This is series is always a good bet. This collection is a good one. It has a nice variety and some very talented authors. Recommended.

Thanks very much for the free ARC for review!!

It's been quite a while since I last read a collection of short stories. The book contains 20 stories. I liked some of them, didn't like a few, and skipped over the horror ones (not my cup of tea). Overall, the stories were rather depressing. I would rather read stories with a bit more of an optimistic lean. But that's the good thing about short stories, if you find one you don't like, you don't have a lot of time invested in it and can move on to the next one.

Thanks to #Harper-Collins/Mariner Books and #NetGalley for providing me with an advanced reading copy (e-ARC) in exchange for my honest review.

I don't always choose short stories, but I appreciate that it is the most difficult form to write, and I have often discovered new authors in short story collections. I asked to review this one because of the guest editor, Rebecca Roanhorse. I have the utmost respect for her talent and writing ability, and am in awe of her imagination. I thought stories she liked might well be worth reading.

There is not a bad story in this anthology.

That is a remarkable accomplishment, even in a "best of" collection. I did not finish the two horror stories, that's not my genre, but the few pages I read of each showed me that they were extremely well written and well imagined. I liked some stories better than others, as always, but all of them are remarkably well written and each has an interesting idea at its core.

I expect it would be difficult to write speculative fiction in these times and not venture into the dark visions of our future worlds, and, while Roanhorse believes that all of them have at least a spark of hope, some are pretty bleak. However, they remain human, interesting, and imaginatively speculative, which is what the reader should get from a title in this series.

I recommend buying the book, so you can read the stories one or two at a time, because each deserves time to contemplate and absorb. I read them straight through, to get the review done before the book was published, but I can imagine re-reading some, and looking for other works by many of the authors.

These stories take you many places, into the near and far future, to the Caribbean Islands and the floating habitats where their people now live, to a Mars colony that has reconstructed one of the worst conflicts on earth, and to ideas about the human mind, and about death and how it changes the living.

I liked all of them, which is unusual, and I thought each of these stories: The Future Library, which combines a love of literature and the consciousness of trees ; Proof by Induction, which asks if there is a way to mend a relationship when a person has died -- and would it help to talk to them again?; Colors of the Immortal Palette, which features a woman artist and a very unusual answer to her need for recognition; The Frankly Impossible Weight of Han, which is one you just have to read; are each worth the price of the book.

And the others are also really interesting. The quality of the writing is unusually good, and you'll have a lot to think about.

In addition, the book is a treasure trove of reading suggestions; they list all 60 of the stories that didn't make the final cut, and Roanhorse calls out 3 of them in her introduction. They also list the sources of the stories, and there are extensive notes from each author, both listing their other work and giving insights into their story in the anthology.

This book belongs in every library and on the personal shelves of science fiction, fantasy and horror fans. Excellent work.

This is a wonderfully curated selection of SFF short stories that I probably wouldn't have managed to read otherwise. The stories cover a wide range from high fantasy to the paranormal to near future to deep space sci-fi. Many of the stories were sad, and it's very easy to see the influence of covid-19 on the genre within these stories.

My favorites were The Pizza Boy by Meg Elison, The Red Mother by Elizabeth Bear, and Skinder's Veil by Kelly Link.

A collection of SFF by mostly well-established authors. I was a little disappointed by this collection, which didn't really contain anything I thought particularly exemplary. I'd have liked to have seen work by less well-known writers--this felt a lot like a meeting of the cool kids' club, with a few authors not quite doing the same quality of work they might once have to get into collections like this. But many readers will enjoy at least some of the stories here, even if I didn't love them all.

4 out of 5 stars.

This is a collection of twenty of the best science fiction and fantasy short stories published in North America during 2021 as selected by guest editor Rebecca Roanhorse, author of "Black Sun", among other books.

A Netgalley ARC provided courtesy of HarperCollins, the scheduled publication date is November 1, 2022.

