of the stories deal with violence, discrimination, and other injustices, and some of them were either too dark for my taste or just didn’t grab me. I was delighted to find that many of the stories were told with tenderness, humor, and optimism. My favorites include “Yarns” by Susan Palwick, “Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!” by TJ Klune, and “Ushers” by Joe Hill.
I really appreciated the Contributors’ Notes section at the end, and I’d like to be able to reread some of these stories immediately after reading the notes. The first story, Caroline M. Yoachim’s story “We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read,” doesn’t really work as intended if you can’t see it, and I wouldn’t have known that without the author’s note.
The audiobook production was good. Each story had a single narrator. I enjoyed the narration by Zach Villa, Cary Hite, Liz Femi, Eunice Wong, and Rebecca Stern. These narrators all have good pacing and pronunciation, distinctive voices and speech patterns to suit each character, and the ability to convey mood and emotion effectively.
I received a free advanced review copy of the audiobook through NetGalley. I volunteered to provide an honest review.
Some of the stories deal with violence, discrimination, and other injustices, and some of them were either too dark for my taste or just didn’t grab me. I was delighted to find that many of the stories were told with tenderness, humor, and optimism. My favorites include “Yarns” by Susan Palwick, “Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!” by TJ Klune, and “Ushers” by Joe Hill.
I really appreciated the Contributors’ Notes section at the end, and I’d like to be able to reread some of these stories immediately after reading the notes. The first story, Caroline M. Yoachim’s story “We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read,” doesn’t really work as intended if you can’t see it, and I wouldn’t have known that without the author’s note.
The audiobook production was good. Each story had a single narrator. I enjoyed the narration by Zach Villa, Cary Hite, Liz Femi, Eunice Wong, and Rebecca Stern. These narrators all have good pacing and pronunciation, distinctive voices and speech patterns to suit each character, and the ability to convey mood and emotion effectively.
I received a free advanced review copy of the audiobook through NetGalley. I volunteered to provide an honest review.
April 9, 2026
My rating: 5 of 5 stars—
I haven’t even finished all of the stories and I know I need to give this book 5 stars! I was excited to get approved for an audiobook of this 2025 collection because I struggle to read short fiction, but love listening to it. Nnedi Okorafor is also one of my favorite authors so I had high hopes for her as a guest editor. And she did not disappoint!
These stories are obviously very different, but so, so good. In particular, I’ve loved many of the characters, who have so much depth for how short these stories are.
The Weight of Your Own Ashes addresses identity and feeling un/seen by those you love so, so beautifully. The relationship between the cool spaceship racing aunt and her niece in FUCK THEM KIDS was fun and heartwarming. The santeria/voodoo Faustian bargain-style story of An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow was exquisitely unsettling and suspenseful. Look at the Moon was a thrilling horror story with a surprising twist ending. As a teacher, the dystopian world of Yarns broke my heart as an aging educator is forced on the run for trying to help a young boy escape from his affiliation to a violent, powerful gang that uses mass surveillance for social control. For true nerds of the genre and Le Guin fans, Isabel K. Jim offers a new perspective on the moral dilemma of Omelas.
I have so many favorites and I’ve still got 5 more stories left to listen to!
Many thanks to HarperAudio Adult and Mariner Books for the opportunity to listen and review this audiobook.
I haven’t even finished all of the stories and I know I need to give this book 5 stars! I was excited to get approved for an audiobook of this 2025 collection because I struggle to read short fiction, but love listening to it. Nnedi Okorafor is also one of my favorite authors so I had high hopes for her as a guest editor. And she did not disappoint!
These stories are obviously very different, but so, so good. In particular, I’ve loved many of the characters, who have so much depth for how short these stories are.
The Weight of Your Own Ashes addresses identity and feeling un/seen by those you love so, so beautifully. The relationship between the cool spaceship racing aunt and her niece in FUCK THEM KIDS was fun and heartwarming. The santeria/voodoo Faustian bargain-style story of An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow was exquisitely unsettling and suspenseful. Look at the Moon was a thrilling horror story with a surprising twist ending. As a teacher, the dystopian world of Yarns broke my heart as an aging educator is forced on the run for trying to help a young boy escape from his affiliation to a violent, powerful gang that uses mass surveillance for social control. For true nerds of the genre and Le Guin fans, Isabel K. Jim offers a new perspective on the moral dilemma of Omelas.
