"Elison’s brutal, incisive novel cuts to the heart of what makes public figures vulnerable and asks us to question our voyeurism." —New York Times Book Review She created a beautiful world. Now he wants it all. On her way to a speaking engagement, bestselling novelist Eli Grey gets into a cab and accepts a drink from the driver, trusting that everything is fine. She wakes up chained in the stranger’s basement. With no close family or friends expecting her to check in, Eli knows she needs to save herself. She soon realizes that her abduction wasn’t random, and though she thinks she might recognize her captor, she can’t figure out what he wants. Her only clues are that he’s very familiar with her books and deeply invested in the fantastical world she creates. What follows is a test of wills as Eli pits herself against a man who believes she owes him everything—and is determined to take it from her. Terrifying and timely, set against the backdrop of convention culture and the MeToo reckoning, Number One Fan unflinchingly examines the tension between creator and work, fandom and source material, and the rage of fans who feel they own fiction.

“Elison offers a troubling yet hopeful vision of the future.” —Los Angeles Review of Books “A strikingly powerful story of one woman’s physical and emotional resourcefulness under the most dire of circumstances. An apocalyptic page-turner that picks up where Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale left off.” —Jackie Hatton, Tor.com “I could talk about female empowerment, body positivity, and gender flexibility. But those terms are wholly inadequate for Meg Elison’s clear-eyed satire in the guise of fantasy and science fiction. Powered by rage, incandescent with a deep understanding of injustice, angry for all the right reasons, yet still essentially optimistic, these are the stories I need to keep me warm through the long dark night. Compelling and fierce and unstoppable.” —Pat Murphy, World Fantasy Award winner “Meg Elison’s stories will raise blisters on your conscience. Her politics are smart, her prose is like a razor, and her characters will break your heart. Read at your own risk.” —Annalee Newitz, author of Autonomous “Meg Elison’s work is visceral and compelling. A voice that doesn’t so much demand attention as it 100 percent deserves every ounce of it.” —Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, Hugo-winning writer and editor

A neglected girl's chaotic coming-of-age becomes a trending new hashtag in a novel about growing up and getting away by an award-winning author. Underprivileged and keenly self-aware, SoCal fourteen-year-old Layla Bailey isn't used to being noticed. Except by mean girls who tweet about her ragged appearance. All she wants to do is indulge in her love of science, protect her vulnerable younger brother, and steer clear of her unstable mother. Then a school competition calls for a biome. Layla chooses her own home, a hostile ecosystem of indoor fungi and secret shame. With a borrowed video camera, she captures it all. The mushrooms growing in her brother's dresser. The black mold blooming up the apartment walls. The unmentionable things living in the dead fridge. All the inevitable exotic toxins that are Layla's life. Then the video goes viral. When Child Protective Services comes to call, Layla loses her family and her home. Defiant, she must face her bullies and friends alike, on her own. Unafraid at last of being seen, Layla accepts the mortifying reality of visibility. Now she has to figure out how to stay whole and stand behind the truth she has shown the world.

"In the wake of a fever that decimated the earth's population--killing women and children and making childbirth deadly for the mother and infant--the midwife must pick her way through the bones of the world she once knew to find her place in this dangerous new one. Gone are the pillars of civilization. All that remains is power--and the strong who possess it. A few women like her survived, though they are scarce. Even fewer are safe from the clans of men, who, driven by fear, seek to control those remaining"--Back cover.

A remote village is determined to keep their robot teacher from being fired. A poetry-loving AI controls the wastewater treatment facility, but a series of malfunctions are beginning to cause concern. The biggest pop idol of the twenty-second century is trapped on Enceladus, and deeply alone. Latchko can talk to the banned AIs and now that his secret is out things are about to get complicated. A former child soldier is raised by a plant-like species but struggles to understand them. Ice fishing on Europa just keeps turning up rocks and things just got worse ... something is changing the world, making it better, but for whom? Short fiction is the heart of science fiction, introducing new voices, experimenting with ideas and technique, and paving the way for the future of the field. Thousands of stories are published every year in the many genre magazines, anthologies, collections, podcasts, and websites, as well as other less common venues. Each year, Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning editor Neil Clarke sifts through the myriad of offerings to select works that represent the best and the brightest, report on the state of the field, and recommend additional stories for further reading. In this volume, covering 2021, you'll find works by Aliette de Bodard, Meg Elison, Rich Larson, Ken Liu, Ray Nayler, Suzanne Palmer, Hannu Rajaniemi, Robert Reed, Karl Schroeder, Vandana Singh, Tade Thompson, and many more.

