The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 Edition Read online

  THE YEAR’S BEST

  SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY:

  2016 EDITION

  RICH HORTON

  In memory of my father, John Richard Horton (1931-2015).

  Copyright © 2016 by Rich Horton.

  Cover art by Sylphe_7.

  Cover design by Stephen H. Segal & Sherin Nicole.

  Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

  All stories are copyrighted to their respective authors, and used here with their permission.

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-478-2 (ebook)

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-470-6 (trade paperback)

  PRIME BOOKS

  www.prime-books.com

  No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.

  For more information, contact Prime Books at [email protected].

  Contents

  Introduction, Rich Horton

  Mutability, Ray Nayler

  And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead, Brooke Bolander

  Cat Pictures Please, Naomi Kritzer

  Capitalism in the 22nd Century, or AIr, Geoff Ryman

  The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild, Catherynne M. Valente

  My Last Bringback, John Barnes

  Please Undo This Hurt, Seth Dickinson

  Time Bomb Time, C.C. Finlay

  The Graphology of Hemorrhage, Yoon Ha Lee

  The Game of Smash and REcovery, Kelly Link

  Acres of Perhaps, Will Ludwigsen

  Little Sisters, Vonda N. McIntyre

  Folding Beijing, Hao Jingfang, translated by Ken Liu

  Today I am Paul, Martin L. Shoemaker

  The King in the Cathedral, Rich Larson

  Drones, Simon Ings

  The Karen Joy Fowler Book Club, Nike Sulway

  Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

  This Evening’s Performance, Genevieve Valentine

  Consolation, John Kessel

  The Heart’s Filthy Lesson, Elizabeth Bear

  The Daughters of John Demetrius, Joe Pitkin

  Unearthly Landscape by a Lady, Rebecca Campbell

  The Astrakhan, the Homburg, and the red, red coal, Chaz Brenchley

  Hello, Hello, Seanan McGuire

  Twelve and Tag, Gregory Norman Bossert

  The Deepwater Bride, Tamsyn Muir

  Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Idea Countess Rathagan, Ian McDonald

  Asymptotic, Andy Dudak

  The Two Paupers, C.S.E. Cooney

  Biographies

  Recommended Reading

  Publication History

  About the Editor

  The Year in Fantasy and Science Fiction, 2015

  Rich Horton

  Let’s Not Let Custom Stale Our Infinite Variety

  We’ve seen a lot of talk about “slates” in the field the past couple of years, much of it disparaging a couple of prominent nomination slates for the Hugo Awards. I was disturbed by the “Sad Puppy” effort last year, and much more so by the “Rabid Puppy” slate (which went so far as to direct a strategic nomination ballot). But all along I’ve been keenly aware that I have engaged in recommending stories for the Hugo for years. Of course for the past decade that has primarily been merely by publishing this series of books—you can certainly assume that any story I reprint is a story I’d be thrilled to see win an award. And in the past I have also, on occasion, posted my own nomination ballot. So what is wrong with slates?

  Well, really, nothing, as long as they are presented as a set of recommendations, and as long as one presumes that people will use the recommendations as a spur to further reading, and not as a voting guide similar to those political parties publish. All my lists, for one thing (and certainly the tables of contents for these books), include more stories than anyone can nominate for a Hugo. The point is to promote reading great stories! That’s all my anthologies are about—a way to put great stories in front of more readers. And in the end, that should be the main point of awards of all sorts: a way to bring great work to wider attention, to wider readership. That’s worth much more than a shiny rocketship!

  I will confess that I have always enjoyed nominating and voting for the Hugos. The process is, for me, fun. But I remain at some level uneasy about a strict ranking of works of art. How can I say that, to take examples from this book, “Mutability” is better than “Little Sisters”? Or “The Karen Joy Fowler Book Club” better than “Consolation”? I can’t! And not because “it’s all a matter of taste.” Individual taste is a factor, to be sure, but I still believe that some stories are better than others, and not just because I like one kind of thing more than something else. But, also, each story is trying to do something different, and there’s no reason the lush, linguistic larks of “The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild” are intrinsically better than the tense and twisty hard science fiction of “Twelve and Tag.” There’s no reason a dark and emotionally fraught piece like “Please Undo This Hurt” is to be necessarily preferred to a romp like “Cat Pictures Please.” (There is, however, reason to prefer a well-written story to an ungrammatical mess, or an original work to a pile of clichés, or a tightly executed plot to one with holes you could parade ogres through.)

  All this is partly why I publish both fantasy and science fiction in these books and a reason my definitions of the genres are pretty broad and why I like to make sure there’s a range of tones to the stories I reprint and a range of sources and a range of writers. Variety is a pleasure in itself. This field is very rich, and we should celebrate its riches at every chance. This book has exotic fantasy. It has steampunk (and dieselpunk!). It has near-future speculation. A Lovecraftian story! Something as indescribable as Nike Sulway’s “The Karen Joy Fowler Book Club,” which is about intelligent hippopotami of all things! Interplanetary science fiction. Several stories about art. (Lots of stories about art or writing . . . that may be a matter of my own personal inclinations, I admit!) A nonstop action-adventure piece. Strange but plausible biology. Far future science fiction, a time travel story, a story about a TV show. Military science fiction.

