■ I wrote this story originally for The Mythic Dream anthology, whose call was to write a retelling/reinterpretation of a myth. I am Native American (Ohkay Owingeh descent) on my mother’s side, so I wanted to focus on a Native story that may not be familiar to most science fiction and fantasy readers. I chose the classic Tewa story “Deer Hunter and White Corn Maiden,” which can be found in multiple texts and online. The original story has a historical setting, but Native people are very much part of the future, and I wanted my retelling to reflect that. So I chose a cyberpunk-esque setting where fame is everything and technology has made it possible to live, if not forever, then for a very long time. (As I researched biological memory and CGI “digital reincarnation” in Hollywood movies, I realized my story is much more near-future than I anticipated.) I see this story with its cautions about obsessive love as still relevant and beautiful. I hope that it intrigues readers enough that they seek out the original and other indigenous stories.
Rion Amilcar Scott is the author of the story collection The World Doesn’t Require You, which was awarded the 2020 Towson Prize for Literature and was a finalist for the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. His debut story collection, Insurrections, was awarded the 2017 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His work has been published in journals such as Kenyon Review, Crab Orchard Review, and The Rumpus, among others.
■ “Shape-ups at Delilah’s” is a sequel of sorts to a story in my first collection, Insurrections, called “Razor Bumps.” In that story the Great Hair Crisis in my fictional town of Cross River, Maryland, is a new plague freshly ruining haircuts and lives. I wanted to see how the Hair Crisis evolved and how it ended. I thought back to childhood and the many hours I spent in the barbershop growing up. The Black barbershop is often thought of as a sanctuary for Black men. I’m interested in the ideas we accept when we are very young and lacking in critical thinking and how we receive them. Possibly the dumbest idea many people I know accepted was the idea that women were somehow unable to cut hair as well as men—as if masculinity imbued one with special haircutting powers and femininity a lack of them (the best barber I ever had gave lie to that notion). Somewhere along the line someone would cite the biblical story of Samson and Delilah, where a woman cutting a man’s hair results in the loss of his strength and his eventual death. Tiny, by being greater than any male barber, flips the myth of Samson and Delilah on its head. Her haircutting, instead of being debilitating, has the power to give strength to the people of Cross River. Tiny’s power, though, is interrupted by the ridiculous preconceived notions and received ideas of the men around her.
Nibedita Sen is a Hugo, Nebula, and Astounding award-nominated queer Bengali writer from Calcutta, and a graduate of Clarion West 2015 whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Podcastle, Nightmare, and Fireside. She accumulated a number of English degrees in India before deciding she wanted another in creative writing, and that she was going to move halfway across the world for it. These days, she can be found working as an editor in New York City while consuming large amounts of coffee and video games. She helps edit Glittership, an LGBTQ SF/F podcast, enjoys the company of puns and potatoes, and is nearly always hungry. Hit her up on Twitter at @her_nibsen.
■ The idea for “Ten Excerpts . . .” came to me during grad school in the USA, taking a literature course on the American gothic as part of my MFA. This wasn’t my first exposure to academia, either—I have a master’s in English lit from back home in India. One thing led to another, and I got to thinking about how Western academia has been a tool of colonialism, and how racist perspectives and practices are absolutely built into its bones, despite—and sometimes because of!—how strongly it insists on its own objectivity and superiority. I like stories that function like intricate little puzzle boxes where the whole is more than the sum of its parts, stories that do interesting things with structure, and I’d already had the idea to write one in the form of an annotated bibliography. Toss in some feminism, food horror, and queerness, and I had a recipe—or, should I say, a bibliography—for something fun.
Somtow Sucharitkul (S. P. Somtow) was born in Thailand, grew up in Europe, and settled in America for a long while. His career as a science fiction writer began in the late 1970s and was an attempt to escape from composer’s block—his first career was in music. The tail began to wag the dog and he was soon appearing regularly in magazines, receiving the 1981 John W. Campbell Award and two Hugo nominations. After adopting the pseudonym S. P. Somtow he drifted into fantasy, historical, and horror novels, of which perhaps the most noted are The Riverrun Trilogy, Vampire Junction, and Moon Dance. He won the World Fantasy Award for his novella The Bird Catcher. The magic realism of Jasmine Nights earned him mainstream plaudits. A sudden urge to spend time as a Buddhist monk (memoir, Nirvana Express) launched the most recent stage of his career in which he became most known as the director of Opera Siam in Bangkok and the composer of nineteen operas and music dramas, the most recent of which, Helena Citrónová, received performances worldwide. He is working on a ten-opera series, DasJati, based on the iconic Ten Lives of the Buddha, a central text of Theravada Buddhism. In the last few years he has returned to fiction, producing several new novels, most recently Homeworld of the Heart and Stillness in Starlight.
