The New Voices of Science Fiction Read online

  Praise for The New Voices of Science Fiction

  [Starred Review] “In the introduction to this superlative anthology, Weisman (The New Voices of Fantasy) declares the future of science fiction resides in the sure hands of the authors of these 20 recent award-winning or award-nominated stories. Rajaniemi, a mathematical physicist and author (The Quantum Thief), adds that their various perspectives create “a tonal freshness” in the genre. . . . All these stories provoke the reader to ponder not only what the future might be but what it should be.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  [Starred Review] “This collection of stories from up-and-coming sf writers is diverse in terms of plot and setting, yet all share an emphasis on creating a distinct tone and style for their imagined worlds . . . wonderful stories by Jamie Wahls, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Suzanne Palmer, and many others make this a must-read for anyone interested in the latest and most exciting sf writing out there.”

  —Booklist, starred review

  “From the moment Mary Shelley took up her pen [and a dare], science fiction has inspired, challenged, and entertained audiences. That legacy is alive and thriving in Hannu Rajaniemi and Jacob Weisman’s curated collection The New Voices of Science Fiction. Covering the last five years of rising stars and new arrivals, the collection is a breath of fresh, interstellar air.”

  —Foreword Reviews

  “This is a stupendous collection. Each story is a wonderful gift. Some are funny, some poignant; all are forward-looking, imaginative, intelligent, and full of heart. The voices are honest and fresh. The themes are contemporary but also universal: love, family, career, alienation, success, loss. There’s something here for everyone. I loved this collection. I simply couldn’t put it down.”

  —Michael Blumlein, author of Longer

  “The New Voices of Science Fiction is a stunning collection. There’s a story for every possible future—it’s impossible to put down.”

  —Peng Shepherd, author of The Book of M

  “The New Voices of Science Fiction speaks in tongues ticklish, rousing, urgent, and forked. This smart, transportive pack of stories shows us our future, shows us ourselves, shows us a hell of a good time.”

  —Katie Williams, author of Tell the Machine Goodnight

  Praise for editor Hannu Rajaniemi

  “A storytelling skill rarely found from even the most experienced authors.”

  —Library Journal

  “Writing that’s striking, evocative. . . . Thoughtful, hard, densely realised and highly patterned, there’s nothing quite like it in contemporary SF.”

  —The Guardian

  “Rajaniemi is a virtuoso idea-smith, with a flair for stylish imagery and clever literary architecture.”

  —Strange Horizons

  “With his challenging, intellectual high-wire-balancing-act novels, Hannu Rajaniemi is definitely a body thief supreme.”

  —Barnes and Noble

  Praise for editor Jacob Weisman

  On World Fantasy Award winner

  The New Voices of Fantasy (co-edited with Peter S. Beagle)

  [Starred Review] “A stellar anthology that proves not only that fantasy is alive and well, but that it will be for years to come.”

  —Kirkus, starred review

  [Starred Review] “This anthology represents some of the most exciting and interesting work in the fantasy field today, and anyone interested in the genre should read it immediately.”

  —Booklist, starred review

  On Invaders: 22 Tales from the Outer Limits of Science Fiction

  [Starred Review] “This volume is a treasure trove of stories that draw equally from SF and literary fiction, and they are superlative in either context.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  Also Edited by Jacob Weisman

  The Treasury of the Fantastic (with David Sandner, 2001, 2013)

  The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (with David G. Hartwell, 2012)

  Invaders: 22 Tales from the Outer Limits of Literature (2016)

  The New Voices of Fantasy (with Peter S. Beagle, 2017)

  Other Books by Hannu Rajaniemi

  Summerland (2018)

  The Jean le Flambeur series

  The Quantum Thief (2010)

  The Fractal Prince (2012)

  The Causal Angel (2014)

  Collections

  Words of Birth and Death (2006)

  Hannu Rajaniemi: Collected Fiction (2015)

  The New Voices of Science Fiction

  Copyright © 2019 by Hannu Rajaniemi and Jacob Weisman

  This is a collected work of fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form without the express permission of the publisher.