Contents:

"10 Steps to a Whole New You" by Tonya Liburd
"The Pizza Boy" by Meg Elison
"If the Martians Have Magic" by P. Djeli Clark
"Delete Your First Memory for Free" by Kel Colman
"The Red Mother" by Elizabeth Bear
"The Cold Calculations" by Aimee Ogden
"The Captain and the Quartermaster" by C. L. Clark
"Broad Dutty Water: A Sunken Story" by Nalo Hopkinson
"I Was a Teenage Space Jockey" by Stephen Graham Jones
"Let All the Children Boogie" by Sam J. Miller
"Skinder's Veil" by Kelly Link
"The Algorithm Will See You Now" by Justin C. Key
"The Cloud Lake Unicorn" by Karen Russel
"Proof by Induction" by Jose Pablo Iriarte
"Colors of the Immortal Palette" by Caroline M. Yoachim
"The Future Library" by Peng Shepherd
"L'Esprit de L'Escalier" by Catherynne M. Valente
"Tripping Through Time" by Rich Larson
"The Frankly Impossible Weight of Han" by Maria Dong
"Root Rot" by Fargo Tbakhi

A fantastic collection of stories with varying degrees of fantasy and science fiction woven within. The collection, in my opinion, tends to lean more towards fantasy or a mixture of the two rather than pure SF. A couple even have subtle touches of horror elements.

The main focus of all the stories is people, not hardware, not technology, and not magic, although all three do enter into the kickoff of many of the stories. People, as all really good SF and Fantasy should center on, their emotions, their reactions to what is happening, and their interpersonal relationships to others. Some of these stories touched me deeply, one made me cry, and all made me think.

In all honesty, I couldn't pick a favorite. In various ways they all had something important to say, many of them falling under the increasingly popular and widespread environmental science fiction subcategory. Would I recommend this collection and to whom? Yes, most definitely I would to all readers who like thought provoking fiction, no love or even experience with SFF required.

Crossposted at Tumblr, Storygraph, Goodreads, and a link on Twitter

It's hard to give any anthology collection a 5 star review. But this collection came damn close. I love the speculative sci-fi in this collection and it includes one of my favorite writers: P. Djeli Clark. I just think there should be separate collections for Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Some of my favorite stories are The Pizza Boy by Meg Ellison, If the Martians Have Magic by P. Djeli Clark, The Cold Calculations by Aimee Ogden, and The Algorithm Will See you Now by Justin C. Key. Check it out to find some great new authors or to revel in the words of some of your favorites!

ARC provided by Mariner Books via NetGalley.

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of 20 short stories. As in any collection, some were stronger than others (and some more to my own personal taste), but there were none I disliked, and several I loved. Rebecca Roanhorse (the guest editor this year) did well in choosing and arranging the stories such that they had surprising resonances with each other. This collection is brimming with fantastic work by POC and queer authors, and some authors I’d never encountered before. My reading has been overwhelmingly focused on novels the last few years, so I’ve been missing out on the wealth of short stories out there! In looking up the sources of some of my favorites in this collection, my love for Tor.com (which has a FANTASTIC e-newsletter/articles/free monthly ebook/original short stories) has only grown, and I was made aware of Clarkesworld (a monthly magazine with 6 to 8 original pieces of fiction available for free on their website) and Apex magazine (which also has some free stories).


My three favorites, in order of their appearance, are:

“The Red Mother” by Elizabeth Bear (Tor.com; I’ve never read anything by her before but I will definitely be remedying that immediately. Great atmosphere and a novel’s worth of character- and worldbuilding in a small package. Iceland-esque setting, contains dragons and riddles)

“Let All the Children Boogie” by Sam J. Miller (Tor.com; I read a collection of his for the first time earlier this year and think this is some of his best work. Small town New York setting, friendships forged through music, mysterious stuff happening on the radio)

“Skinder’s Veil” by Kelly Link (When Things Get Dark; I am obsessed with this one and unfortunately can’t find an online version to send it to everyone I think might like it too. Link apparently has several story collections that I will be reading immediately, and also has a novel on the way—amazing. Struggling grad student, weird house-sitting gig, things that unexpectedly really creeped me out, but in a good way)


Some other notes:

“10 Steps to a Whole New You” (Fantasy) by Tonya Liburd and “The Cold Calculations” (Clarkesworld) by Aimee Ogden did the most with the short story form.

