The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2017 Edition Read online

  THE YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY: 2017 EDITION

  RICH HORTON

  For my brothers, Jim, Bill, Paul, and Pat; and my sister Ann Lucas;

  and in memory of my sister Peggy.

  Copyright © 2017 by Rich Horton.

  Cover art by Luca Oleastri.

  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: 978-1-60701-492-8 (ebook)

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-491-1 (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: The Year in Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2016 | Rich Horton

  Project Empathy | Dominica Phetteplace

  Fifty Shades of Grays | Steven Barnes

  All That Robot Shit | Rich Larson

  That Game We Played During the War | Carrie Vaughn

  Blood Grains Speak Through Memories | Jason Sanford

  A Non-Hero’s Guide to the Road of Monsters | A. T. Greenblatt

  Empty Planets | Rahul Kanakia

  Lazy Dog Out | Suzanne Palmer

  Things With Beards | Sam J. Miller

  Red in Tooth and Cog | Cat Rambo

  The Magical Properties of Unicorn Ivory | Carlos Hernandez

  Ozymandias | Karin Lowachee

  In Skander, for a Boy | Chaz Brenchley

  Between Nine and Eleven | Adam Roberts

  Gorse Daughter, Sparrow Son | Alena Indigo Anne Sullivan

  The Visitor from Taured | Ian R. MacLeod

  RedKing | Craig DeLauncey

  A Fine Balance | Charlotte Ashley

  The Bridge of Dreams | Gregory Feeley

  I’ve Come to Marry the Princess | Helena Bell

  Something Happened Here, But We’re Not Quite Sure What It Was | Paul McAuley

  Innumerable Glimmering Lights | Rich Larson

  The Plague Givers | Kameron Hurley

  Laws of Night and Silk | Seth Dickinson

  Seven Ways of Looking at the Sun-Worshippers of Yul-Katan | Maggie Clark

  Openness | Alexander Weinstein

  Rager in Space | Charlie Jane Anders

  Dress Rehearsal | Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Everybody from Themis Sends Letters Home | Genevieve Valentine

  The Vanishing Kind | Lavie Tidhar

  Biographies

  Recommended Reading

  Publication History

  About the Editor

  Introduction: The Year in Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2016

  Rich Horton

  The State of the Art

  The first thought I have every year contemplating these introductions is to review again the state of the science fiction field—perhaps the field as the whole, or the short fiction slice of it. I confess that after a while this gets perhaps a bit old hat: it’s hard to see overarching trends on a year by year basis, and much of what one says seems repetitive over time.

  This year one is tempted as well to try to make a broader analogy between what is happening in the field and what is happening in the political world. It is easy—indeed too easy, too facile—to draw parallels between the Rabid Puppy movement and Donald Trump’s ascendancy. I don’t have the energy to do so, I confess. Those I’ve seen seem, as I’ve suggested, facile. I don’t doubt there are resonances between the two subjects, but there’s no simple A is A comparison there. And we frankly give ourselves—or give the Hugo Awards—too much importance if we try to act like an award nomination is of the same consequence as a Presidential election.

  Another familiar way to assess the state of the field is to look at us through the lens of popular culture. Or, more simple, the movies. Science fiction has been treated better and better in the cinema of late, it seems to me. In 2015 we saw several outstanding movies (most notably The Martian, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Ex Machina), but none of them were based on a truly great piece of written SF (though the novel The Martian is pretty good, and great fun). In 2016 we finally saw an outstanding sf movie, Arrival, based on a great piece of short sf: Ted Chiang’s 1998 novella “Story of Your Life,” which I think is in the conversation to be the greatest science fiction novella of all time. Arrival is serious and moving and beautifully made. I’d have called “Story of Your Life” unfilmable, and in a way Arrival confirms that judgement: it’s an excellent try, but I do feel it falls short of the novella, and precisely by missing some of what I found mindblowing in Chiang’s story. But that failure on its part is mainly in that it was aiming so high: I can’t complain about a good try falling just short of such a masterwork.

  SF’s inroads into what might be called “higher culture” continue much as for the past few years. We continue to see well done pieces of fantastika in magazines like the New Yorker, Tin House, etc. Notable from the New Yorker last year was Karen Russell’s “The Bog Girl.” And my favorite came from a smaller “little magazine,” Beloit Fiction Journal, though I found it in the author’s excellent debug collection. This is “Openness,” by Alexander Weinstein, which we feature in this book.

  As for the more mundane “State of the Field” as measured by the health of the short fiction venues, 2016 seemed much in line with the last few years. The major change was announced towards the end of the year: as of 2017 Asimov’s and Analog (as well as their crime fiction stablemates Ellery Queen’s and Alfred Hitchcock’s) will be going to bimonthly publication of roughly double-sized issues. This echoes a move made by F&SF several years past. Thus there are no remaining monthly SF magazines (or even nearly monthly as those two actually have been.)

