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Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Publication Date: October 3, 2017

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017

Guest Editor: Charles Yu | Series Editor: John Joseph Adams

The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume’s series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor—a leading writer in the field—then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected—and most popular—of its kind.

Science fiction and fantasy can encompass so much, from far-future deep-space sagas to quiet contemporary tales to unreal kingdoms and beasts. But what the best of these stories do is the same across the genres—they illuminate the whole gamut of the human experience, interrogating our hopes and our fears. With a diverse selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor Charles Yu, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 continues to explore the ever-expanding and changing world of SFF today, with Yu bringing his unique view—literary, meta, and adventurous—to the series’ third edition.

The 2017 volume collects the best material published in 2016, selected by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor Charles Yu.

About the Guest Editor

Charles Yu is the author of three books, including the novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, which was a New York Times Notable Book and named one of the best books of the year by Time magazine. He received the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award, and was nominated for two WGA awards for his work on the HBO series, Westworld. He has also written for upcoming shows on AMC and HBO. His fiction and non-fiction have been published in a number of publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Lightspeed, Slate, and Wired. His next novel, The Book of Wishing, is forthcoming from Pantheon.

Praise

Superb […] This mostly dystopic, sometimes darkly humorous collection of 20 hard-hitting stories feels timely, confronting contemporary cultural crises such as racism, xenophobia, police brutality, barriers to health care access, and the social misuses of technology.

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

[The stories] are sharp, imaginative blasts from possible futures and alternate presents that reflect and comment on our world in ways realistic fiction simply can’t.

—Barnes & Noble

Contain[s] 20 astounding stories by some spectacular writers […] Each and every story has something to offer someone.

—Geeks of Doom

All of the stories in the 2017 Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy are good, and many are brilliant.

—Washington Independent Review of Books