THE BEST SCIENCE FICTION OF THE YEAR
Also Edited by Neil Clarke
Magazines
Clarkesworld Magazine—clarkesworldmagazine.com
Forever Magazine—forever-magazine.com
Anthologies
Upgraded
The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 1
Galactic Empires
The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 2
More Human Than Human
The Final Frontier (forthcoming 2018)
Not One of Us (forthcoming 2018)
The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 4 (forthcoming 2019)
(with Sean Wallace)
Clarkesworld: Year Three
Clarkesworld: Year Four
Clarkesworld: Year Five
Clarkesworld: Year Six
Clarkesworld: Year Seven
Clarkesworld: Year Eight
Clarkesworld: Year Nine, Volume 1
Clarkesworld: Year Nine, Volume 2
Clarkesworld Magazine: A 10th Anniversary Anthology (forthcoming 2018)
Copyright © 2018 by Neil Clarke
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Night Shade Books, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
Night Shade books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Night Shade Books, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].
Night Shade Books® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.
Visit our website at www.nightshadebooks.com.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
ISBN: 978-1-59780-936-8
eISBN: 978-1-59780-619-0
Cover illustration by Chris McGrath
Cover design by Jason Snair
Please see page 609 for an extension of this copyright page.
Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Introduction: A State of the Short SF Field in 2017
A Series of Steaks—Vina Jie-Min Prasad
Holdfast—Alastair Reynolds
Every Hour of Light and Dark—Nancy Kress
The Last Novelist (or A Dead Lizard in the Yard)—Matthew Kressel
Shikasta—Vandana Singh
Wind Will Rove—Sarah Pinsker
Focus—Gord Sellar
The Martian Obelisk—Linda Nagata
Shadows of Eternity—Gregory Benford
The Worldless—Indrapramit Das
Regarding the Robot Raccoons Attached to the Hull of My Ship—Rachael K. Jones and Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali
Belly Up—Maggie Clark
Uncanny Valley—Greg Egan
We Who Live in the Heart—Kelly Robson
A Catalogue of Sunlight at the End of the World—A.C. Wise
Meridian—Karin Lowachee
The Tale of the Alcubierre Horse—Kathleen Ann Goonan
Extracurricular Activities—Yoon Ha Lee
In Everlasting Wisdom—Aliette de Bodard
The Last Boat-Builder in Ballyvoloon—Finbarr O’Reilly
The Speed of Belief—Robert Reed
Death on Mars—Madeline Ashby
An Evening with Severyn Grimes—Rich Larson
ZeroS—Peter Watts
The Secret Life of Bots—Suzanne Palmer
Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance—Tobias S. Buckell
2017 Recommended Reading List
INTRODUCTION:
A State of the Short SF Field in 2017
Neil Clarke
With two prior volumes in this series under my belt, I still haven’t settled on a routine approach to writing these introductions. Some years will write themselves and others, like this one, require extra work. By and large, 2017 was a relatively stable year within the short SF field. It was the first full year without a monthly print magazine—Asimov’s and Analog having switched to bi-monthly at the start of the year—but that doesn’t appear to have had an immediate impact on quantity or quality. It’s too early to say whether or not this has impacted readership. The ground ceded to the monthly digital and online publications doesn’t appear to have changed the landscape at this time.
Perhaps the biggest and most personally exciting news was the announcement by Penthouse Global Media (PGM) that they were resurrecting Omni Magazine with Ellen Datlow returning as fiction editor. Omni was the first science fiction magazine to which I subscribed and it will always have a special place in my heart. There weren’t a lot of stories in each issue, but I always enjoyed them and its quirky side held a special appeal in my youth.
However, over the last few years, there’s been some debate as to who actually owns Omni, with Jerrick Media launching the now-defunct Omni Reboot online magazine in 2013 and, more recently, selling the back catalog of the original Omni as ebooks on Amazon. PGM has since taken Jerrick Media to court over this and other intellectual property issues. Meanwhile, Omni has published its first new (original content) print issue since the 1990s and plans to continue as a quarterly publication. This first print issue might be a bit of a challenge to locate these days but it is worth seeking out. Digital issues are available via Zinio. You’ll find Nancy Kress’s Omni story in this collection.
At a recent science fiction convention, I was interviewed alongside a well-established novelist. One of the questions they asked him was what he thought about the state of short fiction, and he declared it dead or dying. Naturally, I couldn’t let that go unchallenged. It’s disheartening to still be hearing this sort of statement echoing from corners of the field, but it typically comes from comparison to the heyday of genre magazines and a time where the subscriber counts for most magazines were artificially inflated by the impact of Publishers Clearinghouse.
For some time, genre magazine subscriber numbers were in freefall, but that “dead or dying” viewpoint ignores the digital explosion of the last decade. Not only were new market opportunities created, but the old print stalwarts were basically reinvigorated by the sales of their digital editions. Perhaps I am too close to this—my entire career is a result of these changes— but the turn-around saved and brought new life into the field.
Are things as healthy as they should be? No. I’ve addressed that in previous introductions. The number of new readers coming into short fiction is increasing, but not at the rate it needs to to adequately support the number of new markets being created. That said, the market adjustment I’ve been expecting hasn’t yet materialized to the level I feared. (We’re not out of the woods yet, friends.) While more than a few markets have shuttered in the last two years and some are still employing questionable business models, that sort of churn isn’t terribly unusual for the field even in the best of times. What I haven’t seen is a high-profile closure or recent “save market X” campaigns. That sign of stability is good. You need that before you can grow.
Through the small press and crowdfunding efforts to publish anthologies
