The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2021 Edition Read online

  THE YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY: 2021 EDITION

  RICH HORTON

  Copyright © 2022 by Rich Horton.

  Cover art by Tithi Luadthong.

  Cover design by Stephen H. Segal.

  Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

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

  ISBN: 978-1-60701-547-5 (ebook)

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  Table of Contents

  Better Late Than Never | By Rich Horton

  Stepsister | Leah Cypess

  Laws of Impermanence | Ken Schneyer

  Songs of Activation | Andy Dudak

  The Past, Like a River in Flood | Marissa Lingen

  The Bahrain Underground Bazaar | Nadia Afifi

  Open House on Haunted Hill | John Wiswell

  Beyond the Dragon’s Gate | Yoon Ha Lee

  Burn or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super | A. T. Greenblatt

  Minerva Girls | James Van Pelt

  A Feast of Butterflies | Amanda Hollander

  Egoli | T.L. Huchu

  Spirit Level | John Kessel

  Bereft, I Come to a Nameless World | Benjamin Rosenbaum

  You Have the Prettiest Mask | Sarah Langan

  The Garden Where No One Ever Goes | P. H. Lee

  50 Things Every AI Working with Humans Should Know | Ken Liu

  Magnificent Maurice or the Flowers of Immortality | Rati Mehrotra

  Fog and Pearls at the King’s Cross Junction | Aliya Whiteley

  The Monogamy Hormone | Annalee Newitz

  An Important Failure | Rebecca Campbell

  When God Sits in Your Lap | Ian Tregellis

  A Guide for Working Breeds | Vina Jie-Min Prasad

  Silver Door Diner | Bishop Garrison

  Beyond the Tattered Veil of Stars | Mercurio D. Rivera

  The Moon Fairy | Sofia Samatar

  Retention | Alec Nevala-Lee

  Lovers on a Bridge | Alexandra Seidel

  Thirty-Three | Tade Thompson

  Those We Serve | Eugenia Triantafyllou

  Behind Our Irises | Tlotlo Tsamaase

  Little Free Library | Naomi Kritzer

  An Unkindness | Jessica P. Wick

  The Dragon Slayer | Michael Swanwick

  Two Truths and a Lie | Sarah Pinsker

  About the Authors

  Recommended Reading

  Publication History

  About the Editor

  Better Late Than Never

  By Rich Horton

  This anthology has been a long time coming—the stories first appeared in 2020. We were delayed by—old excuse but true!—pandemic issues. My publisher and I were both personally affected by pandemic problems (happily, no serious health issues), and when we worked through that we found that supply chain issues made a paper version of this book a difficult prospect.

  That said, in a curious way, the delay I faced in finalizing the table of contents was actually valuable. I was able to further reflect on the stories I’d liked, and also to investigate some additional sources—most notably Wole Talabi’s exceptional anthology Africanfuturism, which features stories by writers from Africa. Indeed, Talabi recently performed a statistical study, strikingly showing how dramatically the amount of African science fiction has increased in the past decade—as he points out, largely from his home country of Nigeria, and from South Africa. (That said, the two stories I chose for this book from his anthology are “Egoli” by Zimbabwe’s T. L. Huchu; and “Behind Our Irises” by Botswana’s Tlotlo Tsamaase.)

  This really exciting growth area has been spurred the efforts of many—not just Talabi, but Ivor W. Hartmann (whose AfroSF anthologies are outstanding), and Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki (who also recently became the first African-born writer to win a Nebula Award, for his novelette “O2 Arena”.) (The efforts of writers and editors not born in Africa to promote African science fiction, such as Geoff Ryman and new F&SF editor Sheree Renee Thomas, should also be celebrated.)

  In that past I have often tried to give a quick report on the state of the science fiction field in these introductions. Whatever I can say now, however, is curiously out of date for a book celebrating stories from 2020. And, as the coronavirus pandemic stretches into its third year, as the tyrant Vladimir Putin prosecutes an illegal war against a neighboring country, as the US politics remain, to my mind, in a debased and excessively partisan state; well, to coin a phrase, the troubles (and triumphs) of our small field sometimes don’t seem to amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

  That said, celebrating the triumphs of the writers in our field is what lights my fire. And this book is my attempt to celebrate the triumphs of science fiction and fantasy short fiction in 2020. I’ll begin by mourning one great writer we lost just as this book was being assembled: Patricia A. McKillip—alas, we had hoped to include her lovely story “Camouflage” in this volume but the timing was terrible. Do seek it out in Jonathan Strahan’s anthology The Book of Dragons, and do search out McKillip’s catalog beautifully written novels—my favorite being, perhaps, Winter Rose.

  One thing I always hope to do in these books is feature some new writers—new to me at least. I was truly delighted with Amanda Hollander’s second published short story, “A Feast of Butterflies”—and I have learned since that she also writes librettos for operas! (The only other writer I’ve published in this series whom I know to have written a libretto is E. Lily Yu, but I’d be glad to hear of more!) Several further writers were new or nearly new to my when I read the stories I reprint here: Nadia Afifi, John Wiswell, Rati Mehrotra, Bishop Garrison, Eugenia Triantafyllou, and the two African writers mentioned above, T. L. Huchu and Tlotlo Tsamaase. And their stories are a glorious mix of styles and modes—from Hollander’s lushly written and horror-tinged story to Wiswell’s sweet inversion of a horror trope, to first rate near-future science fiction speculation from Afifi, Huchu, and Tsamaase, to rather stranger science fiction speculation from Triantafyllou.

