This volume was finally delivered by Amazon UK in late November 2023, some months after the initial publication date that was quoted. It’s a year out of date, as it were, as it covers stories published in 2021, and would ‘normally’ (i.e. pre-COVID and pre-Shit and Stufftm have been published in late 2022. I’d best get cracking as volume 8 is currently showing as heading my way in March 2024 (I’m guessing a bit later (update : now Nov 2024)). This is the only Year’s Best SF volume these days (sigh).
Clarke has taken over the late Dozois’ task in providing a substantial summary of the year in SF to get the ball rolling. Then into the fiction, which I’ll read from front to back and pop each story in after I’ve read it :
Ray Nayler. Muallim.
Originally in Asimovs, January/February 2021.
Nayler is one new(ish) author whose name I watch out for, and he’s got two stories in this volume. This is a neat little story, but I do miss the days when a story would have been set off world, to give it an additional sfnal dimension. Here the SF element is relatively minor, inasmuch the idea of an intelligent humanoid robot (the Muallim of the title) that is capable of teaching children, is not so much of a thing of the future as it was when I started reading SF more than 50 years ago. The setting is still, however, a strange one to those of us who, unlike Nayler, haven’t travelled to the more remote parts of our world, in this case a remote village in Azerbaijan (tbh not too dissimilar to Tattooine). There are two female protagonists. One is a local female blacksmith, who we see attempting to fix dents in the robot. Another is a female international NGO staffer who is dropped into the village for a few days to evaluate the impact of the robotic teacher who was supplied by another NGO. Turns out that it’s not much of an evaluation as there are only 5 children at the school, not 25 as they had been told, and they don’t go to school on Fridays. It seems the robot teacher initiative, like others before it, has come up against corruption, local issues and so forth. And when the robot is evidently destroyed by local youths, she flies out to take on her next assignment. Except that the locals have in fact pulled a fast one on her and the NGO (the robot hasn’t been destroyed, and so when she leaves and the robot is written off, they are able to keep it to meet their needs). An nice start to the volume, without being a standout. [29th Nov 2023]
Alice Towey. Dark Waters Still Flow.
Originally in : Clarkesworld November 2021 – and still online
A story from an author new to me, and one of two from her in this volume, and she was given her own special mention in the editorial introduction as an author to watch. The protagonist is NEWT – Nutrition Extraction and Water Treatment System – an AI which has been running a municipal facility for many years on a planet with two suns. The boss is Nixil, the third generation of his family to be a Water Sage, and NEWT is particularly fond of Jerafina, a young refugee girl who has a junior role, and with whom the AI shares an interest in poetry. Things start to go wrong in the plant, causing NEWT some concern, and it transpires that Nixil is planning sabotage, and is planning to pin the blame on Jerafina. Drama ensues…. Another neat little story to start the volume. [30th Nov 2023]
Jose Pablo Iriarte. Proof by Induction.
Originally in Uncanny May/June 2021
Near-future and a young tenure-seeking mathematician has to come to terms with a double whammy : his father’s death, and the fact that he and his father haven’t succeeded in their joint endeavour to prove the Perelman Hypothesis, and with his father’s death that appears to also sound the death knell for his tenure application. However, there is the ‘Coda’ – the snapshot of the brain that is taken close to death, that he is able to use to communicate with his father in VR. This gives him the chance to use the Code to a) continue to work on the Perelman Theorem with his dad, and b) try to build a closer relationship with his now dead dad than he was able to do in life. In terms of this story a+b = the best outcome, but sadly he doesn’t achieve that. He does achieve tenure though, so I’m sure you can work out, without needing pencil and paper, whether he achieved a or b. It’s a third neat little story to open the volume, but two niggles for me : 1 – the protagonist is evidently the first person to think of using a CODA-captured intelligence in this way, which seems a bit unlikely and 2 – it’s almost 25 years since David Marusek’s ‘The Wedding Album’, which stunningly explored a snapshot-captured simulacrum and this story doesn’t quite live up to that earlier one. [12th Dec 2023]
Robert Reed. Integral Nothings.
Originally in : The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
Strange forces are at work on planet Earth, microscopic changes that are repairing the damage done by humanity, and indeed preventing humanity from doing damage through nuclear weapons. It becomes clear that those responsible or not of this planet, the question is whether The Blessings are benign and are being delivering are for humanity’s benefit, or not. Answer : not, as becomes clear when human reproduction ceases to be possible. The ‘story’ as such is seen from the perspective of several humans, the last of human finds out that those responsible are not, indeed gods, but merely entities working for unseen, unfathomable gods. We are really that insignificant, but as the ants in the soil of buildings sites are to us. Reed, who has spent decades putting humanity out into deep space, gives us a bleak look in the mirror. [14th Feb 2024]
Karl Schroeder. The Price of Attention.
