by Neil Clarke
THE BEST SCIENCE FICTION OF THE YEAR
Also Edited by Neil Clarke
Magazines
Clarkesworld Magazine—clarkesworldmagazine.com
Forever Magazine—forever-magazine.com
Anthologies
Upgraded
The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 1
Galactic Empires
The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 2
More Human Than Human
The Final Frontier (forthcoming 2018)
Not One of Us (forthcoming 2018)
The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 4 (forthcoming 2019)
(with Sean Wallace)
Clarkesworld: Year Three
Clarkesworld: Year Four
Clarkesworld: Year Five
Clarkesworld: Year Six
Clarkesworld: Year Seven
Clarkesworld: Year Eight
Clarkesworld: Year Nine, Volume 1
Clarkesworld: Year Nine, Volume 2
Clarkesworld Magazine: A 10th Anniversary Anthology (forthcoming 2018)
Copyright © 2018 by Neil Clarke
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ISBN: 978-1-59780-936-8
eISBN: 978-1-59780-619-0
Cover illustration by Chris McGrath
Cover design by Jason Snair
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Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
Introduction: A State of the Short SF Field in 2017
A Series of Steaks—Vina Jie-Min Prasad
Holdfast—Alastair Reynolds
Every Hour of Light and Dark—Nancy Kress
The Last Novelist (or A Dead Lizard in the Yard)—Matthew Kressel
Shikasta—Vandana Singh
Wind Will Rove—Sarah Pinsker
Focus—Gord Sellar
The Martian Obelisk—Linda Nagata
Shadows of Eternity—Gregory Benford
The Worldless—Indrapramit Das
Regarding the Robot Raccoons Attached to the Hull of My Ship—Rachael K. Jones and Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali
Belly Up—Maggie Clark
Uncanny Valley—Greg Egan
We Who Live in the Heart—Kelly Robson
A Catalogue of Sunlight at the End of the World—A.C. Wise
Meridian—Karin Lowachee
The Tale of the Alcubierre Horse—Kathleen Ann Goonan
Extracurricular Activities—Yoon Ha Lee
In Everlasting Wisdom—Aliette de Bodard
The Last Boat-Builder in Ballyvoloon—Finbarr O’Reilly
The Speed of Belief—Robert Reed
Death on Mars—Madeline Ashby
An Evening with Severyn Grimes—Rich Larson
ZeroS—Peter Watts
The Secret Life of Bots—Suzanne Palmer
Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance—Tobias S. Buckell
2017 Recommended Reading List
INTRODUCTION:
A State of the Short SF Field in 2017
Neil Clarke
With two prior volumes in this series under my belt, I still haven’t settled on a routine approach to writing these introductions. Some years will write themselves and others, like this one, require extra work. By and large, 2017 was a relatively stable year within the short SF field. It was the first full year without a monthly print magazine—Asimov’s and Analog having switched to bi-monthly at the start of the year—but that doesn’t appear to have had an immediate impact on quantity or quality. It’s too early to say whether or not this has impacted readership. The ground ceded to the monthly digital and online publications doesn’t appear to have changed the landscape at this time.
Perhaps the biggest and most personally exciting news was the announcement by Penthouse Global Media (PGM) that they were resurrecting Omni Magazine with Ellen Datlow returning as fiction editor. Omni was the first science fiction magazine to which I subscribed and it will always have a special place in my heart. There weren’t a lot of stories in each issue, but I always enjoyed them and its quirky side held a special appeal in my youth.
However, over the last few years, there’s been some debate as to who actually owns Omni, with Jerrick Media launching the now-defunct Omni Reboot online magazine in 2013 and, more recently, selling the back catalog of the original Omni as ebooks on Amazon. PGM has since taken Jerrick Media to court over this and other intellectual property issues. Meanwhile, Omni has published its first new (original content) print issue since the 1990s and plans to continue as a quarterly publication. This first print issue might be a bit of a challenge to locate these days but it is worth seeking out. Digital issues are available via Zinio. You’ll find Nancy Kress’s Omni story in this collection.
At a recent science fiction convention, I was interviewed alongside a well-established novelist. One of the questions they asked him was what he thought about the state of short fiction, and he declared it dead or dying. Naturally, I couldn’t let that go unchallenged. It’s disheartening to still be hearing this sort of statement echoing from corners of the field, but it typically comes from comparison to the heyday of genre magazines and a time where the subscriber counts for most magazines were artificially inflated by the impact of Publishers Clearinghouse.
