The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 Read online

  Four of the authors whose work is included in this volume—A. Merc Rustad, Catherynne M. Valente, Dale Bailey, and Nick Wolven—have previously appeared in BASFF; thus the remaining fifteen authors (fifteen rather than sixteen because Bailey appears twice) are represented for the first time.

  Debbie Urbanski, Brian Evenson, and Ken Liu tied with the most stories in my top eighty this year (three each), and several authors had two each: A. Merc Rustad, Alyssa Wong, Carmen Maria Machado, Caroline M. Yoachim, Dale Bailey, Dominica Phetteplace, N. K. Jemisin, Naomi Novik, Nick Wolven, P. Djèlí Clark, Rich Larson, and Sofia Samatar.

  I mentioned above that the BASFF 2017 stories “This Is Not a Wardrobe Door” and “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0” are finalists for the Nebula Award this year. Additionally, “The City Born Great,” by N. K. Jemisin, is a Hugo Award finalist. Notable stories that have received award recognition include “Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea,” by Sarah Pinsker (Nebula finalist); “You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay,” by Alyssa Wong (Nebula and Hugo finalist); “Seasons of Glass and Iron,” by Amal El-Mohtar (Nebula and Hugo finalist); “Things with Beards,” by Sam J. Miller (Nebula finalist); “A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers,” by Alyssa Wong (Nebula and Hugo finalist); and “The Jupiter Drop,” by Josh Malerman (Stoker finalist).

  As I’ve noted in past forewords, I don’t log every single story I read throughout the year—I only dutifully log stories that I feel are in the running—so I don’t have an exact count of how many stories I reviewed or considered. As in past years, I estimate that it was several thousand stories, perhaps as many as five thousand, altogether.

  Naturally, many of the stories I read were perfectly good and enjoyable but didn’t stand out enough for me to consider them among the best of the year. I did, however, end up with about a hundred additional stories that were at one point or another under serious consideration, including stories from publications not represented in this anthology, such as Amazing Stories, The Book Smugglers, Bracken Magazine, Catamaran Literary Reader, Daily Science Fiction, The Dark, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Flash Fiction Online, Futuristica, Galaxy’s Edge, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Lackington’s, Lenny Letter, Liminal Stories, The Lovecraft ezine, Nature Futures, Persistent Visions, and Slate, as well as the anthologies and collections named above.

  This foreword mentions only a few of the great publications considered for this anthology; see the table of contents and the Notable Stories list to get a more complete overview of the top publications currently available in the field.

  Given how many stories I have to consider every year, it’s probably obvious that I can do this only with a considerable amount of help. So I’d just like to take a moment to thank and acknowledge my team of first readers, who helped me evaluate various publications that I might not have had time to consider otherwise: Alex Puncekar, Robyn Lupo, Devin Marcus, Sandra Odell, Karen Bovenmyer, and Christie Yant. Thanks also to Tim Mudie at Mariner Books, who keeps everything running smoothly behind the scenes at Best American HQ.

  If you’ve made it this far in the foreword, then maybe you’ve been introduced to some new publications to look for in the future or been reminded of a few that have fallen off your radar over the years and deserve a second look. Which brings me to one last point I’d like to take the opportunity to drive home.

  We’re undoubtedly living in a golden age of genre—but not just in literature: also in TV and film. There’s more genre entertainment being produced today than any reasonable person would have any hope of keeping up with. That’s how it’s been with short stories and books for many years; it’s one of the reasons volumes like this one are useful and necessary. But now this is increasingly applicable to television and film as well. Though it’s probably still possible to keep track of all the genre movies coming out (though any one person is unlikely to do so, because of the quantity and the still wildly varying levels of quality), television is becoming more like publishing in the sense that even if you’re a deeply devoted genre fan, you’d basically have to be committed to watching television full-time in order to catch all the genre TV shows being produced. Overall that is a good thing—at least it is if, like me, you love television—even if it makes it harder to have that shared experience anytime you run into a fellow fan; and of course all that film and television (and video game!) entertainment leaves the deeply devoted genre fan with less time to spend on short stories than ever before.

  The problem with any form of entertainment is that the more options there are, the harder it is for any one thing to be successful enough to stick around long-term. On television, for example, within the last year the terrific original genre series BrainDead and Incorporated were both canceled despite brilliant first seasons, and mind-bogglingly good, core genre shows like Syfy’s The Expanse are doing well enough to get renewed but sort of scraping by. Likewise, the magazines you love today may be gone tomorrow. (And indeed, several seem to have faded away this year—whether it’s for good or not, who can say?) Many of them operate on a shoestring, relying on Kickstarter, subscription drives, and support through Patreon.