Originally in : Make Shift: Dispatches from the Post-Pandemic Future’ edited by Gideon Lichfield, The MIT Press 2021
A tight little near-future cop drama, that could easily have been much much longer. The protagonist, Remy Reardon, is well along the autistic spectrum, but is managing to live a better life of late due to his clever hi-tech augmented reality glasses, which enable him to dial back/tune out a lot of the external stimuli which would otherwise send him into a rocking back and forth spin (can you have such a thing? but I’m sure you get the idea). And this enables him to see some things that the rest of us can’t, and he is called in by the cops to assess a crime scene. Sho nuff, Remy is able to pick something up, and he joins a few dots in this covid-challenged near future. It’s a nice, quick read, and I could see a novel or a tv show coming out of the setting and character. To think, the story was published in 2021 and would you have thought that in 2024 you would be looking back fondly at 2021 – vaccines getting on top of covid, the Orange Menace consigned to history (!), and no Russia/Ukraine, Hamas/Israel…. [6th March 2024]
Anil Menon. Paley’s Watch.
Originally in : The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction, Volume 2 (Editor: Tarun K. Saint)
Well, tyro writers take note, I first read an Anil Menon story in small press mag ‘Albedo One’ #33 way back in 2008, and this is his second story in a ‘Year’s Best’ in the last couple of years. It’s hard SF matched nicely with some good characterisation, something that hard SF often fails to do. The hard SF is the titular watch, which isn’t a watch, but is a pseudosphere, in Dini’s Surface,, which, as any fule know, is ‘a surface with constant negative curvature that can be created by twisting a pseudosphere’. Young boffin Tommy is on the fishing vessel which pulls it up from the sea, and his life (what there is left of it) is linked to this almost unknowable item. Sadly, young Tommy who has the whole world in his hands, treats a colleague with problems with a total lack of empathy, and he goes from having the whole world in his hands, to very much not having anything. A good read. [26th March 2024]
Mary Anne Mohanraj. Among the Marithei.
Originally in : Asimovs Science Fiction May/June 2021, and subsequently in Lightspeed Magazine #147 August 2022 – and still online
An excellent miniature from Mohanraj, albeit somewhat depressing in it’s look at humanity out amongst the stars and amongst alien races, and the fear of many humans of the other. We’re still killing each other and killing other races, but on an optimistic note the protagonist Sergey has come through a traumatic childhood to be living, as the title says, Among the Marithei. It’s a quiet, gentle, emotional story, at least until a last paragraph that turns everything upside down. It’s evidently part of the author’s ‘Jump Space Universe’ series, and well worth the read (link above). [27th March 2024]
Vandana Singh. A Different Sea.
Originally in : The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction, Volume 2
Singh is an author whose stories I particularly look forward to getting my hands on, and this one does not disappoint. It’s a story of searching for home. The protagonist is alone, two failed relationships behind her, still feeling an alien in the small coastal village she has settled in. Her daughter is off on a gap year, travelling the oceans, trying to find herself. And there is a very alien alien in her house, which is clearly pining for it’s home. The alien appears to be losing the will to live, but in the end it does find the wherewithal to get home, and the protagonist finds that she herself has in turn settled into what is now her new home. Understated and top notch. [8th May 2024]
Meg Elison. The Pizza Boy.
Originally in : The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March-April 2021
Just the second story I’ve read from Elison, and another good one (the first was ‘The Pill’, collected in The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Vol. 2 (ed Jonathan Strahan, Saga Press 2021). As with that story, this is is nicely observed, the protagonist cooking and delivering pizzas amongst the stars. It turns out though that the pizza boy is deep in a combat zone, and it’s a risky business, what with collecting mushrooms and keeping his dad’s secret tomato sauce recipe alive. And in a neat reveal towards the end, after a confrontation with marines from the Queen’s Armada, it turns out the pizzas, and the mushrooms and the tomatoes, are supporting the resistance. An intriguing setting which you wouldn’t want wasted on just one story, even if it is a worthy year’s best story. [8th May 2024]
Erica Barbeau. Ice Fishing on Europa.
