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permissions
“The Potter of Bones,” by Eleanor Arnason. Copyright © 2002 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, September 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Rogue Farm,” by Charles Stross. Copyright © 2003 by Charles Stross. First published in Live Without a Net (Roc), edited by Lou Anders. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Little Goddess,” by Ian McDonald. Copyright © 2005 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 2005. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Dead Men Walking,” by Paul McAuley. Copyright © 2006 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, March 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Tin Marsh,” by Michael Swanwick. Copyright © 2006 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, August 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Good Mountain,” by Robert Reed. Copyright © 2006 by Robert Reed. First published in One Million A.D. (Science Fiction Book Club), edited by Gardner Dozois. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Where the Golden Apples Grow,” by Kage Baker. Copyright © 2006 by Kage Baker. First published in Escape from Earth (Science Fiction Book Club), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. Reprinted by permission of the agent for the author’s estate, The Virginia Kidd Agency.
“The Sledge-Maker’s Daughter,” by Alastair Reynolds. Copyright © 2007 by Interzone. First published in Interzone, April 2007. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Glory,” by Greg Egan. Copyright © 2007 by Greg Egan. First published in The New Space Opera (Eos), edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Finisterra,” by David Moles. Copyright © 2007 by Spilogale, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 2007. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm,” by Daryl Gregory. Copyright © 2008 by Daryl Gregory. First published in Eclipse Two (Night Shade), edited by Jonathan Strahan. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Utriusque Cosmi,” by Robert Charles Wilson. Copyright © 2009 by Robert Charles Wilson. First published in The New Space Opera 2 (Eos), edited by Jonathan Strahan and Gardner Dozois. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance,” by John Kessel. Copyright © 2009 by John Kessel. First published in The New Space Opera 2 (Eos), edited by Jonathan Strahan and Gardner Dozois. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Useless Things,” by Maureen McHugh. Copyright © 2009 by Maureen F. McHugh. First published in Eclipse Three (Night Shade), edited by Jonathan Strahan. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Mongoose,” by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear. Copyright © 2009 by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear. First published in Lovecraft Unbound (Dark Horse Comics), edited by Ellen Datlow. Reprinted by permission of the authors.
“Hair,” by Adam Roberts. Copyright © 2009 by Adam Roberts. First published in When It Changed (Comma Press), edited by Geoff Ryman. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Things,” by Peter Watts. Copyright © 2010 by Peter Watts. First published electronically on Clarkesworld, January 2010. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Emperor of Mars, by Allen M. Steele. Copyright © 2010 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 2010. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain,” by Yoon Ha Lee. First published electronically on Lightspeed, September 2010. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Martian Heart,” by John Barnes. Copyright © 2011 by John Barnes. First published in Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier (Viking), edited by Jonathan Strahan. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Invasion of Venus,” by Stephen Baxter. Copyright © 2011 by Stephen Baxter. First published in Engineering Infinity (Solaris), edited by Jonathan Strahan. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, Selective Artists.
“Weep for Day,” by Indrapramit Das. Copyright © 2012 by Dell Magazines. First pubished in Asimov’s Science Fiction, August 2012. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi,” by Pat Cadigan. Copyright © 2012 by Pat Cadigan. First published in Edge of Infinity (Solaris), edited by Jonathan Strahan. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Memcordist,” by Lavie Tidhar. Copyright © 2012 by Lavie Tidhar. First published electronically on Eclipse Online, December 2012. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Best We Can,” by Carrie Vaughn. Copyright © 2013 by Carrie Vaughn. First published electronically on Tor.com, July 17. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Discovered Country,” by Ian R. MacLeod. Copyright © 2013 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, September 2013. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Pathways,” by Nancy Kress. Copyright © 2013 by Nancy Kress. First published in Twelve Tomorrows (MIT Technology Review), edited by Stephen Cass.
“The Hand Is Quicker…,” by Elizabeth Bear. First published in The Book of Silverberg (Subterranean Press), edited by William Schafer and Gardner Dozois. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Someday,” by James Patrick Kelly. Copyright © 2014 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, April/May 2014. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Long Haul, from the Annals of Transportation, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009,” by Ken Liu. Copyright © 2014 by Ken Liu. First published electronically on Clarkesworld, November 2014. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight,” by Aliette de Bodard. Copyright © 2015 by Aliette de Bodard. First published electronically on Clarkesworld, January 2015. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Calved,” by Sam J. Miller. Copyright © 2015 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, September 2015. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Emergence,” by Gwyneth Jones. Copyright © 2015 by Gwyneth Jones. First published in Meeting Infinity (Solaris), edited by Jonathan Strahan. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Rates of Change,” by James S. A. Corey. Copyright © 2015 by Protogen LLC. First published in Meeting Infinity (Solaris), edited by Jonathan Strahan. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Jonas and the Fox,” by Rich Larson. Copyright © 2016 by Rich Larson. First published electronically on Clarkesworld, May 2016. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“KIT: Some Assembly Required,” by Kathe Koja and Carter Scholz. Copyright © 2016 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, August 2016. Reprinted by permission of the authors.
