The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3

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

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Recommended Reading


Genre: Science Fiction