The problem with any form of entertainment is that the more options there are, the harder it is for any one thing to be successful enough to stick around long-term. On television, for example, within the last year the terrific original genre series BrainDead and Incorporated were both canceled despite brilliant first seasons, and mind-bogglingly good, core genre shows like Syfy’s The Expanse are doing well enough to get renewed but sort of scraping by. Likewise, the magazines you love today may be gone tomorrow. (And indeed, several seem to have faded away this year—whether it’s for good or not, who can say?) Many of them operate on a shoestring, relying on Kickstarter, subscription drives, and support through Patreon.
It all boils down to this: we must support the things we love, whether it’s books, television, film, or stories—though I’d say especially books and stories! If you like an author or magazine, support it early and often. Word of mouth (including reader reviews at Amazon or Goodreads or the like) can go a long way toward helping an author’s career—or a fledgling zine—get off the ground and stay aloft. Short-fiction venues are often labors of love, and they need your support, in the form of readership, subscriptions, and signal-boosting. And it’s you readers, who care enough about short fiction to read this book (and this foreword), who are the standard-bearers, so if you love something, say something! Meanwhile, I’ll keep doing my part to try to find the best of the best every year, and hey, maybe somehow together, with the help of genre short fiction, we can find a way to transform this dystopian hellscape we’re in back into one of those better tomorrows.
Editors, writers, and publishers who would like their work considered for next year’s edition, please visit johnjosephadams.com/best-american for instructions on how to submit material for consideration.
Introduction
(NOTE: This is true. All of this happened.)
Recently, an anthropologist from another universe showed up at my local coffee shop.
INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: I’m an anthropologist from another universe.
ME: Cool.
INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: I’m from another universe, and that’s what you’re going to say? Cool? Aren’t you wondering how I got here? Don’t you think I might have something very important to talk to you about?
ME: [not really interested] Sorry, yeah. You’re right.
INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Good. I mean, yeesh. We’re not off to a great start—[Notices the look on my face… or maybe reading my mind] You’re zoning me out. Aren’t you? You’re waiting for me to stop talking so you can go back to your work.
ME: I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m under deadline. I’m editing this anthology, and I have to read a whole bunch of short stories—
INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: It looks like you’re browsing pictures of baby pandas.
ME: I suppose you’re not leaving this universe until I talk to you.
INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Nope.
ME: All right then. What’s this about?
The interdimensional anthropologist (who, it turns out, goes by Susan) said she had come here on a Fulbright. Susan had gotten some research money to study our little universe. I asked why ours was worth studying.
SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Not the whole universe. Just a subset.
ME: Oh. I think I know where you’re going with this.
Yeah, Susan said. Susan pulled out a manila folder (they have Office Depot in her dimension) and slapped it on the table (we were at Starbucks—like I said, this is all true; you can tell because I’m adding details and also because I’m asserting that it’s true).
CASE STUDY IN BIFURCATED REALITY:
AMERICA EARLY 2017
proto-civilization demonstrating multiple indicia of having reached early Phase 2, with satisfaction of the Filbert criterion. Reports and field data suggest there are currently two distinct subrealities coexisting within the same space-time region. Situation highly unstable. Funding granted to enable exploratory investigation. Inquiry will focus on how human inhabitants of this bifurcated reality will be affected and whether they will be able to come up with a solution to resolve the problem, or, in the absence of such a solution, what the psychological and emotional consequences will be for these humans (in the event of a negative outcome).
I took a moment to process this.
ME: I don’t like the sound of “negative outcome.”
SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Yeah. You shouldn’t like it.
ME: So. Okay. What the hell does this all mean?
SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Basically, America in 2017 isn’t one reality. It’s two separate ones, mostly distinct but with some overlap.
ME: That… seems… correct. Ridiculous. But correct.
SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: You say it’s ridiculous, but you have a rich academic literature about this topic already.
ME: We do? I mean, this doesn’t sound like science. It sounds like science fiction.
SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Exactly.
Susan handed me a book. I looked at the title page:
The Best American SCIENCE FICTION and FANTASYTM 2017
Edited and with an Introduction by Charles Yu
John Joseph Adams, Series Editor
ME: Huh. [then] Is that… me?
SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: It’s one possible you, yeah. You picked these stories?
ME: I guess I did. I mean, I will.
SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Then I have come to the right place. The humans in this book are demonstrating a kind of technology.
ME: They’re writers.
SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Okay. These human writers are demonstrating a kind of technology.
ME: Stories?
SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Stories. [scribbling in her interdimensional notepad] Right. That’s your word for it. A narrative technology of a specific kind. Genre stories, science fiction and fantasy. Speculative fiction, some call it. The ability to create imagined realities.
ME: I’m sorry—hold up, Susan. Are you telling me that science fiction and fantasy writers caused reality to fragment this way? Caused America to split into two? That SF/F writers are the root cause of all of this craziness, with no one knowing what’s true? Or, worse, that we’re the reason serious people are starting to have serious doubts about whether or not there is such a thing as truth anymore? We’re the problem?
SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: Actually it’s the opposite. Writers of these imaginative realities are not the problem. They’re the solution.
ME: Huh?
SUSAN THE INTERDIMENSIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIST: I will admit, it’s a bit of a contradiction. Or an irony? One of those things—you humans with your primitive rationality and logic still have trouble with some of these complexities. [Takes a breath out of one of her nineteen lungs] Okay, let me try to explain it this way.
Susan took the book and flipped to the table of contents. I eyed them with great interest, which did not go unnoticed by Susan.