The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 (56 page)

I owe a huge debt of thanks to my friend Ada Hoffmann, who helped me refine the ending and clarify what I needed this story to do. And also much gratitude to Sara and Mary at
Scigentasy
for giving it its first home! I've been so humbled and delighted that this story has resonated with readers. I write because I want to connect to other people and robots, and when a story makes that connection, it is the best feeling in the world.

Sofia Samatar
is the author of
A Stranger in Olondria
(2013), winner of the Crawford Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. She teaches literature and writing at California State University Channel Islands.

• “How to Get Back to the Forest” was inspired by three pieces of writing: “Everyday Barf” by Eileen Myles, “Barf Manifesto” by Dodie Bellamy, and “Apoplexia, Toxic Shock, and Toilet Bowl: Some Notes on Why I Write” by Kate Zambreno. They're all about narrative and bodily excesses and ecstasy and control. They're also about, as Zambreno puts it, the revolt and the revolting, about women in a state of sickness and defiance. In “How to Get Back to the Forest” I wanted to explore that connection. I was also interested in the fact that nausea is catching, and the idea of rebellion as a kind of sympathetic reaction. Of course it's no accident that my rebels are a bunch of girls whose bodies are controlled and who get up to a secret vomit-fest in the bathroom. Feminist writing has always been concerned with the body and its potential, the body as a site of resistance, and how that affects writing.

In the library of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as a graduate student, I came across a book called
A Picnic Party in Wildest Africa
by C.W.L. Bulpett, published in 1907. It's an account of a hunting trip, full of admiration for the animals and loathing for the people of East Africa. I found it almost mesmerizingly vile. The hunter in “Ogres of East Africa” is loosely based on Bulpett. I think of the story as a kind of speculative excavation of history, and also as a space for language play, for the sheer joy of imagining what escapes bullets and indexes, what goes on in the margins, in the deep forest. The ogres, of course, are real.

Kelly Sandoval
's fiction has appeared in
Asimov's Science Fiction, Esopus, Shimmer, Grimdark, Flash Fiction Online
, and
Daily Science Fiction.
In 2013 she attended Clarion West with some of the best writers she's ever had the pleasure of reading. By day she works as a procedure writer at a bank, where she's developed strong feelings about the use of the word
verbiage.
She's currently writing an urban fantasy novel about the fall of Faerie and a steampunk game about the adventures of Bernadette Charity Darlington. You can find her online at
kellysandovalfiction.com
.

• When I first moved to Seattle, I noticed everything. The woman with piercings all down her spine, the nude cyclists, the homeless teens camping by the overpass. There was so much beauty and so much pain everywhere I looked. But that was five years ago. Eventually, I stopped looking. When there's always something to see, you get overloaded. You stop noticing anything. I think that's tragic.

I wrote “The One They Took Before” to remind myself to look. To show that sometimes magic is right there, leaking in at the edges. We just need to see it. There's magic in winter roses. In the guy on the bus with the punk outfit and the pink umbrella. In the people who remember to be kind.

Of course, magic has its costs. So does noticing. Once you see, you start to feel responsible. Beauty and pain can both get under your skin.

Jo Walton
has published twelve science fiction and fantasy novels, three poetry collections, and a book of essays about rereading. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2002, the World Fantasy Award for her novel
Tooth and Claw
in 2004, and the Hugo and Nebula Awards for her novel
Among Others
in 2012. Her most recent books are fantasies set in Plato's Republic,
The Just City
and
The Philosopher Kings.
She comes from Wales but lives in Montreal, where the food and books are more varied.

• I very rarely have short-story-length ideas. I had been interested in the idea of a Soviet sleeper who gets left behind by the unexpected collapse of the USSR since reading a bunch of Cold War thrillers at the time when the Cold War was ending. I came across the commonplace assertion that all biographers fall in love with their subjects. When disputing this and pointing out exceptions, I suddenly thought of a future where biographies routinely featured an artificial intelligence that replicated the subject but was programmed by the biographer. This came together in my mind with the idea of a left-behind Soviet sleeper who is, like King Arthur, sleeping until his country needs him. The details of the future world were manufactured out of wondering what kind of country would lead anyone to need that particular sleeper woken.

Daniel H. Wilson
is a Cherokee citizen and the best-selling author of nine books, including
Robopocalypse, Amped, A Boy and His Bot
, and
Robogenesis.
He coedited the science fiction anthologies
Robot Uprisings
and
Press Start to Play.
His playable short story,
Mayday! Deep Space
, is available in the App Store. He publishes a monthly comic,
Earth 2: Society
, and his graphic novel,
Quarantine Zone
, is forthcoming
.
Robopocalypse
was purchased by DreamWorks and is currently being adapted for film by Steven Spielberg. Wilson earned a PhD in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

• I made a terrible mistake. In “The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever,” I included the exact bedtime routine, word for word, that I used for my daughter when she was three years old. She is nearly five at this moment, and so, of course, that particular bedtime routine has disintegrated. The rituals that we have with our children are so special and so personal—yet they are rendered ephemeral by a child's constant growth and development. Letting go hurts a little. Sometimes it hurts a lot. The instinct to memorialize those special patterns is strong. We want to hold on forever. At the event horizon of a black hole, this becomes a physical possibility. Drawing on conversations with my brilliant friend-since-childhood-and-now-physicist, Dr. Mark Baumann, I was able to thread these two elements together as hard science fiction. In my mind, the black hole represents the terrible actuality of holding on forever. It violently demonstrates what we all know to be true in our hearts: we must always be letting go. Life itself is a long, slow letting go. Sad and beautiful. So why the terrible mistake? Quite simply, this story triggers a nostalgia in me so deep that I cannot read it out loud without leaking from the eyes in a deeply embarrassing manner. That's life for you.