Originally in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sept/Oct 2021
A story from an author new to me, which is no surprise as it’s their first pro sale. Onwards and upwards! The protagonist is working alone on Europa, in her science shack on the ice, exploring the depths below through remote submersible bots. She’s a long way from home on account of it feeling like a good place for her to be, due to her not feeling at home at home, as it were, because of her transness. And to make her life more difficult, she suffers from depression. And when a resupply vessel, with food and her meds, which she has run out of, crashes on the other side of the moon, and the ice under her breaks, she resigns herself to her lonely fate. All well and good up to this point. However, help is at hand, in the form of a native life form with whom she is able to communicate with easily, and with whom she has some shared points of reference. And which has the wherewithal to help her retrieve her much needed supplies. This was a bit too much of a stretch for me tbh (i.e. the sudden appearance of a magical creature that resolves her problems and with whom she can engage with), but the characterisation and the storytelling bode well for future stories from this author. [9th May 2024]
Hannu Rajaniemi. Vaccine Season.
Originally in Make Shift: Dispatches from the Post-Pandemic Future, edited by Gideon Lichfield, MIT Press.
Humanity has survived not only COVID-19, but a coronal mass ejection that wiped out electronics for six months, but further pandemics, and come out the other side fighting. Big time. Vaccines have come on leaps and bounds, to the extent that we now have mastery over dementia and cancer and the like, and we now have ageing in our sights. The story features a young boy visiting his elderly grandfather, who is resisting the opportunity to extend his life through having the vaccine passed on to him – even if this means avoiding physical contact with those carrying the vaccine who can pass it on. The young boy takes a risk, and sees for himself just what the future offers humanity, and in doing so, brings his grandfather over to his side. Neat story. [10th May 2024]
Shauna O’Meara. Without Lungs or Limbs to Stay.
Originally in Interzone #290/291
A story by an author new to me, and I reckon it’s the best in the volume so far. It was published in one of the last print editions of Interzone that came out through TTA Press (it’s now digital only with another publisher). It’s well worth trying to seek out a copy, although at the moment your options appear to be 1) to buy this book and read it in this book or 2) to buy the ebook version of Interzone #2901/91 which is available from TTA Press. It’s a story that is worthy of a higher profile. It’s a generation starship story – well, not, it’s a story set on a generation starship, but it’s much more. Spoilers ahead! O’Meara starts bravely – the main protagonist, Dr. Chrissa Conway, is in suspended animation, but as good as dead, which is the crux of the story. The crew of the starship have changed substantially over the generations, and the initial mission which tasked them to find a livable planet for those in cold storage is no longer the current mission…. We, and the two crewmembers tasked with attending to her, find out about Chrissa through a vlog marking the days before she came on board, and the breakup with her partner, who has a last minute change of heart about joining her on the long one-way trip. The story has an emotional ending, as Chrissa, unfrozen, has a few moments before the now non-Earth standard atmosphere kills here, during which her charges hold her hand and convince her that her journey has been a successful. And then it’s time for her to be turned into compost… A really good story, well envisaged, well constructed and well told. [24th May 2024]
Bo-Young Kim (translated by Sophie Bowman). I’m Waiting For You.
Originally in : ‘I’m Waiting For You and other stories’ (2021)
Another story by an author new to me, a much longer one then previous ones, and top quality indeed. If you’re of a certain, like what I am, or if you have studied classis sf, then Haldeman’s ‘Forever War’ springs to mind, but Kim Bo-Young takes us onto an epic journey over 30-odd pages, as his protagonist tries, over the years, without success, to co-incide his return to Earth with that of his fiancee, both heading out into space on round trips. Problem is, it’s FTL travel and that damn relativistic time dilation doesn’t make it easy. Nor does a number of events on his ship, and back on Earth, as we read his letters to his betrothed. As the decades pass, he witnesses Earth change (for the worse) until the final paragraphs where he attempts to make it to the church where they were to have wed, and where they promised to meet, no matter what happened to them…. One of those stories which when you’ve finished reading, you think to yourself ‘I’m glad I read that…’ [1st June 2024]
R.S.A. Garcia. Philia, Eros, Storge, Agape, Pragma.
Originally in Clarkeworld Magazine #172. January 2021 and still online
After commenting on the fact that this volume hadn’t yet had any longer stories in it, Garcia’s story rectifies that issue. But, just to be awkward, I struggled with this story, which has gone down well elsewhere. First up, I was convinced I’d read the story, but couldn’t recall it as I started it. After a bit of confusion I used that search box on the home page of Best SF and realised I was conflating this story with Rachel Swirsky’s ‘Eros, Philia, Agape’ which I read some 15 years ago in another Year’s Best SF volume. To quote the immortal Homer, d’oh!
