Night Doctors. Eyedolon, August
Fawver, Kurt
The Gods in Their Seats, Unblinking. Vastarien, Spring
The Myth of You. The Dissolution of Small Worlds (Lethe)
Goodfellow, Cody
The Sister City. Eyedolon, November
Goss, Theodora
Queen Lily. Lightspeed Magazine, November
Greenblatt, A. T.
And Yet. Uncanny Magazine, March/April
Harn, Darby
Princess Mine. Strange Horizons, March
Harrow, Alix E.
A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies. Apex Magazine, February
Headley, Maria Dahvana
You Pretend Like You Never Met Me, and I’ll Pretend Like I Never Met You. Lightspeed Magazine, September
Hill, Joe
You Are Released. Flight or Fright, ed. Stephen King and Bev Vincent (Cemetery Dance)
Ho, Millie
Hehua. Fireside Fiction, January
Huang, S. L.
The Woman Who Destroyed Us. Twelve Tomorrows, ed. Wade Roush (MIT Press)
Iriarte, José Pablo
The Substance of My Lives, the Accidents of Our Births. Lightspeed Magazine, January
Jemisin, N. K.
The Ones Who Stay and Fight. How Long ’til Black Future Month? (Orbit)
Joffre, Ruth
Nitrate Nocturnes. Lightspeed Magazine, April
Jones, Stephen Graham
Broken Record. The Devil and the Deep, ed. Ellen Datlow (Night Shade)
Kerr, Jake
Three Speeches About Billy Granger. Resist: Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against, ed. Gary Whitta, Christie Yant, and Hugh Howey (Broad Reach)
La Farge, Paul
The Adventure of You. Welcome to Dystopia, ed. Gordon Van Gelder (OR Books)
LaValle, Victor
Ark of Light. Particulates, ed. Nalo Hopkinson (Dia Art Foundation)
Lee, Yoon Ha
The Starship and the Temple Cat. Beneath Ceaseless Skies, February
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Firelight. The Paris Review, Summer
Liu, Ken
Byzantine Empathy. Twelve Tomorrows, ed. Wade Roush (MIT Press)
McGuire, Seanan
Swear Not by the Moon. Infinity’s End, ed. Jonathan Strahan (Solaris)
Miller, Sam J.
My Base Pair. Analog Science Fiction & Fact, May/June
Morris, Stephanie Malia
Bride Before You. Nightmare Magazine, May/June
Newitz, Annalee
The Blue Fairy’s Manifesto. Robots vs. Fairies, ed. Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe (Saga)
Nichols, Russell
Con Con. Terraform, September
Okorafor, Nnedi
The Heart of the Matter. Twelve Tomorrows, ed. Wade Roush (MIT Press)
Olukotun, Deji Bryce
The Levellers. Welcome to Dystopia, ed. Gordon Van Gelder (OR Books)
Owomoyela, An
The Hard Spot in the Glacier. Mechanical Animals, ed. Selena Chambers and Jason Heller (Hex)
Pinsker, Sarah
The Court Magician. Lightspeed Magazine, January
Rivera, Lilliam
Crave. Nightmare Magazine, March
Robson, Kelly
Intervention. Infinity’s End, ed. Jonathan Strahan (Solaris)
Rolon, Nelson
Saudade. FIYAH, Autumn
Singh, Vandana
Widdam. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January/February
Vaughn, Carrie
The Huntsman and the Beast. Asimov’s Science Fiction, September/October
Where Would You Be Now? Tor.com, February
Wasserstein, Izzy
Unplaces: An Atlas of Non-Existence. Clarkesworld Magazine, March
Wilber, Rick
Today Is Today. Stonecoast Review, no. 9
Wilson, Daniel H.
Bastion. Resist: Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against, ed. Gary Whitta, Christie Yant, and Hugh Howey (Broad Reach)
Blood Memory. Guardian Angels and Other Monsters (Vintage)
Wise, A. C.