“Winter Timeshare,” by Ray Nayler. Copyright © 2017 by Dell Magazines.
First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, January/February 2017. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“My English Name,” by R. S. Benedict. Copyright © 2017 by R. S. Benedict. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May/June 2017. Reprinted by permission of the author.
acknowledgments
I’d like to thank all the people who have helped me assemble these volumes over the years; Susan Casper, Sean Swanwick, and Vaughne Lee Hanson for technical support; too many authors and editors to list; and thanks to my own editors, Jim Frenkel, Stuart Moore, Gordon Van Gelder, Bryan Cholfin, and, especially, Marc Resnick.
preface
The first volume of this series, The Year’s Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection, was published way back in 1984, a time so distant and so different that it might as well be another world, and one that would probably seem as alien as any fictional Mars to many of today’s young readers. As I type these words, it’s 2017, with The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection about to come out. Although I already edited The Best of the Best in 2005 and The Best of the Best, Volume 2: 20 Years of the Best Short Science Fiction Novels in 2007, it seemed time for another such collection—so here it is, covering the years from 2003 to 2017, and from The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection to The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection.
Over the entire span of the series, from 1984 to 2017, we’ve reprinted more than six hundred stories, from authors from all around the world, reprinted from magazines, anthologies, electronic magazines, novella chapbooks, and podcasts. I hope that you’ve enjoyed and will enjoy some of them. If you do, the credit goes to the authors who wrote them, and the editors who were shrewd enough to buy them in the first place. They did the real work. All I’ve done, over the years, is to offer you a chance to read the stories that I myself enjoyed.
Time that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,
Worships language and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives.
—W. H. AUDEN
The Potter of Bones
ELEANOR ARNASON
Eleanor Arnason published her first novel, The Sword Smith, in 1978, and followed it with such novels as Daughter of the Bear King and To the Resurrection Station. In 1991, she published her best-known novel, one of the strongest novels of the nineties, the critically-acclaimed A Woman of the Iron People, a complex and substantial novel which won the prestigious James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Amazing, Orbit, Xanadu, and elsewhere. Her other books include Ring of Swords and Tomb of the Fathers, and a chapbook, Mammoths of the Great Plains, which includes the eponymous novella, plus an interview with her and a long essay, and a collection, Big Mama Stories. Her story “Stellar Harvest” was a Hugo Finalist in 2000. Her most recent books are two new collections, Hidden Folk: Icelandic Fantasies, and a major SF retrospective collection, Hwarhath Stories: Transgressive Tales by Aliens. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Here she takes us to a strange planet sunk in its own version of a medieval past for a fascinating study of the birth of the Scientific Method … and also for an intricate, moving, and quietly lyrical portrait of a rebellious and sharp-minded woman born into a time she’s out of synch with and a world that refuses to see what she sees all around her.
The northeast coast of the Great Southern Continent is hilly and full of inlets. These make good harbors, their waters deep and protected from the wind by steep slopes and grey stone cliffs. Dark forests top the hills. Pebble beaches edge the harbors. There are many little towns.
The climate would be tropical, except for a polar current which runs along the coast, bringing fish and rain. The local families prosper through fishing and the rich, semi-tropical forests that grow inland. Blackwood grows there, and iridescent greywood, as well as lovely ornamentals: night-blooming starflower, day-blooming skyflower and the matriarch of trees, crown-of-fire. The first two species are cut for lumber. The last three are gathered as saplings, potted and shipped to distant ports, where affluent families buy them for their courtyards.
Nowadays, of course, it’s possible to raise the saplings in glass houses anywhere on the planet. But most folk still prefer trees gathered in their native forests. A plant grows better, if it’s been pollinated naturally by the fabulous flying bugs of the south, watered by the misty coastal rains and dug up by a forester who’s the heir to generations of diggers and potters. The most successful brands have names like “Coastal Rain” and emblems suggesting their authenticity: a forester holding a trowel, a night bug with broad furry wings floating over blossoms.
