The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021

Foreword

Welcome to year seven of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy! This volume presents the best science fiction and fantasy (SF/F) short stories published during the 2020 calendar year as selected by myself and guest editor Veronica Roth.

Veronica Roth burst onto the publishing scene in 2011 with her first novel, Divergent, which she famously wrote during her senior year at Northwestern University. That book went on to become a number-one New York Times best seller and a franchise-starting worldwide blockbuster. Divergent spawned two novel sequels—Insurgent and Allegiant—​along with a story collection called Four. Collectively, the books have sold somewhere north of forty million copies worldwide and were adapted into three major motion pictures.

After the Divergent series concluded, Veronica returned with a new young adult duology—​Carve the Mark and The Fates Divide—​and then followed that up with a short story collection called The End and Other Beginnings.

In 2020, Roth pivoted, making her adult debut with the novel Chosen Ones, which I was fortunate enough to acquire for my imprint at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It received high praise from previous BASFF series editors Diana Gabaldon and Charles Yu, not to mention the likes of Charlie Jane Anders, Blake Crouch, and Amber Benson—​and also received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews and, despite coming out right when the pandemic started locking everything down, hit the New York Times best-seller list. Veronica’s second adult novel is due out in 2022.

Although Veronica began her career as a novelist, she’s also passionate about short fiction. Above, I mentioned her short story collections, but it’s worth noting that outside of those she’s also published stories in anthologies such as Summer Days and Summer Nights, Shards & Ashes, Wastelands: The New Apocalypse, and in the Amazon Original Stories “deconstructed anthology”[1] Forward. Plus, in 2020, she also had a new story out called “The Least of These” in Lightspeed.

While I was working with Veronica as her novel editor, one of the things that stuck in my mind was how when she went to Worldcon for the first time in 2019, she read every piece of short fiction on that year’s (and the previous year’s) Hugo ballot. I also learned that she was a huge fan of Frank Herbert’s Dune and the works of Madeleine L’Engle and Philip K. Dick. And that she was likewise already a fan of several contemporary masters such as Nnedi Okorafor, Charlie Jane Anders, Ted Chiang, and Seanan McGuire—​all authors who have either been reprinted in BASFF or had Notable Stories selections. Once I factored all that in, the editorial calculus told me she’d make a very fine guest editor . . . and, after you read the stories, I think you’ll agree that my math has never been more right.

Veronica, her husband, Nelson, and her dog, Avi, live in Chicago, a city she deeply loves and deeply loves destroying.

The stories chosen for this anthology were originally published between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2020. The technical criteria for consideration are (1) original publication in a nationally distributed North American publication (i.e., periodicals, collections, or anthologies, in print, online, or e-book); (2) publication in English by writers who are North American, or who have made North America their home; (3) publication as text (audiobook, podcast, dramatized, interactive, and other forms of fiction are not considered); (4) original publication as short fiction (excerpts of novels are not knowingly considered); (5) story length of 17,499 words or less; (6) at least loosely categorized as science fiction or fantasy; (7) publication by someone other than the author (i.e., self-published works are not eligible); and (8) publication as an original work of the author (i.e., not part of a media tie-in/licensed fiction program).

As series editor, I attempted to read everything I could find that meets the above selection criteria. After doing all of my reading, I created a list of what I felt were the top eighty stories (forty science fiction and forty fantasy) published in the genre. Those eighty stories—​hereinafter referred to as the “Top 80”—​were sent to the guest editor, who read them and then chose the best twenty (ten science fiction, ten fantasy) for inclusion in the anthology. The guest editor reads all of the stories anonymously—​with no bylines attached to them, nor any information about where the story originally appeared.

The guest editor’s top twenty selections appear in this volume; the remaining sixty stories that did not make it into the anthology are listed in the back of this book as “Other Notable Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories of 2020.”

In order to select the Top 80 stories published in the SF/F genres in 2020, I considered several thousand stories from a wide array of anthologies, collections, and magazines. As per usual, because there is so much good material published in any given year, it was difficult to decide which stories were among the “best,” and so, outside of my Top 80, I ended up with another sixty or so stories that were of similar high quality.

The Top 80 this year were drawn from forty-three different publications: twenty-six periodicals, thirteen anthologies, two single-author collections, and one stand-alone digital chapbook. The final table of contents draws from seventeen different sources: eleven periodicals five anthologies, and one single-author collection. Tor.com, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Lightspeed are tied for the most selections (two); every other venue represented in the table of contents has one story each.

