The Best Science Fiction of the Year

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 thirty 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 Three, 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 2017. Table of Contents Introduction: The State of Short SF Field in 2017 A Series of Steaks by Vina Jie-Min Prasad Holdfast by Alastair Reynolds Every Hour of Light and Dark by Nancy Kress The Last Novelist, or a Dead Lizard in the Yard by Matthew Kressel Shikasta by Vandana Singh Wind Will Rove by Sarah Pinsker Focus by Gord Sellar The Martian Obelisk by Linda Nagata Shadows of Eternity by Gregory Benford The Worldless by Indrapramit Das Regarding the Robot Raccoons Attached to the Hull of My Ship by Rachel Jones and Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali Belly Up by Maggie Clark Uncanny Valley by Greg Egan We Who Live in the Heart by Kelly Robson A Catalogue of Sunlight at the End of the World by A.C. Wise Meridian by Karin Lowachee The Tale of the Alcubierre Horse by Kathleen Ann Goonan Extracurricular Activities by Yoon Ha Lee In Everlasting Wisdom by Aliette de Bodard The Last Boat-Builder in Ballyvoloon by Finbarr O’Reilly The Speed of Belief by Robert Reed Death on Mars by Madeline Ashby An Evening with Severyn Grimes by Rich Larson ZeroS by Peter Watts The Secret Life of Bots by Suzanne Palmer Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance by Tobias S. Buckell Permissions Recommended Reading