In the End, It Always Turns Out the Same. The Dark, June
Wong, Alyssa
All the Time We’ve Left to Spend. Robots vs. Fairies, ed. Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe (Saga)
Olivia’s Table. A Thousand Beginnings and Endings, ed. Elsie Chapman and Ellen Oh (Greenwillow)
Yu, Charles
America: The Ride. Resist: Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against, ed. Gary Whitta, Christie Yant, and Hugh Howey (Broad Reach)
Yu, E. Lily
Music for the Underworld. Terraform, March
The No-One Girl and the Flower of the Farther Shore. Clarkesworld Magazine, March
Visit hmhbooks.com to find all of the books in the Best American series.
About the Editors
Carmen Maria Machado, guest editor, is the author of Her Body and Other Parties, a finalist for the National Book Award, and the winner of the Lambda Literary Award for lesbian fiction.
John Joseph Adams, series editor, is the editor of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s John Joseph Adams Books imprint, as well as more than thirty anthologies and the magazines Lightspeed and Nightmare.
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Footnotes
1. “I, Dalí, deep in a constant introspection and a meticulous analysis of my smallest thoughts, have just discovered that, without realizing it, I have painted nothing but rhinoceros horns all my life [. . .] I take another look at all my paintings and I am stupefied with the amount of rhinoceros my work contains.” What freedom! What liberation! An artist finding at the root of his work a consistent and undeniable truth: the cosmic beauty of the rhinoceros horn.
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2. Unlike the parent of the squabbling kids, however, I’m less inclined to pull the van over to the side of the road than to drive the whole thing off an embankment, such is the level of my frustration.
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3. In the interest of full disclosure, this is the full sum of my personal experience on this matter: I’ve been told by genre editors/publications that my work is “too literary” and not sufficiently “genre,” but I’ve never experienced the inverse (though I am assured by genre writers that it happens, and I believe them); I’ve argued with a lot of people about this subject online and in person; I was once described on Twitter as a “litfic writer” who was “Quite Put Out” by a genre writer’s mindless repetition of the above tropes—though I write fantasy, I don’t use or recognize the word litfic, and I am actually Permanently Put Out; I wrote fabulism at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and two of the eight stories in my first collection at Clarion; people always seem to think that when I ramble on about gatekeeping I’m talking about literary fiction gatekeeping keeping out genre fiction, even though I am never, ever talking about that; I desperately wish I could believe in ghosts.
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4. Or haven’t read in a long time, or haven’t read enough of, or haven’t read since you were a kid, or only read for school, or haven’t read with any kind of curiosity or depth and width.
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5. And, if you’re a writer yourself, What might I learn from this story? How might it contribute to my work, my practice?
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6. Sarah Gailey’s “STET,” Daryl Gregory’s “Nine Last Days on Planet Earth,” Ada Hoffmann’s “Variations on a Theme from Turandot,” Theodore McCombs’s “Six Hangings in the Land of Unkillable Women,” P. Djèlí Clark’s “The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington,” Nino Cipri’s “Dead Air,” and Silvia Park’s “Poor Unfortunate Fools.”
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7. Particularly Usm
an Malik’s “Dead Lovers on Each Blade, Hung.”
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8. Like LaShawn M. Wanak’s “Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie Sing the Stumps Down Good,” Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s “Through the Flash.”
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9. Adam-Troy Castro’s “Pitcher Plant,” N. K. Jemisin’s “The Storyteller’s Replacement.”
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10. Brenda Peynado’s “The Kite Maker.”
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11. Lesley Nneka Arimah’s “Skinned,” Kelly Robson’s “What Gentle Women Dare.”
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12. Seanan McGuire’s “What Everyone Knows,” Annalee Newitz’s “When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis.”
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13. Martin Cahill’s “Godmeat.”
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14. Sofia Samatar’s “Hard Mary.”
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15. Adam R. Shannon’s “On the Day You Spend Forever with Your Dog.”
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1. Merrows are one of the few “vocal learners” in the animal kingdom, with an unparalleled ability to imitate human speech.