For some time, genre magazine subscriber numbers were in freefall, but that “dead or dying” viewpoint ignores the digital explosion of the last decade. Not only were new market opportunities created, but the old print stalwarts were basically reinvigorated by the sales of their digital editions. Perhaps I am too close to this—my entire career is a result of these changes— but the turn-around saved and brought new life into the field.
Are things as healthy as they should be? No. I’ve addressed that in previous introductions. The number of new readers coming into short fiction is increasing, but not at the rate it needs to to adequately support the number of new markets being created. That said, the market adjustment I’ve been expecting hasn’t yet materialized to the level I feared. (We’re not out of the woods yet, friends.) While more than a few markets have shuttered in the last two years and some are still employing questionable business models, that sort of churn isn’t terribly unusual for the field even in the best of times. What I haven’t seen is a high-profile closure or recent “save market X” campaigns. That sign of stability is good. You need that before you can grow.
Through the small press and crowdfunding efforts to publish anthologies or support individual authors, we continue to see diversification in where stories are coming from and how they reach their readers. These little islands create a very fractured map of short fiction, but help charge innovation in the field. I have no doubt that some great things will rise from this and help improve the overa
ll landscape. When you look at the state of the short SF community, you can’t just look at numbers, you have to find places like this and project forward. It’s amusing to have to point this out in science fiction.
Another big opportunity for growth in short fiction is international. The majority of what is published by US publishers originates from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, but there’s a much larger audience beyond. It’s not uncommon for works to be republished in other countries and often translated to other languages. Years after the digital explosion, the industry is still focused on regional instead of global marketing and distribution. For the online magazines, the internet makes that easy, but for digital and print, the distribution systems are complicated or nonexistent. In the EU, VAT fees are also an issue. In parts of Asia, books and magazines are sold at far lower prices than they are here. Adjustments need to be made and creative solutions discovered if we are to enter an age of an international science fiction community.
That said, this cannot be viewed as a one-way exchange. Opening the doors to the rest of the world also means letting others in. It’s no secret that I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years seeking out translated works for Clarkesworld. Through a relationship with Storycom in China, I’ve been able to publish many fantastic Chinese authors. We’ve also published translations from South Korea, Italy, and Germany. In the last few years, the short fiction community—publishers and readers—has become increasingly more open to works in translation. I’ve seen first-hand how these efforts can build an audience for both US authors abroad and for foreign authors at home.
Through these experiences I’ve learned a lot about the science fiction communities in other parts of the world. While some regions might still equate science fiction with children’s literature or worse, others, like China, appear to have culturally embraced the genre at the highest levels of business and government. In November, I had the opportunity to visit China and participate in a number of events and conferences. It’s a much younger community than ours is here, very enthusiastic, and growing fast. It’s highly likely they’ll continue to have increasing role on the global SF stage in the years to come.
Though its impact reaches far beyond just publishing, there was at least one crowdfunding issue that triggered some serious concern for a portion of the short fiction community in late 2017. Many authors and online magazines, mine included, utilize Patreon to connect with fans and generate revenue. You could describe what they offer as a cross between traditional subscriptions and crowdfunding. For example, a magazine or author can set up an account that allows you to make a monthly financial pledge, and in exchange you might get a digital issue from the magazine or a short story from the author. You can quit at any time. (It can get a lot more complicated than that, but I’m trying to keep it simple.) Over the last few years, the number of people using Patreon has grown significantly, and it’s had a significant financial impact on the genre short fiction community. Some of the authors using Patreon include Tobias S. Buckell, Kameron Hurley, Sean McGuire, N.K. Jemisin, and Catherynne M. Valente. Magazines include Clarkesworld, Fireside, Apex, Uncanny, and more.
In December, Patreon announced that they would be making a change to the way they processed fees. They planned to pass along the credit card processing fees to the patrons, their term for the people who support “creators” on their site. The reason most people don’t know about these fees is that it they are typically paid by the business where you use your card. Up until this point, they were being paid by the creators. The new model was met with almost universal opposition and made worse by poor communication from Patreon. Over the next few days, many supporters reduced or deleted pledges. By the time Patreon announced their intention to cancel the fee changes, many creators had lost a significant amount of monthly revenue. Some patrons returned, but the damage had already been done, namely to the trust that had built up over the last few years.
As we make our way through 2018, it will be interesting to see how Patreon recovers from this PR failure and how the community adjusts moving forward. In many ways, their timing couldn’t have been much worse. Just a couple of months earlier, crowdfunding giant Kickstarter unveiled Drip, Patreon’s first serious competitor. Drip is presently invite-only but anticipated to open to a broader audience in 2018.
