THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY, 2018 by N.K. Jemison (editor) John Joseph Adams (series editor) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

These Best American collections always prove what can be done with a short story. In the foreword, the guest editor N.K. Jemison speaks about the common theme of revolution in the stories included, something as important in 2017/2018 as it is now. A little disheartening, near embarrassing, to see the same fight against the same leadership seven years later. But here we are. Let’s see what we can get into.

RIVERS RUN FREE

Great premise from the jump. Rivers anthropomorphized into people exploited and hunted. The world is built in a flash and the heartache for justice along with it. This is a banger to start with.

DESTROY THE CITY WITH ME TONIGHT

A fantastic take on superhero origins and lore, dropped in a sci-fi frame. Themes of love and innocence and brilliance and purpose. This was clever and so well done. Two solid entries to get things rolling.

YOU WILL ALWAYS HAVE FAMILY: A TRIPTYCH

What started as an eerie folktale turned into an emotional rollercoaster of familial trauma. No one hurts you like family, that’s a fact. This one stung. Wonderfully told though.

JUSTICE SYSTEMS IN QUANTUM PARALLEL PROBABILITIES

A searing premise that reverberates the flaws and relative normalcy of our own justice system. This one is crazy short and still has you thinking of the infinite possibilities. Why does anything work the way it does?

LONELINESS IS IN YOUR BLOOD

What I assume is a nightmarish take on motherhood and beauty. I’m always amazed there are still ways to enliven the vampire/vampire-adjacent subgenre. I’m also amazed you can say so much with so little.

THE HERMIT OF HOUSTON

This one wasn’t my bag, and I say that having enjoyed the topical post-apocalyptic-like world after Facebook and current events become buzz words of greater-yet-skewed meaning. Having that and then also a more graphic and confusing sex/gender discussion was overload for me. There’s some interesting points and passages, but I struggled with it in a way I wouldn’t expect from this collection.

THE LAST CHENG BENG GIFT

I’m realizing a lot of these selections are based in different cultures and their beliefs on death and afterlife. It’s a cool curation tactic that covers a wide net of humanity. And just when I was feeling sort of overwhelmed with the depth of the entries, this one came through crystal clear. Solid piece.

BRIGHTENED STAR, ASCENDING DAWN

To anthropomorphize things and make the humanity of them sting like this is so hard to do, yet here we are. Somehow a full space drama condensed to such a short piece, an entire universe of hierarchy built in a few pages. This might be the most cohesive and complete tale yet.

I’m also really impressed with how well and often recent Science Fiction has handled trans-like characters. Sci-fi has always been somewhat prescient about social topics, and this one is really fun to see pop up so casually.

THE RESIDENT

The unsettling body descriptions set the tone early for this one, and I knew I was in for something uncomfortable. Each line is somehow skewed to sound troubling, a masterful flick of the writer’s wrist that commands words to do exactly what they intended. I was dragged into the heat of the story, a psychologically terrifying mystery that rolled on with more and more dread and capped with an introspective look in the mirror. This was also the best writing of any piece so far. This one will sit with me.

THE GREATEST ONE-STAR RESTAURANT IN THE WHOLE QUADRANT

Making fun of ourselves from the perspective of another creature never seems to get old. Pointing out our eccentricities and faults, funny quirks of survival and our preference for doing things messier than a machine would do it. I liked the combination of that here, mixed with the cyborg taking on the painfully human trait of people-pleasing and social media dopamine hits. Perfectly paced, sized, and toned.

TASTING NOTES ON THE VARIETALS OF THE SOUTHERN COAST

This has to be in my top three, and it’s a quickie. A textbook example of voice carrying the entire piece, the narrator’s knowledge for wine grounding us as the reality of the situation is revealed. The morality of “I’m just following orders” is unearthed brutally here. And the vintner musings are fantastic. I loved this piece.

DONT PRESS CHARGES AND I WON’T SUE

Knowing the theme of the collection, what isn’t more revolutionary than transgenderism? I’m seeing the common theme through many of these stories and this one brings it to the forefront, an absolute nightmare of civil abuse that I hate to say is not that far from a potential future considering where we are with the country today. It’s sickening how important a story like this feels, and it’s told with heart-wrenching emotion. Just let everyone be who they fucking want, OKAY?