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2. Another technique used to collect skin samples, which has proved controversial, is biopsy-darting. A dart with a hollow tip is shot into the side of the merrow. These darts were originally so large, the merrows tended to react violently when they were hit.
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3. PCBs, despite being banned in 1979, continue to be linked to infertility in merrows. In 2011 the eastern black merrow species had an infertility rate of 60 percent.
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4. Merrows live in social assemblages as pairs or triads consisting of a dominant female, an alpha male, and an immature juvenile or beta male. If the dominant mermaid of a triad dies, all subordinates seize the opportunity to ascend in rank and grow. The alpha male is poised to become female and rapidly changes sex to assume the vacated position, while the beta male completes the breeding pair by turning into a mature male in a short amount of time.
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5. The catalog letter X is used for solo merrows. Merrows without pods rarely last more than five years on their own. They are rarely seen again.
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6. Every merrow population has a unique call or “dialect.” These acoustic differences are used to identify membership of a pod and prevent inbreeding. Dr. John Bigg’s groundbreaking research on merrow dialects has since proven why outsider merrows have difficulty overcoming these “language barriers.”
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7. Aggressive mimicry is the most popular theory on why merrows imitate human speech, stemming from stories of merrows that drowned humans in oceans, lakes, or rivers. This theory is largely dismissed as superseded within the scientific community. It may have even contributed to the extinction of the freshwater merrow species.
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8. Merrows have two stomachs, one for digestion, one for storage, where food can be regurgitated at will.
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9. We later compared Astra’s 2011 GCC levels with that of captive merrows in Marine World. She had the stress levels of a merrow living in a 20×20-foot steel box.
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10. Merman penises are fibroelastic, filled with collagen. Even flaccid, their penises are stiff. Humans have attempted copulation with merrows for years, but a human male, even with a week’s supply of Viagra and a flashlight, would never find his way through the twisting maze that is a mermaid’s vagina.
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11. We knew merrows had no sense of impropriety, but still we questioned why Astra would initiate sexual contact in our presence. Marla, of all people, conjectured it came from a desire to please. “She wanted to show us,” Marla said, “that she’s trying.”
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12. The A pod was difficult to track during this two-week period. Merrow pods avoid traveling long distances when the females are nesting, so the A pod’s sudden migration toward Kyushu, Japan, was considered unusual.
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13. The haenyeo, or “women of the sea,” is the deferential appellation given to the Jeju female divers. They too have dwindled in number, but a recent K-drama rekindled interest in their trade. They’ve set up a haenyeo school near our facility. Sometimes we see them selling fresh octopus and squid to tourists, wielding sea knives and shouting prices. “Just for you, I’ll make it twenty-five thousand won,” they shout to no one in particular. “Just for you.”
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14. “Benthic foraging on stingrays by merrows (Nereida glaucus) in New Zealand waters,” Journal of Marine Science (2013), dispelled this popular theory in scientific literature.
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15. Ibid., p. 6. If the alpha mermaid of a triad falls ill or is injured, the alpha male changes sex to assume the female role while the beta male completes the breeding pair by turning into a mature male. Casas, Lisa, and Ryu, Taewoo. (2008). “Sex Change in Merrows: Molecular Insight from Transcriptome Analysis.” Scientific Reports.
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16. In 2012, Marla Rowland gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Marina, at the age of thirty-eight. At Marina Rowland’s first birthday, Marla is reported to have told some of her past coworkers she wished she could apologize to Astra.
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17. Homosexual behavior in merrows is not uncommon in social play, but a male’s rejection of a female’s advances was unheard of within the marine science community in 2011. Later studies have disproved this misconception.
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18. Merrows often do mate for life, but this is seen as an evolutionary strategy for maximizing the number of merlings they can raise. Monogamy only comes after the successful conception of a fertile egg. Alpha females are known for discarding males who are incapacitated in any way that prevents copulation.
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The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 Page 50
