The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023

By John Joseph Adams and R. F. Kuang

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“Short stories have to accomplish a nearly impossible magic trick: to introduce a world often much stranger than our own and make you care about it in a matter of pages,” writes R. F. Kuang in her introduction. “The most important part of this magic trick is just a willingness to get weird.” The stories in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023 are brimming with bizarre and otherworldly premises. Women can’t lie or fall in love. Fathers feed their children ghost preserves. Souls chase one another through animal incarnations. Yet these stories are grounded deeply in our reality. Out of these stories’ weirdness emerges the cruelty of border enforcement, the horror of legislation restricting reproductive freedom, the frightening pace of AI. The result is a stunning, immersive, intensely felt experience, showing us less of what the world is, and more of what it could be.

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023 includes Nathan Ballingrud • KT Bryski • Isabel Cañas • Maria Dong • Kim Fu • Theodora Goss • Alix E. Harrow • S. L. Huang • Stephen Graham Jones • Shingai Njeri Kagunda • Isabel J. Kim • Samantha Mills • MKRNYILGLD • Malka Older • Susan Palwick • Linda Raquel Nieves Pérez • Sofia Samatar • Kristina Ten • Catherynne M. Valente • Chris Willrich

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Published Oct 17, 2023

320 pages

Average rating: 6

2 RATINGS

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richardbakare
Jun 21, 2026
6/10 stars
The 2023 collection of The Best American Science Fiction gives strong dystopian vibes. From beginning to end, each author sounds the alarm bell on over-surveillance, the misuse of artificial intelligence, and the erosion of civil liberties. I am sure these short stories felt like a far stretch in that 2020 to 2023 window. Sadly, many of these cautions are now a reality. Every time one looks back on that pandemic era, you can see how the unraveling of reality impacted the arts and the cultural zeitgeist. R.F. Kuang did a wonderful job amalgamating a great cross-section of perspectives, stories, and topics. The pace and tone in each story keep the whole in sync while maintaining an individual quality to each entry. That said, the collection as a whole lost steam at the halfway point. A sense of repetitiveness and dwindling quality hurt the overall rating. Not that any entry dragged down the whole but that none of the latter stories packed the wonder and excitement marked by some of the earlier entries. Otherwise, this was a good read and time well spent for short story and/or science fiction lovers.
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