“If the Martians Have Magic” (Uncanny) by P. Djèlí Clark, “The Algorithm Will See You Now” (Vital: The Future of Healthcare) by Jusin C. Key, “The Frankly Impossible Weight of Han” (khōréō) by Maria Dong, and “Root Rot” (Apex) by Fargo Tbakhi each have a lot to praise but I especially appreciated their interrogation of loss and trauma.

“Broad Dutty Water: A Sunken Story” (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) by Nalo Hopkinson and “The Future Library” (Tor.com) by Peng Shepherd were the main stories dealing with climate change and the future of our planet, which seems like a small number in a collection of 20 published in the times we live in, but they really packed such a punch that it didn’t feel like the collection was lacking on the matter.

Other stories not noted were still great, but I have said enough, read the collection and find out what they’re about!

The best american science fiction and fantasy, 2022, edited by Rebecca Roanhorse and John Joseph Adams

I have started to really enjoy these best of the year anthologies - it’s a great way for someone like me, who usually prefers single author short story collections, to catch up on recent short fiction. This one was great! It has gems from such favorites of mine as Sam J Miller and Catherynne Valente.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I love the year-end “best of” short story collections, because although I read a ton of short stories, there are inevitably things I’ve missed. Our guest editor for 2022 is Rebecca Roanhorse, author of Black Sun, and along with John Joseph Adams, they have chosen a great variety of stories, showcasing the strongest genre voices.

My favorites in this collection were unexpectedly sweet. Two stories especially warmed my heart, as they were focused on teenage misfits finding friendship; Stephen Graham Jones’ I Was a Teenage Space Jockey is a gorgeous story of loss and arcade high scores, and Sam J. Miller’s Let All the Children Boogie tells of how music can establish strong bonds between people, as two awkward teens investigate strange voices from the radio. Both these stories were so beautiful. Another sweet story I recommend from this collection is Delete Your First Memory For Free, by Kel Coleman.

Two of my favorites authors make well-deserved appearances; Kelly Link’s Skinder’s Veil, which was featured in the incredible Shirley Jackson tribute, When Things Get Dark, involves a house-sitting job that gets incredibly strange. And Karen Russell’s The Cloud Lake Unicorn is an incredibly moving tale of motherhood and maternity.

I think the highlight of this collection is The Frankly Impossible Weight of Han, by Maria Dong. Not only is it a fascinating, entertaining story about a duplicating machine, grief, and ghosts, but the narrator’s voice is just so appealing. I am beyond excited for Dong’s debut novel next year.

Other highlights include Nalo Hopkinson’s Broad Dutty Water, Rich Larson’s Tripping Through Time (I looooooved the ending of this one), Proof by Induction by José Pablo Iriarte, and The Future Library by Peng Shepherd.

This is such a strong collection, and doesn’t even scratch the surface of how many awesome science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories have been published this year. Indeed, at the back of the book, there is a detailed list of “further reading”. Recommended for lifelong genre fans, as well as a gateway drug for curious readers.

This was definitely a mixed bag. Some of the stories weren’t for me and some were really great. That’s my favorite thing about analogies though, you get to taste test a lot of authors. I also find it hard to write reviews for each individual story without giving something away. Some of them are more vignettes than an actual story so almost any summary could spoil it. I would say, if you enjoy short fiction with some fantastic elements, this is a solid collection.

As always, the BASFAF 2022 was filled with great short stories from already great voices in the genres, and I loved every minute of it. I think this might be one of the best collections to date.