Only two of the authors selected for this volume (Daryl Gregory and Ken Liu) previously appeared in BASFF; thus the remaining authors are appearing for the first time. This is the second appearance for both Gregory and Liu.

Four periodicals appear in BASFF for the first time this year. Three of those are long-storied literary magazines not particularly known for publishing genre works: The Paris Review, A Public Space, and One Story. The fourth periodical to join BASFF’s ranks is Fantasy Magazine, a trailblazer in online fiction publishing that returned in 2020 after several years of hiatus. All of the above (save for Paris Review) were included in our Top 80 for the first time this year, and joining them are Alta, Apparition Lit, Daily Science Fiction, and Drabblecast.

Several authors were tied for the most stories in the Top 80, with two each: A. T. Greenblatt, Alix E. Harrow, Charlie Jane Anders, KT Bryski, Ken Liu, Maurice Broaddus, Sofia Samatar, Stephen Graham Jones, Yohanca Delgado (with both being selected for inclusion), and Yoon Ha Lee. Overall, seventy different authors are represented in the Top 80.

Sarah Pinsker’s and Meg Elison’s stories selected for inclusion, “Two Truths and a Lie” and “The Pill,” were both named finalists for the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula Awards. Pinsker’s story was the winner of the Nebula for Best Novelette and was also nominated for the Bram Stoker Award.

Among the Notable Stories, there were three stories that were named finalists for the Hugo Award: “The Mermaid Astronaut,” by Yoon Ha Lee; “Badass Moms in the Zombie Apocalypse,” by Rae Carson; and “Burn, or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super,” by A. T. Greenblatt. All three were also finalists for the Locus Award.

The latter two stories above were also finalists for the Nebula Award, as were the following Notable Stories: “Stepsister, ” by Leah Cypess; “Advanced Word Problems in Portal Math,” by Aimee Picchi; “The Eight-Thousanders,” by Jason Sanford; and “Shadow Prisons,” by Caroline M. Yoachim.

In addition to the stories named above, the following Notable Stories were also Locus Award finalists: “If You Take My Meaning,” by Charlie Jane Anders; “A Whisper of Blue,” by Ken Liu; “Fairy Tales for Robots,” by Sofia Samatar; “The Sycamore and the Sybil,” by Alix E. Harrow; and “The Girlfriend’s Guide to Gods,” by Maria Dahvana Headley.

One story, “The Bone-Stag Walks,” by KT Bryski, was a finalist for the Aurora Award.

Note: the final results of some of the awards mentioned above won’t be known until after this text is locked for production, but will be known by the time the book is published.

The following anthologies all had stories selected for inclusion in this year’s volume: Burn the Ashes, edited by me, Hugh Howey, and Christie Yant (volume 2 of the Dystopia Triptych); Take Us to a Better Place: Stories, presented by[2] the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Made to Order: Robots and Revolution, edited by Jonathan Strahan; The Book of Dragons, edited by Jonathan Strahan; and Faraway, presented by Amazon Original Stories.

Several other anthologies had stories in the Top 80: the other two volumes of the Dystopia Triptych (Ignorance Is Strength and Or Else the Light), edited by me, Hugh Howey, and Christie Yant; Entanglements, edited by Sheila Williams; Escape Pod: The Science Fiction Anthology, edited by Mur Lafferty and S. B. Divya; The Decameron Project, presented by the New York Times; Out of Line, presented by Amazon Original Stories; Psi-Wars, edited by Joshua Viola; and Us in Flux, presented by the ASU Center for Science and the Imagination. The anthologies with the most stories in the Top 80 were Made to Order: Robots and Revolution (three); The Book of Dragons (three); Or Else the Light (two); and Take Us to a Better Place: Stories (two).

Plenty of anthologies published fine work in 2020 but just didn’t end up with a story in the Top 80. Here’s a partial list: Breathe FIYAH, edited by Brent Lambert and DaVaun Sanders; Avatars, Inc., edited by Ann VanderMeer; Miscreations: Gods, Monstrosities & Other Horrors, edited by Doug Murano and Michael Bailey; A Phoenix Must Burn: Sixteen Stories of Black Girl Magic, Resistance, and Hope, edited by Patrice Caldwell; The Dystopian States of America, edited by Matt Bechtel; Recognize Fascism, edited by Crystal Huff; Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy 3, edited by William Schafer; Glitter + Ashes: Queer Tales of a World That Wouldn’t Die, edited by dave ring; Final Cuts, edited by Ellen Datlow; Evil in Technicolor, edited by Joe M. McDermott; Dominion: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora, edited by Zelda Knight and Ekpeki Oghenechovwe Donald; My Battery Is Low and It Is Getting Dark, edited by Patricia Bray and Joshua Palmatier; Galactic Stew, edited by David B. Coe and Joshua Palmatier; and Apocalyptic, edited by S. C. Butler and Joshua Palmatier.