  Other writers are new to this series of anthologies but have well-established careers: Tade Thompson’s brilliant Rosewater trilogy established his place in the field several years ago, and I’m thrilled to have a story by him. Sarah Langan has been publishing since the turn of the millennium—and “You Have the Prettiest Mask” is (accidentally, I’m certain) the most prescient seeming story in this volume, dealing as it does with a terrible disease—and with masking! Other veteran first timers are Aliya Whiteley, Jessica P. Wick (perhaps better known for her editing and poetry than her short fiction), and Ian Tregillis. Plus a special case—Mercurio D. Rivera has previously appeared in one of my anthologies—a one-year experiment in reprinting the best online science fiction and fantasy that became moot, more or less, as online venues stopped being a novelty.

  Two more writers who have been publishing for a while but appear in these books for the first time are special cases of a sort—I’ve had an eye on the work of Ken Schneyer and Leah Cypess for years, and for one reason or another never quite chose their stories . . . until 2020, when Schneyer’s “Laws of Impermanence” and Cypess’ “Stepsister” absolutely shoved their ways to the front of the pack—two of the best stories of 2020, and two stories I knew I’d have in this book the second I finished reading them. (And that’s another reason I regret the delay in publishing this volume!)

  It's a special delight to reprint two writers who also appeared in the very first edition of my best of the year collections, back in 2006: James Van Pelt and Michael Swanwick. They have both continued to publish excellent short fiction—lots of it—in the intervening years and these stories show that they haven’t lost a step.

  I won’t list every other writer—these are all writers whose stories I’ve liked and continue to like, and I think it’s a list combining the clear greats of the field—the Samatars and Lius and Swanwicks and Kessels and Pinskers—with up-and-comers who we’ll think of in the same terms soon. But I will mention Benjamin Rosenbaum particularly—he’s been absolutely one of the most interesting, most varied, most downright brilliant writers of short fiction over the past couple of decades—and his first novel, The Unraveling, just came out in English, and it is brilliant. (It is also peripherally related to his story in this book.)

  I strive for all kinds of variety in these books. In theme: here we see horror, lush fantasy, near future speculation, far future extrapolation, urban fantasy, dragons, robots, angels, fairy tale retellings, and on and on. In length. In background—there are writers from Botswana, Canada, England, India, Singapore, the US, and Zimbabwe. And in place of publication—from online magazines like Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Fiyah, from the traditional print magazines like Analog and F&SF, from original anthologies like A Book of Dragons and Entanglements, from small press anthologies like London Centric and A Sinister Quartet, from saddle-stitched zines like Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Past Tense, from a literary “little magazine” (though it’s huge): Conjunctions. I didn’t pick a story in translation this year, but I have in the past, and happily there are many interesting such stories published every year.


  Better late than never—I hope you enjoy these, I’m convinced you will! (At least most of them—we’ll never agree on everything, and that’s a good thing!) The field remains in great hands—see what I mean!

  Stepsister

  Leah Cypess

  The story you know isn’t exactly a lie.

  It leaves a lot out, but everything you’ve been told is absolutely true. This is the story you’ve heard. Just not exactly as you’ve heard it.

  You are hearing this new version when you’re older, so you can see the cracks in it, the dark absurdities and sickening cruelties. But it is not so different from the story you were told as a child. To a child, everything related by a trusted adult is a solid, reasonable truth. Perhaps if a child was told no tales, the whole world would appear senseless and cruel.

  Instead, your mind fits itself to the truth you know. It grows with you, becomes a part of you, and you cannot question it without murdering a little bit of yourself.

  And what would compel anyone to do that?

  ● ● ●

  I like to tell my friends that when we were younger, King Ciar and I used to spar with wooden posts, and that once the prince knocked my makeshift helmet so hard that it spun around and stuck on my head, and it took five servants and a vat of butter to get me free.

  “The butter made my hair spike,” I said, “and I liked the look so much I refused to wash it out. It was two months before my mother had enough. She tied me up while I slept, then woke me by dumping a vat of sudsy water over my head. She spent half an hour scrubbing my scalp and ignoring my screams.”

  Laughter roared through the tavern, even from the far tables I hadn’t been addressing. It was an easy enough sight for them to imagine; I had more than two decades on me, but my face was still round and childish, and my sporadic attempts to grow a beard only made it worse rather than better. Plus, when my hair was overlong—which it tended to be, because I had reservations about letting the castle barbers’ knives get too near my throat—it stuck out from my head in tufts.

  “Your mother?” said Lissa, and I swore softly before turning to grin at her. I had forgotten that Lissa’s mother, like mine, was a long-time servant at the castle. Lissa knew that my mother had died when I was five years old.

