The Best Science Fiction of the Year

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
Permissions
Recommended Reading

Neil Clarke is the editor of Clarkesworld and Forever Magazine; owner of Wyrm Publishing; and a five-time Hugo Award Nominee for Best Editor (short form). He currently lives in New Jersey with his wife and two children.