  The variety of the field is confirmed by the variety of sources for new short fiction. Starting with the traditional print “Big Three” magazines in the US: Analog, Asimov’s, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Analog publishes, by preference, “hard science fiction” with a fair amount of adventure-oriented stories and military science fiction. It also, these days, seems to me to prefer near-future sociological speculation that reminds me of the early years of Galaxy: speculation often based on quirky exaggerations of current trends or the possibilities of new technology. The content has been increasingly interesting under new editor Trevor Quachri. Asimov’s also publishes mostly science fiction (with an occasional fantasy mixed in), but a generally broader mix. For my taste, under long-tenured editor Sheila Williams, Asimov’s remains consistently the best print magazine in the field. F&SF also has a new editor, C.C. Finlay. As the title suggests, it publishes a fairly even mix of fantasy and science fiction.

  The leading UK magazine for quite some time has been Interzone, edited by Andy Cox. Interzone publishes both science fiction and fantasy, and under Cox it seems to have a tropism for more highly colored science fiction, stranger stuff. Cox also edits Black Static, a horror magazine, with what seems a perhaps cliched British quietude and generally excellent writing. The newest notable magazine is Galaxy’s Edge, which publishes mostly science fiction, a lot of new writers, and some outstanding reprints.

  From Australia comes Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, which�
��among a wide variety of styles—shows a certain predilection for comic stories.

  And from Canada comes On Spec, perhaps a bit on the staid (or, dare I say, polite) side, but worthwhile and generally quite well-written.

  It’s no secret nowadays that much of the action in short fiction is online. I have a personal stake here, as I’m the reprint editor at Lightspeed, so I won’t try to rank the sites. Lightspeed itself publishes a purposely even mix of science fiction and fantasy, and an even mix of reprints and new fiction; a fairly broad approach to the field. We also reprint a longer story each month in the ebook edition. Clarkesworld is another highly esteemed ezine, publishing more science fiction than fantasy as a rule. It also publishes some reprints, and it tends to publish longer stories than many ezines. In the past year, it has been publishing a lot of translated science fiction, mostly from China—much of this very good indeed. The oldest surviving prominent ezine is Strange Horizons, which has a reputation of hospitality to slipstream and more overtly literary stories. That said, in reality it features plenty of science fiction as well as fantasy and slipstream. Another important ezine is Apex, which began as a print magazine with a focus on horror (particularly science fiction horror), but migrated online and turned to a broader mix, perhaps not dissimilar to that of Strange Horizons. Uncanny is a new online magazine with an express intent to publish truly weird stories—an intent it has achieved so far. For fantasy, particularly adventure fantasy, the top online magazine is probably Beneath Ceaseless Skies, though we shouldn’t neglect a couple that are more purely focused on adventure fantasy: Swords and Sorcery Magazine and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. For horror, look to Lightspeed’s companion, Nightmare, and also to The Dark, not officially a companion of Clarkesworld, but co-edited by one of Clarkesworld’s editors (and the publisher of this book), Sean Wallace. Daily Science Fiction publishes a lot of new stuff (as the name suggests) and quite a wide variety. Abyss and Apex is another long-running online ’zine with a broad remit. And for longer fiction, Giganotosaurus is a great place to go: long novelettes and novellas, both fantasy and science fiction, much of it very fine.

  I haven’t mentioned one of the most important sources of new short fiction: Tor.com. They publish stories of all sorts, including occasional reprints, some longer stories as well, and also some graphic stories. Their quality has been consistently high. Last year Tor began a series of novellas as well: a great way to get more fiction of that tricky length to us.

  Of course beyond the magazine field there are still plenty of anthologies. This year saw excellent outings from Ellen Datlow (particularly The Doll Collection), Jonathan Strahan (particularly Meeting Infinity), Sean Wallace (The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk), the very busy John Joseph Adams (Operation Arcana, Press Start to Play, The End Has Come, etc.), and the team of Gardner Dozois and George R.R. Martin, who gave us Old Venus. That just scratches the surface. I ought also to mention a few very near-future oriented hard science fiction anthologies: the continuing series from the MIT Technology Review, Twelve Tomorrows; and a fine book from Microsoft, Future Visions. Finally, a number of stories were published in standalone ebook format, many of these novellas: “The Two Paupers” and “Little Sisters” (both included here) and also a new long story by Lois McMaster Bujold, “Penric’s Demon.”

  This variety of sources, styles, and forms of new short science fiction and fantasy can be imposing. It certainly contributes to the fractioning of the field, so much so that few, if any, can really say they’ve read anything significant. (Which contributes to the controversy over awards: much of it consists of partisans for one story or another arguing with other partisans, neither side having read the other side’s favorites.) But in the end, that’s a feature, not a bug—better to have great stories you can’t get around to reading than to run out of great stories! At any rate, here’s hoping that this book will introduce you to a new set of great science fiction and fantasy!