  The online segment also continued much as before, with very strong years from Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, who continue these days as the “usual suspects,” not to mention Tor.com, which I don’t necessarily think of as a “webzine” but which is one, really. There was plenty of strong work elsewhere as well, in such places as the venerable Strange Horizons, the always intriguing Uncanny, and the energetic Daily Science Fiction. The most exciting new entry for me was Mothership Zeta, devoted to what they called “fun” sf and fantasy. Alas, they’ve gone on hiatus after the first six issues, but they hope to return. This book features A. T. Greenblatt’s “The Non-Hero’s Guide to the Road on Monsters,” which, as I hope you’ll agree, definitely satisfies the “fun” requirement.

  As for original anthologies, I was very happy to see a pair of books celebrating NewCon Press’s tenth anniversary: Now We Are Ten and Crises and Conflicts. I have chosen a story from each for this book (“Dress Rehearsal” by Adrian Tchaikovsky and “Now We Are Ten” by Adam Roberts) and there was also very fine work from Nina Allan, Bryony Pearce, Nancy Kress, and Mercurio D. Rivera among others. And, of course, each year we look forward to the latest of Jonathan Strahan’s “Infinity” series: 2016’s Bridging Infinity once again included multiple stories I chose to reprint. The other original anthology featured here represents another ongoing series, Mike Allen’s Clockwork Phoenix, which is a great source of stories that don’t care much what genre they fit.

  One newish way to get new short fiction is directly from the writers, via Patreon. (Not that there hasn’t been writer-sourced short fiction before: Bruce Holland Rogers’ subscription based short-short service, delivered via email, comes to mind.) I’ve seen excellent work on Patreon from a couple of writers recently (and I’m sure there are more): Tim Pratt and Kameron Hurley. Both have published a good deal of strong work there—this year I particularly liked Hurley’s “The Plague Givers,” which was first reprinted in Uncanny, and is included in this book. (Hurley also had excellent work in Lightspeed (via Patreon) and in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.)

  Perhaps the best way to talk about the state of the field at any given time is to celebrate the writers who are, after all, the creators of the state of the field. And if we’re talking about how the field is changing, we’re talking to a great extent about new writers. For me, as an anthologist, I’m very interested in the writers I’m publishing for the first time—on the average, almost half the writers in any of my books are in one of my books for the first time. To be sure, these aren’t always new writers! So it’s a delight for me to be publishing a story by Steven Barnes (“Fifty Shades of Grays”) for the first time—though the first story I remember reading by him was “The Locusts” (with Larry Niven), way back in 1979, when I was still in college. (The main reason it took me so long to publish one of his stories, I trust, is that he is primarily a novelist.) Likewise, Cat Rambo has been publishing a whole lot of interesting short fiction over the past fifteen years, and it’s great to have her one of these volumes for the first time. For that matter, this is the first time we’ve had a Kameron Hurley story—I feel that I’ve been remiss in both cases! Not to mention Jason Sanford, who has been one of the most original and adventurous writers of strange sf for the past decade, often in Interzone. And Karin Lowachee, another writer who hasn’t published a whole lot of short fiction in a career spanning more than two decades.

  It’s really exciting to see all the very new writers appearing f
or the first time here, writers like Charlotte Ashley, Rahul Kanakia, Craig DeLancey, Suzanne Palmer, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Alena Indigo Anne Sullivan, A. T. Greenblatt, Helena Bell, Carlos Hernandez, Maggie Clark, Dominica Phetteplace, Sam J. Miller and the aforementioned Alexander Weinstein. The constant emergence of new writers is a special joy for me, as a reviewer, anthologist, and in a very modest way something of an historian of the sf field. It is new voices that move the field in new directions, that keep the field young and relevant.

  And in that context, it is particularly exciting to note a writer like Rich Larson—not new to these books (we featured “The King in the Cathedral” last year)—but pretty new to publishing (his first story appeared in 2012), and remarkably prolific over a really impressive range of themes, tone, and subject matter. He published so many good stories least year we felt compelled to pick two for this book . . . and I’m sure we’ll see a lot more exceptional stuff.

  Amid all this talk of new writers, however, the veterans are pretty darn important, too. Gregory Feeley appeared in the very first volume of a predecessor to this series (Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2006), and I’m excited to have a challenging new sf story from him. Ian R. MacLeod, Genevieve Valentine, Charlie Jane Anders, Lavie Tidhar, and Adam Roberts have all been in these books three times or more—which his appropriate as they are three of the best writers we have. Which leaves a couple more writers appearing for the second time: Seth Dickinson, another very new and interesting talent; Chaz Brenchley, who probably deserved to be here a lot more often than he has; and Carrie Vaughn, who frankly I thought I had reprinted a lot more often (I know she was on the short list many more times).

  I think it’s clear that the sf field remains vibrant and exciting, with an intriguing mix of brand new writers, young stars on the rise, and well-established veterans. As ever, this book tries to showcase that entire range, and of course to present the best new short sf and fantasy, remembering that it is often at shorter lengths that the newest and freshest creations first appear.

  Project Empathy

  Dominica Phetteplace

  Bel and I both worked for Blue Cup.

