The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018

Sun Lords of the Principality #- Brightened Star,Ascending Dawn

by N.K. Jemisin (Editor), John Joseph Adams (Series Editor), Charles Payseur (Contributor)

A collection of the best American science fiction and fantasy stories from 2017.

Today’s readers of science fiction and fantasy have an appetite for stories that address a wide variety of voices, perspectives, and styles. There is an openness to experiment and pushing boundaries, combined with the classic desire to read about space ships and dragons, future technology and ancient magic, and the places where they intersect. Contemporary science fiction and fantasy looks to accomplish the same goal as ever—to illuminate what it means to be human. With a diverse selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor N. K. Jemisin, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 explores the ever-expanding and changing world of SFF today, with Jemisin bringing her lyrical, endlessly curious point of view to the series’ latest edition.

Rivers Run Free / Charles Payseur --
Destroy the City With Me Tonight / Kate Alice Marshall --
You Will Always Have Family: A Triptych / Kathleen Kayembe --
Justice Systems in Quantum Parallel Probabilities / Lettie Prell --
Loneliness is in Your Blood / Cadwell Turnbull --
The Hermit of Houston / Samuel R. Delany --
The Last Cheng Beng Gift / Jaymee Goh --
Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn / A. Merc Rustad --
The Resident / Carmen Maria Machado --
The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant / Rachael K. Jones --
Tasting Notes on the Varietals of the Southern Coast / Gwendolyn Clare --
Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue / Charlie Jane Anders --
Church of Birds / Micah Dean Hicks --
ZeroS / Peter Watts --
Carnival Nine / Caroline M. Yoachim --
The Wretched and the Beautiful / E. Lily Yu --
The Orange Tree / Maria Dahvana Headley --
Cannibal Acts / Maureen McHugh --
Black Powder / Maria Dahvana Headley --
Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance / Tobias S. Buckell

Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Fiction, Anthologies, Speculative Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy

357 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 2018

About the author

N. K. Jemisin lives and works in New York City.

Reviews

[Lena · Rating 3 out of 5]

River Run Free by Charles Payseur ★★★★☆
“Beyond the mountains and beyond the forests and farther still, there’s the sea. So vast and so powerful that the waters of it know no fear. And we’ll tell the sea of what’s happening here, and it will feel the pain of its children and it will rise and flow across the land. Over the forests and the mountains and the Dust and it will tear down the dams and the dikes and the locks and the citadel. And the Dust will be green again, and the Luteans will drown.”

I hope the river people get their revenge.

Obviously, this was an allegory about climate change and the moral decay of colonialism.

The beginning was confusing, is this Gaia speaking? But, overall a good story.


Destroy the City with Me Tonight by Kate Alice Marshall ★★★½☆
“Men and women with maps on their bones, cities that own them.”

Lonely superhero story.

As origins go, I like the idea of Casper-Williams Syndrome. It’s the greed of the city spirit I found off-putting.


You Will Always Have Family: A Triptych by Kathleen Kayembe ★★☆☆☆
Steeped in Congolese folklore and magic, that I know nothing about, this was a painful story about a man who destroyed his family. Unenjoyable.


Justice Systems in Quantum Parallel Probabilities by Lettie Prell ★★☆☆☆
A murder awaiting sentencing dreams of different realities with different systems of justice and wonders if he would get a better deal there. Interesting but unenjoyable.


Loneliness Is In Your Blood by Cadwell Turnbull ★★★½☆
African vampire story! Snapshot of the life cycle of a night hag/vampire who came over with the slaves and eventually has a child.

The Hermit of Houston by Samuel R. Delany DNF
This was some kind of dystopia(?) about a sex switch future where you don’t talk about sex. Then there was lots of talk about sex. Not interesting, and worse, boring.


The Last Cheng Beng Gift by Jaymee Goh ★★½☆☆
Mrs. Lim begins receiving odd afterlife gifts from the daughter she liked least and considered giving away. When she goes to check on that daughter she is horrified the girl has dropped out of engineering school and is living as an artist in poverty.

The daughter tearfully constructs beautiful afterlife gifts for her mother. I think we are meant to believe there is resolution but it didn’t feel that way.


Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn by A. Marc Rustad ★★★½☆
A little bit of Murderbot, a teaspoon of Star Wars, and a dash of Firefly have made a surprisingly low key story about a sentient ship and her crew who decide to defy the Empire.


The Resident by Carmen Maria Machado ★★☆☆☆
95% introspection.
Our MC is an unnamed lesbian writer with issues at a writers retreat writing a story about a crazy lesbian in the woods, or attic, or wherever.

The story ends asking you not to be judgy about the gothically weak lesbian with issues going nuts in the woods.

Don’t apologize, just write something better.

The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant by Rachel K. Jones ★★★☆☆
Escaped cyborg find they can’t escape their instincts to serve humans.


Tasting Notes on the Varietals of the Southern Coast by Gwendolyn Clare ★★★½☆
Snapshot look at a Roman/Game of Thrones-type dystopian fantasy world where thousands of lives are lost for the emperors love of wine.


Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue by Charlie Jane Anders ★½☆☆☆
A transgender person is kidnapped by the Love and Dignity for Everyone corporation. The person must fight to stay who they are.

This was less science fiction than total science nonsense used by the writer as a stepping stone for anger over normalization practices.

But really? Drilling a hole in the skull and somehow that drains and reanimated a corpse with your reprogrammed personality and memories?

I’ve seen made for TV Space Spider movies that try harder.


Church of Birds by Micah Dean Hicks ★★★★☆
That was a great derivation of the Swan Princess that could have fit neatly in Zoe Gilbert’s Folk. In fact, I thought it was from Folk for the first two pages.


ZeroS by Peter Watts ★★★★☆
The best story thus far, if a bit long. Dying soldiers are offered a second chance by becoming “zombie” soldiers.

Their brains are hardwired with separation between conscious and unconscious, creating a fearless army of id - a pack of wolves.

There's an interesting exploration of battlefield morality, the limits of military bioscience, and our relationship with our own minds.

The gestalt villain was a nice touch too. Very creepy if you have never read one. My first was in The Rook.


Carnival Nine by Caroline M. Yoachim ★★★★★
“My life has been different from the adventures I imagined as a child, but I made the most of the turns I was given, and that’s all any of us can do.”

In this mountain of mediocre I was completely unprepared for a tearjerker.

From the first lines I completely saw this as a Tim Burton movie, animated as A Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s a story about family, and using the time you have to be with the ones you love.

And now I’m crying harder and I have to go call my mom for no reason.

Read it for yourself: http://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.co...


The Wretched and the Beautiful by E. Lily Yu ★½☆☆☆
A heavy-handed story about negative attitudes towards immigration.


The Orange Tree by Maria Dahvana Headley ★★★★☆
MD Headley and Theodora Goss have carved out this lovely niche for themselves; taking tired machismo stories and giving them fresh feminist revisions. Call me a fan.


Cannibal Acts by Maureen McHugh ★★☆☆☆
Just a snapshot of your basic end of the world desperation. It takes place in Alaska and that is the extent of its specialness.


Black Powder by Maria Dahvana Headley ★★★★☆
“She frees herself from the job of story. She’s been the girl who tells tales nightly... She frees herself from the job of guiding men through the dark.”

Only MD Headley could rewrite the story of Scheherazade; connecting wishes, bullets, love, and time.

But it was choppy. It either needed one less thread or ten more stitches.

The writing is lovely.

“The wishes in this story are wishes built the way wishes are always built, and the way bullets are built too, to keep going long after they’ve left the safety of silence.”


Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance by Tobias S. Buckell ★★★★★
“I seek moral guidance outside clear legal parameters,” I said. “And confession.”
“Tell me everything.”
And I did.

Perfect short story! Not a snapshot, not a preview, not a taste - a full story. I haven’t read one of those since Ursula Vernon’s The Tomato Thief.

Due to programming obligations a robot is forced to help a murder evade custody. But with a little guidance from a higher power she will turn the tables!

I’m a big fan of comeuppance stories. Great choice for a closer.

I read 19/20 stories and the average was 3.184. While there were standouts, overall I was disappointed with the choices.

[Matt Quann · Rating 3 out of 5]

While reading the short stories N.K. Jemisin curated for The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018, I was taken aback by how substantial an undertaking it must be to create an anthology. Reading through a pile of short stories and coming up with a handful that will represent not only what you think is best, but what will appeal to the diverse eyes of an audience has got to be a real challenge.

With that said, I think Jemisin and series editor, John Joseph Adams, have done a pretty good job here. Some of the stories are revelatory, some just okay, some I didn't enjoy at all, and one story even got abandoned halfway through because it was the cause of some medical-grade reading stagnation. Luckily, given the diversity of subject matter--fantasy, sci-fi, horror, fables, and new weird all take some time at centre stage--it's more than likely that you'll find stories that do something for you.