I have so many favorites and I’ve still got 5 more stories left to listen to!
Many thanks to HarperAudio Adult and Mariner Books for the opportunity to listen and review this audiobook.
December 18, 2025
Great collection! Just a few duds for me, and even then it was mostly that I thought they were meh, not horrible.
As other reviewers have noted, there are a lot of dark stories and even horror. That made the collection work even better for me! Nnedi and I are on the same page there.
I found two of these stories frustrating in that they engaged with themes in unoriginal way, but I think most other readers list them as favorites. The Forgetting Room and Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! The latter especially annoyed me because the device of it all was so transparent and manipulative. If a society has robots in a factory that it doesn’t view as alive, why would it ever give the robots a week of freedom before recycling? It would’ve been so easy to create a scenario that made more sense.
My favorites:
1. Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole: as an Ursula K. Le Guin fan, it was fun to read a story that revisits her story and reacts to it.
2. The River Judge: historical “good for her” ish story with lots and lots of murder.
3. The Weight of Your Own Ashes: tackles what grief and death look like for an entity that has multiple bodies, including the gap in understanding with someone who only has one body.
4. Ushers: saw where this was going, but it was fun to get there. Couple detectives interview a young man who conveniently has death happen around him but he’s never a victim himself.
As other reviewers have noted, there are a lot of dark stories and even horror. That made the collection work even better for me! Nnedi and I are on the same page there.
I found two of these stories frustrating in that they engaged with themes in unoriginal way, but I think most other readers list them as favorites. The Forgetting Room and Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! The latter especially annoyed me because the device of it all was so transparent and manipulative. If a society has robots in a factory that it doesn’t view as alive, why would it ever give the robots a week of freedom before recycling? It would’ve been so easy to create a scenario that made more sense.
My favorites:
1. Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole: as an Ursula K. Le Guin fan, it was fun to read a story that revisits her story and reacts to it.
2. The River Judge: historical “good for her” ish story with lots and lots of murder.
3. The Weight of Your Own Ashes: tackles what grief and death look like for an entity that has multiple bodies, including the gap in understanding with someone who only has one body.
4. Ushers: saw where this was going, but it was fun to get there. Couple detectives interview a young man who conveniently has death happen around him but he’s never a victim himself.
October 28, 2025
As much as I enjoyed these stories – and I generally did – there was so much dark fantasy and outright horror in this collection that after I finished I needed a cocoa, a lie down, and a comfort read to get over it. Together, these stories do not exactly paint a pretty picture of the world these authors were thinking of as they wrote, but then again, the world we’re living in right now often feels as dark as they painted.
Because this is a collection of the best stories of the previous year, I had read a few of them before – in my Hugo Nomination readings as the publication periods overlapped. Where I have already posted a review of the story, I’ve linked to it instead of repeating myself.
The Escape Rating for the collection as a whole is a very much fudge-factored A-, and it feels like there’s a horrifying monster lurking in the dark eating that fudge. Or something like that.
I need to go find myself another cocoa while you read the reviews of the individual stories. Just FYI, you might need one too.
My complete review is too long to be posted here, because I reviewed each of the individual stories. It's published at Reading Reality
Because this is a collection of the best stories of the previous year, I had read a few of them before – in my Hugo Nomination readings as the publication periods overlapped. Where I have already posted a review of the story, I’ve linked to it instead of repeating myself.
The Escape Rating for the collection as a whole is a very much fudge-factored A-, and it feels like there’s a horrifying monster lurking in the dark eating that fudge. Or something like that.
I need to go find myself another cocoa while you read the reviews of the individual stories. Just FYI, you might need one too.
My complete review is too long to be posted here, because I reviewed each of the individual stories. It's published at Reading Reality
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