■ My life has always been a kind of border checkpoint, with East and West rushing through in opposite directions, on their way to god knows where; sometimes I feel like the guy who stamps the passports, picking up little pieces of information en passant . . . and eventually assembling the snippets into creative works. There is a real orphanage in a Bangkok slum, run by the saintly Father Joe and populated by kids who are living with HIV—it couldn’t be more different from the one described in this story, but it’s one of the shiny bits of the real world glimmering inside the texture of this story. There is a real Bob Halliday who really is a bit like the god Ganesha—he has passed away, but he lives on, continually popping up as a character in divergent tales of mine for decades.
Caroline M. Yoachim is a prolific author of short stories, appearing in Lightspeed, Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Uncanny Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Clarkesworld, among other places. She has been a finalist for the World Fantasy, Locus, and multiple Hugo and Nebula awards. A chapbook edition of The Archronology of Love is available, with bonus flash fiction set in the same world. Yoachim’s debut short story collection, Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World & Other Stories, was published in 2016. Find her online at carolineyoachim.com, or on Twitter as @CarolineYoachim.
■ In “The Archronology of Love,” I wanted to explore the destructive nature of archaeology: the elements of an excavation site that are lost in the process of gathering information. Archaeologists trade real-world objects in their physical context for catalogs, photographs, carbon dating, and various other types of records. The processes involved are obviously different, but conceptually archaeology (and archronology) remind me of quantum mechanics, where observation collapses the wave function.
The novelette draws from bits and pieces of inspiration across a long period of time, starting with an archaeological dig I did as an undergraduate in 1999. Other aspects of the story draw on more recent experiences—missing a loved one, walking in the campus quad at University of Washington. The bases of the alien artifacts were inspired by an iridescent blue beetle I saw on a trip to Japan. This is pretty typical for my writing process. Images and moments that stay with me over time tend to get mashed together in my fiction.
E. Lily Yu received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer in 2012 and the Artist Trust/LaSalle Storyteller Award in 2017. Her short stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Clarkesworld, Tor.com, Uncanny Magazine, Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and multiple best-of-the-year anthologies, and have been finalists for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Sturgeon, and World Fantasy awards. H
er first novel, On Fragile Waves, will be out in late 2020.
■ “The Time Invariance of Snow” has been a long time coming. Back in high school, I taught myself Latin from Wheelock and learned about Lucretia, the Sabines, Dido, etc.; Cassandra, whose story has been a thorn in me for years, arrived in a standard high school English class. In college, I wrote a prize-winning one-act play about the life and career of Chien-Shiung Wu and a mediocre second thesis on Shannon entropy. Two years ago, I read The Order of Time, by Carlo Rovelli. That book staggered me with its vision of bidirectional time and the increase of entropy, time’s arrow, being an illusion due to a coarse-grained view of the universe. Then Christine Blasey Ford stood up and testified.
The story wrote itself, at that point.
Other Notable Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories of 2019
Selected by John Joseph Adams
Adhyam, Shweta
One Found in a World of the Lost. Beneath Ceaseless Skies, September
Allen, Violet
The Synapse Will Free Us from Ourselves. A People’s Future of the United States, ed. Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams (One World)
Athens, Cyd
Poison. Fireside, April
Bailey, Marika
An Irrational Love. FIYAH, Autumn
Ballingrud, Nathan
Jasper Dodd’s Handbook of Spirits and Manifestations. Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, ed. Ellen Datlow (Saga)
Bangs, Elly
A Handful of Sky. Beneath Ceaseless Skies, June
Banker, Ashok K.
Son of Water and Fire. Lightspeed, January
Bolander, Brooke
A Bird, a Song, a Revolution. Lightspeed, September
Bradley, Lisa M.
Men in Cars. Anathema, December
Broaddus, Maurice
The Migration Suite: A Study in C Sharp Minor. Uncanny, July/August
Bryski, KT
The Path of Pins, the Path of Needles. Lightspeed, December
Buckell, Tobias S.
The Blindfold. A People’s Future of the United States, ed. Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams (One World)
Chiang, Ted
Omphalos. Exhalation: Stories (Knopf)
Crenshaw, Paul
Bulletproof Tattoos. If This Goes On, ed. Cat Rambo (Parvus Press)
Crouch, Blake
Summer Frost. Forward, ed. Blake Crouch (Amazon)
Doctorow, Cory
Affordances. Future Tense, October
Greenblatt, A. T.
Before the World Crumbles Away. Uncanny, March/April
Give the Family My Love. Clarkesworld, February
Hicks, Micah Dean
Quiet the Dead. Nightmare, February
Hudson, Kai
The Weaver Retires. PodCastle, March
Hvide, Brit E. B.
East of the Sun, West of the Stars. Clarkesworld, February
Jemisin, N. K.
