Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship's Reviews > The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023

After reading a couple years of Best American Short Stories and criticizing this year’s collection for including no speculative or experimental work, I decided to check out this anthology—all speculative, of course, and this batch highly experimental in form and structure. To the extent guest editor Kuang chose the stories (series editor Adams picks 80 by reading widely in magazines, collections and anthologies; the guest editor narrows it to 20), her introduction makes her philosophy clear: her primary criterion was “commitment to the bit,” with a strong preference for gonzo, bonkers, and sometimes political stories. They are concept-heavy, giving me new appreciation for the character-driven stories in BASS 2023. It is an interesting and diverse batch of stories—in topic and structure as well as author and character identity—but I only liked about 8 out of 20, and loved none, even the couple from authors whose work I’ve loved before.

Notes on the individual stories:

“Readings in the Slantwise Sciences” by Sofia Samatar: I love Samatar’s work—seriously, go check out her collection—but this is a wild choice to begin the anthology because it isn’t even a story, it’s a writing exercise. Samatar was going stir crazy during lockdown and rewrote three National Geographic articles to be surreal and fantastical. The articles have no connection to each other and while I rather liked the use of fairies as a metaphor for insect die-off, the piece overall is a strange choice.

“Air to Shape Lungs” by Shingai Njeri Kagunda: Another strange choice for a first impression. The author comes up with a fantasy concept to symbolize opposition to borders and racism, writes a 3-page description of said concept and stops there, without actual plot or characters.

“Beginnings” by Kristina Ten: The first one I sort of liked, a poignant little suburban fairy tale that kept me guessing about where we were and what was really going on. Not sure why the author thinks all fairy tales end happily, though.

“Sparrows” by Susan Palwick: A favorite. While the world is falling apart, a lonely college student holes up in her dorm to finish her Shakespeare paper, and it’s a resonant exploration of meaning in life, what we do when death is imminent, and where the world might be headed. I’m excited to see this author has written novels (better yet, not about the apocalypse)—my biggest find of the anthology.

“The Six Deaths of the Saint” by Alix Harrow: The most popular of the anthology, and I see why and mostly agree. An exciting tale of love and war with twists that pack a punch, and emotional and thematic resonance. I didn’t entirely love the ending: (view spoiler)[it felt like a “everything you needed, you had all along” message, which given that they were starving orphans, was not true. (hide spoiler)] But overall I probably liked this better than the novel I’ve read from Harrow and see why people love her short fiction.

“Termination Stories for the Cyberpunk Dystopia Protagonist” by Isabel J. Kim: I’ve heard great things about this author, but this is a very meta takedown of a subgenre I don’t read, which did very little for me.

“Men, Women and Chainsaws” by Stephen Graham Jones: A twist on horror tropes, which will likely work better for people who like horror. I admired the rare realistic depiction of average small-town young adults—not bookish, or solitary and eccentric, the way authors tend to prefer their leads; the protagonist works at a car dealership but wishes she was a hair stylist, lives in a trailer with roommates and parties hard at bonfires on the weekend—but didn’t otherwise enjoy it. The ending felt particularly off: (view spoiler)[the protagonist is basically a psychopath, murdering her ex for breaking up with her, but the story doesn’t embrace that and even vindicates her at the end. (hide spoiler)]

“Rabbit Test” by Samantha Mills: Part dystopian tale, part historical review, all op-ed about reproductive rights in America. It’s effective—I can see it being read at conferences in years to come, and if you’re feeling outraged about recent Supreme Court decisions and want validation, this story is a great choice. I would have liked a little more from the characters.

“There are No Monsters at Rancho Buenavista” by Isabel Cañas: A flash fiction monster story. It’s fine but not helped by putting the author’s note up front—I’m not convinced this is the subversion she thinks it is.

“Murder by Pixel” by S.L. Huang: This reads like a feature in a news magazine—impressively so; fiction authors rarely mimic the style of anything so well. What happens when chatbot AIs are set loose to contact people? The story gives us a scenario, inventing only the people involved, and giving us even (presumably fictional) interviews with professionals and the (real) history of AI. A strong work, to be engaged with as a thinkpiece more so than a story.