I'll highlight Charlie Jane Anders contribution, Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue, for being my favourite of the batch and a welcome warm-up for her new novel. Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance by Tobias S. Buckell also closes the collection with a smart story brimming with excellent sci-fi premises. Though the stories do often highlight issues of social injustice (as I believe great SFF should do), some of the stories seem too focused on theme at the expense of plot. Anders' short story, by comparison, is a great example of a emotionally resonant representation of injustice with a sci-fi twist.

Though I took a good few months to work my way through the entirety of the collection, the really great stories made my reading worthwhile. The last three or four stories also were strong enough that I began to forgive the stories from the start and middle that didn't quite snap into place. Definitely worth a gander for SFF fans, though I would be inclined to recommend a low story-skipping threshold!

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know...
—"Revolution," by The Beatles (1968)

After assessing the impact of our current Predicament-in-Chief and his ilk on fiction (and literacy in general), N.K. Jemisin goes on to call the contents of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 "the twenty most revolutionary short stories from the year 2017" (Introduction, p.xviii).

Now, that sounds like hyperbole to me. However powerfully written they are—and they are, mostly—these stories seem unlikely to foment any actual revolutions, and I'm not sure, for that matter, how well "most revolutionary" maps onto "best" anyway. But, all hyperbole aside, this year's volume was an excellent snapshot of (English-language, North American) speculative fiction. I finished this book with a list of new authors' names to look for, an appreciation for Jemisin's talent as an editor, and a renewed conviction that short-form sf is currently as healthy, vibrant and significant as it has ever been.

As is my custom, I'm going to say at least a little about each story in this anthology. And I'm going to advise (again—seems as if I say this a lot) not skipping the Contributors' Notes at the end, in which each author illuminates that work:

"Rivers Run Free," by Charles Payseur
This desiccated fable of rivers personified—no longer than it needed to be—flows in an entirely different channel (heh—see what I did there?) from Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London.

"Destroy the City with Me Tonight," by Kate Marshall
Marshall's story proves that it's not yet impossible to find a new take on superheroes.

"You Will Always Have Family: A Triptych," by Kathleen Kayembe
A Congolese-American ghost story with a beautiful ending, just right for the work. (And Kayembe's Notes provide valuable insight into its construction.)

So far, the entries have been leaning heavily towards the "F" end of the SF & F spectrum. But then there's...

"Justice Systems in Quantum Parallel Probabilities," by Lettie Prell

No matter how society stacks the cards against you, you're not supposed to react by going outside the law.
—p.51

This is my first taste of Prell's fiction, despite the fact that we've been Goodreads friends for, well, a decade or so, and I'm really glad to report that this one was a standout for me, a succession of interlocking vignettes that builds to a perfect conclusion, down to the well-chosen adverb (adverbs are hard!) in its final sentence. (And again, Prell's Notes at the end of the book, while you don't need 'em to enjoy the story, do add depth and context.)

"Loneliness Is in Your Blood," by Cadwell Turnbull
The unusual second-person form didn't redeem this slender vampyr tale for me, I'm afraid...

"The Hermit of Houston," by Samuel R. Delany
I'm really glad to see Grand Master Delany's still writing, and this story—what might happen if Ursula K. Le Guin and Marlon James got together and had a post-population-bomb story baby, if you can imagine such a thing—might not be a plausible future but it's definitely an inventive and fascinating one.

"The Last Cheng Beng Gift," by Jaymee Goh
A Chinese afterlife—from the ghost's perspective. Immense fun—and do not miss the Notes on this one either!

"Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn," by A. Merc Rustad
Anne McCaffrey meets Tom Godwin. The ship who... followed protocol? That may not sound like much of a story at first, but then the ship's only obedient up to a point.
Compare and contrast with Tobias S. Buckell's "Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance," the story that ends this collection.

"The Resident," by Carmen Maria Machado
Not unlike Daphne du Maurier, Machado's story of a would-be author at an artists' retreat is vivid and unapologetic, featuring careful, ornate and archaic prose; close attention to odd details—blemishes, textures; and a leisurely sense of foreboding.

"The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant," by Rachael K. Jones
A darkly funny reductio ad absurdam, like mashing up Brian Aldiss with Terry Bisson.

"Tasting Notes on the Varietals of the Southern Coast," by Gwendolyn Clare
Wine-touring the apocalypse: a slight but neat conceit, with an absolute zinger of an ending.

"Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue," by Charlie Jane Anders
Rachel, whose name wasn't always Rachel, receives thoroughly unwanted—and unneeded—compassion.

OMG creepy, Frances types. Make it stop make it stop.
I can't, Jeffrey types back. I can't ok. I don't have the right paperwork.
—p.184

Deeply personal, angry and raw, Anders' tale struck me as the most revolutionary fiction in this volume.

"Church of Birds," by Micah Dean Hicks
For all its mundane trappings, this one's a fairy tale, although no fairy-tale endings are involved—and you might even recognize the fable it's building on.

"ZeroS," by Peter Watts
Asante's handlers may have "a vested interest in the traditional chain of command" (p.215), but she doesn't, and Peter Watts doesn't either. This one's the hardest of hard SF, as expected from Watts, with some conclusions that are likewise hard to take—also as expected.

"Carnival Nine," by Caroline M. Yoachim
Yoachim pleases again with a tightly-wound tale, taken to logically illogical lengths. I really enjoyed her collection Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World back in 2016, too.

"The Wretched and the Beautiful," by E. Lily Yu
Ripped straight from tomorrow's headlines—Yu's story is almost too documentary in nature to be SF at all.

"The Orange Tree," by Maria Dahvana Headley
The poet causes to be made an ingenious device. But... Headley undercounts the ways to be lonely, I think—only a thousand?

"Cannibal Acts," by Maureen F. McHugh
Another way the world ends—no, no, not the world. Just us. Justice.

"Black Powder," by Maria Dahvana Headley
Headley again—she's the only author to appear twice in this anthology, but it's entirely justified by, among other things, the strength of her laconic, efficient prose. Take this six-word sentence:

He's gangle, denim, pustule and pouch.
—p.305

"Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance," by Tobias S. Buckell
Not at all what I expected from the title; this final tale involves some exceedingly clever scheming, within all required parameters. Compare and contrast with A. Merc Rustad's "Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn," from earlier in this volume.


Okay, that's the lot. And while I can't speak to how revolutionary these stories are, they're certainly among the best the current field has to offer.

As something of a codicil, I'd like to add that The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction's May/June 2019 issue, which I read just after this volume, contains not just one but two powerful stories that I wouldn't be surprised to see in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020: Lavie Tidhar's "New Atlantis" and Debbie Urbanski's "How to Kiss a Hojacki." You read it here first (well, unless you read the stories themselves in F&SF)!

[Holly · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book seriously needs to be retitled "Tales of Virtue for Our Times (With a Smidge of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Thrown In to Make it Genre)"

This is not a book of fantasy and sci-fi short stories, as it is represented. This is actually a collection of sermons about inclusion.

That being said, there is a time when the choir bores of being preached to and this book marks the watershed event.

From here on out I will read only literary works that were created for literary purposes. Books that were written to tell a fascinating tale. So no more participating in group reads of crap that was published for purely commercial gain.

Thankfully I borrowed a copy from a friend and read it for free. If I had paid real money of this faux literature I would be pissed.

[Monica **can't read fast enough** · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took my time and read this anthology slowly which worked out really well for me. The stories stayed separate in my mind and didn't all run together. I was able to enjoy them more individually than if I had pushed through the whole thing straight through. Like all collections I enjoyed some more than others but they all had interesting approaches and stories. All in all an enjoyable collection of stories. I now have some new to me authors to track down other writings from.

You can find me at:
•(♥).•*Monlatable Book Reviews*•.(♥)•
Twitter: @MonlatReader
Instagram: @readermonica
Facebook: Monica Reeds
Goodreads Group: The Black Bookcase

[Richard S · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pretty lame compilation. Some of it is mildly interesting, but sci-fi today - if this represents it - seems to have lost its creativity and edginess, and sadly, what made it interesting - the "science" part. The biggest disappointment is that they don't make or try to make any sense. "Rivers Run Free," the first story, is very pretty, but like the stories that follow "Destroy the City with Me," "You Will Always Have a Family," while creative and "neat", are far less interesting than science fiction from the 1970s and 1980s, as they don't any attempt to be "scientific", and don't fall into any enjoyable tropes of fantasy. I would classify most of these as "imaginative" writing - and far less interesting than Borges or Mieville. The bios in the back are cringeworthy - how cool am I? It would be nice if there were some scientists who wrote this stuff or engineers. Way too cute, way too dumb, and not even weird in a good way.

I read another review of this and it said the book was a collection of "sermons on inclusion." I'm not sure that's exactly how it would phrase it, science fiction was always full of social messaging, - but it was always in relation to the science fiction content (a classic example was the moon colonies in Heinlein’s “Moon for the Misbegotten”). Here the stories are so weak, the social messaging is kind of ridiculous. In one story the characters ask each other their personal pronouns. A bit jarring perhaps, but perfectly fine in science fiction. But you need a decent story. If inclusion in these types of collections is based on your personal politics (and maybe I’m suspicious), then science fiction might be dead if the stories are as poor as in this collection.