  Introduction copyright © 2019 by Jacob Weisman

  Foreword copyright © 2019 by Hannu Rajaniemi

  Interior and cover design by Elizabeth Story

  Cover art “Interval” copyright © 2015 by Matt Dixon

  Tachyon Publications LLC

  1459 18th Street #139

  San Francisco, CA 94107

  www.tachyonpublications.com

  [email protected]

  Series Editor: Jacob Weisman

  Project Editor: Jaymee Goh

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61696-291-3

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-61696-341-5

  First Edition: 2019

  “The Shape of My Name” © 2015 by Nino Cipri. First appeared on Tor.com, March 4, 2015.

  “Madeleine” © Amal El-Mohtar. First appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, June 2015.

  “One Hour, Every Seven Years” © 2017 by Alice Sola Kim. First appeared in McSweeney’s #49: Cover Stories, July 2017.

  “Ice” © 2015 by Rich Larson. First appeared on Clarkesworld, October 2015.

  “Robo-Liopleurodon!” © 2018 by Darcie Little Badger. First appeared in Robot Dinosaur Fiction!, July 27, 2018.

  “Mother Tongues” © 2018 by S. Qiouyi Lu. First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, January 2018.

  “Calved” © 2015 by Sam J. Miller. First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, September 2015.

  “Strange Waters” © 2018 by Samantha Mills. First appeared on Strange Horizons, April 2, 2018.

  “In the Sharing Place” © 2018 by David Erik Nelson. First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, September 2018.

  “The Secret Life of Bots” © 2017 by Suzanne Palmer. First appeared on Clarkesworld, September 2017.

  “Our Lady of the Open Road” © 2015 by Sarah Pinsker. First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 2015.

  “A Series of Steaks” © 2017 by Vina Jie-Min Prasad. First appeared on Clarkesworld, January 2017.

  “The Need for Air” © 2018 by Prell Productions LLC. First appeared on Tor.com, June 27, 2018.

  “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™” © 2017 by Rebecca Roanhorse. First appeared in Apex Magazine, August 7, 2017.

  “A Study in Oils” © 2018 by Kelly Robson. First appeared on Clarkesworld, September 2018.

  “Tender Loving Plastics” © 2018 by Amman Sabet. First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 2018.

  “Toppers” © 2016 by Jason Sanford. First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, August 2016.

  “The Doing and Undoing of Jacob E. Mwangi” © 2019 by E. Lily Yu. First appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, May/June 2019.

  “Openness” © 2016 by Alexander Weinstein. First appeared in Children of the New World: Stories, September 2016. Reprinted
by permission of Picador.

  “Utopia, LOL?” © by Jamie Wahls. First appeared on Strange Horizons, June 5, 2017.

  CONTENTS

  INTRODUCTION

  Jacob Weisman

  FOREWORD

  Hannu Rajaniemi

  OPENNESS

  Alexander Weinstein

  THE SHAPE OF MY NAME

  Nino Cipri

  UTOPIA, LOL?

  Jamie Wahls

  MOTHER TONGUES

  S. Qiouyi Lu

  IN THE SHARING PLACE

  David Erik Nelson

  A SERIES OF STEAKS

  Vina Jie-Min Prasad

  THE SECRET LIFE OF BOTS

  Suzanne Palmer

  ICE

  Rich Larson

  ONE HOUR, EVERY SEVEN YEARS

  Alice Sola Kim

  TOPPERS

  Jason Sanford

  TENDER LOVING PLASTICS

  Amman Sabet

  WELCOME TO YOUR AUTHENTIC INDIAN EXPERIENCE™

  Rebecca Roanhorse

  STRANGE WATERS

  Samantha Mills

  CALVED

  Sam J. Miller

  THE NEED FOR AIR

  Lettie Prell

  ROBO-LIOPLEURODON!

