Кейт Эллиот: The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021

Plenty of anthologies published fine work in 2020 but just didn’t end up with a story in the Top 80. Here’s a partial list: Breathe FIYAH, edited by Brent Lambert and DaVaun Sanders; Avatars, Inc., edited by Ann VanderMeer; Miscreations: Gods, Monstrosities & Other Horrors, edited by Doug Murano and Michael Bailey; A Phoenix Must Burn: Sixteen Stories of Black Girl Magic, Resistance, and Hope, edited by Patrice Caldwell; The Dystopian States of America, edited by Matt Bechtel; Recognize Fascism, edited by Crystal Huff; Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy 3, edited by William Schafer; Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World That Wouldn’t Die, edited by dave ring; Final Cuts, edited by Ellen Datlow; Evil in Technicolor, edited by Joe M. McDermott; Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora, edited by Zelda Knight and Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald; My Battery Is Low and It Is Getting Dark, edited by Patricia Bray and Joshua Palmatier; Galactic Stew, edited by David B. Coe and Joshua Palmatier; and Apocalyptic, edited by S. C. Butler and Joshua Palmatier.

One collection had a story selected for inclusion this year: Big Girl, by Meg Elison. The only other collection represented in the Top 80 was Nine Bar Blues, by Sheree Renée Thomas.

Here are some other notable collections that included excellent work in 2020. Some of these contained only reprints, and thus had no eligible material, but I’m acknowledging them here anyway in order to shine a light on good works: Universal Love, by Alexander Weinstein; Why Visit America, by Matthew Baker; The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, by Ken Liu; Velocities: Stories, by Kathe Koja; Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies, by John Langan; The Road to Woop Woop, by Eugen Bacon; The Best of Elizabeth Bear, by Elizabeth Bear; The Best of Jeffrey Ford, by Jeffrey Ford; If It Bleeds, by Stephen King; The Postutopian Adventures of Darger and Surplus, by Michael Swanwick; The Grand Tour, by E. Catherine Tobler; and The Midnight Circus, by Jane Yolen.

More than a hundred periodicals were considered throughout the year in my hunt for the Top 80 stories. I read magazines both large and small and sought out the genre stories that might have been lurking in the pages of a literary and/or mainstream periodical.

The following magazines all had work representing them in the Top 80 this year: Asimov’s (three), Clarkesworld (three), Fireside (two), FIYAH (two), Future Tense (two), Lightspeed (seven), The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (six), Nightmare (four), Strange Horizons (two), Tor.com (eight), and Uncanny (three). The following periodicals had one story each: Alta, Analog, Apex, Apparition Lit, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Conjunctions, Daily Science Fiction, Drabblecast, Fairy Tale Review, Fantasy Magazine, Granta, One Story, PodCastle, The Paris Review, and A Public Space.

The following magazines didn’t have any material in the Top 80 this year, but did publish stories that I had under serious consideration: The Adroit Journal, Baen.com, Cape Cod Poetry Review, The Dark, Escape Pod, Flash Fiction Online, Gargoyle, Kaleidotrope, Ploughshares, Pseudopod, Terraform, and Weird Tales.

Normally this is where I’d issue some requiem for the magazines that have ceased publication in the past year, but despite all of the actual, tragic deaths this year due to the pandemic, periodicals seem to have somehow thrived (or at least survived ). In fact, I don’t see any notable periodicals that folded in 2020, which is rather remarkable, and in fact, at least two top magazines returned from the dead: Apex and Fantasy. There were also a handful of promising new magazines announced I’ll be keeping an eye on as they start publishing in 2021: Constelación (which will be publishing simultaneously in English and Spanish), Dark Matter, Mermaids Monthly, and The Deadlands.

As always, I implore you to support the short fiction publishers you love. If you can, subscribe (even if they offer content for free!), review, spread the word. Every little bit helps.

We all need a little help from our friends whenever we embark on any project, and BASFF is no different. As of last year, assistant series editor Christopher Cevasco was my right hand, helping me chart the stars and navigate the cosmos (of SF/F). Additionally, as in years past, big thanks to Alex Puncekar and Christie Yant, who again provided some editorial support. Much appreciation to you all!

I’d also like to thank Fariza Hawke, who is now the in-house person who wrangles BASFF -related matters at Mariner Books. Thanks too to David Steffen, who runs the Submission Grinder, a writer’s market database, for his assistance in helping me do some oversight on my list of new and extinct markets mentioned above.

Huge thanks too to the authors who take the time to let me know when they have eligible works, either by just dropping me a line or else by submitting them via my BASFF online submissions portal. I’m also grateful to publishers and editors who proactively send me review copies of anthologies, collections, and periodicals—​especially the ones that do so unprompted and don’t wait until December to send a year’s worth of material.

Editors, writers, and publishers who would like their work considered for next year’s edition (the best of 2021), please visit johnjosephadams​.com/​best​-american for instructions on how to submit material for consideration.

I keep thinking about this quote, from Hungarian playwright András Visky: “Nothing is more surreal than reality.” Visky was a political prisoner in Romania in the late fifties and early sixties; the context of this quote was discovering his name on a government list of “people of interest” years later. The surreal part is: he was two years old when the list was made.

Nothing is more surreal than reality.

Last year was full of unreality. I remember the day the lockdown order was announced, hurrying to the grocery store to stock up for two weeks—​two weeks of lockdown sounds hilarious to me now—​finding the shelves cleared of toilet paper, cleaning products, and cans of beans, the freezer section empty except for a lonely bag of cauliflower, people with shopping carts heaped high, everyone quiet, afraid to touch, afraid to breathe.

Then weeks later, sucking in fabric with every breath, walking those same aisles with arrows telling me which direction to go and Xs taped on the ground to show me what six feet is, plexiglass between me and the cashier. A map of the United States always open on my husband’s computer with red splotches documenting the spread; it was months before we stopped watching the death toll. We played the board game Pandemic over Zoom with his sister because it was the only board game we had in common, and we lost. And we laughed about it, because sometimes you gotta.

Or this: pulling up to the parking lot of a defunct dentist office so that a person dressed all in blue with only her eyes showing can reach into my car to shove a pipe cleaner up my nose, and I think about how lucky I am to have easy access to said pipe cleaner.