[Ari · Rating 3 out of 5]

this would be a four-star collection (great stories nearly top to bottom, rare in any anthology), but for the fact that Maria Dahvana Headley's first story (of two) in this aggravated me so deeply. it's the story "The Orange Tree," which takes as its premise "what if 11th century CE Jewish poet/philosopher Solomon ibn Gabirol used kabbalah to make a sex robot."

It uses that to explore the ways in which women are silenced and their personhood overwritten by men, which, whatever, fine, that's #feminist, except what isn't so much (and what disappointed me specifically in a collection curated to contain revolutionary fiction) is depicting a Jewish man as a bitter, abusive magician who uses his powers to hurt women.

The Jew as Satanic magician abusing innocent (gentile) women is a long-running trope, one that pervaded medieval Europe, and that hasn't disappeared yet. Taking a real-life Jewish poet and framing him like this isn't revolutionary, only hurtful, and I'm astonished that nobody in the writing, editing, or curating processes involved in this story's creation and selection for this anthology thought of that.

(as my own personal, bitter jewish aside: I can think of one other sf/f work that has a Sephardic Jew in it, period, and it felt like a slap in the face to open this one up and see what the author had done with one of ours.)

[Samantha (AK) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free review copy from the editor.

Every year, John Joseph Adams compiles a list of eighty short stories that he considers to be the best American science-fiction & fantasy offerings in the previous calendar year. He then passes them--stripped of author information--to a guest editor, who weeds the list down to twenty: ten SF, ten fantasy. As this year’s guest editor (the wonderful N.K. Jemisin) mentions in her introduction:

...as Le Guin noted, most readers presume that one of these genres (and only one) is future-oriented. They aggrandize the predictive nature of science fiction while dismissing fantasy as regressive, when in fact both genres are actually about the present: science fiction through allegory, and fantasy by concatenation.

The twenty stories in this volume cross the entire range of speculative fiction, from the folkloric horror of Kathleen Kayembe’s ”You Will Always Have Family: A Triptych”, to the military SF of Peter Watts’ experimental super soldiers in ”ZeroS”. Samuel R. Delany’s ”The Hermit of Houston” is the most challenging contribution to this volume: a future(ish) exploration of what stories we tell ourselves, and what is acceptable, and who controls that acceptability, all as experienced through the mundane, everyday life of an aging gay couple. The setting is alternately utopian and horrifying, and the love story surprisingly tender, but (in true Delany fashion) it’s rather opaque on the first read.

Two of these I’d read (and enjoyed) in their original publications: Caroline Yoachim’s “Carnival Nine” is a tale of disability in a clockwork world. Tobias Buckell’s “Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance” is a clever bit of work that turns the usual robot tropes on their heads when a maintenance ‘bot finds itself beholden to a conniving human CEO.

To my joy, some of the offerings are delightfully unconventional. These are genres that exist to challenge assumptions, to ask “why?” and “what if?” To push. And so we see superheroes grappling with a disease that gives them power even as it destroys their personal identities in Kate Alice Marshall’s ”Destroy the City with Me Tonight.” , and ”Rivers Run Free” in Charles Payseur’s fantastical exploration of how marginalized communities are set against each other.

The creeping madness of Engineer in Rachel K. Jones’ ”The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant” shows the gory end of desperation to please the audience at any cost, a sentiment echoed (in an entirely different form) by the protagonist of Carmen Maria Machado’s ”The Resident” a kind of gothic fantasy figure who eventually embraces herself as the madwoman in her own attic, with the right to write whatever she wants.

I didn’t like them all. Lettie Prell’s “Justice Systems in Quantum Parallel Probabilities,” in which a prisoner catches glimpses of different justice systems while awaiting his own sentence, was a series of insubstantial vignettes, however interesting; and I found E. Lily Yu’s depiction of an ambivalent society’s response to ugly alien refugees in “The Wretched and the Beautiful” both heavy-handed and instantly forgettable.

More touching for me were stories like Charlie Jane Anders’ ”Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue”, a gut-wrenching tale of a woman kidnapped by an organization who wants to ‘fix’ her, when she has no desire to be ‘fixed;’ and Maria Dahvana Headley’s ”The Orange Tree,” a story about an 11th century female golem made from wood, and how she comes into her own.

The thing about anthologies is that you don’t have to like every story, but even the ones in this volume that didn’t work for me gave me something to think about. The Best American Science-Fiction and Fantasy 2018 presents a wonderful cross-section of talent, well worth reading for anyone curious as to the state of the genre(s) today.

[Lettie Prell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won't comment on my own story in this volume of course, but I read all the others and found a stunning, diverse array of excellently executed stories. Just a few of my favorites:
* Rivers Run Free, by Charles Payseur. I loved those water beings and the issues brought forward in this fantasy.

* You Will Always Have Family: A Triptych, by Kathleen Kayembe. The Congolese culture in this dark tale made for fascinating reading, imbuing it with the required discomfort, while also providing the logic for a satisfying resolution.

*Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn, by A. Merc Rustad. The prose soars like the sentient starship in this science fiction delight.

My least favorite? Samuel R. Delany's "The Hermit of Houston." It's outrageous. It made me really uncomfortable. But then I'd turn the page and go "whoa" because I'd find a gem of speculative genius. I had to follow the trail to the end.

[Benyakir Horowitz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had this strange idea that I’d start to read some recently written science fiction to make sure that I don’t dislike all of it because I keep harping on how much I haven’t read anything written in the last ten years (okay, more than that, but let’s be generous) that I really like. Turns out this collection includes fantasy too, which doesn’t really bother me, since I’ve read some and not despised it. Turns out there’s only one real fantasy story in this collection, and it’s actually great.

I had this idea that I’d talk about every story in the collection. I could do that, but I’ll just point out the low point (there’s only one), the few great points, and I’d not talk about the mediocre stories (of which there are many).

That’s really where the rating for this book came from. There are some outstanding or great stories, but they’re few and far between, and most of them aren’t really sci-fi or fantasy. Stories that don’t have a real point make up the majority of the book. There is really only three sci-fi stories I liked, which I’ll talk about later.

First, the lowest point! It’s the very first story. It’s horrible to begin like this, but Rivers Run Free by Charles Payseur doesn’t really a point and is stupid, to boot. The story is about rivers becoming corporeal entities, and they’re running from an empire that hunts and exploits them. In the opening scene, the river-people exploit their watery nature to defeat their enemies, then a pair of river-people have sex, and it’s just like humans. Okay, I don’t need a description, but the author gave it to us anyway. Why have it be that way if the rivers aren’t actually people? I get it, the rivers are about passion and wild emotion, and the author mentions something about water resources being exploited.

Look, I don’t disagree with the author, but I contend the story isn’t great. My problem is Rivers Run Free is far more about the author than anything else. Another minor complaint is that, again, the story isn’t really sci-fi or fantasy. It could vaguely be either so I don’t really count it as either.

I will briefly give a shout-out to ZeroS by Peter Watts whose unintended message is ‘killing children is actually fine’ with the condition that they’re child soldiers.

Now, I want to talk about some of the stories I liked that weren’t sci-fi. The highlight was the third story, You Will Always Have Family: a Triptych by Kathleen Kayembe (which I think would’ve been a far better first story, even the second, a somewhat milquetoast Urban Fantasy story). It’s a heart-warming story about patricide. It’s basically a ghost story using Conglese and American folklore.

Another quite good one is Carnival Nine by Caroline M. Yoachim. It’s about small toys creating a civilization. It isn’t about much but the trials and tribulations of life. For me that’s too much of a vague message for me to care much, but it’s well written and emotional

The last good one I want to mention is The Orange Tree by Maria Dahvana Headley is a story based off the Andalusian philosopher and Jewish Philosopher Solomon Ibn Gabirol as he animates a golem. It doesn’t have too much of a message, but it’s nice, and it feels like The Alchemist, a book I enjoyed.

The two good sci-fi stories are The Greatest One-Star Restaurant by Rachael K. Jones and Zen and the Art of Starship by Tobias S. Buckell. The former is about an automaton literally cannibalizing her fellow outlaw robots to make a restaurant, and the last one is about passive resistance. I read Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in high school, and I remember not liking it, so I expected worse. But it was powerful and a good read. It was also the last story in the book, which is a good thing. As I’ve said before, the first and last chapter of any book are its most important.

Speaking of beginnings, why I didn't talk about a lot of the individual stories is that a lot of them have pretty rough beginnings. It’s a bit more forgiving in books when you have the whole space to grow into the characters, but in a short story you have a relatively little time to get people interested. This book actually reminded me of why I don’t usually read short stories. I think the time is when they’re all by the same author. Stephen King is really dynamite at this though his literary quality isn’t what I desire anymore.