  Darcie Little Badger

  THE DOING AND UNDOING OF JACOB E. MWANGI

  E. Lily Yu

  MADELEINE

  Amal El-Mohtar

  OUR LADY OF THE OPEN ROAD

  Sarh Pinsker

  A STUDY IN OILS

  Kelly Robson

  ABOUT THE EDITORS

  INTRODUCTION

  JACOB WEISMAN

  The New Voices of Science Fiction collects stories by writers whom Hannu Rajaniemi and I believe will become increasingly important in the years to come. All the stories in this volume were published quite recently, after 2014, and the writers themselves for the most part are new to their success. Many of these writers will be writing and publishing their first novels in the next few years, while some, including Rebecca Roanhorse, Sam J. Miller, Sarah Pinsker, and Rich Larson, are already on their way.

  Another talented group of up-and-coming writers was featured in The New Voices of Fantasy, which I co-edited with the legendary fantasist Peter S. Beagle. It came out in 2017 and won the World Fantasy Award for best anthology. The book collected stories by several authors whose careers have taken off, including Carmen Maria Machado, Brooke Bolander, and Hannu Rajaniemi, to name just a few.

  In 1977, a youthful George R. R. Martin took up the mantle of anthologies dedicated to younger writers, publishing several volumes centered around the John W. Campbell Award, which is given at the annual Hugo Award ceremony to the best new writer. Martin published work by himself, Lisa Tuttle, George Alec Effinger, Suzy McKee Charnas, Spider Robinson, and John Varley, among others. Martin’s series ran five volumes in all, ending in 1987.

  The New Voices of Science Fiction is very much of this particular moment in the genre. If we had commissioned it ten years earlier, you would perhaps have seen such now-famous stories as Charles Stross’s “Accerlando” (or my personal Stross favorite, “Tourists,” which Stross calls “a case of hit-and-run amnesia”). You may have found “Calorie Man” or “The People of Sand and Slag” by Paolo Bacigalupi, early in his career. And, if the anthology had been truly attuned to what was happening at the time, you just may have discovered a truly breathtaking story, “Deus Ex Homine,” by an unknown writer named Hannu Rajaniemi.

  So, what is the new generation of science-fiction writers up to? With Jamie Wahls, it’s the witty “Utopia, LOL??” about an everyman who finds himself in a future that he is incapable of comprehending. Alice Sola Kim takes Ray Bradbury’s “All Summer in a Day” on a test drive through time, “One Hour, Every Seven Years.” In “Mother Tongues,” S. Qiouyi Lu shows to what new lengths a mother may go to sacrifice for her daughter. And with “Openness,” Alexander Weinstein demonstrates the ultimate potentials of social media.

  With these twenty fabulous stories, writers Amal El-Mohtar, Kelly Robson, Lettie Prell, Suzanne Palmer, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, and others show that the future of science fiction is in sure hands—and that, like the real future, it’s only a brief matter of time before it arrives.

  FOREWORD

  HANNU RAJANIEMI

  I certainly did not feel like a new voice when my first novel, The Quantum Thief, came out almost a decade ago. I only had the faintest idea that I even had a voice, except for the chorus of worry, self-doubt, and guilt in my head. I simply wrote about my obsessions—physics, gentleman thieves, chocolate, game theory—and filtered them through the idiosyncrasies of a second-language writer grappling with translating Finnish idioms into English. Somehow, that mess resonated with a wide readership across the world, and I am forever grateful for that.

  But even now, several books and many stories later, I find the concept of a writerly voice elusive. The most adroit writers have the power to disappear, existing only as people and worlds conjured in our heads like waking dreams. And if the voice is the distillation of one’s worldview, an approximation of one’s consciousness, then finding it may be as difficult as locating the seat of the self—or its absence—in deep meditation.

  But I do know what the writers who have shaped me sound like. What was novel in my own voice was a distorted echo of Finnish mythology, Jules Verne, Maurice Leblanc, Tove Jansson, Roger Zelazny; British space opera writers like Iain Banks and Charles Stross; and many more. I fell in love with them and was changed by them. The truly new voices—whether chronologically recent or simply discovered by the reader for the first time—do that, and more. A new voice says something previously unspoken and true about the world around us. A new voice makes us want to imitate it, to amplify it, to join it in a chorus. A new voice wakes us to the fact that things are no longer the same.

