The second volume of a new best-of-the-year science fiction short story anthology edited by Hugo Award-winning editor Neil Clarke.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
With\u00a0The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Two<\/i>, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and 27 of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2016.<\/p>\n
Table of contents:<\/p>\n
“The Visitor from Taured” by Ian R. MacLeod (Asimov’s, September 2016)<\/p>\n
“Extraction Request” by Rich Larson (Clarkesworld, January 2016)<\/p>\n
“A Good Home” by Karin Lowachee (Lightspeed, June 2016)<\/p>\n
“Prodigal” by Gord Sellar (Analog, December 2016)<\/p>\n
“Ten Days” by Nina Allan (Now We Are Ten, edited by Ian Whates)<\/p>\n
“Terminal” by Lavie Tidhar (Tor.com, April 2016)<\/p>\n
“Panic City” by Madeline Ashby (CyberWorld, edited by Jason Heller and Joshua Viola)<\/p>\n
“Last Gods” by Sam J. Miller (Drowned Worlds, edited by Jonathana Strahan)<\/p>\n
“HigherWorks” by Gregory Norman Bossert (Asimov’s, December 2016)<\/p>\n
“A Strange Loop” by T.R. Napper (Interzone, January\/February 2016)<\/p>\n
“Night Journey of the Dragon-Horse” by Xia Jia (Invisible Planets, edited by Ken Liu)<\/p>\n
“Pearl” by Aliette de Bodard (The Starlit Wood, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe)<\/p>\n
“The Metal Demimonde” by Nick Wolven (Analog, June 2016)<\/p>\n
“The Iron Tactician” by Alastair Reynolds (Newcon Press)<\/p>\n
“The Mighty Slinger” by Tobias S. Buckell and Karen Lord (Bridging Infinity, edited by Jonathana Strahan)<\/p>\n
“They All Have One Breath” by Karl Bunker (Asimov’s, December 2016)<\/p>\n
“Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea” by Sarah Pinsker (Lightspeed, February 2016)<\/p>\n
“And Then, One Day, the Air was Full of Voices” by Margaret Ronald (Clarkesworld, June 2016)<\/p>\n
“The Three Lives of Sonata James” by Lettie Prell (Tor.com, October 2016)<\/p>\n
“The Charge and the Storm” by An Owomoyela (Asimov’s, February 2016)<\/p>\n
“Parables of Infinity” by Robert Reed (Bridging Infinity, edited by Jonathana Strahan)<\/p>\n
“Ten Poems for the Mossums, One for the Man” by Suzanne Palmer (Asimov’s, July 2016)<\/p>\n
“You Make Pattaya” by Rich Larson (Interzone, November\/December 2016)<\/p>\n
“Number Nine Moon” by Alex Irvine (F&SF, January\/February 2016)<\/p>\n
“Things with Beards” by Sam J. Miller (Clarkesworld, June 2016)<\/p>\n
“Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit-Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts” by Ken Liu (Drowned Worlds, edited by Jonathana Strahan)<\/p>\n
“Touring with the Alien” by Carolyn Ives Gilman (Clarkesworld, April 2016)<\/p>\n