The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019

Starred review from August 26, 2019
For this fifth anthology of outstanding American genre fiction, series editor Adams is joined by guest editor Machado, who winnowed down 80 contenders into 20 finalists, 10 each from the U.S. and Canada. Machado’s selections lean toward the experimental, the literary, and the boundary-pushing. Standouts include Annalee Newitz’s “When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis,” in which a drone befriends both humans and crows to combat inner-city epidemics; LaShawn M. Wanak’s “Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie Sing the Stumps Down Good,” an alternate history piece in which singers are pressed into service against deadly spores; Sarah Gailey’s “STET,” which explores grief through the form of a scientific paper; Lesley Nneka Arimah’s “Skinned,” a provocative piece about the role of women in a patriarchal African society; Sofia Samatar’s “Hard Mary,” in which Amish-like girls adopt a broken android; and P. Djèlí Clark’s introspective history piece, “The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington.” Despite the “American” label, there’s a decidedly global, multicultural feel to these pieces, which exemplify diversity and representation. As Machado says in her introduction, “Here you will find an undeniable bias towards the use of formal constraints, vibrant and muscular prose, ambitious weirdness.” In exploring the potential of the genre and challenging expectations, this anthology isn’t for everyone, but it’s a masterful showcase of what’s possible.

October 1, 2019
The chosen becomes the chooser: Machado, the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties (2017) and a contributor to last year's anthology, serves as guest editor for the 2019 volume. Every one of these 20 tales shines; there's not a lackluster one in the bunch. They cover a variety of overlapping subgenres, from haunted-house horror to speculative social fiction to alien invasion to apocalyptic fantasy, and feature some of the most notable and rising writers in these overlapping areas, including Seanan McGuire, Daryl Gregory, P. Djèlí Clark, Sofia Samatar, and last year's editor, N.K. Jemisin, among others. In her introduction, Machado declares her intention to ignore any artificial lines drawn between those stories considered "literary" and those labelled as "genre," and she says that her chief criterion in selecting these works was whether they provided her with pleasure. That doesn't mean these stories offer happy endings or simple answers. If there's one theme that unites them, it's the characters' desire to escape: from that haunted house (Adam-Troy Castro's "Pitcher Plant"), the forces of time itself (Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's "Through the Flash" and Adam R. Shannon's "On the Day You Spend Forever With Your Dog"), the restrictions of expected fictional tropes (Ada Hoffman's "Variations on a Theme From Turandot"), racism and classism (LaShawn M. Wanak's "Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie Sing the Stumps Down Good" and P. Djèlí Clark's "The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington"), misogyny and the associated bonds of social convention (Sofia Samatar's "Hard Mary," Kelly Robson's "What Gentle Women Dare," Theodore McCombs' "Six Hangings in the Land of Unkillable Women," and Lesley Nneka Arimah's "Skinned"), and of course, foolish and dangerous preconceptions about the world that everyone holds in some measure (that's just about every story). A strong collection that will inspire, disturb, and, yes, give pleasure.

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Starred review from September 1, 2019
The stories selected by guest editor Machado (Her Body and Other Parties, 2017) for this acclaimed annual anthology reflect her commitment to interrogating the boundaries between literary and genre fiction, asking "what sort of pleasures does this story bring me" instead of "what category is this?" Among the many and varied pleasures of the collection are stories that share Machado's love of formal experimentation, like Silvia Park's "Poor Unfortunate Fools," where the conservation of endangered mer-people is presented through both exposition and documents, and P. Djeli Clark's "The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington," which presents an alternate and magical America through the erased histories of nine slaves' teeth. Other excellent entries range from Usman Malik's bleak and muscular "Two Lovers on Each Blade, Hung," about a heroin addict's discovery of serpentine secrets; Martin Cahill's luscious fantasy of a cook making dishes out of the divine in "Godmeat"; and Annalee Newitz's sweet and aptly titled "When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis." With other equally strong stories by a host of others, this brilliant and beautiful collection is a must-read for those looking to enjoy the fullest range of narrative pleasure.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)