The May/June 2020 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine. Featuring new fiction by Arkady Martine, Jennifer Marie Brissett, Emma Törzs, A.T. Greenblatt, Meg Elison, and Suzanne Walker. Reprint fiction by Sonya Taaffe. Essays by Fran Wilde, Kelly Lagor, Khairani Barokka, and Ada Palmer, poetry by Valerie Valdes, Ali Trotta, Roshani Chokshi, and T.K. Lê, interviews with Emma Törzs and Meg Elison by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Julie Dillon, and editorials by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, and Elsa Sjunneson.

The January/February 2020 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine. Featuring new fiction by Rae Carson, Eugenia Triantafyllou, C. L. Clark, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, Sharon Hsu, and Alex Bledsoe. Reprint fiction by E. Lily Yu. Essays by Meg Elison, Marissa Lingen, Malka Older, and Katharine Duckett, poetry by Ada Hoffmann, Brandon O'Brien, Leah Bobet, and Betsy Aoki, interviews with Eugenia Triantafyllou and Bonnie Joe Stufflebeam by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Nilah Magruder, and editorials by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, and Elsa Sjunneson.

For decades, science fiction has compelled us to imagine futures both inspiring and cautionary. Whether it's a cryptic message encountered by a survey ship, the discovery of alien life in the distant reaches of space, a window into a future Earth, or the adventures of well-meaning AI, science fiction inspires our imagination and delivers a lens through which we can view ourselves and the world around us. At the very heart of the genre is short fiction, the secret lab that has introduced many of the new ideas, techniques, and voices prominent across all other media. In The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Eight, Hugo and Locus Award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a comprehensive year-in-review of 2022's short fiction markets and selects thirty-one of its best stories from the wealth of magazines, anthologies, podcasts, and collections that make up the field. In these pages you'll find works by both the new and established authors who are setting the pace for science fiction today and into tomorrow. Start your journey here.

Stories from our latest collection feature gritty murders on the streets of Chicago, New York, L.A., London and Paris, horrors in dark alleys, as well as many more scenes from urban crime that elicit a dark curiosity. Classic authors are cast with previously unpublished stories by exciting budding contemporary crime writers to bring you the latest anthology in our successful series. New, contemporary and notable writers featured are: T.J. Berg, Judi Calhoun, Ramsey Campbell, Meg Elison, Rich Larson, C.L. McDaniel, Dan Micklethwaite, Trixie Nisbet, Thana Niveau, Josh Pachter, Michael Penncavage, Jennifer Quail, Zandra Renwick, K.W. Roberts, Leo X. Robertson, David Tallerman, Salinda Tyson, Rachel Watts, and Chris Wheatley. Classic authors include Robert Barr, Wilkie Collins, Jack London, Edgar Wallace, Oscar Wilde and more.

In this Philip K. Dick Award-winning series, one woman's unknowable destiny depends on a bold new step in human evolution. In the wake of the apocalypse, Flora has come of age in a highly gendered post-plague society where females have become a precious, coveted, hunted, and endangered commodity. But Flora does not participate in the economy that trades in bodies. An anathema in a world that prizes procreation above all else, she is an outsider everywhere she goes, including the thriving all-female city of Shy. Now navigating a blighted landscape, Flora, her friends, and a sullen young slave she adopts as her own child leave their oppressive pasts behind to find their place in the world. They seek refuge aboard a ship where gender is fluid, where the dynamic is uneasy, and where rumors flow of a bold new reproductive strategy. When the promise of a miraculous hope for humanity's future tears Flora's makeshift family asunder, she must choose: protect the safe haven she's built or risk everything to defy oppression, whatever its provenance.