I wasn't that impressed with this collection. There are some gems, certainly, and "The Cold Calculations" would be outstanding in any collection, but a great many of them just didn't have much going on. I'm the kind of reader who is interested in who did what, why, and what happened. Give me interesting people doing interesting things and I'm happy. I don't need flowery prose. This is a collection where either the prose is outstanding, bordering on poetry, or the worldbuilding is exceptional, but it's either trite plots we've seen millions of times, or it's nearly devoid of plot. "10 Steps to a Whole New You" offers nothing by way of interesting characters, or anyone doing anything interesting really. But the writing style is pure art. If you want an outstanding turn of phrase, you'll love it.

I don't feel all of them entirely fit the genre, or at least that they are truly representational of the genre. To me, romance has as the driving element two charactes falling in love. If they do that on an alient planet, it's not science fiction, it's romance. A mystery has as the driving element someone gathering clues to solve a crime. If the crime is the murder of the dragon dung shoveler, it's not fantasy, it's a mystery. Science fiction has, as the driving element, something that is possible but not yet real. "Broad Duddy Water" is definitely science fiction. Fantasy has, as its driving element, something magical and impossible. "The Red Mother" is definitely fantasy. Some of these contain elements of science fiction or fantasy, but the driving element fits neither. "I Was a Teenage Space Jockey" has, as the driving element, a boy making peace with his elder brother escaping their abusive household. Which is that? Science fiction or fantasy? I'd argue neither. It is literary fiction with a trapping of fantasy. While some are excellent and would belong in The Best American Short Storis collection, and I'd argue that's a good place for IWaTSJ, I'm not sure they belong in this genre's collection. They are almost all heavy-handed political stories, which would not normally be an issue, but it seems here genre was sacrificed for message as was quality of story-telling.

I rated each story individually, and my rating of the book is the simple average.

10 Steps to a Whole New You -- At the core, this is the story of someone bit by a vampire, with about as much structure and substance as might be composed by an average fifth grader. The use of dialect that reads false and artistic flourishes attempts, and in my opinion fails, to save this peice from banality. It was the weakest of the collection. (1 star)

The Pizza Boy -- This is a side adventure in a sprawling interplanetary rebellion. I liked it, drilling into the detail of the small instances of a bit player in a larger story. (4 stars)

If Martians Have Magic -- A university professor needs to save a group of civilians from the cruelty, hate, and viciousness of a war-ravaged victor. Both sides make so much sense, this story packs a lot of power into a short piece. (5 stars)

Delete Your First Memory for Free -- A reversal of the Phillip K Dick Story, "We Can Remember it For You Wholesale". This explores how our memories, even the minor yet unpleasant ones, can shape us. (5 stars)

The Red Mother -- Just a Viking Mage delivering a message. I had an irrational love of this because Elizabeth Bear seems to honestly know how to spin yarn on a drop spindle. (5 stars)

The Cold Calculations -- The most powerful of the bunch. What if the situations beyond our control aren't? What is the price of a human life, and who gets to set it? (5 stars)

The Captain and the Quartermaster -- This was a basic tale of the workings of an army between the fights. It is told out of order, and the characters are charming, but there is little new to be found here. (2 stars)

Broad Dutty Water: A Sunken Story -- Much like the first story, more style than substance. Jacquee botches going home from a doctor's visit in a post-apocalyptic world. At least there's a talking pig. (1 star)

I Was a Teenage Space Jockey -- Native American kids facing bullies and abusive households find solace in an old-style arcade. For fantasy, 1 star. For literary fiction 5 stars. I'm taking the average. (3 stars)

Let All the Children Boogie -- This one seemed like it had so much promise, and then it ended on a whimper that not only left more questions than answers, but left the wrong questions, such as "why?" and "who cares?" It's the story of two kids who hear a mysterious voice on the radio and follow it to -- I won't spoil it. It's so good until the end. (3 stars)

Skinder's Veil - This starts off as the story of a PhD student who clearly does not know what a library is and who lives with a horrible roommate. It takes a while to have a slight brush with fantasy, but it runs far more literary. By the time it gets near fantasy, things rapidly devolve to where the protagonist is doing things, not because they make sense, but because the plot calls for them. There is no recovering from that. (1 star)

