A chilling novella about extinction, grief, and what we hold onto when the world falls apart.

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.

This edited collection explores the relationships between humans and nature at a time when the traditional sense of separation between human cultures and a natural wilderness is being eroded. The ‘Anthropocene,’ whose literal translation is the ‘Age of Man,’ is one way of marking these planetary changes to the Earth system. Global climate change and rising sea levels are two prominent examples of how nature can no longer be simply thought of as something outside and removed from humans (and vice versa). This collection applies the concepts of ecology and entanglement to address pressing political, social, and cultural issues surrounding human relationships with the nonhuman world in terms of ‘working with nature.’ It asks, are there more or less preferable ways of working with nature? What forms and practices might this work take and how do we distinguish between them? Is the idea of ‘nature’ even sufficient to approach such questions, or do we need to reconsider using the term nature in favour of terms such as environments, ecologies or the broad notion of the non-human world? How might we forge perspectives and enact practices which build resilience and community across species and spaces, constructing relationships with nonhumans which go beyond discourses of pollution, degradation and destruction? Bringing together a range of contributors from across multiple academic disciplines, activists and artists, this book examines how these questions might help us understand and assess the different ways in which humans transform, engage and interact with the nonhuman world.

A transformative eco-horror to solarpunk short story collection from award-winning author Octavia Cade.

“We talk about the tyranny of distance a lot in this country.That distance will not save us.” With governments denying climate science, scientists from affected countries and organisations are forced to traffic data to ensure the preservation of research that could in turn preserve the world. From Antarctica, to the Chihuahuan Desert, to the International Space Station, a fragile network forms. A web of knowledge. Secret. But not secret enough. When the cold war of data preservation turns bloody – and then explosive – an underground network of scientists, all working in isolation, must decide how much they are willing to risk for the truth. For themselves, their colleagues, and their future. Murder on Antarctic ice. A university lecturer’s car, found abandoned on a desert road. And the first crewed mission to colonise Mars, isolated and vulnerable in the depths of space. How far would you go to save the world?

Interdimensional forests, atomic ghosts and future tech gone horribly wrong abound in this collection of six works by acclaimed New Zealand sci fi and fantasy writers. Tim Jones explores desperation and betrayal on New Zealand's shores in his climate refugee novella, Landfall. AC Buchanan tells a story of creatures and people displaced in time and space in Bree's Dinosaur. Grant Stone's tale of jealous muses and musical prodigy: The Last. Lee Murray and Piper Mejia's sci-fi adventure Mika throws the reader into an odyssey through a dystopic USA. A husband with a secret in IK Paterson-Harkness' Pocket Wife. Grief, ghosts, and atoms: Octavia Cade explores Ernest Rutherford's discoveries of loss in The Ghost of Matter. From award-winning boutique publisher Paper Road Press.

Hansel and Gretel. Turkish Delight. Viscous blood and meaty gristle. From the rituals that surround mealtime to the culture-spanning tales of insatiably hungry monsters, food is often used as both tool and metaphor in speculative fiction. In this award-winning collection of fifteen essays from Octavia Cade, the intersection of food and horror is explored in bone-crunching, marrow-slurping detail. You are what you eat, except when you aren't.

The best science fiction and fantasy stories from Metaphorosis magazine's first year. Stories from Joshua Phillip Johnson, Elise Forier Edie, Vanessa Fogg, Gerald Warfield, Meryl Stenhouse, Jeremy Packert Burke, Molly Etta, Jack Noble, Aatif Rashid, L. Chan, Kato Thompson, Jarod K. Anderson, and Octavia Cade. Contents: The Demon in the Page - Joshua Phillip Johnson Heard - Elise Forier Edie In Dew and Frost and Flame - Vanessa Fogg The Heresy Machine - Gerald Warfield Gathering Dust - Meryl Stenhouse So, You're In an Alternate Universe - Jeremy Packert Burke Solomon and the Dragon's Tongue - Molly Etta Spoiler: She Leaves Him - Jack Noble The World's Secret Heartbeat - Aatif Rashid Whalesong - L. Chan How to Survive a Fish Attack - Kato Thompson My Dog is the Constellation Canis Major - Jarod K. Anderson The Sea Bank of Svalbard South - Octavia Cade

"The Ghost of Matter is a piece of speculative history about the man who split the atom, the silences between, and the grief of broken things"--Back cover.

Each month The Dark brings you the best in dark fantasy and horror! Edited by award winning editors Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Sean Wallace and brought to you by Prime Books, this issue includes two all-new stories and two reprints:"The Better Part of Drowning" by Octavia Cade"Silk Bones" by Neil Williamson (reprint)"The Sound of His Voice Like the Colour of Salt" by L Chan"Sugared Heat" by Lisa L. Hannett (reprint)