From quiet, elegiac, contemporary tales to far-future, deep-space sagas, the stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor Karen Joy Fowler for *The* *Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016* demonstrate the vast spectrum of what science fiction and fantasy aims to illuminate, displaying the full gamut of the human experience, interrogating our hopes and our fears—of not just what we can accomplish or destroy *as a person* , but what we can accomplish or destroy *as a people* —and throwing us into strange new worlds that can only be explored when we shed the shackles of reality. *The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016* includes Rachel Swirsky, Sofia Samatar, Charlie Jane Anders, Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, Maria Dahvana Headley, Kij Johnson, Catherynne M. Valente, Dexter Palmer *and others* KAREN JOY FOWLER, guest editor, is the author of six novels and four short story collections, including *We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves*. She is the winner of the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award, a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, and has won numerous Nebula and World Fantasy awards. JOHN JOSEPH ADAMS, series editor, is the best-selling editor of more than two dozen anthologies, including *Brave New Worlds* and *Wastelands*. He is the editor and publisher of the digital magazines *Lightspeed* and *Nightmare* and is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, a new science fiction/fantasy novel imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Table of Contents: Meet Me in Iram by Sofia Samatar The Game of Smash and Recovery by Kelly Link Interesting Facts by Adam Johnson Planet Lion by Catherynne M. Valente The Apartment Dweller’s Bestiary by Kij Johnson By Degrees and Dilatory Time by S.L. Huang The Mushroom Queen by Liz Ziemska The Daydreamer by Proxy by Dexter Palmer Tea Time by Rachel Swirsky Headshot by Julian Mortimer Smith The Duniazát by Salman Rushdie No Placeholder for You, My Love by Nick Wolven The Thirteen Mercies by Maria Dahvana Headley Lightning Jack’s Last Ride by Dale Bailey Things You Can Buy for a Penny by Will Kaufman Rat Catcher’s Yellows by Charlie Jane Anders The Heat of Us: Notes Toward an Oral History by Sam J. Miller Three Bodies at Mitanni by Seth Dickinson Ambiguity Machines: an Examination by Vandana Singh The Great Silence by Ted Chiang