“White Water, Blue Ocean” by Linda Raquel Nieves Perez: The worst-written story in the collection, featuring a Puerto Rican(?) family under a curse (or perhaps a poorly-thought-out blessing from a clueless spirit). Full of abrupt emotional shifts and awkward exposition, and with a narrator who believes the entire world revolves around their gender identity.

“The CRISPR Cookbook” by MKRNYILGLD: Formatted as an instruction manual for the science-inclined who need to cook up their own abortions in an oppressive world. Suffers from being Abortion Story #2 and less effective than Abortion Story #1; I’d have rather read the actual story of a scientist doing this than the manual she refers to.

“Three Mothers Mountain” by Nathan Ballingrud: A well-written story if you’re interested in Appalachian fairy tales blended with horror. I don’t like horror and found it gross and sad. The kids should’ve talked to their teachers.

“The Odyssey Problem” by Chris Willrich: A spacefaring riff on “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” in which several completely opposed—but all sensible by their own terms—systems of morality run into each other in what feels like escalating moral oneupmanship. I see why some people love this, and it’s certainly confident, blazing ahead and demanding readers keep up. But my biggest takeaway was “never assume you’ve reached the apex of moral progress,” which is pretty obvious, and its characters are no more than props. Why make a rescued Omelas child your narrator if you refuse to do pathos? Plus, Willrich ignores Le Guin’s points about the long-term effects—intellectual, linguistic, physical—that such a childhood would have.

“Pellargonia” by Theodora Goss: Three teens with a worldbuilding hobby accidentally create a country, and the story is in the form of a letter to the relevant journal asking for help. Maybe I’m a curmudgeon for disliking it, as most readers found it charming, but the constant interjections interrupt the flow and it is not believable as a letter to an academic journal (nor did it make me believe these kids could’ve successfully passed off their prior work). Also, it felt like it was hiding the fact that this is a story about clueless Americans screwing things up for everyone by messing with countries they don’t understand behind the tired “every kid in the friend group has a different diversity point” trope. Maybe it’s subtly making the point that identity politics don’t absolve you of responsibility for your actions, or maybe that’s giving it too much credit.

“Pre-Simulation Consultation” by Kim Fu: Happily, I liked this one: a story in the form of a transcript between a customer and employee, negotiating a virtual reality experience. We learn a fair bit indirectly about both of the characters, it’s a fun but thoughtful look at corporate and legal handling of new technologies, and the end is strong.

“In the Beginning of Me, I Was a Bird” by Maria Dong: Ugh. A vibes story I definitely didn’t vibe with. A depressing premise (all life is dying off, and humans are making it worse by their spirits parasitically invading other species and killing them off even faster), that’s apparently supposed to be counterbalanced by the mystical connection between two souls, but those souls are parasites and we’re given no reason to care about them, and no hope. Also, the protagonist didn’t begin as a bird.

“The Difference Between Love and Time” by Catherynne Valente: A bonkers story about a woman’s turbulent lifelong romantic relationship with the space-time continuum, which is always appearing in different forms. I can see why people like it but this one was just too out there for me, not surprising since Valente’s recent novels have been too. My buddy read partner, who liked it, describes it as “a story of metaphysics and madness.”

“Folk Hero Motifs in Tales Told by the Dead” by KT Bryski: A good one. In a sort of purgatory, this story alternates between the poignant story of the dead narrator, and trickster stories recognizable in inspiration but twisted to feature the dead. Clever and meaningful and strange.

“Cumulative Ethical Guidelines for Mid-Range Interstellar Storytellers” by Malka Older: I can see why others would find this unremarkable, but for me it was the perfect end to the anthology. It reads like a crowdsourced Google Doc put together by and for storytellers working on spaceships. It sneaks in a lot of worldbuilding while sounding like the kinds of comments people actually write, and I found it fun and sweet.

Overall, then, lots of ups and downs, a few new authors discovered. Worth the read for me but hard to recommend. I might try another volume in a different year to see whether it’s the guest editor’s taste that doesn’t quite agree with me, or the series editor’s.