  Mutability

  Ray Nayler

  We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;

  How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,

  Streaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soon

  Night closes round, and they are lost forever:

  —Percy Bysshe Shelley

  It was an almost perfect café. It was in a red brick building built sometime in the early twentieth century: a mass of art deco, faux-Moorish and Russian influences, punctuated with stained glass and onion domes. You entered through an Arabian Nights archway into an anteroom of cracked hexagonal tiles and robin’s-egg plaster. Here, you could take off your coat and hang it on one of the brass hooks along the right-hand wall. Turn left through another arch—this one crawling with chipped plaster grapevines—you were in the main room. This room had a domed ceiling like a mosque or a Turkish bath house, blue Byzantine tiles on the floor, and layers of crumbling posters on the walls interspersed with framed pictures and notes signed by customers. The age-spotted mirrors and dusty bottles of an ancient, hand-carved bar dominated one side of the room.

  The bar was where the owner was always to be found, rubbing his shaved head, staring at a game of chess. He always played against one of three different opponents. Opponent One was a gaunt man in a dirty collared shirt who chewed, repulsively, on a piece of string hanging from the corner of his mouth. Opponent Two was a heavy, slope-shouldered man. He kept his coat on and played quickly and impatiently. Opponent Three was a girl, thirteen or so, with a nose she was trying to grow into and blonde hair that looked like it had been rubbed in ashes. One so rarely saw children these days. Very serious, she always came in with a book—a real book. Where was she getting them?

  It was unclear who won any of the long, silent games. Once they were over, Opponent One or Opponent Two would get up and leave, with no hint of triumph or desolation. Opponent Three would stay and read her book for hours, accepting the occasional cocoa on the counter nearby while the owner busied himself with other things. His child? Who knew? The owner never spoke to the café’s customers, with the exception of these three.

  The rest of the room was filled with tables, chairs, and light. The tables were an assortment of round café tables, square or rectangular tables from restaurants or offices long since gone, high tile-topped wrought-iron tables of the kind you might find in a garden or on a balcony somewhere, big scarred oaken slabs that might have come from a warehouse or factory. The chairs were also a mix: some straight-backed, some cane, some wicker, some just plain stools. All were defective in their unique way, and all demanded different techniques for getting comfortable. The chairs and tables were never to be found in quite the same configuration when Sebastian came in in the mornings. The light was never in the same configuration either: it fell piebald through the stained glass panels at the top of the windows in a moody shift along the tiles and tables and chairs, dependent on cloud and season.

  And so the café had the feeling, at once, of agelessness—its ancient building, its collection of rescued furniture like a museum of other places, its continual game of chess in the corner—and of change: the patterns of color-stained light and the restless puzzle of tables and chairs. All this, and the coffee, sandwiches, and macaroons were excellent. All this, and the service was good.

  But what made it nearly perfect was Sebastian’s place in the corner, against the wall furthest from the entrance, by the windows. Here there was an enormous, worn, purple-velvet armchair and a massive oak table. There was enough room on that ancient table to spread his work out; the terminal and the notebooks he liked to use when he wanted the mechanical action of writing by hand, the cup of coffee brought steaming to the table by one of the students from the nearby universities who worked here (they were like the light and the chairs and tables, moving always elsewhere). The waiters never came around to ask if he wanted anything else, but they were always near the bar, scanning the customers for a motion that meant something was needed, that meant it was time for the check.

  He had found the café at a
terrible time in his life. He felt, in a way, as though the café had saved him. The long days of work, or of just watching the light slide across the floor, or just watching other customers—in hushed conversation, or bent over their terminals, or just staring off at nothing—made him feel a quiet part of something. He was welcome here. He was known, but left alone. He could work here in a way he could never work at home. At home, when he tried to attack a particularly difficult problem in the work, something would distract him. Hours later he would find himself staring blankly into his terminal, reading about god knows what insignificant detail of research on something completely unrelated to what he had been looking for. Here, surrounded by pleasant, human-scale distractions, he found his focus.

  Sebastian had noticed her long before she approached him. More exactly, he had noticed her notice him. He’d looked up and caught her staring at him. Later he would examine the moment: rain outside that the wind occasionally drove against the windows, streaking through the dust in alluvial fans toward the bottom of the glass. A special feeling of refuge in the café that day. The smell that the rain brought in along with new customers seeking shelter—one of whom was this tall, dark-haired woman in a gray dress and moss-green scarf. It was a hard, autumn rain that said winter was coming, a rain that drove the loosening gold leaves from their branches to the ground. He had not seen her before, and he caught her looking at him—really looking at him, in a way at once rude and mystifying. She looked away when he looked up, but he was aware of her glancing at him while he worked. The rain hammered the streets and the buildings outside and the place filled up with more dripping refugees. When he came home that evening, the maple in the courtyard, which that morning had been wrapped in red and yellow, was a winter skeleton.

  The next day she was there early. She stayed most of the day, with a terminal for company. Also the day after. On the fourth day she stopped him in the anteroom. Outside, the evening street was shadow-colored. Above the buildings, the flushed undersides of clouds were dark blue and salmon. He was lifting his ancient shooting jacket from a hook. She came in, reached for a threadbare peacoat. Then she stopped, resting her hand on the collar of her coat, and turned to him.