The Algorithm Will See You Now -- A psychiatrist works through her own issues while treating a patient. And there are computers. (1 star)

The Cloud Lake Unicorn -- A woman has a baby. That's the only driving thing anyone acts on, so that's the entire plot. The rest is literary dressing. But it is such good literary dressing I have to elevate the rating from what the mere plot would deserve. (3 stars)

Proof by Induction -- This was a finalist for this year's Hugo award. Failing professor does math with his dead father. The characters are cool though. (3 stars)

Colors of the Immortal Palette -- An artist seeks immortality -- literally and figuratively -- and to find her place in a world where she is far from the default. This is a brilliant reimagining of the vampire lore and a powerful tour through the life of a fascinating character. (5 stars)

The Future Library -- A combination romance and save the trees story set in a dystopian future. This feels structurally awkward. The character is more an observer than an agent. It was compelling at times more for the knee jerk reaction to climate change than the particulars of this story. The logic of the protagonist's actions fails any attempt at analysis. She wants to prove something false, by providing absolute evidence it is true. (1 star)

L'Espirit de L'Escalier -- An adaptation of the Orpheus and Eurydice story in modern times. (4 stars)

Tripping Through Time -- In a world where virii like Covid are the norm, a young woman takes a job as a waitress in an establishment that uses glimpses into history as a form of entertainment. I'm not honestly sure what the characters wanted, since they did so little to get it. (1 star)

The Frankly Impossible Weight of Han -- This is metafiction, more about the technology at its center than the characters involved. Normally not my cup of tea, but it's incredibly well done. (5 stars)

Root Rot -- This story starts not entirely horrible and it kind of devolves a bit. I think once they took a liter of blood from the protagonist, who hasn't eaten, and he just wanders along his way, it was nearly a book meets wall incident. I've given a pink on a half-empty stomach and nearly hit the floor. And then they put it back, so the why is bewildering, but the why of most of this story is bewildering. It is, at best, dystopia on Mars (1 star)

I've been reading a lot of the "best of" anthologies from the last couple of years lately, and this one comes close to the top of my list of favorites so far. Like the other anthologies, not all of the stories jump out, but there are several stars here and I now have some new authors I want to check out. These are short stories so I think it takes a special kind of talent to connect with a reader on such an abbreviated timescale and be able to have meaningful action in just a few pages. Several of these were able to do that, in my opinion!

Thank you to Mariner Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to access this free e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

I received this book as a digital ARC from Netgalley. Story by story review, go!

10 Steps to a Whole New You by Tonya Liburd: This is a second person story in dialect about a woman who lives in the Caribbean who befriends a "soucouyant" (a sort of Caribbean vampire body snatcher) who changes her. It's not bad, but the story doesn't feel substantial enough for the weight of its structure. 2 stars

The Pizza Boy by Meg Elison: The unnamed narrator is a pizza delivery boy in outer space, working on sourcing ingredients when he's far away from Earth and has to scrounge in strange places. He has to make the pizza, because the pizza is a message. 4 stars

If the Martians Have Magic by P. Djeli Clark: There's a lot going on here. We're in an alternate history with magic and aliens and a kinda steampunk vibe. Minette is a voodoo practitioner in a world where the loa are real and powerful. She's shared her magic/religion with a group of Martians that are hated and feared. I liked this one a lot, as I have the other work by Clark that I've read. 5 stars

Delete Your First Memory for Free by Kel Coleman: Our main character is a painfully anxious young man struggling to enjoy some human interaction without freaking out. He and a group of new friends go to a business that lets them erase memories. He erases a few memories, and feels better. Interesting premise, but very little happens. 2 stars

The Red Mother by Elizabeth Bear: An old viking goes looking for his brother to tell him that he's been cleared of a murder charge and can come home. He tracks his brother by magic, finds an old friend who tells him his brother is dead, and has to battle a dragon for its venom, which can be used as a resurrection potion. Lots of very nice detail in this one that really makes the setting come alive, but I don't know, it left me a little cold. 3 stars

