Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024

When I started as a public librarian, I checked out a few annual “Best of” anthologies to get a sense for different genres: sports writing, science writing, crime fiction, short stories in general. I recently found The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024 (Hugh Howey and John Joseph Adams, eds.) on sale, so I gave the ensemble-cast audiobook a listen.

Disappointingly, the stories were of varying quality. I expect better in an anthology with the word Best in the title. Or let me be more accurate: the stories were all good, speaking on a plot level, but the prose was not always up to snuff.

The phrase “achingly beautiful” should not appear in your short story, because that phrase is hackneyed. If I’m editing, I’ll let that slide in book-length manuscripts for some authors, because prose craft is not everyone’s forte. I will not let that slide in a short story, because you’ve only got three thousand words, give or take, and each one needs to count.

I absolutely, positively would not let “achingly beautiful” appear twice in the same fucking story. Which it did in one of the stories in the anthology.

My favorite fantasy short story was “John Hollowback and the Witch,” because I am a sucker for good witchy stories. Amal El-Mohtar has been on my TBR for years. I’m going to seek out her longer fiction on the strength of this story. My favorite science fiction short story was “Calypso’s Guest,” by Andrew Sean Greer. I love a familiar story thoughtfully retold.

And there was a short story I expected to dislike. I won’t name the writer, but I had bounced off his novels because his prose disappointed me, but he did a great job with the short story.