  All the stories in this volume have that power of waking: an original thematic scope, a tonal freshness. They make you a little uncomfortable. These writers are native to a strange world where science-fictional inventions are injected into the veins of the mundane on a daily basis, and political reality out does satire. It is a world of contradictions: of vast slow-burning threats and sudden bone-cracking transformations. It is a world that mixes utopian dreams with brutal greed, that embraces diversity while walking over the weak. It is a complex world that cannot be defined by a single new perspective.

  This anthology assembles a chorus of storytellers who are up to the task of capturing the essence of our world’s present and future. They refuse to be contained in one genre, but what they do is unmistakably science fiction. Yet they are not satisfied with using well-worn tropes of SF, such as time travel—or shinier speculative machinery, such as the Singularity—just as cold thought experiments, but they repurpose these ideas into deep explorations of gender, love, and identity. There are stories about contemporary nightmares like social media and climate change, but they have a clarity and attention to human detail that go beyond Black Mirror–esque cautionary tales. They don’t hesitate to confront pain and willingly walk into the dark, but they also guide us back from it—and sometimes to laugh uproariously at the absurdity of it all.

  And finally, these authors show us the new new things, from global cataclysms to personal transformations that get us lost in entirely unprecedented landscapes. They will, no doubt, inspire fresh writerly talent, and make us readers hungry for new kinds of stories we did not even know we wanted.

  They are here to wake us, by giving us new waking dreams. Read them, and be changed.

  OPENNESS

  ALEXANDER WEINSTEIN

  Alexander Weinstein’s fiction has appeared in Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy and Best American Experimental Writing, and has been awarded the the Lamar York, Gail Crump, Hamlin Garland, Etching’s Whirling, and New Millennium Prizes. He is the director of the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Siena Heights University. His collection of short s
tories, Children of the New World, was selected as a New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year for 2016.

  “Openness” follows the rise and fall of a romance complicated by technologically-enhanced digital intimacy.

  BEFORE I DECIDED to finally give up on New York, I subbed classes at a junior high in Brooklyn. A sixth grade math teacher suffering from downloading anxiety was out for the year, and jobs being what they were, I took any opportunity I could. Subbing math was hardly my dream job; I had a degree in visual art, for which I’d be in debt for the rest of my life. All I had to show for it was my senior collection, a series of paintings of abandoned playgrounds, stored in a U-Pack shed in Ohio. There was a time when I’d imagined I’d become famous, give guest lectures at colleges, and have retrospectives at MoMA. Instead, I found myself standing in front of a class of apathetic tweens, trying to teach them how to do long division without accessing their browsers. I handed out pen and paper, so that for once in their lives they’d have a tactile experience, and watched as they texted, their eyes glazed from blinking off message after message. They spent most of the class killing vampires and orcs inside their heads and humoring me by lazily filling out my photocopies.

  The city overwhelmed me. Every day I’d walk by hundreds of strangers, compete for space in crowded coffee shops, and stand shoulder to shoulder on packed subway cars. I’d scan profiles, learning that the woman waiting for the N enjoyed thrash-hop, and the barista at my local coffee shop loved salted caramel. I’d had a couple fleeting relationships, but mostly I’d spend weekends going to bars and sleeping with people who knew little more than my username. It all made me want to turn off my layers, go back to the old days, and stay disconnected. But you do that and you become another old guy buried in an e-reader, complaining about how no one sends emails anymore.

  So I stayed open, shared the most superficial info of my outer layer with the world, and filtered through everyone I passed, hoping to find some connection. Here was citycat5, jersygirl13, m3love. And then, one morning, there was Katie, sitting across from me on the N. She was lakegirl03, and her hair fell from under her knit cap. The only other info I could access was her hometown and that she was single.