Then I struggled with the narrative entwining the main storyline with an earlier incident, and then a reference to another narrative from an earlier story, and other bits and bobs of the story and the writing of it just didn’t grab me. [15th Aug 2024]
Gregory Norman Bossert. Hanai.
Originally in Asimovs Science Fiction, November/December 2021.
A neat story set on Hawaii in a relatively near future, in which a small number of spacefaring races are not in touch, mostly at arms length, with us. The protagonist is a xenoanthropologist who was a history with three of these races, as is gradually revealed to us. Don’t ask my why, but I was seeing Sigourney Weaver as her, and Jodie Foster as her sister. Anyhoo, the final member of one ancient race turns up to speak to the xenoanthropologist with three favours to ask, and it’s not straightforward – particularly through the ever present swarms of surveillance nano-drones hear there and everywhere. It turns out interpretive dance is a key element to helping the alien, and there’s more. A neat story. [15th Aug 2024]
An Owomoyela. The Equations of the Dead.
Originally in Lightspeed Magazine #131 April 2021 and still online
Read the story via the link above obvs. An excellent little piece, cyberpunky, a bit of nadsatesque slang, and AIs, what’s not to like? The protagonist, a runner for a Mr Big in the underworld, going by the moniker ‘Harmless’ comes across a young guy who is doing something quite unusual : communicating with AIs. This is unusual on account of the fact that the AIs, once they became self aware and able to look after their own infrastructure, promptly left humanity to our own business and carried on their own business, enigmatically and aloof. Turns out that this guy has worked out how to communicate with them and is trying to explore whether their power can be used to take digital memories and records of the dead, and create a virtual simulacra. When Harmless tells his boss about the young hacker, the boss was a piece of the action, and Harmless realises that this is very bad news for the hacker, and very bad news for Harmless, as he has fallen in love with him. How can Harmless do his master’s bidding without feeding his new love to the lions? Another good story from this author, whose had a half dozen or so over the past decade that have come across my lap, and they’ve all been strong ones. It looks like I’ve read about a quarter of their output, and a lot of their work is published online, so I may well seek out one or two more stories of theirs. [29th Sept 2024]
Indrapramit Das. A Necessary Being.
Originally in ‘Make Shift: Dispatches from the Post Pandemic Future; ed Gideon Lichfield, MIT Press 2021.
A neat little story set around a near-future post-pandemic and post-climate change Kolkata. There a three main characters in the story. The largest is a giant mecha : “The giants had wandered Kolkata like gods, transforming the land, grasping in their titanic hands an opportunity to draw the wilderness back to cool the Earth’s raging fever.” The mecha is like a jaeger from Pacific Rim, controlled by a human, and the ‘heart’ of this mech, rescues a young girl from floodwaters, and the two quickly form a bond, living together in the chest of the mecha. The young girl grows up and things change, but then again, things stay the same. An enjoyable read and quite affecting. [19th October 2024]
Shiv Ramdas. The Trolley Solution.
Originally in : Future Tense Fiction/Slate and still online.
A story that I struggled to engage with. Firstly, the vast majority of the story is in the form of dialogue – which enables the author to easily expound on the ethical and practical issues of introducing AI into academia and teaching, but isn’t a great reading experience. But it was the kind of approach that Asimov was big on in the 50s, and he did well with it. Secondly, the setup is just a little simplistic, and the story just feels like an undergraduate Creative Writing story, rather than a Best SF of the Year story about an undergraduate Creative Writing course. And in fact it does feel just a little like a story from the 50s. [3rd February 2025]
Cooper Shrivastava. Aptitude.
Originally published on Tor.com and still online.
I was annoyed enough with the author starting their story with “One may ascend to godhood in the same way one attains any other competitive position: a series of rigorous standardized exams.” but got even more annoyed with the online version of the story starting with a frickin story summation. It would have been nice to have let the reader wonder what exackerly was going on for a few pages and dropping a few hints, especially as the opening ‘Registration & Continental Breakfast’ with attendees drinking coffee and nibbling danish pastries is quite down to Earth and contemporary and would not immediately hint at a story on a cosmological scale.
