Ten years ago marked the centennial anniversary of The Best American Short Stories annual series of anthologies, first published by Small, Maynard & Company and now released by Mariner Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It took one hundred years, but that anniversary was also the birth of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy (BASFF) spin-off series under the editorialship of John Joseph Adams. (In contrast, the crime/mystery/suspense genre had already gotten its own series starting in 1997.)
The decade of volumes since its inception has seen a diverse range of annual guest editors for BASFF, starting with Joe Hill in 2015 through Nnedi Okorafor for the latest 2025 volume. Each year the guest editors bring their own unique perspectives and tastes to the collection but work within a system with Adams to fit the overall series. And that overall series has a particular perspective itself, one attuned to the more mainstream literary auspices of The Best American Short Stories parent series.
Thus, as with any “Best of” anthology, a reader is going to get a rather limited and by necessity somewhat personalized collection of stories that align with the editor’s tastes and the artistic viewpoints of the publisher/series. This is all to say that though there are a host of various “Best of” anthologies each year, it really does pay for short fiction fans to read a wide range of them, particularly if one isn’t keeping up with all the short fiction publication outlets through the year.
Contents of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025, edited by Nnedi Okorafor and John Joseph Adams:
- “We Will Teach You How to Read│We Will Teach You How to Read” by Caroline M. Yoachim from Lightspeed
- “Also, the Cat” by Rachel Swirsky from Reactor
- “The Audit” by Olivia Blake from Januaries
- “Country Birds” by Kij Johnson from The Sunday Morning Transport
- “Fuck Them Kids” by Tatiana Obey from FIYAH
- “The River Judge” by S.L. Huang from Reactor
- “The Weight of Your Own Ashes” by Carlie St. George from Clarkesworld
- “An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow” by Xavier Garcia from Death in the Mouth, Volume 2
- “The Forgetting Room” by Kathryn H. Ross from FIYAH
- “Look at the Moon” by Dominique Dickey from Lightspeed
- “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim from Lightspeed
- “The Witch Trap” by Jennifer Hudak from Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet
- “Yarns” by Susan Palwick from Asimov’s
- “The Wonders of the World” by ‘Pemi Aguda from Ghostroots
- “Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!” by TJ Klune from In the Lives of Puppets
- “A Stranger Knocks” by Tananarive Due from Uncanny
- “The Sort” by Thomas Ha from Clarkesworld
- “What Happened to The Crooners” by Russell Nichols from Nightmare
- “The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics” by Adam-Troy Castro from Lightspeed
- ” Ushers” by Joe Hill from Amazon Original Stories
The characteristics of a BASFF story make for a collection that is generally heavier on exploration of characters, emotions, psychology, and social systems through speculative ideas or settings rather than a focus on plot, technical details, or scientific mechanisms. This isn’t to say the latter elements are absent. They just aren’t the focus. Though the stories are unified by having at least some speculative or fantastic element to put them in the genre, many could easily be marketed as mainstream ‘literature’ if the author were to have the name like “Margaret Atwood.”
I don’t want to get into the quagmire of how one defines or differentiates “Science Fiction” from other related genres, or start an argument about differences (or not) between “Hard” SF or “Other.” But as a biologist myself, I do see a significant difference between “natural” sciences like physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc. and “social” sciences, even though a continuum exists and there is plenty of ‘science’ done between the two farthest extremes.
But I personally found very little in this collection I would define as “science fiction” and what is here tends more towards the social side of the continuum. For instance, “We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read” by Caroline M. Yoachim starts from the foundational biological speculation of an alien species that processes time (and therefore communicates) differently than we do. The focus of that speculation doesn’t delve into the science of this but uses it to explore textual modes of writing and reading (artistic literary experimentation) and how we as a human species broadly relate. “The Weight of Your Own Ashes” by Carlie St. George similarly starts with a biological “what if” to delve into psychological and social science explorations.
“The Audit” by Olivie Blake and “The Forgetting Room” by Kathryn H. Ross start with speculation of a technological tool to explore its effects on characters and social relationships. “Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!” by TJ Klune and “The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics” by Adam-Troy Castro use sci-fi staples of artificial, mechanical life, again to focus on psychological, human perspectives of this (though Castro’s also does make a key technological point in terms of the difficulties in programming robots as Asimov wrote.)
