The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012

Megaphone. He teaches at Syracuse University.

C.S.E. Cooney collects knives and books. Her fiction and poetry can be found in SteamPowered II and the Clockwork Phoenix 3 anthologies, at Apex, Subterranean, Strange Horizons, Podcastle, Goblin Fruit, and Mythic Delirium. Her book Jack o’ the Hills came out with Papaveria Press in 2011, which will also put out her poetry collection How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes in 2012. She was the recipient of the 2011 Rhysling Award in the Long Poem category. All the women in her family have dark eyes.

Marissa Lingen is a freelance writer of over eighty short works of science fiction and fantasy. She lives in the Minneapolis area with two large men and one small dog.

Rachel Swirsky holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including Tor.com, Clarkesworld and Subterranean Magazine. She’s been nominated for the Hugo Award and the World Fantasy Award, and in 2011 she won the Nebula Award for best novella. She hasn’t ever written a bucket list, but if she had, she probably wouldn’t have accomplished most of the stuff on it. (For instance, she has never starred on Broadway. What’s that about?)

Lavie Tidhar grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and has since lived in South Africa, the UK, Vanuatu and Laos. He is the author of the ground-breaking alternative history novel Osama (a BSFA Award nominee), and of the Bookman Histories trilogy of steampunk novels comprising The Bookman, Camera Obscura and The Great Game. Lavie’s other works include linked story collection HebrewPunk, novellas Cloud Permutations, Gorel & The Pot-Bellied God, An Occupation of Angels and Jesus & The Eightfold Path. He edited The Apex Book of World SF and was a World Fantasy Award nominee for his work on the World SF Blog.

E. Lily Yu is a senior in English at Princeton University working toward a certificate in biophysics. Her short stories and poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review Online, Clarkesworld, Jabberwocky 5 Electric Velocipede, and Goblin Fruit, and her short play on beta decay had a staged reading at Princeton in October. At school, she competes on the ballroom team, plays flute, and juggles. She was born in Oregon and raised in New Jersey.

Since her first sale in 1987, Kij Johnson has sold dozens of short stories to markets including Amazing Stories, Analog, Asimov’s, Duelist Magazine, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Realms of Fantasy. She has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short story and the 2001 Crawford Award for best new fantasy novelist. Her short story “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss” was a nominee for the 2008 Nebula and Hugo awards. Her novels include two volumes of the Heian trilogy Love/War/Death: The Fox Woman and Fudoki. She’s also co-written with Greg Cox a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel, Dragon’s Honor. She is currently researching a third novel set in Heian Japan; and Kylen, two novels set in Georgian Britain.

Recommended Reading

Charlie Jane Anders, “Six Months, Three Days” (Tor.com)

M.T. Anderson, “Oracle Engine” (Steampunk!)

Eleanor Arnason, “My Husband Steinn” (Asimov’s, 10-11/11)

Kage Baker, “Attlee and the Long Walk” (Life on Mars)

John Barnes, “The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees” (Engineering Infinity)

Christopher Barzak, “Smoke City” (Asimov’s, 4-5/11)

Stephen Baxter, “The Invasion of Venus” (Engineering Infinity)

Peter S. Beagle, “The Way It Works Out and All” (F&SF, 7-8/11)

Elizabeth Bear, “Dolly” (Asimov’s, 1/11)

Elizabeth Bear, “Gods of the Forge” (TRSF)

M. David Blake, “Absinthe Fish” (Bull Spec)

Aliette de Bodard, “Shipbirth” (Asimov’s, 2/10)

Marie Brennan, “Love, Cayce” (Intergalactic Medicine Show, 4/11)

Damien Broderick, “The Beancounter’s Cat” (Eclipse Four)

Rachel Manija Brown, “Steel Rider” (Steam Powered)

Pat Cadigan, “You Never Know” (Solaris Rising)

Geoffrey W. Cole, “One of the Many Uses of Cedar” (On Spec, Summer/11)

Tina Connolly, “As We Report to Gabriel” (Fantasy, 1/11)

Paul Cornell, “The Copenhagen Interpretation” (Asimov’s, 7/11)

John Crowley, “And Go Like This” (Naked City)

Indrapramit Das, “The Widow and the Xir” (Apex, 7/11)

Eric Del Carlo, “Time, Like Blood, on My Hands” (Redstone, 12/11)

Andy Duncan, “Slow as a Bullet” (Eclipse Four)

Sarah L. Edwards, “By Plucking Her Petals” (Interzone, 1-2/11)

K.M. Ferebee, “Seven Spells to Sever the Heart” (Fantasy, 11/11)

Carolyn Ives Gilman, “The Ice Owl” (F&SF, 10-11/11)

Lisa Goldstein, “Little Vampires” (Realms of Fantasy, 4/11)

Elizabeth Hand, “Near Zennor” (A Book of Horrors)

Colin Harvey, “The Ghost Station” (Albedo 1 #40)

Amanda M. Hayes, “Silvergrass Mirror” (Abyss and Apex, 4Q/11)

Rosamund Hodge, “Apotheosis” (Black Gate, Spring/11)

Dylan Horrocks, “Steam Girl” (Steampunk!)

Alexander Jablokov, “The Day the Wires Came Down” (Asimov’s, 4-5/11)

Alaya Dawn Johnson, “Their Changing Bodies” (Subterranean, Summer/11)

Gwyneth Jones, “The Ki-Anna” (Engineering Infinity)

John Kessel, “Clean” (Asimov’s, 3/11)

Mary Robinette Kowal, “Kiss Me Twice” (Asimov’s, 6/11)

Douglas Lain, Wave of Mutilation (Fantastic Planet Books)

Jay Lake, “The Long Walk Home” (Subterranean, Winter/11)

V.H. Leslie, “Time Keeping” (Black Static, 6-7/11)

David D. Levine, “The Tides of the Heart” (Realms of Fantasy, 6/11)

Kelly Link, “Valley of the Girls” (Subterranean, Summer/11)

Ken Liu, “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary” (Panverse Three)

Kristin Livdahl, A Brood of Foxes (Aqueduct)

Ken MacLeod, “The Surface of Least Scattering” (TRSF)

Ken MacLeod, “The Best Science Fiction of the Year Three” (Solaris Rising)

Nick Mamatas, “North Shore Friday” (Asimov’s, 4-5/11)

Ian McDonald, “Digging” (Life on Mars)

Ian McHugh, “Boumee and the Apes” (Analog, 5/11)

Maureen F. McHugh, “After the Apocalypse” (After the Apocalypse)

Sean McMullen, “Enigma” (Analog, 1-2/11)

David Moles, “A Soldier of the City” (Engineering Infinity)

Alec Nevala-Lee, “The Boneless One” (Analog, 11/11)

Peadar O Guilin, “Heartless” (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 12/15/11)

An Owomoyela, “All That Touches the Air” (Lightspeed)

An Owomoyela, “Frozen Voice” (Clarkesworld)