Obvs, the link to the story is above, so click on it and read the story before continuing here. I did struggle with the maths (we have maths here in the UK, not math) although I enjoyed the big scope, although it wasn’t clear to me exackerly how a human on a spaceship being sucked into a black hole actually gets a hold of an invitation to become a God. But heighho, the protagonist is up against some seriously smart competitors, and has to use her native cunning to make sure she progresses through the selection process. There’s a neat twist at the end. [4th February 2025]
Regina Kanyu Wang (translated by Xueting Christine Ni). The Tide of Moon City.
Originally published in Sinopticon: a Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction.
A story that I struggled with. A bit stilted at times, a few conversations with explanatory exchanges, and for a far-future story, some very 20th century vibes – university life, dating couples, twin beds vs double beds in hotels, pre-marital sex, gender discrimination, female teen jealousy : it wouldn’t take much at all to rewrite as a story set in the 1950s on earth. It feels like a story that should be in a Very New Faces in SF volume, rather than a Year’s Best volume. [17th Feb 2025]
Ray Naylor. A Rocket for Dimitrios.
Originally in Asimovs, January/February 2021 and online on the author’s website
A second story from Naylor in this volume, and it’s a doozy. I don’t normally like alternate history, as it often has a simplistic switching of what happened, whereas Naylor’s is much more complication, and from an intriguing premise. If you haven’t read the story yet, follow the link above. His premise : just before the second world war, an alien spacecraft crashed in America, and the advanced alien tech that the Americans got from it gave them a massive advantage in the war, which turned out quite quite different, and with balances of power, political alliances etc all bent into alternate shapes. And quite nicely, we see Eleanor Roosevelt and Hedy Lamarr in altogether higher profile roles than they had (and in flying suits no less). The story revolves around the possibility that there is a second crashed spaceship somewhere, and if so, what changes to the balance of power will there be depending on who finds it? Note to self : there’s evidently a follow up story in 2024.[21st Feb 2025]
Ken Liu. Jaunt.
Make Shift : Dispatches from the Post-Pandemic Future (Twelve Tomorrows, ed Gideon Lichfield, 2021)
A second story in consecutive Clarke’s from Liu that has disappointed. Obviously, writing something in the depths of COVID-19 (it was bad enough in England, but keerist what it must have been like in the USA…) is going to be a challenge, but this ‘story’ feels just a bit too preachy, covering topics including covid, telepresence, VR, tech, global corporations, is told in the form of extracts and transcripts of documents and television shows etc, which is a format that I do struggle with. [2nd April 2025]
Octavia Cade. The Streams Are Paved With Fish Traps.
Originally in : Multispecies Cities: Solarpunk Urban Futures (Weaver Press 2021)
SolarPunk is a thing, evidently! An optimistic story from Cade, but as with the previous story, just a bit too preachy as there isn’t a whole lot of story to hang the message on. The message : wouldn’t it be nice if people got together and made our cities havens for wildlife, and indeed, went underground and made habitats for fish and fowl. Yup, there is indeed a small percentage of people who would do such a thing, but then again the massive majority wouldn’t give a fck, and a minority would do their level best to put their efforts into entirely the opposite end of the spectrum when is comes to environmental matters. [2nd April 2025]
Alice Towey. The Water Beneath Our Feet.
Analog Science Fiction & Fact, November/December 2021
The editor doesn’t do Towey any favours by placing this near future, fairly straightforward eco-focussed story right after the preceding near future, fairly straightforward eco-focussed story. Towey puts a partially cyborg farming robot in an ethical dilemma : it spots a group of transient people stealing water from the massive farm it works on to grow their own produce. It studies what they are doing, and finds itself impressed with it, and with their argument that the water in the ground can hardly be seen to be really ‘owned’ by anyone, so can it be theft. But this poses an ethic dilemma : report them to the farm owner, or, and this being an Analog story, can it find a way around the conundrum. An OK story, but not a standout for me. [7th August 2025]
Tade Thompson. Elegba’s Valley.
Originally in Upshot : Stories of Financial Futures still online
A story from an author new to me, but whose work has received plaudits. It’s from an online collection looking at ‘financial futures’ which is a first for me. Thompson looks at universal basic income, which is a concept familiar to me (being a Guardian reader). However, whilst the story is set near-future in a community with is an experiment on this model, the story doesn’t really go into that much depth on the experiment, as it’s the interpersonal relationships and a bit of double-dealing that is the essence of the story. For my money (traditional folding money, electronic money, precious metals, bitcoin, whatever) the story could have done with having a bit more of either element of the story, as it’s over and done with quite quickly. [2nd October 2025]
Grace Chan. He Leaps for the Stars, He Leaps for the Stars.