In previous introductions to this series, I’ve described the process by which the stories are evaluated. Something I didn’t spend much time on was how eligibility was determined. In most cases, it’s fairly straightforward. If the story appears for the first time in English in 2017, it was eligible for consideration. However, there are some edge cases. For example, like most Year’s Best editors and award rules, I treat a magazine or anthology with a January 2017 cover/publication date to be a 2017 publication, even though copies might have reached subscribers in December 2016. Basically, we’re honoring the intent of the publisher.
Sometimes, a story can become detached from an issue/book and published separately. For example, a story from an anthology might be released online in December as marketing for the book. In that case, that particular story is considered published in 2016, while the other stories are from 2017. If you’re lucky, best of the year editors have been told about this in advance and can consider the story for their 2016 volume. If you’re not, the story/stories can fall between anthologies and fail to get some of the recognition they deserve.
One such case happened this year. Late last year, I was informed that the January 2017 issue of Wired would contain several science fiction stories, and I added them to my list of works to be considered for this book. Unfortunately, Wired decided to also publish the stories individually on their website mid/ late 2016, making them ineligible in 2017. By the time this was discovered, it was too late to consider them for the previous volume. It’s a shame, as it’s likely one or more would have made it at least as far as the recommended reading list. However, since the stories are still online, you can check them out for yourself at www.wired.com/magazine/the-scifi-issue.
The twenty-six stories that did get selected for this year’s volume came from thirteen different venues. I had hoped that would have been more, but some of the better stories from some of the other markets were more fantasy-oriented than appropriate for this anthology. Ten of the stories came from online magazines, six from print magazines, and ten from anthologies. This includes two novellas, eleven novelettes, and thirteen short stories. Overall, a stronger than average showing from the small press this year.
As always, I like to wrap things up with some of the people and things I’d like to draw special attention to for their work this year. The quantity and categories may change from year to year, but such is my nature. Before I start, I would also like to include a special thank you to friend and colleague Sean Wallace for his assistance and support with this anthology.
Best Anthology
Sadly, the larger publishers aren’t producing many original science fiction anthologies these days. I only saw a handful in my reading this year. However, the small press has been actively trying to fill that void, and this was one of the years they had the upper hand. Of the ten stories selected from anthologies, seven came from small press projects. The best original anthology of 2017 was Extrasolar, edited by Nick Gevers and published by PS Publishing. At this time, the only edition of this fantastic anthology is a somewhat expensive UK hardcover. I’m hoping that there will be a trade paperback or ebook edition released in the future so more people can enjoy it.
Best New Writer
Of all the categories, this is my favorite and a great note to end on since the state of short fiction can be best defined by the quality of its new voices. Some years, it might be someone who’s been steadily publishing good stories but has recently risen to a new level. Other years, like this one, it will be an author eligible for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer—someone whose first professional sale was in the last two years. The opening story in this anthology wa
s Vina Jie-Min Prasad’s first professional sale, and she has since landed other fine stories at Uncanny and Fireside Magazine—one of which you’ll also find in my recommended reading list at the end of this book. Although hardly an expansive catalog of stories, this category is very much about quality over quantity. Trust me, this is a writer you’ll definitely be hearing more about in the future.
Thanks for reading my thoughts on the state of the short SF field in 2017. Now, go read some of the best stories published that year!
Vina Jie-Min Prasad is a Singaporean writer working against the world-machine. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Fireside Fiction, and Uncanny Magazine. You can find links to her work at vinaprasad.com.
A SERIES OF STEAKS
Vina Jie-Min Prasad
All known forgeries are tales of failure. The people who get into the newsfeeds for their brilliant attempts to cheat the system with their fraudulent Renaissance masterpieces or their stacks of fake checks, well, they might be successful artists, but they certainly haven’t been successful at forgery.
The best forgeries are the ones that disappear from notice—a second-rate still-life moldering away in gallery storage, a battered old 50-yuan note at the bottom of a cashier drawer—or even a printed strip of Matsusaka beef, sliding between someone’s parted lips.
Forging beef is similar to printmaking—every step of the process has to be done with the final print in mind. A red that’s too dark looks putrid, a white that’s too pure looks artificial. All beef is supposed to come from a cow, so stipple the red with dots, flecks, lines of white to fake variance in muscle fiber regions. Cows are similar, but cows aren’t uniform—use fractals to randomize marbling after defining the basic look. Cut the sheets of beef manually to get an authentic ragged edge, don’t get lazy and depend on the bioprinter for that.
Days of research and calibration and cursing the printer will all vanish into someone’s gullet in seconds, if the job’s done right.
Helena Li Yuanhui of Splendid Beef Enterprises is an expert in doing the job right.