Кейт Эллиот: The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021

While I was working with Veronica as her novel editor, one of the things that stuck in my mind was how when she went to Worldcon for the first time in 2019, she read every piece of short fiction on that year’s ( and the previous year’s) Hugo ballot. I also learned that she was a huge fan of Frank Herbert’s Dune and the works of Madeleine L’Engle and Philip K. Dick. And that she was likewise already a fan of several contemporary masters such as Nnedi Okorafor, Charlie Jane Anders, Ted Chiang, and Seanan McGuire—​all authors who have either been reprinted in BASFF or had Notable Stories selections. Once I factored all that in, the editorial calculus told me she’d make a very fine guest editor . . . and, after you read the stories, I think you’ll agree that my math has never been more right.

Veronica, her husband, Nelson, and her dog, Avi, live in Chicago, a city she deeply loves and deeply loves destroying.

The stories chosen for this anthology were originally published between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2020. The technical criteria for consideration are (1) original publication in a nationally distributed North American publication (i.e., periodicals, collections, or anthologies, in print, online, or e-book); (2) publication in English by writers who are North American, or who have made North America their home; (3) publication as text (audiobook, podcast, dramatized, interactive, and other forms of fiction are not considered); (4) original publication as short fiction (excerpts of novels are not knowingly considered); (5) story length of 17,499 words or less; (6) at least loosely categorized as science fiction or fantasy; (7) publication by someone other than the author (i.e., self-published works are not eligible); and (8) publication as an original work of the author (i.e., not part of a media tie-in/licensed fiction program).

As series editor, I attempted to read everything I could find that meets the above selection criteria. After doing all of my reading, I created a list of what I felt were the top eighty stories (forty science fiction and forty fantasy) published in the genre. Those eighty stories—​hereinafter referred to as the “Top 80”—​were sent to the guest editor, who read them and then chose the best twenty (ten science fiction, ten fantasy) for inclusion in the anthology. The guest editor reads all of the stories anonymously—​with no bylines attached to them, nor any information about where the story originally appeared.

The guest editor’s top twenty selections appear in this volume; the remaining sixty stories that did not make it into the anthology are listed in the back of this book as “Other Notable Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories of 2020.”

In order to select the Top 80 stories published in the SF/F genres in 2020, I considered several thousand stories from a wide array of anthologies, collections, and magazines. As per usual, because there is so much good material published in any given year, it was difficult to decide which stories were among the “best,” and so, outside of my Top 80, I ended up with another sixty or so stories that were of similar high quality.

The Top 80 this year were drawn from forty-three different publications: twenty-six periodicals, thirteen anthologies, two single-author collections, and one stand-alone digital chapbook. The final table of contents draws from seventeen different sources: eleven periodicals five anthologies, and one single-author collection. Tor.com, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Lightspeed are tied for the most selections (two); every other venue represented in the table of contents has one story each.

Only two of the authors selected for this volume (Daryl Gregory and Ken Liu) previously appeared in BASFF; thus the remaining authors are appearing for the first time. This is the second appearance for both Gregory and Liu.

Four periodicals appear in BASFF for the first time this year. Three of those are long-storied literary magazines not particularly known for publishing genre works: The Paris Review, A Public Space, and One Story. The fourth periodical to join BASFF ’s ranks is Fantasy Magazine, a trailblazer in online fiction publishing that returned in 2020 after several years of hiatus. All of the above (save for Paris Review ) were included in our Top 80 for the first time this year, and joining them are Alta, Apparition Lit, Daily Science Fiction, and Drabblecast.

Several authors were tied for the most stories in the Top 80, with two each: A. T. Greenblatt, Alix E. Harrow, Charlie Jane Anders, KT Bryski, Ken Liu, Maurice Broaddus, Sofia Samatar, Stephen Graham Jones, Yohanca Delgado (with both being selected for inclusion), and Yoon Ha Lee. Overall, seventy different authors are represented in the Top 80.

Sarah Pinsker’s and Meg Elison’s stories selected for inclusion, “Two Truths and a Lie” and “The Pill,” were both named finalists for the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Awards. Pinsker’s story was the winner of the Nebula for Best Novelette and was also nominated for the Bram Stoker Award.

Among the Notable Stories, there were three stories that were named finalists for the Hugo Award: “The Mermaid Astronaut,” by Yoon Ha Lee; “Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse,” by Rae Carson; and “Burn, or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super,” by A. T. Greenblatt. All three were also finalists for the Locus Award.

The latter two stories above were also finalists for the Nebula Award, as were the following Notable Stories: “Stepsister, ” by Leah Cypess; “Advanced Word Problems in Portal Math,” by Aimee Picchi; “The Eight-Thousanders,” by Jason Sanford; and “Shadow Prisons,” by Caroline M. Yoachim.

In addition to the stories named above, the following Notable Stories were also Locus Award finalists: “If You Take My Meaning,” by Charlie Jane Anders; “A Whisper of Blue,” by Ken Liu; “Fairy Tales for Robots,” by Sofia Samatar; “The Sycamore and the Sybil,” by Alix E. Harrow; and “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Gods,” by Maria Dahvana Headley.

One story, “The Bone-Stag Walks,” by KT Bryski, was a finalist for the Aurora Award.

Note: the final results of some of the awards mentioned above won’t be known until after this text is locked for production, but will be known by the time the book is published.

The following anthologies all had stories selected for inclusion in this year’s volume: Burn the Ashes, edited by me, Hugh Howey, and Christie Yant (volume 2 of the Dystopia Triptych); Take Us to a Better Place: Stories, presented by [2] I’ve taken to using the phrasing “presented by” (rather than “edited by”) in situations such as this where you have a book of short stories that is clearly an anthology, but it is published in such a way that does not credit an anthology editor. In some cases, such as this one, an organization is credited; other times, there is only a publisher. the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Made to Order: Robots and Revolution, edited by Jonathan Strahan; The Book of Dragons, edited by Jonathan Strahan; and Faraway, presented by Amazon Original Stories.

Several other anthologies had stories in the Top 80: the other two volumes of the Dystopia Triptych ( Ignorance Is Strength and Or Else the Light ), edited by me, Hugh Howey, and Christie Yant; Entanglements, edited by Sheila Williams; Escape Pod: The Science Fiction Anthology, edited by Mur Lafferty and S. B. Divya; The Decameron Project, presented by the New York Times; Out of Line, presented by Amazon Original Stories; Psi-Wars, edited by Joshua Viola; and Us in Flux, presented by the ASU Center for Science and the Imagination. The anthologies with the most stories in the Top 80 were Made to Order: Robots and Revolution (three); The Book of Dragons (three); Or Else the Light (two); and Take Us to a Better Place: Stories (two).