  It all boils down to this: we must support the things we love, whether it’s books, television, film, or stories—though I’d say especially books and stories! If you like an author or magazine, support it early and often. Word of mouth (including reader reviews at Amazon or Goodreads or the like) can go a long way toward helping an author’s career—or a fledgling zine—get off the ground and stay aloft. Short-fiction venues are often labors of love, and they need your support, in the form of readership, subscriptions, and signal-boosting. And it’s you readers, who care enough about short fiction to read this book (and this foreword), who are the standard-bearers, so if you love something, say something! Meanwhile, I’ll keep doing my part to try to find the best of the best every year, and hey, maybe somehow together, with the help of genre short fiction, we can find a way to transform this dystopian hellscape we’re in back into one of those better tomorrows.

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

  —John Joseph Adams

  Introduction

  I. Alternative Realities

  (NOTE: This is true. All of this happened.)

  Recently, an anthropologist from another universe showed up at my local coffee shop.

  INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: I’m an anthropologist from another universe.

  ME: Cool.

  INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: I’m from another universe, and that’s what you’re going to say? Cool? Aren’t you wondering how I got here? Don’t you think I might have something very important to talk to you about?

  ME: [not really interested] Sorry, yeah. You’re right.

  INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Good. I mean, yeesh. We’re not off to a great start—[Notices the look on my face . . . or maybe reading my mind] You’re zoning me out. Aren’t you? You’re waiting for me to stop talking so you can go back to your work.

  ME: I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m under deadline. I’m editing this anthology, and I have to read a whole bunch of short stories—

  INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: It looks like you’re browsing pictures of baby pandas.

  ME: I suppose you’re not leaving this universe until I talk to you.

  INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Nope.

  ME: All right then. What’s this about?

  The interdimensional anthropologist (who, it turns out, goes by Susan) said she had come here on a Fulbright. Susan had gotten some research money to study our little universe. I asked why ours was worth studying.

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Not the whole universe. Just a subset.

  ME: Oh. I think I know where you’re going with this.

/>   Yeah, Susan said. Susan pulled out a manila folder (they have Office Depot in her dimension) and slapped it on the table (we were at Starbucks—like I said, this is all true; you can tell because I’m adding details and also because I’m asserting that it’s true).

  CASE STUDY IN BIFURCATED REALITY:

  AMERICA EARLY 2017

  proto-civilization demonstrating multiple indicia of having reached early Phase 2, with satisfaction of the Filbert criterion. Reports and field data suggest there are currently two distinct subrealities coexisting within the same space-time region. Situation highly unstable. Funding granted to enable exploratory investigation. Inquiry will focus on how human inhabitants of this bifurcated reality will be affected and whether they will be able to come up with a solution to resolve the problem, or, in the absence of such a solution, what the psychological and emotional consequences will be for these humans (in the event of a negative outcome).

  I took a moment to process this.

  ME: I don’t like the sound of “negative outcome.”

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Yeah. You shouldn’t like it.

  ME: So. Okay. What the hell does this all mean?

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Basically, America in 2017 isn’t one reality. It’s two separate ones, mostly distinct but with some overlap.

  ME: That . . . seems . . . correct. Ridiculous. But correct.

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: You say it’s ridiculous, but you have a rich academic literature about this topic already.

  ME: We do? I mean, this doesn’t sound like science. It sounds like science fiction.

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Exactly.

  Susan handed me a book. I looked at the title page:

  The Best American SCIENCE FICTION and FANTASY™ 2017

  Edited and with an Introduction by Charles Yu

  John Joseph Adams, Series Editor

  ME: Huh. [then] Is that . . . me?

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: It’s one possible you, yeah. You picked these stories?

  ME: I guess I did. I mean, I will.

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Then I have come to the right place. The humans in this book are demonstrating a kind of technology.

  ME: They’re writers.

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Okay. These human writers are demonstrating a kind of technology.

  ME: Stories?

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Stories. [scribbling in her interdimensional notepad] Right. That’s your word for it. A narrative technology of a specific kind. Genre stories, science fiction and fantasy. Speculative fiction, some call it. The ability to create imagined realities.

  ME: I’m sorry—hold up, Susan. Are you telling me that science fiction and fantasy writers caused reality to fragment this way? Caused America to split into two? That SF/F writers are the root cause of all of this craziness, with no one knowing what’s true? Or, worse, that we’re the reason serious people are starting to have serious doubts about whether or not there is such a thing as truth anymore? We’re the problem?

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Actually it’s the opposite. Writers of these imaginative realities are not the problem. They’re the solution.

  ME: Huh?

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: I will admit, it’s a bit of a contradiction. Or an irony? One of those things—you humans with your primitive rationality and logic still have trouble with some of these complexities. [Takes a breath out of one of her nineteen lungs] Okay, let me try to explain it this way.