Originally in Clarkesworld Magazine #178 July 2021 – and still online
Well worth a read – click on the link below. Yennie is a media superstar dancer and performer, based out on Enceladus, living with his android minder, who works him hard. We find out just how hard, and also the extent to which Yennie has been groomed for this role, not from an early age, but in utero. In addition to the stresses of rehearsals, releasing new videos, being nice to corporate sponsors etc, he also has to allow lucky fans to enter his sensorium, so that they can experience being him. But the latest to share his brain has something to offer, rather than just taking. A good story from an author new to me. [3rd October 2025]
Rich Larson. Complete Exhaustion of the Organism.
Originally in Lightspeed Magazine #131 April 2021 and still online
I was looking forward to reading this, as Larson invariably gives good story, and indeed this is top class. It’s online, so follow the link above obvs. It’s post-apocalyptic. The story doesn’t got into detail as to exackerly what happened, and why, or by who, as the focus is very much on the two protagonists, the two lovers trudging across the wasteland, turning their back on some kind of synthetic pseudo-real life community that has been created for the remnants of humanity. And those who have created that community keep leaving the couple bits and pieces to help them on their way each night whilst they sleep in their tent. And one night it’s a baby…. Larson gives tyro writers a lesson with his opening line ““It’s not a real baby,” Jain says flatly. “And we should kill it.”” which really hooks the reader. And unlike the last but one story, which had quite a bit about universal basic income, which didn’t really do much for the story (it was in a ‘financial futures’ anthology so had to have it in), this story doesn’t get into the bigger picture, so we’re left guessing as to who the ‘they’ are, whether it’s alien overlords or AIs or whatever, but that’s irrelevant to the narrative which is about the two humans. Powerful stuff. [3rd October 2025]
Aliette de Bodard. Mulberry and Owl.
Originally in : Uncanny Magazine #42 Sept/Oct 2021 and still online
A strong story set in the author’s Xuya universe. I’ve no idea if the characters have appeared in other stories, so there may be an added dimension if that is the case and you’re familiar with the main protagonist and antagonist (!), but the story works plenty fine as a standalone if it is that. The story is online, so why not spend half an hour (maybe a bit more if you’re a slow reader) reading it before you go any further. What I liked about this story : far future and deep space setting, female characters, the cultural background and family links that give a strong underpinning to the story, a complicated story with a back story rather than a ‘astronaut/scientist gets in a tricky situation and has to extricate themselves’, the antagonist (a frickin enormous AI/humanmind controlled spaceship that has been exiled for doing the work of the old Empress viz destroying those opposing the regime, the way the backstory gradually unfolds. What I didn’t like about the story : nothing. [8th December 2025]
Suzanne Palmer. Bots of the Lost Ark.
Originally in Clarkesworld Magazine #177, June 2021 – and still online
Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novelette 2022, although tbh there are more than a few stories in this volume that I would rank about it. We see a return of Bot 9, also a Hugo Novelette winner back in 2018, which I read at the time and enjoyed as ‘cute’. Ditto this story, in which the tiny bot has to once again come to the rescue of Ship. The crew are all in cryosleep and a lot of the other bots have formed conglomerates (‘gloms’) to take over the role of the crew they had been built to serve. But they have gone too far, seeing themselves are replacing the crew rather than just temporarily substituting for them. [9th December 2025]
Conclusion
A strong volume with a wide range of stories. I recognised 50% of the authors straight away, and had perhaps an inkling of 10% of the others, with 40% or so new to me. Interestingly, I’ve just put the UK edition of the 1991 Dozois’ Years Best SF anthologies onto ebay, and in the ebay summary mentioned the volume started with Nancy Kress’s ‘Beggars in Spain’ and had stories by Lios Tilton, William Gibson, Greg Egan, Karen Joy Fowler, Ian Macleod, Robert Silverberg, Pat Cadigan, Robert Reed, Gregory Benford, Kim Stanley Robinson, Paul McAuley, Geoffrey Landis, James Patrick Kelly, Greg Egan, Brian Aldiss, Pat Cadigan and more. That volume is 35 years old but all those author names all resonate with me very strongly. That’s probably just me showing my age. Or was it the case that back in the day the Big Names sold print magazines and so those authors could get short SF published more easily than newer writers?
For me, the pick of the stories come from Shauna O’Meara, Bo-Young Kim, An Owomoyela, Indrapramit Das, Ray Naylor, Rich Larson, and Aliette de Bodard.