This story is about a girl born in one of these coastal towns. Her mother was a well-regarded fisherwoman, her father a sailor who’d washed up after a bad storm. Normally, a man such as this—a stranger, far from his kin—would not have been asked to impregnate any woman. But the man was clever, mannerly and had the most wonderful fur: not grey, as was usual in that part of the world, but tawny red-gold. His eyes were pale clear yellow; his ears, large and set well out from his head, gave him an entrancing appearance of alertness and intelligence. Hard to pass up looks like these! The matrons of Tulwar coveted them for their children and grandchildren.
He—a long hard journey ahead of him, with no certainty that he’d ever reach home—agreed to their proposal. A man should be obedient to the senior women in his family. If they aren’t available, he should obey the matrons and matriarchs nearby. In his own country, where his looks were ordinary, he had never expected to breed. It might happen, if he’d managed some notable achievement; knowing himself, he didn’t plan on it. Did he want children? Some men do. Or did he want to leave something behind him on this foreign shore, evidence that he’d existed, before venturing back on the ocean? We can’t know. He mated with our heroine’s mother. Before the child was born, he took a coastal trader north, leaving nothing behind except a bone necklace and Tulwar Haik.
Usually, when red and grey interbreed, the result is a child with dun fur. Maybe Haik’s father wasn’t the first red sailor to wash up on the Tulwar coast. It’s possible that her mother had a gene for redness, which finally expressed itself, after generations of hiding. In any case, the child was red with large ears and bright green eyes. What a beauty! Her kin nicknamed her Crown-of-Fire.
When she was five, her mother died. It happened this way: the ocean current that ran along the coast shifted east, taking the Tulwar fish far out in the ocean. The Tulwar followed; and somewhere, days beyond sight of land, a storm drowned their fleet. Mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins disappeared. Nothing came home except a few pieces of wood: broken spars and oars. The people left in Tulwar Town were either young or old.
Were there no kin in the forest? A few, but the Tulwar had relied on the ocean.
Neighboring families offered to adopt the survivors. “No thank you,” said the Tulwar matriarchs. “The name of this bay is Tulwar Harbor. Our houses will remain here, and we will remain in our houses.”
“As you wish,” the neighbors said.
Haik grew up in a half-empty town. The foresters, who provided the family’s income, were mostly away. The adults present were mostly white-furred and bent: great-aunts and -uncles, who had not thought to spend their last years mending houses and caring for children. Is it any wonder that Haik grew up wild?
Not that she was bad; but she liked being alone, wandering the pebble beaches and climbing the cliffs. The cliffs were not particularly difficult to climb, being made of sedimentary stone that had eroded and collapsed. Haik walked over slopes of fallen rock or picked her way up steep ravines full of scrubby trees. It was not adventure she sought, but solitude and what might be called “nature” nowadays, if you’re one of those people in love with newfangled words and ideas. Then, it was called �
��the five aspects” or “water, wind, cloud, leaf and stone.” Though she was the daughter of sailors, supported by the forest, neither leaf nor water drew her. Instead, it was rock she studied—and the things in rock. Since the rock was sedimentary, she found fossils rather than crystals.
Obviously, she was not the first person to see shells embedded in cliffs; but the intensity of her curiosity was unusual. How had the shells gotten into the cliffs? How had they turned to stone? And why were so many of them unfamiliar?
She asked her relatives.
“They’ve always been there,” said one great-aunt.
“A high tide, made higher by a storm,” said another.
“The Goddess,” a very senior male cousin told her, “whose behavior we don’t question. She acts as she does for her own reasons, which are not unfolded to us.”
The young Tulwar, her playmates, found the topic boring. Who could possibly care about shells made of stone? “They don’t shimmer like living shells, and there’s nothing edible in them. Think about living shellfish, Haik! Or fish! Or trees like the ones that support our family!”
If her kin could not answer her questions, she’d find answers herself. Haik continued her study. She was helped by the fact that the strata along the northeast coast had not buckled or been folded over. Top was new. Bottom was old. She could trace the history of the region’s life by climbing up.
At first, she didn’t realize this. Instead, she got a hammer and began to break out fossils, taking them to one of the town’s many empty houses. There, through trial and error, she learned to clean the fossils and to open them. “Unfolding with a hammer,” she called the process.
Nowadays we discourage this kind of ignorant experimentation, especially at important sites. Remember this story takes place in the distant past. There was no one on the planet able to teach Haik; and the fossils she destroyed would have been destroyed by erosion long before the science of paleontology came into existence.
The Very Best of the Best Page 1