[Tristan · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I've finally finished my project book, reading one story a book for the first 20 books (more or less--I finished it several books ago but wasn't able to get a review out until now) of 2019! Like the 2017 installment of this series, it's a nice snapshot of the field. I like the overall organization--pairs of science-fiction and fantasy stories so that you get a solid impression of the overall effect. I didn't like this quite as much as the 2017 installment of the series (I was less impressed with Jemisin's selection on balance I think, which was surprising given that I have really enjoyed the novel of hers that I have read so far and "The City Born Great" was one of the very best pieces in the prior year's anthology). I've also read more short fiction recently (although really I'm only even kind of up on the 2018 publications in SFF) so maybe I've just developed stronger opinions about short stories.

For me, the best stories were "Carnival Nine," "Church of Birds," "Tasting Notes on the Varietals of the Southern Coast" (which was probably my absolute favorite), "The Last Cheng Beng Gift", "Justice Systems in Quantum Parallel"--four of which were fantasy (perhaps betraying my preference for fantasy, perhaps indicative of the fact that Jemisin writes fantasy and doesn't really write science fiction). For me, the least successful stories were "ZeroS", "Cannibal Acts" "The Hermit of Houston", "Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue", all of which were science fiction. The remainder of the collection I thought were in a broad stretch of middle-of-the-road. "The Orange Tree" didn't work as well as the same author's "Black Powder" (which made me wonder about the decision to select two stories by the same author for the anthology, when neither was among my favorites and one seemed markedly less successful than the other--wouldn't we have a better picture of the field if we had had an additional author? Admittedly, I had a similar question about two stories in the 2017, so maybe not).

I was also interested in the differences between the table of contents and other major assessments of the field. Not that either a single anthology or an award is the be-all and the end-all of quality, but I do think it's interesting that of the contents and "notable stories" (Adams indicates that his MO is to select the 80 stories he is most impressed with and then the guest editor chooses the twenty actually printed) contains only one Nebula-nominated story from the 2018 slate (of things published in 2017) and only two Hugo-nominated stories. "Carnival Nine" is the one Nebula nominee and one of the Hugo nominees; the other was a "notable story". The winner of both awards--Rebecca Roanhorse's wonderful "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian ExperienceTM"--was not among the stories Adams selected for consideration for the collection. I should keep an eye out on how those connect up, especially since the anthology comes out in October of the year on the cover--after the Hugos and Nebulas, and I'm sure that all the decisions are made prior to the nominee slates being revealed.

Recommended, a solid snapshot of the genre and a nice resource if you're looking for places to go for SFF short fiction since it includes the Notable Stories list.

[Tate Schad · Rating 4 out of 5]

These Best American collections always prove what can be done with a short story. In the foreword, the guest editor N.K. Jemison speaks about the common theme of revolution in the stories included, something as important in 2017/2018 as it is now. A little disheartening, near embarrassing, to see the same fight against the same leadership seven years later. But here we are. Let’s see what we can get into.


RIVERS RUN FREE
Great premise from the jump. Rivers anthropomorphized into people exploited and hunted. The world is built in a flash and the heartache for justice along with it. This is a banger to start with.

DESTROY THE CITY WITH ME TONIGHT
A fantastic take on superhero origins and lore, dropped in a sci-fi frame. Themes of love and innocence and brilliance and purpose. This was clever and so well done. Two solid entries to get things rolling.

YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE FAMILY: A TRIPTYCH
What started as an eerie folktale turned into an emotional rollercoaster of familial trauma. No one hurts you like family, that’s a fact. This one stung. Wonderfully told though.

JUSTICE SYSTEMS IN QUANTUM PARALLEL PROBABILITIES
A searing premise that reverberates the flaws and relative normalcy of our own justice system. This one is crazy short and still has you thinking of the infinite possibilities. Why does anything work the way it does?

LONELINESS IS IN YOUR BLOOD
What I assume is a nightmarish take on motherhood and beauty. I’m always amazed there are still ways to enliven the vampire/vampire-adjacent subgenre. I’m also amazed you can say so much with so little.

THE HERMIT OF HOUSTON
This one wasn’t my bag, and I say that having enjoyed the topical post-apocalyptic-like world after Facebook and current events become buzz words of greater-yet-skewed meaning. Having that and then also a more graphic and confusing sex/gender discussion was overload for me. There’s some interesting points and passages, but I struggled with it in a way I wouldn’t expect from this collection.

THE LAST CHENG BENG GIFT
I’m realizing a lot of these selections are based in different cultures and their beliefs on death and afterlife. It’s a cool curation tactic that covers a wide net of humanity. And just when I was feeling sort of overwhelmed with the depth of the entries, this one came through crystal clear. Solid piece.

BRIGHTENED STAR, ASCENDING DAWN
To anthropomorphize things and make the humanity of them sting like this is so hard to do, yet here we are. Somehow a full space drama condensed to such a short piece, an entire universe of hierarchy built in a few pages. This might be the most cohesive and complete tale yet.

I’m also really impressed with how well and often recent Science Fiction has handled trans-like characters. Sci-fi has always been somewhat prescient about social topics, and this one is really fun to see pop up so casually.

THE RESIDENT
The unsettling body descriptions set the tone early for this one, and I knew I was in for something uncomfortable. Each line is somehow skewed to sound troubling, a masterful flick of the writer’s wrist that commands words to do exactly what they intended. I was dragged into the heat of the story, a psychologically terrifying mystery that rolled on with more and more dread and capped with an introspective look in the mirror. This was also the best writing of any piece so far. This one will sit with me.

THE GREATEST ONE-STAR RESTAURANT IN THE WHOLE QUADRANT
Making fun of ourselves from the perspective of another creature never seems to get old. Pointing out our eccentricities and faults, funny quirks of survival and our preference for doing things messier than a machine would do it. I liked the combination of that here, mixed with the cyborg taking on the painfully human trait of people-pleasing and social media dopamine hits. Perfectly paced, sized, and toned.

TASTING NOTES ON THE VARIETALS OF THE SOUTHERN COAST
This has to be in my top three, and it’s a quickie. A textbook example of voice carrying the entire piece, the narrator’s knowledge for wine grounding us as the reality of the situation is revealed. The morality of “I’m just following orders” is unearthed brutally here. And the vintner musings are fantastic. I loved this piece.

DONT PRESS CHARGES AND I WON’T SUE
Knowing the theme of the collection, what isn’t more revolutionary than transgenderism? I’m seeing the common theme through many of these stories and this one brings it to the forefront, an absolute nightmare of civil abuse that I hate to say is not that far from a potential future considering where we are with the country today. It’s sickening how important a story like this feels, and it’s told with heart-wrenching emotion. Just let everyone be who they fucking want, OKAY?

CHURCH OF BIRDS
The saddest one so far. On a day I was already feeling emotional, this gave my heart even more weight to carry. Beautiful and tragic, the poor Swan Boy. Feels like we have found a groove now.

ZeroS
My head is still spinning from trying to keep up with the names and advanced tech flying at me. What an epic. War is hell, and the idea that you could be brought back so your body can be used as a super soldier experiment is a nightmare, even if it seems like a fair deal in exchange for living longer. Might be the longest piece in the book, and the hardest to follow, but impressive and gnarly in so many ways. Would our military resort to such tactics to stay ahead of the curve? I have no doubt.

CARNIVAL NINE
Being a woman, being a mother, is a constant measure of how you can live your life in relation to the men around you, almost destined to take their every whim into account before your own. I don’t know if that was part of the goal of this piece, but it seemed to come through as I read. Especially the mother’s love. What they give of themselves is more than should even be possible, yet they do it, all the way until there’s nothing left. I wondered if it’s even doable for a mother to have both her own interests and her child’s, or only one. Maybe once you have a child, all you can settle for is a less than perfect mix. I don’t know. Motherhood is hard. This piece and the narrative device were approachable and built on truths that are universally recognizable.

THE WRETCHED AND THE BEAUTIFUL
This was clearly a searing implication of the way we treat refugees and migrants in our country, and I’m so on board. And the line about rumors the aliens ate a person’s cat! This came out almost ten years ago, yet the same playbook of hateful rhetoric and scaremongering is almost word-for-word the same as today (i.e. migrants supposedly eating geese during last year’s election). Why can’t we just have some humanity? Instead of turning those seeking aid and a safe place to hang their head into weapons for distraction and greed. I get so sick of this endless cycle. Stories like this make me wonder if anyone out there reading it is unaware of what they are walking into, and if any of them who need it finally see the light. Sadly, I doubt those types of people read things like this — hard looks in the mirror, fictional examples of real acts of transgression on the global and personal scale — at all.

THE ORANGE TREE
A tale of loneliness and magic. Based on historical legend, it’s told with poetic language and rhythm. I loved the device of the thousand versions of loneliness and how that framed the story. I found this to be a sad piece, if not some form of a moral lesson. Always amazing what talented writers can do with history and the stories of old.

CANNIBAL ACTS
A good old-fashioned post-pandemic apocalypse story. Focusing on the personal, small-scale but showing us the effects of societal breakdown. Making us care about the characters, about maintaining our humanity, about what and when we start to bend and what gives us hope. Good bang for your buck here. Felt a little too open-ended, but still worth the read.

BLACK POWDER
This was more my taste and speed than the other entry by the same author. Mixing together genies and the west is a brilliant combo I wouldn’t have thought to put together. I didn’t exactly follow the ending, but getting there was fun enough. Not too shabby.

