The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 Read Free

as well, figuring prominently in numerous mainstream bestsellers both in the literary fiction category and in film and television. That makes now the perfect time for SF/F to join the Best American family.
    Many popular mainstream books in recent years have been infused with science fiction and fantasy elements—Alice Sebold’s
The Lovely Bones
, Kazuo Ishiguro’s
The Buried Giant
, Audrey Niffenegger’s
The Time Traveler’s Wife
, Emily St. John Mandel’s
Station Eleven.
Some, such as Cormac McCarthy’s
The Road
, have not only been popular but have won the Pulitzer Prize as well. Many readers would not classify some of these novels as genre books, yet it is undeniable that they
are
genre; if you removed the SF/F element from any of them, the stories would fall apart. Furthermore, within the SF/F community, these novels have already been accepted as part of the field.
    Part of the scope of this anthology series will be to help define—and
re
define—just what science fiction and fantasy is capable of. It is my opinion that the finest science fiction and fantasy is on a par with the finest works of literature in any genre, and the goal of this series is to prove it.
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    The stories chosen for this anthology were originally published between January 2014 and December 2014. The technical criteria for consideration are (1) original publication in a nationally distributed American or Canadian publication (that is, periodicals, collections, or anthologies, in print, online, or as an ebook); (2) publication in English by writers who are American or Canadian or who have made the United States their home; (3) publication as text (audiobooks, podcasts, dramatizations, interactive works, and other forms of fiction are not considered); (4) original publication as short fiction (excerpts of novels are not knowingly considered); (5) length of 17,499 words or less; (6) at least loosely categorized as science fiction or fantasy; (7) publication by someone other than the author (self-published works are not eligible); and (8) publication as an original work of the author (not part of a media tie-in/licensed fiction program).
    As series editor, I attempted to read everything I could find that meets these selection criteria. After doing all my reading, I created a list of what I felt were the top eighty stories published in the genre (forty science fiction and forty fantasy). Those eighty stories were sent to guest editor Joe Hill, who read them and then chose the best twenty (ten science fiction, ten fantasy) for inclusion in the volume. Joe read all the stories blind, with no bylines attached to them nor any information about where they originally appeared. The sixty stories that did not make it into the anthology are listed in the back of this book as “Other Notable Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories of 2014.”
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    I could not have done all the work of assembling this volume alone (or even with only the help of our esteemed guest editor). Accordingly, many thanks go out to my team of first readers, who helped me evaluate various publications that I might not have had time to consider otherwise, led by DeAnna Knippling, Robyn Lupo, and Rob McMonigal, with smaller but still significant contributions by Christie Yant, Karen Bovenmyer, Michael Curry, Sylvia Hiven, Amber Barkley, Aaron Bailey, Hannah Huber, Hannah Mades-Alabiso, and Sarah Slatton.
    I also owe a huge debt of gratitude to the work of editors who have come before me. Though this is the first volume of
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy
, it couldn’t have happened without the brilliant work done by the various editors involved with
The Best American Short Stories
,
The Best American Mystery Stories
, and the rest of the Best American family. Our in-house editor at Mariner Books, Tim Mudie, was by my side throughout the entire process and was a diligent companion in helping a first-time series editor get up to