From Hugo Award-winning editor Neil Clarke, the best science fiction stories of the year are collected in a single volume.

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, a yearly anthology compiled by Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning editor Neil Clarke, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers.

The best science fiction scrutinizes our culture and politics, examines the limits of the human condition, and zooms across galaxies at faster-than-light speeds, moving from the very near future to the far-flung worlds of tomorrow in the space of a single sentence. Clarke, publisher and editor-in-chief of the acclaimed and award-winning magazine Clarkesworld, has selected the short science fiction (and only science fiction) best representing the previous year's writing, showcasing the talent, variety, and awesome "sensawunda" that the genre has to offer.

Table of Contents

Introduction: A State of the Short SF Field in 2018
When We Were Starless - Simone Heller
Intervention - Kelly Robson
All the Time We've Left to Spend - Alyssa Wong
Domestic Violence - Madeline Ashby
Ten Landscapes of Nili Fossae - Ian McDonald
Prophet of the Roads - Naomi Kritzer
Traces of Us - Vanessa Fogg
Theories of Flight - Linda Nagata
Lab B-15 - Nick Wolven
Requiem - Vandana Singh
Sour Milk Girls - Erin Roberts
Mother Tongues - S. Qiouyi Lu
Singles' Day - Samantha Murray
Nine Last Days on Planet Earth - Daryl Gregory
The Buried Giant - Lavie Tidhar
The Anchorite Wakes - R.S.A. Garcia
Entropy War - Yoon Ha Lee
An Equation of State - Robert Reed
Quantifying Trust - John Chu
Hard Mary - Sofia Samatar
Freezing Rain, a Chance of Falling - L.X. Beckett
Okay, Glory - Elizabeth Bear
Heavy Lifting - A.T. Greenblatt
Lions and Gazelles - Hannu Rajaniemi
Different Seas - Alastair Reynolds
Among the Water Buffaloes, a Tiger's Steps - Aliette de Bodard
Byzantine Empathy - Ken Liu
Meat and Salt and Sparks - Rich Larson
Umbernight - Carolyn Ives Gilman