Emergency Skin. Forward, ed. Blake Crouch (Amazon)
Give Me Cornbread or Give Me Death. A People’s Future of the United States, ed. Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams (One World)
Jones, Stephen Graham
The Tree of Self-Knowledge. Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, ed. Ellen Datlow (Saga)
Kang, Minsoo
The Virtue of Unfaithful Translations. New Suns, ed. Nisi Shawl (Solaris)
Kim, Alice Sola
Now Wait for This Week. A People’s Future of the United States, ed. Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams (One World)
Kosmatka, Ted
Sacrificial Iron. Asimov’s, May/June
Larson, Rich
Still Life of a Death Broker. Terraform, May
Leckie, Ann
The Justified. The Mythic Dream, ed. Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe (Saga)
Lee, Yoon Ha
The Empty Gun. Mission Critical, ed. Jonathan Strahan (Solaris)
Lewis, L. D.
Moses. Anathema, April
Signal. Fireside, August
Link, Kelly
The White Cat’s Divorce. Dread & Delight: Fairy Tales in an Anxious World (art exhibit 2018)/The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September/October
Lo, Malinda
Red. Foreshadow, Issue 1
Machado, Carmen Maria
The Things Eric Eats Before He Eats Himself. The Mythic Dream, ed. Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe (Saga)
Miller, Sam J.
Death and Other Gentrifying Neighborhoods. Terraform, March
Shucked. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November/December
Mondal, Mimi
His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light. Tor.com, January
Moreno-Garcia, Silvia
On the Lonely Shore. Uncanny, March/April
Nayler, Ray
The Ocean Between the Leaves. Asimov’s, July/August
Okorafor, Nnedi
Binti: Sacred Fire. Binti: The Complete Trilogy (DAW)
Onyebuchi, Tochi
The Fifth Day. Uncanny, September/October
Osborne, Karen
The Dead, in Their Uncontrollable Power. Uncanny, March/April
Peynado, Brenda
The Touches. Tor.com, November
Pratt, Tim
A Champion of Nigh-Space. patreon.com/timpratt, April / Uncanny, July/August
Rappaport, Jenny Rae
The Answer That You Are Seeking. Lightspeed, September
Rivera, Mercurio D.
In the Stillness Between the Stars. Asimov’s, September/October
Roanhorse, Rebecca
Harvest. New Suns, ed. Nisi Shawl (Solaris)
Robson, Kelly
Skin City. The Verge/Better Worlds, February
Roth, Veronica
Ark. Forward, ed. Blake Crouch (Amazon)
Echo. Wastelands: The New Apocalypse, ed. John Joseph Adams (Titan)
Singh, Vandana
Mother Ocean. Current Futures, ed. Ann VanderMeer (Xprize)
Solomon, Rivers
Blood Is Another Word for Hunger. Tor.com, July
St. George, Carlie
Some Kind of Blood-Soaked Future. Nightmare, October
Valente, Catherynne M.
The Sun in Exile. A People’s Future of the United States, ed. Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams (One World)
Wasserstein, Izzy
Requiem Without Sound. Escape Pod, December
Wise, A. C.
How the Trick Is Done. Uncanny, July/August
Yáñez, Alberto
Burn the Ships. New Suns, ed. Nisi Shawl (Solaris)
Yu, E. Lily
The Valley of Wounded Deer. Lightspeed, October
Three Variations on a Theme of Imperial Attire. New Suns, ed. Nisi Shawl (Solaris)
Visit hmhbooks.com to find all of the books in the Best American series.
About the Editors
© Deborah Kennedy
Diana Gabaldon, guest editor, is the author of the award-winning, #1 New York Times best-selling Outlander novels. She serves as coproducer and adviser for the Starz network’s Outlander series based on her novels.
John Joseph Adams, series editor, is the editor of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s John Joseph Adams Books imprint, as well as more than thirty anthologies. He’s also editor of the Hugo Award–winning magazine Lightspeed.
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Footnotes
Foreword
1. For the record, I would have guessed literature, history, and anthropology, with the PhD in literature.
[back]
* * *
Introduction
1. “The Insatiable Entity,” in Science Wonder Stories (Hugo Gernsback, ed.), March 1930 (n.b.: this was published nearly thirty years before the film The Blob appeared); “The Myriad,” from Amazing Stories, December 1937 (“This story out-Lilliput
s Lilliputia, for the action is carried on by the minutest kind of beings, who are decidedly able to take care of themselves!”—Editor’s introduction); and “The Ancient Ones,” from Super Science Stories: The Big Book of Science Fiction, vol. 7, no. 1, July 1950 (“Inheritors of an Earth they could not possess, they strugged [sic] onward toward a feeble glimmering of life, while Death incarnate stalked in their track!”—Table of Contents blurb).
[back]
* * *
The Time Invariance of Snow
1. The more we peer myopically into the abyss of time, the more we understand that there is no such thing as once, nor a single sequential line of time, but rather a chaos of local happenings stretching from improbability to probability.
[back]
* * *
2. Here too the concept of mirror is an approximation, for the phenomenon in question extended into a minimum of seven dimensions; but mirror is a close and useful metaphor.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 Page 50