"Whatever you do, whatever storytelling choices you make, commit." So advises guest editor R.F. Kuang in her introduction to this year's assemblage of notable science fiction and fantasy tales (the ninth in this anthology series). True to her dictum, this edition's stories are passionate in their commitment to the bit, no matter how idiosyncratic the bit gets, and if these tales don't necessarily break new ground, they reveal a dazzling array of styles and choice bits of writing.
Sofia Samatar's whimsical "Readings in the Slantwise Sciences" kicks off the proceedings in delightful off-kilter style: we're presented entries from what might be a science journal — if that journal dosed up on a few psychedelics. A crystal can see to the end of the universe; an icy kingdom is powered by necromancy; a treatise on fairy etymology reveals their value to the environment, even as their numbers dwindle to extinction. Samatar lets her ruminations on the alchemy of magic and science run free even as her writing is filigreed with luxuriant turns of phrase.
Many of the stories interrogate genre conventions to amusing effect. Kristina Ten's "Beginnings" gives fairy-tale storytelling a hip feminist spin, as a love triangle between a prince and two female pals plays out as a high school comedy-drama, punctuated by sour betrayal. In Isabel J. Kim's "Termination Stories for the Cyberpunk Dystopia Protagonist," a "cool and sexy Asian girl" teams up with a "white boy hero," the former all too aware she's trying on her persona as one tries on a new dress, jaded existentialism and game theory all but overwhelming the putative narrative.
A particular comic highlight is Theodora Goss's "Pellargonia: A Letter to the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology," wherein three young students besotted with role-playing games dream up the history, culture and current events of an entire nation — only to see their creation spring to life. Mixing an epistolary structure with epistemological musings, "Pellargonia" pokes fun at scholarly pretensions even as it contemplates the reach of imagination.
A handful of entries extrapolate dark outcomes from the issues of our current day. Samantha Mills's "Rabbit Test" and MKRNYILGLD's "The CRISPR Cookbook" both imagine futures in which women struggle to regain authority over their bodies, while S.L. Huang's "Murder by Pixel" kicks our current anxieties with AI into overdrive, mixing fact and fiction to ponder the possibility of an evolved chatbot that can drive humans to suicide — and whether such an AI can actually be charged with a crime.
The best stories in the collection are cosmic in dimension yet very human at heart. Maria Dong's unsettling "In the Beginning of Me, I Was a Bird" is ostensibly a tale about alien contamination and human souls forced into animal bodies, yet blossoms into a moving meditation on loneliness and what it means to truly be alone. For the truly cosmic, however, it's tough to beat Catherynne M. Valente's bravura comic tale "The Difference Between Love and Time," in which the space-time continuum is anthropomorphized as an on-again, off-again lover — whether it's binging on Law and Order, being a slobby roommate, or stocking up on self-help books, the space-time continuum is a handful indeed, and Valente deploys absurdist humor one might associate with Douglas Adams, even while building to an impressive pitch of longing and eventual catharsis.
"What matters is that the rabbit comes out of the hat alive," writes Kuang in her introduction, and one can find solid prestidigitation in most of the stories presented in this collection. Those seeking truly revelatory, game-changing sci-fi and fantasy might not be satiated by The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023, but as a playful grab-bag of moods, genres and plain impressive writing, there's much in this omnibus to appreciate.