The Year's Best Science Fiction Vol. 1: The Saga Anthology of Science Fiction 2020

by Jonathan Strahan (Editor)

Overview

The definitive guide and a must-have collection of the best short science fiction and speculative fiction of 2019, showcasing brilliant talent and examining the cultural moment we live in, compiled by award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan.

With short works from some of the most lauded science fiction authors, as well as rising stars, this collection displays the top talent and the cutting-edge cultural moments that affect our lives, dreams, and stories. The list of authors is truly star-studded, including New York Times bestseller Ted Chiang (author of the short story that inspired the movie Arrival), N. K. Jemisin, Charlie Jane Anders, and many more incredible talents.

An assemblage of future classics, this anthology is a must-read for anyone who enjoys the vast and exciting world of science fiction.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781534449596
Publisher:	Gallery / Saga Press
Publication date:	09/08/2020
Pages:	608
Sales rank:	67,190
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Strahan was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in early 1964. He moved to Australia in 1969 where he in short order helped to fight a bushfire, shook hands with an astronaut, and became convinced he’d become a geologist and live on Mars. It’s not surprising that he fell in love with science fiction early, or that he spent far too much time reading. He went on to graduate from college with an interesting but not particularly useful arts degree, but had met people that led him directly into science fiction itself. He coedited and copublished Eidolon, an award-winning Australian semiprozine, in the 1990s before starting to work for Locus in 1997. That led directly to Jonathan becoming a reviewer, and going on to edit nearly 100 books. He has won the World Fantasy, Aurealis, Ditmar, and Locus Awards, and has been nominated 15 times for the Hugo Award. He is also the cohost and producer of the Hugo Award–nominated Coode Street Podcast. He still lives in Western Australia with the former managing editor of Locus and their two children.

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/27/2020

Strahan (The Book of Dragons, editor) packs the first volume in Saga’s Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology series with 28 diverse and brilliant stories. Climate change looms large in many of these pieces: the clientele of “The Bookstore at the End of America” by Charlie Jane Anders, the resource hunters in Peter Watts’s “Cyclopterus,” and the loyal science bots of Alec Nevala-Lee’s “At the Fall” all navigate near-future worlds ravaged by global warming. E. Lily Yu’s “Green Glass: A Love Story,” Rich Larson’s “Contagion’s Even at the House Noctambulous,” and “It’s 2059 and the Rich Kids Are Still Winning” by Ted Chiang, meanwhile, take scathing looks at all-too-possible dystopian worlds split between haves and have-nots. Tobias S. Buckell’s “The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex” and Sofia Rhei’s “Secret Stories of Doors” both find dark humor in very different visions of the future. There are no misfires here, and the standouts include N.K. Jemisin’s twisty “Emergency Skin,” Suzanne Palmer’s bleakly elegiac “The Painter of Trees,” S.L. Huang’s haunting “As the Last I May Know,” and Tegan Moore’s fierce “The Work of Wolves.” Strahan’s thoughtful selections offer a sometimes chilling, always fascinating look at the best of the genre. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2020-06-17
Exploring critical issues impacting humankind—from climate change to racism to mass shootings—this timely and thematically profound anthology of the year’s best short-form science fiction is filled with thought-provoking gems.

Noteworthy stories from all over the globe are featured prominently in this collection, including Indian writer Indrapramit Das’ dark “Kali_Na,” which chronicles the unforeseen consequences of a megacorp developing an AI deity for the masses; Saleem Haddad’s “Song of the Birds,” about a 14-year-old girl living in Gaza City struggling to understand her brother’s inexplicable suicide; and Chinese writer Han Song’s metaphorical “Submarines,” in which the poor are forced to live in homemade habitats underwater. Peter Watt’s “Cyclopterus”—set in a near future ravaged by environmental collapse—is chillingly plausible, as is “Thoughts and Prayers” by Ken Liu, which chronicles a couple’s ordeal after their daughter is killed at a music festival by a shooter and their lives are destroyed by online trolls. “The Bookstore at the End of America” by Charlie Jane Anders is both disturbing and inspiring. Molly and her daughter, Phoebe, run a bookstore located on the border of California and the United States, which are at war. When the fighting begins and customers from both sides find shelter inside, the owners begin a mandatory book club—with glorious results. In an anthology full of powerful stories, perhaps the most memorable is “Emergency Skin” by N.K. Jemisin, about an explorer who returns to an Earth that his misogynist, racist, and elitist ancestors left generations earlier as it was dying—only to find not a barren, graveyard planet, as he expected, but one thriving and vastly advanced. In a sentence that exemplifies the tone of many of the anthology’s selections, Jemisin writes: “Sometimes that’s all it takes to save a world, you see. A new vision. A new way of thinking, appearing at just the right time.”

If this is the future of science fiction, the genre is in very good hands.

Kirkus Reviews

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