ZEN AND THE ART OF STARSHIP MAINTENANCE
I love it when a plan comes together. Or at least when it’s revealed in the end that justice was delivered. A great little robot story with some humor and easy to swallow technologies. In this day and age, there’s something satisfying seeing a CEO get what they deserve. A well-written, fun piece to go out on.

—————————————————————

Favorites:
1. Tasting Notes
2. Church of Birds
3. Carnival Nine
4. The Wretched and the Beautiful

Once again, I’m floored by the quality of so many writers out there, coming up with entire universes and squeezing them into these very palatable sizes. Then, while doing that, also making major social statements that stir conversation on real world causes. Everyone should be reading short fiction. It’s good and good for you. Case closed.

I can’t believe how many of these felt like they were ripped from today’s headlines. You want to believe, though things are rough out there today, they aren’t exactly the same kind of bad as 2016-2020. But reading these, it should be clear to anyone it’s the same but worse. I’ll keep reading these stories because it’s part of the battle to call out those that aim to hurt, weaken, and silence, in any way we can. And if I’m reading them, maybe someone else out there that really needs it is too.

[Tad Callin · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are no "bad" stories here.

There are stories here that didn't appeal to me as much as the other stories did; there are stories here that left me scratching my head and wondering if I just didn't get it - which is always a possibility, even with stories I love. But there were no stories in this collection that made me think, "If I found this in the slush pile, I would decline it."

I fully expected to enjoy the majority of these, just based on the authors in the table of contents. Rachael K. Jones and Caroline M. Yoachim always impress me with their work, and at least half of the authors in this collection have had stories appear on Escape Artists podcasts (if quality, free audio is your thing, you should look for those). Jones's "The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant" is a fun story, though it is not as deep or poetic as much of her other work. Yoachim's stories always find an emotional core within an odd or unlikely premise, and "Carnival Nine" delivers like literal clockwork. I found A. Merc Rustad's "Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn" to be typical of Merc's writing: a surprisingly intimate epic, told in terms that humanized the machine characters and confronted the moral quandary presented by refugees in a direct and human manner.

Of the tales that did not land with me, some were making ambitious experiments with their narrative form (notably "The Resident" by Carmen Maria Machado) or were telling stories that were either smaller or larger than the short story form is readily able to tell. I found "The Last Cheng Beng Gift" and "Justice Systems in Quantum Parallel Probabilities" to be of the former variety; both told stories that were small in scope and felt like they ended without telling me everything I needed to know. Samuel R. Delany's "The Hermit of Houston" felt like a much larger story than the format encompasses; attempting to outline the life story of a character that doesn't actually remember their own life story (not a spoiler) may make that unavoidable.

A few of these stories moved me, but are the sort of thing that I would hesitate to recommend to someone else unless I knew the intended audience would love them as much as I did. E. Lily Yu's very short and brutal treatment of an alien encounter with Earth, "The Wretched and the Beautiful," is probably too on-the-nose for casual readers, or those who are less than sympathetic to criticism of America's and Europe's current approaches to immigration and refugees. And I think I liked Charlie Jane Anders's "Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue" more than even the author did! Anders says in the Contributor's Notes of this story that it "feels like a huge primal scream on paper...when I look back at it now, I'm surprised at how much artifice there is." I frankly loved experiencing both of these stories.

I was most surprised by "ZeroS" by Peter Watts. I've grown weary of military SF tropes, zombies, and environmentalism as a story conflict over the years, but Watts manages to combine these elements in a way that - for me - transcended and subverted the tropes. This was a fast, fun read with some emotional highlights, and some interesting questions about what exactly is is that we are loyal to.

If I had to name a favorite, I would be torn between the time-bending weird Western flavor of Maria Dahvana Headley's "Black Powder" and the nuanced old black magic of Kathleen Kayembe's "You Will Always Have Family: A Triptych" - both of which touch on family and lore tying old worlds and new together.

Overall, this is a volume that is worth your time - either as a disposable doorway to finding some authors you wouldn't otherwise have discovered, or as a collectible snapshot of what 2018 had to offer.

[Michelle Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

If reading a good novel is like savoring a big, delicious slice of cake, then reading a well-curated anthology of short fiction from different authors is like working your way through a box of chocolates. They're all good and delicious in their own unique ways. Each one is created to savor in just one bite.

The settings, subjects, and writing styles vary widely, from space opera to medieval, from horror to comedy. As a bonus, almost all of these stories center on protagonists who are women, people of color, queer, genderqueer, or trans - what else would you expect with NK Jemisin as the editor?

I now have a bunch of new authors and short fiction publications to check out. So glad that I picked this book out at the library at random!

[Chris Vanjonack · Rating 3 out of 5]

As always with the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy series, I really appreciate the socially progressive themes throughout this collection (which are themed around revolution!), but I had a tough time engaging with many of these stories. There are definitely some gems throughout-- particularly "Don't Press Charges and I Won't Shoot" by Charlie Jane Anders, "Church of Birds" by Micah Dean Hicks, "The Resident" by Carmen Maria Machado, and "You Will Always Have Family: A Trptych" by Kathleen Kayembe.

[Erika Holt · Rating 4 out of 5]

An innovative and thought provoking collection of speculative fiction stories with a literary bent. Particular favourites were: "Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn" by A. Merc Rustad, "Carnival Nine" by Caroline M. Yoachim, "The Orange Tree" by Maria Dahvana Headley, and "Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance" by Tobias S. Buckell.

[M.E. · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is really remarkable how superb the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy series is, with this volume particularly remarkable. Every story strong and effective elements, and a few are among the most exciting work I've encountered in years. This is a bit peculiar, as I have not been impressed with the copious editing and occasional introductions of John Joseph Adams, the series editor. But here he seems to be doing an excellent job hiring stellar writers to select the final stories. In this case, the remarkable NK Jemison has outdone herself.

Standing out in a very strong collection is Samuel R. Delany's The Hermit of Housten, perhaps his first science fiction short story in decades.Delany's story is an extremely peculiar and excellent account of a man's lifelong romance to his male partner. You have to piece together the world they live in very slowly and painfully, in part because it because it becomes clear the protagonist has some profound confusions about basic facts. (His partner and him, for example, argue if the world is flat or round, and much later the protagonist discovers his partner spent time working in a "virtual lunar colony" and likely around a moon of an outer planet, but always understood that as part of the infinite flat plane of earth.) It is a far future scenario, with humans apparently geographically segregated by gender. It's oddness, and the difficulty of making sense of the world, is masterfully done, unique and unexpected. After being one of the best SF authors of the 1960s, Delany stopped writing the genre in the early 1980s, switching to erotic experimental semi-memoir. He wrote one major novel since with SF themes towards the end (Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders), and this story is a major historical event for the genre.

The volume had several unusually beautiful and well executed stories in addition to Delany. To take three: A. Merc Rustad's "Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn," about a friendship between a star ship and a stowaway in an imperial setting; Peter Watts' "ZeroS" about a platoon of zombie soldiers, Kathleen Kayembe's "You Will Always Have Family: A Triptych" about a body possessing central African witch from the perspective of his loving relatives; and Carmen Maria Machado's "The Resident," about a writer on retreat, and a lot of almost but not quite fantastic things happen as she sort of but not really spirals into unhappiness, past trauma, and mild madness. It is very effective.

Only one story I despised: Charlie Jane Anders' "Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue," a terrifying story about a trans woman being tortured in a coercive and invasive conversion therapy program. As a trans woman, I found the story extremely triggering, very upsetting, and generally leaving me hating the genre. I can't see any benefit or value in torture-driven stories, and I think I am not alone in being particularly triggered and upset when it is an oppressed group I happen to be a part of. Reading it, I had a strong rage towards Anders, who I took to be a liberal cis (non-trans) do-gooder who has no idea how harmful such work can be. But I later found out she is a trans woman. This news is baffling and very confusing for me, and I have yet to really make sense of it. I really did not have a conceptual map in my head that it was psychologically possible for a trans woman to choose to write such a story and put it out in the world as published, public work. I have a lot to learn about humans.

So yes, a stellar collection highlighting the best the genre has to offer this year.

[Isaac Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anthologies can be hit or miss, so I was impressed with how many of the stories in this collection really moved me. My biggest takeaway is that Carmen Maria Machado is a god among mortals, and her piece ‘The Resident’ from Her Body and Other Parties was the strongest in the collection, though it’s inclusion as Sci-Fi/Fantasy was a bit of a surprise. Other stories I really, really liked include:
“You’ll Always Have Family: A Triptych” by Kathleen Kayembe
“Destroy the City with Me Tonight” by Kate Alice Marshall
“Loneliness is In Your Blood” by Castell Turnbull
“Carnival Nine” by Caroline M. Yoachim
“Black Powder” by Maria Dahvana Headley
“Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance” by Tobias S. Buckell

But really, there were only a few stories I didn’t enjoy, it was a good selection and makes me excited to read more sci-fi and fantasy!