The Cold Calculations by Aimee Ogden: This story is a comment on Tom Godwin's The Cold Equations, a pretty famous story from the 1950's. In that story, a girl stows away aboard a relief ship, but her extra weight means the ship can no longer make its target, and she steps out the airlock to save the ship. Lots of people have made lots of good points about the original story; definitely worth the Google. But this is a really hopeful story about the power of anger to make positive change in the world. 5 stars

The Captain and the Quartermaster by C.L Clark: A Captain and a Quartermaster in a rebel army meet, fall in love, and get married during a years long war. The war brings them together, but they come to realize their marriage can't last after the war is over. The fantasy elements of this story are very slight, and mostly come down to a generic war and both Captain and Quartermaster being women. It's fine and sweet, but doesn't really do much for me. 3 stars

Broad Dutty Water: A Sunken Story by Nalo Hopkinson: This seems at first to be a pretty bleak story set after an environmental catastrophe leaves lots of formerly habitable land flooded. Our protagonist Jacquee is flying back to her floating community after having some cybernetic implants put in. But she doesn't wait to fully acclimate, and crashes her plane. The deserted island she finds has unusual biodiversity rarely found in the flooded world, and Jacquee sees the possibility for life to go on and adapt, even in extreme circumstances. Plus, there's a talking augmented pig named Lickchop. 5 stars

I Was a Teenage Space Jockey by Stephen Graham Jones: I keep reading Stephen Graham Jones, hoping that eventually his work will click for me. He can write some very effective horror, but I always feel like I'm being held at a distance. This is another one with a pretty slight touch of fantasy. Two bullied Native teen boys go to an arcade on Halloween to beat the high score that one of their brothers left on a machine before he went missing. 3 stars

Let All the Children Boogie by Sam J. Miller: Here's another story with just a pinch of sci-fi. Laurie is a teenager in New York state who meets and bonds with a non-binary teen named Fell. Fell doesn't have a great home life, but they and Laurie connect over music from a local radio show called Graveyard Shift. But the show starts to be interrupted by a strange voice that Fell is convinced is a time traveler. A very sweet and heartfelt story that really captures teenage angst. 4 stars

Skinder's Veil by Kelly Link: Andy can't finish his dissertation because his roommate is constantly having sex. When a friend asks him to sub in for her house sitting gig, he jumps at the chance. Of course, the job comes with some strange requirements. This is a strange mix of fairy tale, horror, dream logic, and maybe time travel. If you're familiar with Kelly Link, this is very much a Kelly Link story. 4 stars

The Algorithm Will See You Now by Justin C. Key: A future psychiatrist takes on a patient who triggers some of her own psychological problems. Kinda torn on this one. This future has very advanced brain mapping technology that can be used to basically edit the brain, regulate emotions, and even remove memories. It's very unsettling, which I'm sure is the point. The psychiatrist and her patient are both Black women, which also brings up the whole history of medical exploitation and abuse of poc. 3 stars

The Cloud Lake Unicorn by Karen Russell: A 40 year old woman unexpectedly becomes pregnant and decides to keep her baby. Around the same time she begins to see and commune with a unicorn that appears in her Oregon neighborhood. The voice in this story is very vivid and the descriptions are quite lovely. I am confused about how you would go about cooking on a giant salt block that you keep in your yard, however. Do you just build a fire under it? Wouldn't it melt in the rain? Also, our protagonist is named Mauve which is either interestingly unique, or disgustingly twee, I haven't decided. 4 stars

Proof by Induction by Jose Pablo Iriarte: Paulie is a mathematician whose father has just died. Luckily, Paulie lives in a future that has the technology to record the last moments of a living brain, allowing people to talk to their loved ones after death. Mostly this is used to find out where the will is, but Paulie uses it to get his dad's help with a famous unsolved theorem. He also works out the issues he and his father had, and grows as a person. I knew how this was going to go when I figured out the premise, but it's really well done and feels very emotionally true. 5 stars