  “Yes,” I said, meeting her dark eyes. “She always wanted a girl, see. I think she was glad of the excuse.”

  A moment of silence. I held my breath. It could have gone either way; Lissa liked nothing better than proving people wrong, but partly as a result of that hobby, she had very few friends left. Hopefully she wouldn’t risk antagonizing one of them.

  She leaned back. “Glad of an excuse to wash your hair? Or to tie you up?”

  More laughter, much louder than what I had elicited. I was glad of it, and of Lissa’s smirk. If the laughter satisfied her, she would let me get away with my slip.

  I wasn’t lying, by the way. The story was true. It was just that it was I who hit the prince, and his helmet that had to be removed with butter, and it was his mother, the queen, who had him tied up and covered with suds—not with her own hands, of course. She hadn’t whipped me with her own hands, either, though she had stood nearby and watched, to make sure I understood the consequences of putting the crown prince’s life in danger.

  She had made Ciar watch, too. It was the one time I had ever seen a tear trickle down the cheek of our infamously ruthless monarch.

  That story isn’t as funny. And if I told of our king’s humiliation, that would have been treason, and I might have ended up hanged rather than merely whipped. You have to walk a fine line around royalty. Unless you’re smart enough to stay far away from them to begin with.

  I like to think I would have been smart enough, if I’d ever been given a choice in the matter.

  Someone coughed from the tavern door. It was the sort of cough that stopped our laughter cold and wiped the smirk off Lissa’s face. We all turned toward it, like marionettes being pulled by a single string.

  “Lord Garrin,” the royal messenger said, and the others’ faces turned toward me, Lissa’s eyes narrowing in speculation.

  I resisted the urge to point out that I had no title. It wasn’t the messenger’s fault; nobody is ever quite sure of how to address me. I was the king’s best friend, his sworn companion. I was also a potential claimant to his throne, a possible dagger to his throat. And the only family he now had left.

  Lord didn’t exactly sum it up, but it was as close as anyone could get.

  The messenger cleared his throat. “His Majesty has need of you.”

  I was glad I’d told the story. It had kept me from draining my tankard, and the last thing I needed, when dealing with King Ciar, was to be drunk.

  “Of course,” I said, and rose to my feet with only the slightest of stumbles. “Take me to him.”

  ● ● ●

  Ciar was two people, these days: the king he was turning into, harsh and weary and determined, and the brother I’d grown up with, reckless and hedonistic and loyal. Usually, it was easy for me to tell which Ciar I would be dealing with. But today he was someone else entirely, someone who sat in his bedchamber staring out the window, his face set in lines of melancholy.

  I searched through all my memories of Ciar—twenty-two years’ worth—and failed to come up with a single melancholy one. Even that day in the courtyard, with the whip tearing through my skin, his face hadn’t looked like this. I couldn’t actually remember what his face did look like that day, but I was sure it hadn’t been this bleak.

  I’d never had a chance to ask, since Ciar never mentioned that day again. His gaze was ever forward, never back. It was part of the problem with him, and also part of the reason men followed him: his certainty that whatever he was headed toward, it was better than what was behind him.

  “Everyone else,” he said, without looking up, “leave us.”

  It was quite an exodus, for there were at least ten people in the room. The servants of his chamber, his guards, his retainers, his supposed friends: they all filed past me with resentful stares. Lady Aniya, who was either his mistress or angling for the position, gave me a warm smile as if we knew each other. We didn’t, but I admired her brains in trying to get me on her side. Unlike Queen Ella, who had always seen her husband’s bastard brother as a rival and tried to turn Ciar against me. The queen still didn’t appear to have noticed that I was the only person in Ciar’s life he had never left behind.

  Not yet, Lissa told me once. But only because we had been arguing; even she knew better than that. I had been Ciar’s friend for our entire lives. No one else—no woman, no companion, not even a favorite hunting dog—had retained their place in his affections for longer than five years.

  “Garrin,” Ciar said, once we were alone. “I need your help.”

  I didn’t know whether to sink to one knee or stride over and clasp his arm. But the words I had to say were the same in either case, so I said them without moving. “Of course, Your Majesty.”

  He turned away from the window and faced me. Sadness looked wrong on his features, like an ill-fitting mask. “You must find my wife’s stepsister and bring her to court.”

  “I will,” I said automatically, before the meaning of his words sank in. Then they did, and every muscle in my body tensed. “Ciar, why?”

  He blinked, and a more familiar expression swept over his face: cold, clear determination. “That is not your concern.”

  A surge of rage went through me, an anger I’d only felt—only allowed myself to feel—once before. I pushed it down, back to its usual banked simmer. After all, as far as he knew, it was true; I had no reason to care more about this order than any other he gave me.

  He was the king now, and I had to think about which questions I dared ask. “Does Her Majesty the queen know that you are—”

  “Of course not.” That flicker of pain again, before his expression closed up around it. “And you are to make sure she does not find out.”

  Sometimes, it is very dangerous to have a king trust you. Especially when his queen hates you for it.

  Especially when she is right to.

  “Of course, Your Majesty.” I decided to bow. “What excuse shall I give for my departure?”