Selected by John Joseph Adams

A
LEXANDER
, W
ILLIAM

The War Between the Water and the Road.
Unstuck 3

A
NDERS
, C
HARLIE
J
ANE

The Day It All Ended.
Hieroglyph
, ed. Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer (William Morrow)

Palm Strike's Last Case.
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, July-August

A
RNASON
, E
LEANOR

The Scrivener.
Subterranean
, Winter

B
ACIGALUPI
, P
AOLO

Moriabe's Children.
Monstrous Affections
, ed. Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant (Candlewick Press)

Shooting the Apocalypse.
The End Is Nigh
, ed. John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey (Broad Reach)

B
LACK
, H
OLLY

Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind).
Monstrous Affections
, ed. Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant (Candlewick Press)

B
ROADDUS
, M
AURICE

The Iron Hut.
Sword & Mythos
, ed. Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Innsmouth Free Press)

B
ROCKMEIER
, K
EVIN

The Invention of Separate People.
Unstuck 3

B
UCKRAM
, O
LIVER

The Black Waters of Lethe.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
, June

C
ORREIA
, L
ARRY

The Great Sea Beast.
Kaiju Rising
, ed. Tim Marquitz (Ragnarok)

D
E
L
ANCEY
, C
RAIG

Racing the Tide.
Analog
, December

D
UE
, T
ANANARIVE

Herd Immunity.
The End Is Now
, ed. John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey (Broad Reach)

E
L
-M
OHTAR
, A
MAL

The Lonely Sea in the Sky.
Lightspeed
, June (special issue: Women Destroy Science Fiction!)

E
RDRICH
, L
OUISE

Domain.
Granta
, October

E
VENSON
, B
RIAN

The Blood Drip.
Granta
, October

F
INLAY
, C. C.

The Man Who Hanged Three Times.
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, January-February

F
RIED
, S
ETH

Hello Again.
Tin House
, Spring

G
ILBOW
, S. L.

Mr. Hill's Death.
The Dark
, May

G
RIFFITH
, N
ICOLA

Cold Wind.
Tor.com
, April

H
ANKS
, T
OM

Alan Bean Plus Four.
The New Yorker
, October 27

H
EADLEY
, M
ARIA
D
AHVANA

The Tallest Doll in New York City.
Tor.com
, February

Who Is Your Executioner?
Nightmare
, November

H
OWARD
, K
AT

The Saint of the Sidewalks.
Clarkesworld
, August

I
RVINE
, A
LEX

For All of Us Down Here.
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, January-February

J
EMISIN
, N. K.

Stone Hunger.
Clarkesworld
, July

J
ONES
, K
IMA

Nine.
Long Hidden
, ed. Rose Fox and Daniel Jose Older (Crossed Genres)

J
ONES
, R
ACHAEL
K.

Makeisha in Time.
Crossed Genres
, August

K
ELLY
, J
AMES
P
ATRICK

Someday.
Asimov's Science Fiction
, April-May

K
ENDALL
, M
IKKI

If God Is Watching.
Revelator
, April

K
ENYON
, S
HERRILYN, AND
K
EVIN
J. A
NDERSON

Trip Trap.
Dark Duets
, ed. Christopher Golden (Harper Voyager)

K
IERNAN
, C
AITLÍN
R.

Bus Fare.
Subterranean
, Spring

L
A
V
ALLE
, V
ICTOR

Lone Women.
Long Hidden
, ed. Rose Fox and Daniel Jose Older (Crossed Genres)

L
EE
, Y
OON
H
A

The Contemporary Foxwife.
Clarkesworld
, July

L
E
G
UIN
, U
RSULA
K.

The Daughter of Odren. ebook (HMH Books for Young Readers)

L
IBLING
, M
ICHAEL

Draft 31.
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, April-May

L
IPPMAN
, L
AURA

Ice.
Games Creatures Play
, ed. Charlaine Harris and Toni Kelner (Ace)

L
IU
, K
EN

The Long Haul: From the ANNALS OF TRANSPORTATION, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009.
Clarkesworld
, November

M
AC
L
EOD
, C
ATHERINE

Sideshow.
Nightmare
, October (special issue: Women Destroy Horror!)

M
ARCUS
, D
ANIEL

Albion upon the Rock.
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, March-April

M
C
I
NTOSH
, W
ILL

Dancing with Death in the Land of Nod.
The End Is Nigh
, ed. John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey (Broad Reach)

M
OHANRAJ
, M
ARY
A
NNE

Communion.
Clarkesworld
, June

M
ORAINE
, S
UNNY

Singing with All My Skin and Bone.
Nightmare
, September

N
ELSON
, S
HALE

Pay Phobetor.
Lightspeed
, December

P
ERALTA
, S
AMUEL

Hereafter.
Synchronic
, ed. David Gatewood (David Gatewood)