The second volume of a new best-of-the-year science fiction short
story anthology edited by Hugo Award-winning editor Neil Clarke.
First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual
request; a family's pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift
of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant
world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous
hermit lives in the sea above the now-underwater Harvard University;
former friends navigate unsteady peace between human refugees and the
technologically superior race that saved them; in a future where human
life can be infinitely extended through cybertronic rebirth, one woman
declines immortality.
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 Two, award-winning editor
Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and twenty-seven of the best
stories published by both new and established authors in 2016.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
"The Visitor from Taured" by Ian R. MacLeod (Asimov's, September 2016)
"Extraction Request" by Rich Larson (Clarkesworld, January 2016)
"A Good Home" by Karin Lowachee (Lightspeed, June 2016)
"Prodigal" by Gord Sellar (Analog, December 2016)
"Ten Days" by Nina Allan (Now We Are Ten, edited by Ian Whates)
"Terminal" by Lavie Tidhar (Tor.com, April 2016)
"Panic City" by Madeline Ashby (CyberWorld, edited by Jason Heller and
Joshua Viola)
"Last Gods" by Sam J. Miller (Drowned Worlds, edited by Jonathana
Strahan)
"HigherWorks" by Gregory Norman Bossert (Asimov's, December 2016)
"A Strange Loop" by T.R. Napper (Interzone, January/February 2016)
"Night Journey of the Dragon-Horse" by Xia Jia (Invisible Planets,
edited by Ken Liu)
"Pearl" by Aliette de Bodard (The Starlit Wood, edited by Dominik
Parisien and Navah Wolfe)
"The Metal Demimonde" by Nick Wolven (Analog, June 2016)
"The Iron Tactician" by Alastair Reynolds (Newcon Press)
"The Mighty Slinger" by Tobias S. Buckell and Karen Lord (Bridging
Infinity, edited by Jonathana Strahan)
"They All Have One Breath" by Karl Bunker (Asimov's, December 2016)
"Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea" by Sarah Pinsker
(Lightspeed, February 2016)
"And Then, One Day, the Air was Full of Voices" by Margaret Ronald
(Clarkesworld, June 2016)
"The Three Lives of Sonata James" by Lettie Prell (Tor.com, October
2016)
"The Charge and the Storm" by An Owomoyela (Asimov's, February 2016)
"Parables of Infinity" by Robert Reed (Bridging Infinity, edited by
Jonathana Strahan)
"Ten Poems for the Mossums, One for the Man" by Suzanne Palmer
(Asimov's, July 2016)
"You Make Pattaya" by Rich Larson (Interzone, November/December 2016)
"Number Nine Moon" by Alex Irvine (F&SF, January/February 2016)
"Things with Beards" by Sam J. Miller (Clarkesworld, June 2016)
"Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit--Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of
Massachusetts" by Ken Liu (Drowned Worlds, edited by Jonathana
Strahan)
"Touring with the Alien" by Carolyn Ives Gilman (Clarkesworld, April
2016)