  She got the job because she had good personality scores and above average social media metrics. She was a junior and captain of the dance team. On her tryout, she took orders and served drinks with what her evaluators described as “warmth” and “grace.” Over a hundred teenagers auditioned, only Bel was offered a position.

  Blue Cup requires close surveillance on all its employees. They want access to every interaction, both in-person and online. This normally requires the implantation of a standard Watcher chip.

  In Bel’s case, she was fitted with a prototype of the newest version of the Watcher, the creatively titled Watcher 2.0. Not everyone can afford to care about rights and privacy. She agreed to the terms of use without even reading them.

  The talent required to be a great Blue Cup host is rare, and the difference between a great host and the merely good can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars at a single location. At Blue Cup anyone who was a frequent buyer could be Bel’s friend, both in the café and at school, provided they kept their purchase count high.

  Regular guests are to be greeted by name. Interactions are not (yet) scripted, hosts are paid to know what to say and when. Bel will remember your drink or compliment your appearance. She will mention the picture you posted online or make some comment about last weekend’s crazy party. If you were not invited to last weekend’s party, she will secure you an invitation to next weekend’s party. In this way, the social structures of the nearby high school are converted into drink purchases at Blue Cup.

  It is not enough to be popular; a great Blue Cup host will be liked and accepted by almost all cliques. She helps others fit in without being disruptive to hierarchies. Underperforming hosts are rotated out of the cast, but high performing hosts are often retained at great cost. After a year of stellar performance at our Concord location, Bel did not ask for a raise—she asked to be transferred fifteen miles west, to our San Francisco location. This was logical. In Concord, she only had another couple of years of employment before she aged out of that store’s target demo. In San Francisco, the Blue Cup Café is a concept that undergoes a lot of revisions. That cast is more age-diverse because that helps with research. I assumed that Bel wanted what almost everyone else wanted: long term employment.

  It was through the development of the San Francisco Blue Cup Concept location that I first became acquainted with Bel. My initial impression was favorable. She rated high on our proprietary attractiveness measure, which is generated by comparing the size and relative distances between facial features. She had a well-placed nose and eyes that were the ideal distance apart. Her forehead was a good size. She was in the 99th percentile for chin prettiness.

  Bel had a straight posture and a strong neck and spine from years of dance classes. She had a tightness in her eyelids and a tendency to bare her teeth when she smiled. I met her while I was developing the persistence measure. She scored high.

  Blue Cup was able to effect a transfer for Bel from Concord High to the Pre-Collegiate Academy. The PCA is a scholastic program for gifted young people who live within the San Francisco borders. As such, its students come from the most prominent families in the area. It is technically a public institution because it is funded with public money, but that funding is supplemented by generous grants from families, nonprofits, and corporations such as Blue Cup. Although it is technically a public institution, admission is by invite only.

  The PCA is not school as Bel knows it. There are no overcrowded classrooms or even teachers. There are tutors, counselors, and workshop facilitators. The school has not been standardized with the goal of insuring conformity to other state-funded schools. The purpose of the school is to provide an individualized learning plan to the next generation of leaders and innovators. The students have had access to a personal staff of educators their whole lives.

  Bel was assigned four tutors and two counselors. She was not placed in any workshops because it was determined that her academic level in all subjects was too remedial.

  “But I was a straight-A student at my old school,” said Bel.

  Her math tutor nodded sympathetically. “I came from the suburbs, too. But now look at me.”

  Bel wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be looking at. She was used to teachers that resented their jobs. She didn’t understand that tutors in the city were well compensated, that the position was highly sought after.

  “If you work really hard, we can get you through Calculus 1 and 2 in a single semester. Then you can join the freshman multivariable calculus seminar next year.”

  Bel stared off into space for a moment. For this moment, her emotions were unreadable by me.

  “Fine,” she said, which registered as an 89 and 57 on the determination and unhappiness indices, respectively.

  At PCA, there was no dance team. Her classmates were aloof, hierarchies had been entrenched, sometimes going back generations. Bel had a name but not a “name.” Her influence score took a dive. She was not active on any of the social media that her new peers were into, so she had to start over with new accounts. Her influence ranking plummeted.

  I sensed regret. She wouldn’t have come to PCA had she known what it was really like. But she was here now, with her own room in a shining and clean city. Blue Cup had secured her permits to live, work, and study here. Was it better to be royalty in Concord or a peasant in the city? There was an additional consideration of her mother’s anger and her father’s drinking. She was probably happy to have distance and a life apart from them, but she also seemed to miss them.

  If familiarity was what she longed for, she would not find it at the San Francisco Blue Cup. That location is very popular, but it is frequented by tourists, not locals. It requires a different protocol.

  At the San Francisco Blue Cup, the aspirational city experience is repackaged in a way that is accessible and familiar to our visitors, who come not just from the Outer Bay Area and Inland California, but from all over the world. It is almost impossible to obtain a permit to live in the city, but far easier to obtain a visitor’s permit. This system has eliminated the problems of homelessness and poverty within city borders. Not just anyone can live in the city, but almost anyone can visit and enjoy a specially crafted beverage in our City Café.