Colors of the Immortal Palette by Caroline M. Yoachim: Mariko is a half Japanese, half French artist's model in Impressionist Paris. Mariko really wants to be an artist herself, but her hardscrabble life leaves her little time to work on her art. She finds a vampire living as an artist, and persuades him to grant her immortal life. I like this, mostly, but it felt pretty similar to a bunch of vampire stories I've read before. Longing for immortality, losing connection to humanity, finding it again. 3 stars

The Future Library by Peng Shepherd: Ingrid is an arborist in a world that's rapidly losing its trees. She meets and falls in love with Claire, a writer in charge of the Future Library Project. (The Future Library Project is a real thing, where authors write a story that won't be published for 100 years, and a tree is planted to become the book after it's harvested.) The world is teetering on the edge of ecological collapse, but Ingrid and Claire carve out a space for themselves taking care of what becomes the last forest in the world. This is a really sad story, with the hint of bittersweet in the end. 5 stars

L'Esprit de L'Escalier by Catherynne M. Valente: This is a modern retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, where Orpheus managed to not look back. Unfortunately, coming back from the dead doesn't fix your relationship problems, especially when your wife is basically a zombie. I love this author. 5 stars

Tripping Through Time by Rich Lason: The unnamed narrator works as a server for the fancy parties that rich people have in time bubbles in the ancient past. The parties take place against the background of battles and natural disasters, but the future itself is wracked by poverty and pandemics. The narrator lives with her immunocompromised mother, and when she gets sick they can't afford for her to go to a hospital. So many of these stories take place in a future where we've really managed to fuck up Earth. There's a lot of justifiable anger in them, but I really like all the different approaches. 5 stars

The Frankly Impossible Weight of Han by Maria Dong: A scientist invents a replicator machine, but it begins replicating his grief for his dead wife. As the world is being taken over by his grief, or han, a Korean "urban shaman" has to commune with ghosts to save the world. This is a weird mix of magic and sci-fi, and while I liked some of the details, it didn't really do it for me. 3 stars

Root Rot by Fargo Tbakhi: Our unnamed narrator is dying of alcoholism on Mars. He's so deep in his own self loathing and pain that I had a kind of hard time parsing the world the story takes place in. As best I can tell, he's Palestinian and came to Mars to terraform it, but now I think the terraforming project has halted and at least part of Mars is controlled by Israelis, who have seemingly replicated on Mars the segregation and suppression of Palestinians in Israel. The narrator mentions a procedure that wipes the Arabic language from people's brains, so we're in an obvious dystopia. This one was exceptionally bleak for my taste, but YMMV. 2 stars

Overall this is a very good collection that's given me some new writers to check out. There's a lot of anger, justifiably so in my opinion, in these stories, which seems a bit new to me, but I like it.

I've gotten into more sci-fi and fantasy lately, and this anthology did not disappoint! Great stories- I always find one or two new writers to follow by reading these anthologies.

Avg of 4 Stars ⭐️

This collection of science fiction and fantasy was a great way to read some new short stories of authors I'm familiar with and finding new ones to follow

Like any anthology style book there are stories I really enjoy and others that I may not.

The story by Stephen Graham Jones was great and I have a lot of his previous works on my tbr. It was science fiction but with horror vibes.

I a few others I also really enjoyed, but not limited to

The Pizza Boy By Meg Ellison, a short dystopian story about the last baker who knows for to make pizza. Providing himself safety.

Cold Calculations By: Aimee Ogden, an astronaut has to make the hardest decision about a young girl stowaway as the amount of fuel was not planned for her extra weight. He needs to get back to save a planet.

This group of stories will have something for everyone. Their unique and diverse. I recommend checking this one out.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins's for this advance reader copy. My review is voluntarily my own.

Roanhorse and Adams have done fantastic work curating this selection of contemporary science and fiction short fiction. I found them to not only be fantastically imaginative and often quite thought-provoking, but they really showcase the versatility in the genres.

Of course, in these uncertain and absurd times, they also provide a great variety of vastly-different escapes, at least for a few pages each at a time. That, and I now have several different authors on my radar for the next time I need a quick break from the world.