As Earth dies, an architect is commissioned to remote build a monument on Mars from the remains of a failed colony; a man who has transferred his consciousness into a humanoid robot discovers he’s missing 30 percent of his memories and tries to discover why; bored with life in the underground colony of an alien world, a few risk life inside one of the whales floating in the planet’s atmosphere; an apprentice librarian searching through centuries of SETI messages from alien civilizations makes an ominous discovery; a ship in crisis pulls a veteran multibot out from storage with an unusual assignment: pest control; the dead are given a second shot at life, in exchange for a five-year term in a zombie military program.
For decades, science fiction has compelled us to imagine futures both inspiring and cautionary. Whether it’s a warning message from a survey ship, a harrowing journey to a new world, or the adventures of well-meaning AI, science fiction inspires the imagination and delivers a lens through which we can view ourselves and the world around us. With The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and 27 of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2017.
Table of Contents:
“A Series of Steaks” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Clarkesworld, January 2017)
“Holdfast” by Alastair Reynolds (Extrasolar, edited by Nick Gevers)
“Every Hour of Light and Dark” by Nancy Kress (Omni, Winter 2017)
“The Last Novelist, or a Dead Lizard in the Yard” by Matthew Kressel (Tordotcom, March 2017)
“Shikasta” by Vandana Singh (Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities, edited by Ed Finn and Joey Eschrich)
“Wind Will Rove” by Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s Science Fiction, September/October 2017)
“Focus” by Gord Sellar (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, May/June 2017)
“The Martian Obelisk” by Linda Nagata (Tordotcom, July 2017)
“Shadows of Eternity” by Gregory Benford (Extrasolar, edited by Nick Gevers)
“The Worldless” by Indrapramit Das (Lightspeed, March 2017)
“Regarding the Robot Raccoons Attached to the Hull of My Ship” by Rachael K. Jones and Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali (Diabolical Plots, June 2017)
“Belly Up” by Maggie Clark (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July/August 2017)
“Uncanny Valley” by Greg Egan (Tordotcom, August 2017)
“We Who Live in the Heart” by Kelly Robson (Clarkesworld, May 2017)
“A Catalogue of Sunlight at the End of the World” by A.C. Wise (Sunvault, edited by Phoebe Wagner and Bronte Christopher Wieland)
“Meridian” by Karin Lowachee (Where the Stars Rise, edited by Lucas K. Law and Derwin Mak)
“The Tale of the Alcubierre Horse” by Kathleen Ann Goonan (Extrasolar, edited by Nick Gevers)
“Extracurricular Activities” by Yoon Ha Lee (Tordotcom, February 2017)
“In Everlasting Wisdom” by Aliette de Bodard (Infinity Wars, edited by Jonathan Strahan)
“The Last Boat-Builder in Ballyvoloon” by Finbarr O’Reilly (Clarkesworld, October 2017)
“The Speed of Belief” by Robert Reed (Asimov’s Science Fiction, January/February 2017)
“Death on Mars” by Madeline Ashby (Visions, Ventures, Escape Velocities, edited by Ed Finn and Joey Eschrich)
“An Evening with Severyn Grimes” by Rich Larson (Asimov’s Science Fiction, July/August 2017)
“ZeroS” by Peter Watts (Infinity Wars, edited by Jonathan Strahan)
“The Secret Life of Bots” by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld, September 2017)
“Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance” by Tobias S. Buckell (Cosmic Powers, edited by John Joseph Adams)