“Fuck Them Kids” by Tatiana Obey is the one story in the collection that I would say feels like a SF adventure with plot and a setting of space travel equaling the amount of character exploration done.
Lest one think I’m complaining about the emphasis of this collection, I am definitely not. These are all great genre stories. But it’s an important emphasis within the spectrum of genre to point out to potential readers. The stories also predominantly hail from digital publications rather than print, increasingly common, but a point I do lament.
Another emphasis to stress about this anthology is that the rest of the stories would fall firmly into the “Fantasy” side of things, and most of those (as well as some of the above) could be further classified as ‘dark’ if not “Horror.” Again, not a complaint, this all is actually what I most love to read within the genre. “Country Birds” by Kij Johnson, “The River Judge” by S.L. Huang, “An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow” by Xavier Garcia, “Look at the Moon” by Dominique Dickey, “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole” by Isabel J. Kim, “The Witch Trap” by Jennifer Hudak, “A Stranger Knocks” by Tananarive Due, “The Sort” by Thomas Ha, “What Happened to the Crooners” by Russell Nichols, and “Ushers” by Joe Hill all have darker tones that can verge into horror territory.
“The Wonders of the World” by ‘Pemi Aguda may not be ‘dark’ but approaches some elements of ‘weird’ fiction.
A minority counterbalance the darkness with lightheartedness or humor, such as the TJ Klune story and “Also, the Cat” by Rachel Swirsky. And though set in a dark, dystopian world (all too familiar) “Yarns” by Susan Palwick conveys a bright and hopeful message.
Inevitably readers often rule that anthologies are a “hit and miss” mixture of stories that they personally enjoy. In a specific sense, that was the case for me as a reader of this. Doing a rough personal ranking of the stories, I total ten of the twenty that I would consider ‘favorites.’ Five of the remaining ten I would consider good, and the other five I would say I didn’t connect with very much.
Of the ten I considered favorites, I would say that “Also, the Cat” by Rachel Swirsky, “The River Judge” by S.L. Huang, “The Weight of Your Own Ashes” by Carlie St. George, “Yarns” by Susan Palwick, and “A Stranger Knocks” by Tananarive Due were new discoveries that I most adored. I previously read Thomas Ha’s “The Sort” and adored it as well, a second time. If you missed the podcast episode where Shaun and I interviewed Ha about his collection that this is in, be sure to check that out.
“Also the Cat is an exceptionally fun and touching story of three elderly sisters who live together but have grown to despise one another and then die, one by one, to each realize they now exist as a ghost who is still with the survivor(s), but who cannot be sensed by those survivors. It’s a simple story with a very satisfying structural math to it and great human insight.
“The River Judge” falls within the universe of S.L. Huang’s The Water Outlaws, a novel I really enjoyed that retells a classic work of Chinese literature. This is a self-contained compelling story with a well-rendered character facing difficult choices and familial burdens.
“The Weight of Your Own Ashes” starts from a brilliantly interesting biological speculation, what if a species evolved where one consciousness was shared by multiple bodies. I do wish more had been focused on the biology in this, but St. George still does great explorations of alien and human relationships here.
“Yarns” features an old woman who uses her calming practice of knitting to diffuse a tense situation that threatens her life. I love the message of this and as much as I love dark stories, I appreciate having this one in the collection to give some hope and light.
“A Stranger Knocks” features elements of ‘cursed movie’ horror tropes, which I live for. It’s set in the 1920s and features an African American couple hired to drive a producer around for film screenings that have odd effects on the viewers. It’s a kind of plot that I always go for, and in general I am usually in awe of Due’s prose and ability to tell a story.
I’ve already written too much, though a part of me wants to talk about the other stories too, even those five that I didn’t enjoy as much. But that brings me to the final point I do want to take time/space on. Thinking about this collection broadly, I don’t think there’s a bad story in it. Even those I didn’t like as much, I do appreciate their quality. They just didn’t speak to me, but I am certain they do speak strongly and inspirationally to others. And I certainly don’t regret reading them and thinking about them.
After reading the stories, one should check out the Contributors Notes that appear as an appendix at the end of the anthology. These offer not just biographies of the authors, but brief reflections on their stories that were included. In general these enriched the experience of reading their work, particularly those that I didn’t care for as much at first, but then could see the authorial perspective and appreciate.
