![]() ![]() In “Not a Wardrobe, Tornado, or Looking Glass,” a portal story in the Narnia, Oz, and Wonderland tradition, a young temp watches everyone in the world disappear through a private portal, abandoning everything for the comfort of his or her fantasy world. With that premise underlying a simple love story, Weinstein reveals how taking the wanton openness of social media to that extreme can destroy human relationships. In “Openness,” Alexander Weinstein imagines a world in which Facebook profiles are on psychic display at all times, allowing everyone on the street some entry into each other’s personal life. The “blues” are reluctantly tolerated, but not accepted, and ultimately resented and hated in a way that echoes the anti-immigrant and anti-refugee rhetoric prevalent in our own America. Bridge," Debbie Urbanski shows the effects on a suburban town when the government relocates aliens there. In “When They Came to Us,” a story that reads like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" crossed with "Mrs. Both present stories that reflect back on our world by showing us an alternate world with a strange twist. Adams’ foreword invokes the television show “Black Mirror,” and the comparison is apt. But the stories with direct social commentaries end up being the most satisfying. That’s not an essential component of fiction by any means - the editors haven’t lost sight of the fact that fun should still be an essential element, and these stories are fun. The best of them have a layer of social commentary. All of the stories in the 2017 Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy are good, and many are brilliant. ![]() Adams and Yu have managed to avoid that pitfall. ![]() That might be too heady a claim to lay upon any one book, but regardless of how well the various stories in this anthology reach that height - or even attempt it - the sentiment feels true.Īnthologies often suffer from variable quality, forcing a reader to wade through a lot of mediocrity to reach the gems. It’s a strong argument for the importance of genre fiction as both a salve and a step toward a solution for a world in which reality has become a subjective term. He suggests that science fiction and fantasy, genres unique in imagining other realities, offer hope, because they are proof that “at least a few people interested in imagining better worlds, other worlds, the existence of alternative points of view.” It’s two separate ones, mostly distinct but with some overlap.” Yu, who rose to prominence with his lauded novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, brings his playfulness and penchant for the metafictional to the volume, on display in his excellent introduction.Ĭast as a series of dialogues between Yu and interdimensional travelers at his local coffeeshop, Yu addresses the current political crisis, saying that “America in 2017 isn’t one reality. The series editor, John Joseph Adams, selected 80 pieces of short fiction that appeared in North America last year, and celebrity guest editor Charles Yu winnowed that number down to 20. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 is the third entry in Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s most recent addition to their longstanding Best American series. ![]()
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