CHURCH OF BIRDS

The saddest one so far. On a day I was already feeling emotional, this gave my heart even more weight to carry. Beautiful and tragic, the poor Swan Boy. Feels like we have found a groove now.

ZeroS

My head is still spinning from trying to keep up with the names and advanced tech flying at me. What an epic. War is hell, and the idea that you could be brought back so your body can be used as a super soldier experiment is a nightmare, even if it seems like a fair deal in exchange for living longer. Might be the longest piece in the book, and the hardest to follow, but impressive and gnarly in so many ways. Would our military resort to such tactics to stay ahead of the curve? I have no doubt.

CARNIVAL NINE

Being a woman, being a mother, is a constant measure of how you can live your life in relation to the men around you, almost destined to take their every whim into account before your own. I don’t know if that was part of the goal of this piece, but it seemed to come through as I read. Especially the mother’s love. What they give of themselves is more than should even be possible, yet they do it, all the way until there’s nothing left. I wondered if it’s even doable for a mother to have both her own interests and her child’s, or only one. Maybe once you have a child, all you can settle for is a less than perfect mix. I don’t know. Motherhood is hard. This piece and the narrative device were approachable and built on truths that are universally recognizable.

THE WRETCHED AND THE BEAUTIFUL

This was clearly a searing implication of the way we treat refugees and migrants in our country, and I’m so on board. And the line about rumors the aliens ate a person’s cat! This came out almost ten years ago, yet the same playbook of hateful rhetoric and scaremongering is almost word-for-word the same as today (i.e. migrants supposedly eating geese during last year’s election). Why can’t we just have some humanity? Instead of turning those seeking aid and a safe place to hang their head into weapons for distraction and greed. I get so sick of this endless cycle. Stories like this make me wonder if anyone out there reading it is unaware of what they are walking into, and if any of them who need it finally see the light. Sadly, I doubt those types of people read things like this — hard looks in the mirror, fictional examples of real acts of transgression on the global and personal scale — at all.

THE ORANGE TREE

A tale of loneliness and magic. Based on historical legend, it’s told with poetic language and rhythm. I loved the device of the thousand versions of loneliness and how that framed the story. I found this to be a sad piece, if not some form of a moral lesson. Always amazing what talented writers can do with history and the stories of old.

CANNIBAL ACTS

A good old-fashioned post-pandemic apocalypse story. Focusing on the personal, small-scale but showing us the effects of societal breakdown. Making us care about the characters, about maintaining our humanity, about what and when we start to bend and what gives us hope. Good bang for your buck here. Felt a little too open-ended, but still worth the read.

BLACK POWDER

This was more my taste and speed than the other entry by the same author. Mixing together genies and the west is a brilliant combo I wouldn’t have thought to put together. I didn’t exactly follow the ending, but getting there was fun enough. Not too shabby.

ZEN AND THE ART OF STARSHIP MAINTENANCE

I love it when a plan comes together. Or at least when it’s revealed in the end that justice was delivered. A great little robot story with some humor and easy to swallow technologies. In this day and age, there’s something satisfying seeing a CEO get what they deserve. A well-written, fun piece to go out on.

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Favorites:

1. Tasting Notes

2. Church of Birds

3. Carnival Nine

4. The Wretched and the Beautiful

Once again, I’m floored by the quality of so many writers out there, coming up with entire universes and squeezing them into these very palatable sizes. Then, while doing that, also making major social statements that stir conversation on real world causes. Everyone should be reading short fiction. It’s good and good for you. Case closed.

I can’t believe how many of these felt like they were ripped from today’s headlines. You want to believe, though things are rough out there today, they aren’t exactly the same kind of bad as 2016-2020. But reading these, it should be clear to anyone it’s the same but worse. I’ll keep reading these stories because it’s part of the battle to call out those that aim to hurt, weaken, and silence, in any way we can. And if I’m reading them, maybe someone else out there that really needs it is too.