Also for anyone whose read it both, I’m super curious if you think maybe “Destroy the City with Me Tonight” may have planted the seed for editor NK Jemisin’s novel The City We Became, because while the stories are very different, there is a strong echo there.

[Mary Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally finished this book, after over a year of working through it. When I started, it was a gift from a friend who shortly thereafter went to prison. I kept the Christmas card he gave me in there and it mostly made me sad to read - not just for him, but also, this collection is sad. Of course it is, because N.K. Jemisin collected and edited them - and her work is devastating.

The last story, though - Zen and The Art of Starship Maintenance - that one was uplifting. The main character, who is unnamed, actively contracted away its name, has no free will, yet it delivered an epic "fuck you" to an oppressive power. In the notes at the end of the book, the author writes he was "inspired" to write about "how the dispossessed can still find routes of resistance."

In a country where it feels like my vote and my voice matter so little, Tobias Buckell delivered a message I really needed to hear.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A lot of these stories didn't do it for me at all, which was a disappointment after the lackluster 2020 collection--BUT that's on yours truly, this humble, confused reader, who cannot somehow unlock the barrier that prevents me from understanding military / hard / very scientific-reading science fiction.

Rereading Carmen Maria Machado's "The Resident" was a wild ride and spurred me to revisit her collection to see if it hits like Kelly Link (amazing, baffling).

E. Lily Yu's "The Wretched and the Beautiful" actually hurt to read--brilliant.

I read the introduction last and boy howdy, damn. N.K. Jemisin really is a genius.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

excellent writing, but depressing

I used to enjoy these annual anthologies, but hadn’t read one in quite some time. this one has probably cured me of ever doing so again. the stories are all clever & well written, but all carry such a darkness that I’m not sure I want to bother. when part of a collection is dark, you start to look for even a single story of redemption & hope. it’s not here.

[Elliot Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

My personal favorites in this anthology:
- Marshall, “Destroy the city with me tonight”
- Rustad, “Brightened Star, ascending dawn”
- Clare, “Tasting notes on the varietals of the southern coast”
- Hicks, “Church of birds”
- Buckell, “Zen and the art of spaceship maintenance”

[Fred Hughes · Rating 2 out of 5]

A disappointing collection of stories as 80% of the book is in the fantasy genre with scarcely 3 science fiction stories.

Recommend more science fiction oriented anthologies

[JamalT · Rating 4 out of 5]

Out of 20 stories, I loved 6, liked 9, was neutral on 3, and didn't like 2. I want to focus on what worked, so starting with the positive reviews moving to the more negative ones. Once I split the stories into those 4 categories, they should just be listed in their order of publication in the book, not as a numerical rank. Also, I'm putting my little elevator pitch of what each story is about--I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll try not to, but I think it's helpful/fun in reviews to get a better idea of what's inside.

Best:
You Will Always Have Family:
Blurb-A family emigrates to the United States from Africa and something made the trip with them.
This is atmospheric and really well put together. I don't have a lot to say that wouldn't spoil it, so...it's good.

Loneliness Is In Your Blood:
Blurb-Hard to summarize without spoiling; it's about a monster.
Pretty visceral and gorgeously written, with a nice slow reveal/mystery to it.

Greatest 1 Star Restaurant . . . :
Blurb-Rebel cyborgs take over a food dispensation spaceship.
Most fucked up story in the collection, and maybe the best. Grotesque with a disturbingly light tone, this is the one I'm probably going to remember.

Tasting Notes:
Blurb-The diary of the king's wine taster on his tour of the king's vineyards.
Similar to the story above, this also has a delightfully fucked up tone. Amazing ending.

Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue:
Blurb-About 2 childhood friends who reunite under pretty bad circumstances.
What a terrific story--this was scary and disturbing. It's good.

Carnival 9:
Blurb-The life of a young clockwork girl.
This is a beautiful story; it might be the simplest but its stunning and quietly devastating.

Liked:
Destroy the City With Me Tonight:
Blurb-New take on superheroes.
Nice story about identity.

The Last Cheng Being Gift:
Blurb-A story centered on Malaysian culture/beliefs, about a mother accepting a gift.
Cute story!

The Resident:
Blurb-Writer is accepted to a residency program to write her novel and find herself. Things happen.
This is the story out of the entire collection that I would want to reread and analyze the most. It's atmospheric and well written, but also very open to interpretation (or maybe I didn't get it haha). It's the story I'm most interested in trying to understand, if that makes sense.

The Wretched and the Beautiful:
Blurb-Aliens make first contact.
The writing here is succinct, clear, and strong. Good story.

The Orange Tree:
Blurb-A sick old man creates a golem out of an orange tree.
This was a fascinating read, and I think it would be a love if it was a little longer. Not a lot, but it's a good sign when you want to read more of something. I also really love how this writer puts ideas together (she also wrote Black Powder below and I feel the same about it).

Cannibal Acts:
Blurb-In Alaska, we follow a community on the edge of the end of the world.
I enjoyed this, but I didn't really take anything deeply new from it. It wasn't that different a take on the end of the world or what might happen in that situation--but it was still a good read.

Black Powder:
Blurb-Some genies live inside a gun.
This was such a cool concept, I just wanted more. Also, it's very dreamlike and there's a lot that isn't explained/well explained, and that's ok, but I wouldn't have hated a little more information either. Most of the characters don't have names, which makes it really hard to follow the action at times because then we play the pronoun game.

Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance:
Blurb-A human endangers a robot.
Again, I don't want to spoil things--this was cute. Lighter in tone but I really loved when the human and the robot were discussing why they made certain decisions.

Neutral:
Rivers Run Free:
Blurb- Rivers take human form to try to escape to the sea.
It was ok. The biggest difference between stories I liked and ones that are neutral is my personal emotional reaction. So for these stories I got the point the author was going for, but it just didn't really resonate to me. You might really love them because they might resonate with you, art is like that.

Justice Systems . . .
Blurb-Imagine Einstein's Dreams but for criminal justice.
This was a really cool idea, and I love Einstein's Dreams so this exploration of what justice/reform/punishment can mean was enjoyable. And if you haven't read Einstein's Dreams--do that. Do that now. It's short and should be at your library.

Church of Birds
Blurb-A reimagining/epilogue to a fairy tale.
I actually really love the source fairy tale here, it doesn't get a lot of attention and the ending is screwed up. I think had this been longer I would've enjoyed its payoff more. I also wanted more development with both of the female characters.

Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn
Blurb-We follow a sentient spaceship and everything else is I think a spoiler.
This was again, pretty ok. I think I was more interested in why the spaceship is sentient and less in what happens after, and the story doesn't focus on the why, which might explain my lukewarm reaction to it.

Dislike:
Hermit of Houston:
Blurb-We follow a man living in a Mad Max/Lisa the Painful type world.
This story was picked by the editors because it challenges a lot of typical writing conventions, so I feel a little bad for saying I hated the writing style, but...I did. I figured it out, but I think I missed a lot of details and more critically, I didn't really enjoy learning about the world. I have more thoughts to follow.

ZeroS:
Blurb-We follow a zombie spec-ops squad.
The idea here is cool, and the twist was pretty cool too, but the takeaways felt stale. You kinda know where some of this is going, which lessens the impact. Also, maybe more of a problem for me, the world building wasn't great--they kept name-dropping things without any context. I found out reading the authors' notes that this is a littler story set in a bigger universe the author writes stories in. Maybe, like professors with advanced subjects, they didn't think enough about how confusing it is for a new reader to come in and follow what is happening. That's my main issue, otherwise there was a lot I did like about it.

Some spoiler thoughts:

I saw an angry review about how this is a collection of scolding stories about togetherness? And I wanted to address it. It's pretty important to remember that a lot of these stories were written either right after the U.S. 2016 election or right right after--which was a particularly tense time for everyone. Some of these stories are authors working through their outrage or fear, although only one is direct. The rest are allegories, and remind me strongly about the kind of sci-fi we got during the Cold War.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the authors' tones, and I would say the collection's overall tone is generally more of one of catharsis than "scolding." Wretched and the Beautiful feels like the author was angry and found a healthy outlet for that anger, and I think the story has its crucial bite in that anger.

But the Hermit of Houston is one of the very first stories you read, and I can see how it could upset someone. I think the writing style is interesting--and if you like it, that's great and I don't want to take that away from you. However, (and maybe this isn't how the author meant it, the story is so hard to follow), I finally understood it as this gross, almost petty revenge story. It's my least favorite because I didn't really get anything out of it except rage. That doesn't make it bad, but it doesn't really fit its framing, so that anger just sort of exists without something to anchor it to.

And I compare that to Wretched and the Beautiful--another pissed off story--where the author hones her anger, writing short lines that are damning and accurate.

Lastly I want to bring up Don't Press Charges because it's also a type of political story, and I think it was the most successful. This is another situation where the author focused their energy on a specific fear, and the result is fabulous. It's genuinely scary and funny and creates empathy because you want the protagonist to be ok.
So if you're interested, it's worth reading, there are some total gems in this collection.

[Ryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rivers Run Free - 4* - A short, sad story about oppression and hope.

Destroy the City with Me Tonight - 5* - Incredible bizarre tale of super heroism as a disease. Turns all the concepts from the comics on their heads.

You Will Always Have Family: A Triptych - 4* - Great structure and a cool idea. Some genuine horror in the first section. Redemptive ending kind of undercuts it.

Justice Systems in Quantum Parallel Probabilities - 5* - I love these Invisibles Cities kinds of stories. Alternate universe justice systems are a really fun approach.

Loneliness is in Your Blood - 4* - Very beautifully written story about loneliness and motherhood and love.

The Hermit of Houston - 3* - I’m not sure if I like this story much, but I appreciate it. It’s about gender and aging and memory and probably a thousand other things. It’s also kind of impenetrable.

The Last Cheng Beng Gift - 3* - A fun little vignette about parenthood, especially the fraught relationships of Asian mothers and their daughters. I liked it but it’s fairly forgettable.

Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn - 2* - It’s fine, but the relationships that the final part hangs on are not nearly developed enough to support it.

The Resident - 5* - Absolutely masterful. Shirley Jackson meets Kelly Link. Unsettling macabre body horror and haunted house and time travel and everything else. The standout story of the collection.

The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant - 5* - Delightfully gruesome, funny, acerbic. Bonkers take on the quest for a 5* rating (ironic!) and the foodie scene.

Tasting Notes on the Varietals of the Southern Coast - 3* - Cute idea to tell the story of a war through the eyes of the army’s wine snob, but overall too slight for me.

Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue - 5* - Extremely upsetting gut punch of a story. Masterful but very hard to read.

Church of Birds - 2* - Written well enough but the ending is both obvious and unearned.

ZeroS - 5* - Very good military SF about selfhood and bodily control and war. I don’t really feel like it ended anywhere but I liked it a lot and it made me want to read more of Watts’s stuff.

Carnival Nine - 3* - Already read for my Hugo review. A nice story about disability with affecting characters. Hasn’t really stuck with me.

The Wretched and the Beautiful - 4* - A short little fable trembling with rage and despair. Not a subtle allegory but a strong one nonetheless.

The Orange Tree - 5* - A lot of the same themes as The Mere Wife about the anger and secret knowledge of women. Also the same gorgeous prose and a really nice twist on very obscure historical events.

Cannibal Acts - 3* - So dark it’s black. Not much of a story, more of a tone piece.

Black Powder - 3* - Not sure I understand this story at all. It’s beautifully written as always, and the characters are fascinating, but I’m not sure it hangs together.

Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance - 3* - Fun enough story. I like the cleverness of the ending and how the "robot" carefully obeys the letter of Asimov's laws but not at all the spirit.

[Jared · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was, quite easily, my favorite BASFF yet.

As a reader who regularly, critically, and eagerly consumes a lot of short fiction every year, Best Of collections can be tricky endeavors. Aside from bringing a new editor every year to select the stories, I think JJA, who is no stranger to putting together an anthology, has a good editor's eye. For my part as the reader, the best Best Of is one full of stories I've seen before ("Yes, I loved that story!") and ones I hadn't heard of ("This looks great!"). Plus, you cannot go wrong with NK Jemisin at the helm.

While most of the stories stood out to me, Charles Payseur's "Rivers Run Free" acts as an excellent opener, tense and fast-paced, with literal sentient rivers fighting for their lives. I've long been greedy for Payseur's reviews, but his fiction is also some of the best and most worth reading you can find.

Lettie Prell's "Justice Systems in Quantum Parallel Probabilities" may have been my favorite new story, certainly one that stuck with me for a while. A simple enough concept, parallel universe justice systems, quickly give the reader a heartrending trip that had me wondering: what would I choose, which would I want? But obviously, you don't get to choose.

The wildest trip, though, is Samuel R. Delany's "Hermit of Houston." I'm surprised I slept on this story, and surprised I couldn't find more buzz about it. I bounced off it initially, but kept coming back to the dense prose, fascinatingly built world, a story about stories, and one I'll be rereading to try and wrap my head around it.

Maureen McHugh's "Cannibal Acts" is not the visceral end-of-the-world story you might expect. Instead it's startlingly real-feeling, with the cannibalism almost glossed over with how much of a given it is; the characters navigating their unexpected dystopia feel among the most human of many stories I've read in this genre.

Those are just the standout stories that were new to me. I'd read before, and loved, Carmen Maria Machado's "The Resident," Rachael K. Jones's "The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant," and was quite pleased to see one of my first favorite short fiction authors, E. Lily Yu, with her great Terraform story, "The Wretched and the Beautiful."

All in all, this was a great year, one of many great years for vibrant, enriching, engaging short fiction. I only hope I consume as many great stories as I did in 2018, and that collections like BASFF continue to help me fill in the gaps when I don't.

[Wise Cat · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the 2017 edition of this way better. I was going to give this 3 stars, but I decided on 2. I'd do 2 1/2 stars if we could do 1/2 star ratings. (Yes, I know that won't happen as it seems it's been requested but GR said no can do)

Like the previous version, there's 20 stories in it. Some are short (like 4 or 5 pages), some are long (20 or more pages), some medium (maybe 10-15 or so). And out of those 20, I only liked 11.

2 of the stories in the book are from the same author. I don't recall the 2017 edition being like that.

There were a few that, to me, seemed to be neither sci-fi nor fantasy but more like horror or dystopia, I know there's some overlap between the genres, and I do enjoy all of those genres.

Some stories, like "The Orange Tree" and "Loneliness is in your blood" just plain sickening. And I almost couldn't finish "Black Powder."

Others I just didn't understand so I can't say if I liked it or not (as in "What on earth is this story supposed to be about?". Or I was bored.

The section in the back with comments from each author helps explain some stories, but a few of these comments contain spoilers for the story. So I read the story first, then the comments from the author about it.

A member said something about sermons about inclusion of LGBT people. That's a good point; I kind of felt like I was being preached to but couldn't come up with the right words to describe it. That being said, I'm all for diversity/inclusion, but this wasn't the sci-fi/fantasy collection I thought it would be. I struggled with some of the stories, wondering "When does this end?" I started looking to see how long a story was before starting, so I could decide if I wanted to try to read it all at once or a few pages at a time.

I have never heard of any of the authors in this book, but then there's so many out there anyway....

I haven't yet read how they picked these stories, but I will later. As mentioned above, the 2017 edition was way better. I think I gave that 4 stars. I remember liking almost every story in that one, and I even wrote down notes to myself to research other works by many authors in that one (of which I wasn't familiar with).

[Marie-Therese · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good, wide-ranging anthology featuring a diverse mix of styles and voices, as well as authors both well-known and long published and others very new to the genre.

The book stumbles a bit at the beginning (I felt the first two stories, by Charles Payseur and Katie Alice Marshall, were by far the weakest in the volume and, to my mind, not worthy of inclusion in a "best" collection) but regains its footing with Kathleen Kayembe's "You Will Always Have a Family: a Triptych", gains speed and assurance with Caldwell Turner's "Loneliness is in Your Blood" and really hits its stride with Samuel Delany's "The Hermit of Houston" (probably the best recent fictional work I've read by this veteran author). After that everything is worth reading, although not all are necessarily what I would have chosen as "best" of the year (Rachael K. Jones' "The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant" is cute but not much more, and Charlie Jane Anders' "Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue" reads more like a bleeding chunk of some longer work than a fully realized, self-contained story). There are some truly exceptional stories here though: both pieces by Maria Dahvana Headley impressed me with their verbal beauty, rich imagery, and evocative historical settings; Peter Watts' "ZeroS" managed to bring the zombie trope to life in a hard sci-fi tale that was both technically and emotionally satisfying and well as being masterfully paced (need to read more by Watts ASAP!); Micah Dean Hicks' "Church of Birds" is an effective and melancholy take on what happens after the happy ever after of a familiar fairy tale; and Carmen Maria Machado's "The Resident", first published in her debut story collection 'Her Body and Other Parties', remains as emotionally resonant, surprising, and slightly disorienting as the first time I read it-I suspect this tale is going to be featured in literary anthologies for years to come.

All in all, this is a very worthy installment in this newish series. If Adams keeps picking co-editors of this level of discernment there should be many more fine volumes of 'The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy' to come.

[Scout · Rating 4 out of 5]

Micro-reviews

"Rivers Run Free": Rivers can walk around in human bodies and are trying to escape before people can wipe them out by harnessing their power. Some cool cinematic moments and an interesting premise, but the sex scene seemed like a weird inclusion and put me off.

"Destroy the City with Me Tonight": Superheroism as a disease that gives you powers but makes you just a symbol without a life. Overall, this take on the superhero genre didn't really grab me. Kind of reminded me of Dreadnought but if I didn't care about the main character.

"You Will Always Have Family: A Triptych": Wow! Gradually revealing more and more levels of the same story. Great mix of horror, folklore, and family psychological drama. If it's not a dog, what does Uncle really keep trapped in his room all day and night? Why does he have to protect Izzy with a charm whenever she sleeps over?