One collection had a story selected for inclusion this year: Big Girl, by Meg Elison. The only other collection represented in the Top 80 was Nine Bar Blues, by Sheree Renée Thomas.

Here are some other notable collections that included excellent work in 2020. Some of these contained only reprints, and thus had no eligible material, but I’m acknowledging them here anyway in order to shine a light on good works: Universal Love, by Alexander Weinstein; Why Visit America, by Matthew Baker; The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, by Ken Liu; Velocities: Stories, by Kathe Koja; Children of the Fang and Other Genealogies, by John Langan; The Road to Woop Woop, by Eugen Bacon; The Best of Elizabeth Bear, by Elizabeth Bear; The Best of Jeffrey Ford, by Jeffrey Ford; If It Bleeds, by Stephen King; The Postutopian Adventures of Darger and Surplus, by Michael Swanwick; The Grand Tour, by E. Catherine Tobler; and The Midnight Circus, by Jane Yolen.

More than a hundred periodicals were considered throughout the year in my hunt for the Top 80 stories. I read magazines both large and small and sought out the genre stories that might have been lurking in the pages of a literary and/or mainstream periodical.

The following magazines all had work representing them in the Top 80 this year: Asimov’s (three), Clarkesworld (three), Fireside(two), FIYAH (two), Future Tense (two), Lightspeed (seven), The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (six), Nightmare (four), Strange Horizons (two), Tor.com (eight), and Uncanny (three). The following periodicals had one story each: Alta, Analog, Apex, Apparition Lit, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Conjunctions, Daily Science Fiction, Drabblecast, Fairy Tale Review, Fantasy Magazine, Granta, One Story, PodCastle, The Paris Review, and A Public Space.

The following magazines didn’t have any material in the Top 80 this year, but did publish stories that I had under serious consideration: The Adroit Journal, Baen.com, Cape Cod Poetry Review, The Dark, Escape Pod, Flash Fiction Online, Gargoyle, Kaleidotrope, Ploughshares, Pseudopod, Terraform, and Weird Tales.

Normally this is where I’d issue some requiem for the magazines that have ceased publication in the past year, but despite all of the actual, tragic deaths this year due to the pandemic, periodicals seem to have somehow thrived (or at least survived). In fact, I don’t see any notable periodicals that folded in 2020, which is rather remarkable, and in fact, at least two top magazines returned from the dead: Apex and Fantasy. There were also a handful of promising new magazines announced I’ll be keeping an eye on as they start publishing in 2021: Constelación (which will be publishing simultaneously in English and Spanish), Dark Matter, Mermaids Monthly, and The Deadlands.

As always, I implore you to support the short fiction publishers you love. If you can, subscribe (even if they offer content for free!), review, spread the word. Every little bit helps.

We all need a little help from our friends whenever we embark on any project, and BASFF is no different. As of last year, assistant series editor Christopher Cevasco was my right hand, helping me chart the stars and navigate the cosmos (of SF/F). Additionally, as in years past, big thanks to Alex Puncekar and Christie Yant, who again provided some editorial support. Much appreciation to you all!

I’d also like to thank Fariza Hawke, who is now the in-house person who wrangles BASFF-related matters at Mariner Books. Thanks too to David Steffen, who runs the Submission Grinder, a writer’s market database, for his assistance in helping me do some oversight on my list of new and extinct markets mentioned above.

Huge thanks too to the authors who take the time to let me know when they have eligible works, either by just dropping me a line or else by submitting them via my BASFF online submissions portal. I’m also grateful to publishers and editors who proactively send me review copies of anthologies, collections, and periodicals—​especially the ones that do so unprompted and don’t wait until December to send a year’s worth of material.

Editors, writers, and publishers who would like their work considered for next year’s edition (the best of 2021), please visit johnjosephadams​.com/​best​-american for instructions on how to submit material for consideration.