The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Twelve

A girl who became a warrior princess in another realm waits for her chance to return there. A forger gets a peculiar request for fake steaks. A cryptocurrency’s failure threatens a native population. A mysterious ward of the state only speaks Anglo-Saxon. In a world where people rent or sell their bodies to the rich and disembodied, a mogul finds himself under attack by religious extremists. A journeyman who makes magic gloves tries to provide for his sick sister.

A lot of collections claim to contain the best science fiction and fantasy for a given year. While those collections invariably have a few timeless tales, there’s also plenty of filler. But when you see the name Jonathan Strahan under “editor,” the bar for “best” rises quite a few notches. He has cultivated a reputation as an author who recognizes quality speculative fiction in many forms, and collections under his curation invariably reflect not only the genre’s finest but its most eclectic as well.

And if this is the best of sci-fi and fantasy for the year, then both genres aren’t just healthy, they are thriving like never before. This is creativity, reinvention, and innovation.