  Susan took the book and flipped to the table of contents. I eyed them with great interest, which did not go unnoticed by Susan.

  ME: Would you mind if I . . .

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Took a picture of the table of contents? Nah. I figured you would.

  ME: [grateful] Thanks. It’d just make it so much easier for me to pick the stories if I already knew what I was going to pick. Er, you know what I mean.

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: No prob. Always happy to help form a stable causal loop. [then] Within this book, parallel planes of flattened wood pulp and ink markings, arranged in a particular configuration in this volume of space, are maps, instructions, detailed blueprints of the multiverse.

  ME: I mean, sure. But those aren’t really . . . real. Are they?

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Depends on what you mean by real.

  ME: Factual. Corresponding to an agreed-upon reality.

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Given the current state of the American polity, I’m wondering whether you are overestimating the level of agreement. But that’s not the point. You’re right, they’re not real in your universe. But these alternative realities do exist. And they’re closer than you think.

  ME: [looking around] Close? How close?

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: They are what is known as the adjacent possible. If you can imagine it from this universe, then they must, as a matter of definition, touch your universe.

  ME: So all twenty of those stories are actually other possible worlds that border this one.

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: [nodding] You’re a quick study. Yes, they not only surround this world, they buttress it. They actually define it.

  ME: What do you mean, they define it?

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Imagine your universe on a map. To the left, an ocean. To the right, mountains. Above and below, other features of the topology.

  ME: We’re bounded on all sides by our imagination. Leaving us in the middle.

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Your universe is the negative space defined by these natural boundaries.

  ME: Our reality is defined by what we can imagine.

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: All these imaginary worlds are fundamentally grounded in your consensus reality. They depend on it.

  ME: So the bigger our imaginations, the richer and more stable our own reality becomes. But then, what about . . .

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Right. So you can see why this current situation is so dangerous. What’s happening now is that the imagination is being challenged. The diversity of viewpoints, the ability to create stories, to have different perspectives, is being systematically destroyed. In its place, a narrative is being decreed.

  ME: They’re trying to legislate and enforce a single master narrative.

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: And that master narrative is not coherent. It is unconnected from the base reality. It does not depend on consensus. It is an impoverished substitute for reality. The destruction of truth can’t go on indefinitely. Reality will continue to fragment, until reality itself loses use as a meaningful term.

  ME: This sounds pretty bad. Is it too late?

  SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: It’s not too late. That’s where this anthology comes in. The stories, this technology you have invented, they are engineering solutions for structural repair of micro-realities. This is the material science creating an invisible structure that actually strengthens because it depends on the underlying consensus reality. By connecting to the substructure, the foundational reality, it reinforces and delineates, giving a shape to truth. A mosaic, created by the imagination, of independent and pluralistic voices, which form in the aggregate a hidden framework, protecting your world from collapse. They don’t assert the truth, they depend upon it. [Checks her interdimensional gadget] Whoops, sorry, I was wrong. Looks like it’s too late after all. Bye!

  At this, Susan disappeared out of existence.

  Turns out the bifurcated reality collapsed, so only one was left. You know what happened next, probably.

  The other reality took over. It won. There was just one reality. This one.

  II. Alternatives to Reality

  (NOTE: This is also completely
true. All of this also happened.)

  I was just getting over the whole Susan of it all when another interdimensional being showed up.

  ME: Let me guess. Anthropologist.

  INTERDIMENSIONAL BEING: Actually, no. I’m a cop. My name is Stan.

  ME: This seems bad.

  STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: I’m not going to lie, sir. It’s not good.

  ME: Are you going to arrest me?

  STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: Not you. You’re not very important. And anyway, if I were going to arrest someone, it’d be all of you.

  ME: So then what are you here for?

  STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: You people have a lot of explaining to do.

  ME: I suppose by “you people” you mean humans.

  STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: Not all humans. Just Americans. Are you an American?

  ME: Please don’t talk to me. I don’t know anything. Really. You could not have picked a worse person to speak on behalf of humanity. Go talk to that lady over there, with the earbuds, pretending not to notice you. Or maybe that guy with a little bit of cream cheese on the corner of his mouth. Anyone but me.

  STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: It’s good that you’re just sort of an average person. A nobody. Someone at random. That way we can be sure we’re getting a representative sample.

  ME: [gulping] A representative sample for what?

  STAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL COP: This universe is taking up a lot of space. And not producing much in the way of interesting ideas. We’re thinking of shutting it down. Plus America seems to have really caused some distortions in reality. The whole place is really just not working out.

  ME: Please don’t shut down our universe. We like existing. You just caught us at a weird time. Could you maybe come back, like, four years ago? Or maybe a few thousand years from now?