"Justice Systems in Quantum Parallel Probabilities": More like a legal thought exercise-- alternate universe versions of the justice system-- but a well-written one with a gripping human element.

"Loneliness is in Your Blood": The long life of a blood-drinking woman who peels her skin off to become invisible. Strong opening but dropped off a bit... didn't seem like there was a good reason for it to be written in second person, except to make the first three paragraphs a little punchier.

"The Hermit of Houston": I probably need to re-read this when I can concentrate on it more, because as is I just could not follow it. So much unfamiliar jargon packed into a small space that it was totally bogged down, and I couldn't pick out a single strand of plot, character, or worldbuilding. I literally just went back to try to reread part of it and could not make it work for me. What is going on here? It won the Locus and Delany seems to be a sci fi powerhouse... maybe eventually I'll retry with more patience.

"The Last Cheng Beng Gift": A mother enjoys and evaluates the gifts her children send to her in the afterlife. Great story, very funny and touching. I'm with Mrs. Lim though-- fish spas freak me out.

"Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn": A spaceship AI must decide what rules to follow. Definite Ann Leckie vibes, and also reminiscent of Aliette de Bodard's "The Waiting Stars"-- a.k.a., I really liked it. AI-perspective stories rule.

Okay I hope you enjoyed those last two positive stories, because things are going to get tough for most of the rest of the collection.

"The Resident": A novelist attends a rural artist residency and has a terrible, feverish time. I'll admit that I skipped this one because I had read it in Her Body and Other Parties and knew that it had distressed me. Obviously Carmen Maria Machado is a genius writer, but I just couldn't do it again. Recommend if you're okay with being distressed.

"The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant": Speaking of distressing, this story is pretty profoundly gross. But also hilarious and what an amazing premise and I really loved it. The meat.... oh, the meat...

"Tasting Notes on the Varietals of the Southern Coast": Fantasy? In my Sci-Fi/Fantasy collection? It's more likely than you think. I thought this story, a vintner evaluating the wines in a country destroyed by a magical plague, was quite good, and the perfect length (aka, short) for what it had to say. You might appreciate even more if you know anything about wine, but I wouldn't know since I don't know anything about wine.

"Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue": Haven't read any Charlie Jane Anders before, but this explains why everyone loves her stuff-- love may be the wrong word. More speculative/horror in tone than sci-fi, surprisingly with an strain of YA/coming-of-age. Really gut-wrenchingly scary, and the chase scene is the stuff of nightmares. Content warning for extreme dysphoria and nonconsensual surgery.

"Church of Birds": Aarne-Thompson Folktale Type 451 (Brothers Turned Into Birds) is a rich vein, and hasn't been depleted yet. Really liked this one. We're still definitely keeping up the trend of sad/distressing though.

"ZeroS": Another one that feels like it could be a whole novel. I actually checked to see if it's a side story in a larger series, the worldbuilding felt too well-developed for just a short story (it's hard to explain the premise though-- better to just read). As far as I can tell, it's a standalone, but I definitely want to check out Watts' other stuff now. Reminded me of Altered Carbon, but unlike Altered Carbon didn't make me want to stop reading after three pages because of noir-imported sexism, so that's nice. Why do I keep comparing these to other books though? This was very good. Loved how the story was divided into titled sections, it helped to break it up and the titles didn't just just help you to follow along but also really added something.

"Carnival Nine": To be honest, I thought this was going to be bad when I first started it, but it totally won me over. Really really helped that it didn't try to be overly cute about its premise (clockwork people living in a model train town) and in fact I think it was much more effective than what I can easily imagine being an alternate version of same story about family separation and disability told in a dystopian sci-fi world instead, which seems more overdone.

"The Wretched and the Beautiful": Okay. I see what you're doing here... I mean, we've all seen District 9. This story is only seven pages but already sort of overstays its welcome. Like, I know you're trying to tell an important message, but we get it. We get it.

"The Orange Tree": Poet creates a golem out of a complex cabinet made from a whole orange tree-- fantastic start. I found the historical note at the end of the story super interesting, and while I liked the story, I almost wish I could've just gotten more information on the known facts of historical Solomon ibn Gabirol and Qasmuna bat Isma'il, and the stories of the hinged golem.

"Cannibal Acts": Really liked this one. A simply told and effective story about a lesbian biologist in a post-pandemic Alaskan community. Unfortunately, feels the most real of all the stories in this collection. This one actually made my cry

"Black powder": Not for me, maybe because it kept reminding me of The Dark Tower (guess I'm still comparing). Congrats to Maria Dahvana Headley though, two stories in one "Best American" anth.

"Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance": Post-human, some humans still holding on. Spaceships so wide they contain suns. I'd read a book of this one too.

[Sam Love · Rating 3 out of 5]

I appreciate the Series Editor's detailed explanation of the work involved in the difficult task of curating a collection representative of the best short stories in two gigantic and varied genres. "Fantasy" and "science fiction" are not wholly defined, delineated, mutually exclusive genres; this is at times jarring in this anthology, where a Congolese ghost story ("You Will Always Have Family") is served up alongside Yelp-review obsessed deranged cyborg chefs ("The Greatest One Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant"), and near-future dystopias exploring human survival ("Cannibal Acts; Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue) are juxtaposed with a bittersweet narrative about anthropomorphic wind-up toys coping with caretaking ("Carnival Nine"). Horror (terrifying body-swapping, a writer attending a creepy-residency and [maybe] descending into her own madness, the aforementioned Congolese ghost story, a vampire tale) was an unexpected feature, although a thought-provoking one for myself. (What are the boundaries between "fantasy", "horror", and"science fiction"?) Guest Editor N.K. Jemisin's own (incredible) work straddles the very blurry lines between science fiction and fantasy, and her Introduction to the collection certainly should not be missed. The contributors' notes (located at the back of the book) also provide helpful context and insights into the stories.

As to the actual stories in the collection themselves: they're uneven, but there is something here for everyone. Some of my favorites:
-Kathleen Kayembe's "You Will Always Have Family: A Triptych"
: a Congolese ghost story and family drama that echoed Jordan Peele's film Us
- Kate Alice Marshall's "Destroy the City with me Tonight"
The lonely young superhero, done in a fresh way perfect for a short story form. I saw some clear connections with Guest Editor NK Jemisin's own The City We Became .
- A. Merc Rustad's "Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn"
A sentient enslaved spaceship hides a secret and learns to embrace empathy and art, in defiance of her enslavers. (a side note, but I find the recent explorations of the classic sci-fi trope of sentient spaceship AIs to be a particularly exciting part of the genre in the last few years. See the protagonist of Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice or the witty and twisted Gregorovitch from Christopher Paolini's To Sleep in a Sea of Stars . As other reviews mention, this story pairs well with the excellent closer "Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance" by Tobias Buckell.
- Peter Watt's "ZeroS"
Very action-oriented supersoldier sci-fi that I envisioned as an episode of the TV series "Black Mirror", although the revelation of the nature of the enemy forces left me feeling like the author had accidentally justified the moral atrocities committed in warfare. Nevertheless, a fun pick.
- Gwendolyn Clare's "Tasting Notes on the Varietals of the Southern Ghost"
An oblivious sommelier traverses through a war-torn region and serves wine to the ruler as civilians shriek in the background. Darkly satirical and full of rich description.
- Rachel K. Jones' "The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant"
My absolute FAVORITE of the collection. Service industry Cyborgs commandeer a space food truck and have to cook and serve meals to maintain their cover as they escape to a cyborg haven away from enslaving humans. Hilarious and absurd, yet a compelling satire and commentary on the ways that capitalist logics are pervasive, and how they harm oneself, other members of the proletariat, and revolutionary aspirations.

Some stories I appreciated for the beautiful writing, such as Charles Payseur's "Rivers Run Free", (although I do think the story would be stronger without that gratuitous sex scene which doesn't really add anything). Both of Maria Dahvana Headley's pieces stood out for their gorgeous writing and compelling story arcs, but the themes didn't quite land with me. The heavy-handed "Loneliness is in Your Blood", "The Wretched and the Beautiful", "The Last Cheng Beng Gift", and "Cannibal Acts" trod well-worn tropes in ways that felt predictable, familiar, and stale. And still other stories left me confused ("Justice Systems in Quantum Parallel", whose main point is that many different, both realistic and absurdist, justice systems have existing or might exist; and "The Hermit of Houston", whose main points were entirely lost on me, but is perhaps one that detailed analysis by others may turn my feelings about on another reading). Micah Dean Hicks' "Church of Birds" and Caroline Yoachim's "Carnival Nine" are both bittersweet (and very different) fairytales of sorts, but weren't really my cup of tea. And Carmen Maria Machado's "The Resident", which I did love when I first read it in her book "Her Body and Other Parties" surprisingly underwhelmed in this stand-alone format.

Overall a nice collection, and a good way to get a little tasting sampler: you might learn that you LOVE pickled cauliflower, hate fried olives, and that sourdough crostinis are fine, but they're not what you'll talk about with your friends while you share your meal together.