The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2011 Edition

by Rich Horton (ed)

  “I don’t know if you remember me.” He sat in a chair beside the bed. “I’m Robbie. I worked with Leonard. At the museum.”

  “He told me.” Her voice was so soft he had to lean close to hear her. “I’m glad they got here. I expected them yesterday, when it was still snowing.”

  Robbie recalled Anna in her hospital bed, doped to the gills and talking to herself. “Sure,” he said.

  Maggie shot him a glance that might have held annoyance, then gazed past him into the garden. Her eyes widened as she struggled to lift her hand, fingers twitching. Robbie realized she was waving. He turned to stare out the window, but there was no one there. Maggie looked at him, then gestured at the door.

  “You can go now,” she said. “I have guests.”

  “Oh. Yeah, sorry.”

  He stood awkwardly, then leaned down to kiss the top of her head. Her skin was smooth and cold as metal. “Bye, Maggie.”

  At the door he looked back, and saw her gazing with a rapt expression at the window, head cocked slightly and her hands open, as though to catch the sunlight.

  Two days after they got home, Robbie received an email from Leonard.

  Dear Robbie,

  Maggie died this morning. The nurse said she became unconscious early yesterday, seemed to be in pain but at least it didn’t last long. She had arranged to be cremated. No memorial service or anything like that. I will do something, probably not till the fall, and let you know.

  Yours, Leonard

  Robbie sighed. Already the week on Cowana seemed long ago and faintly dreamlike, like the memory of a childhood vacation. He wrote Leonard a note of condolence, then left for work.

  Weeks passed. Zach and Tyler posted their clips of the Bellerophon online. Robbie met Emery for drinks ever week or two, and saw Leonard once, at Emery’s Fourth of July barbecue. By the end of summer, Tyler’s footage had been viewed 347,623 times, and Zach’s 347,401. Both provided a link to the Captain Marvo site, where Emery had a free download of the entire text of Wings for Humanity! There were now over a thousand Google hits for Margaret Blevin, and Emery added a Bellerophon t-shirt to his merchandise: organic cotton with a silk-screen image of the baroque aircraft and its bowler-hatted pilot.

  Early in September, Leonard called Robbie.

  “Can you meet me at the museum tomorrow, around eight-thirty? I’m having a memorial for Maggie, just you and me and Emery. After hours, I’ll sign you in.”

  “Sure,” said Robbie. “Can I bring something?”

  “Just yourself. See you then.”

  He drove in with Emery. They walked across the twilit Mall, the museum a white cube that glowed against a sky swiftly darkening to indigo. Leonard waited for them by the side door. He wore an embroidered tunic, sky-blue, his white hair loose upon his shoulders, and held a cardboard box with a small printed label.

  “Come on,” he said. The museum had been closed since five, but a guard opened the door for them. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

  Hedges sat at the security desk, bald and even more imposing than when Robbie last saw him, decades ago. He signed them in, eying Robbie curiously then grinning when he read his signature.

  “I remember you—Opie, right?”

  Robbie winced at the nickname, then nodded. Hedges handed Leonard a slip of paper. “Be quick.”

  “Thanks. I will.”

  They walked to the staff elevator, the empty museum eerie and blue-lit. High above them the silent aircraft seemed smaller than they had been in the past, battered and oddly toylike. Robbie noticed a crack in the Gemini VII space capsule, and strands of dust clinging to the Wright Flyer. When they reached the third floor, Leonard led them down the corridor, past the Photo Lab, past the staff cafeteria, past the library where the Nut Files used to be. Finally he stopped at a door near some open ductwork. He looked at the slip of paper Hedges had given him, punched a series of numbers into the lock, opened it then reached in to switch on the light. Inside was a narrow room with a metal ladder fixed to one wall.

  “Where are we going?” asked Robbie.

  “The roof,” said Leonard. “If we get caught, Hedges and I are screwed. Actually, we’re all screwed. So we have to make this fast.”

  He tucked the cardboard box against his chest, then began to climb the ladder. Emery and Robbie followed him, to a small metal platform and another door. Leonard punched in another code and pushed it open. They stepped out into the night.

  It was like being atop an ocean liner. The museum’s roof was flat, nearly a block long. Hot air blasted from huge exhaust vents, and Leonard motioned the others to move away, toward the far end of the building.

  The air was cooler here, a breeze that smelled sweet and rainwashed, despite the cloudless sky. Beneath them stretched the Mall, a vast green gameboard, with the other museums and monuments huge gamepieces, ivory and onyx and glass. The spire of the Washington Monument rose in the distance, and beyond that the glittering reaches of Roslyn and Crystal City

  “I’ve never been here,” said Robbie, stepping beside Leonard.

  Emery shook his head. “Me neither.”

  “I have,” said Leonard, and smiled. “Just once, with Maggie.”

  Above the Capitol’s dome hung the full moon, so bright against the starless sky that Robbie could read what was printed on Leonard’s box.

  MARGARET BLEVIN.

  “These are her ashes.” Leonard set the box down and removed the top, revealing a ziplocked bag. He opened the bag, picked up the box again and stood. “She wanted me to scatter them here. I wanted both of you to be with me.”

  He dipped his hand into the bag and withdrew a clenched fist; held the box out to Emery, who nodded silently and did the same; then turned to Robbie.

  “You too,” he said.

  Robbie hesitated, then put his hand into the box. What was inside felt gritty, more like sand than ash. When he looked up, he saw that Leonard had stepped forward, head thrown back so that he gazed at the moon. He drew his arm back, flung the ashes into the sky and stooped to grab more.

  Emery glanced at Robbie, and the two of them opened their hands.

  Robbie watched the ashes stream from between his fingers, like a flight of tiny moths. Then he turned and gathered more, the three of them tossing handful after handful into the sky.

  When the box was finally empty Robbie straightened, breathing hard, and ran a hand across his eyes. He didn’t know if it was some trick of the moonlight or the freshening wind, but everywhere around them, everywhere he looked, the air was filled with wings.

  BIOGRAPHIES

  Yoon Ha Lee likes to raid philosophy books for story ideas and knows just enough about guns to stay away from the real thing. Her works have appeared in Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Lightspeed.

  Born in Vermont and raised all over the place, K.J. Parker has worked as, among other things, a tax lawyer, an auction house porter, a forester and a numismatist. Married to a lawyer and settled in southern England, Parker is currently a writer, farm labourer and metalworker, in more or less that order. K. J. Parker is not K. J. Parker’s real name, but if somebody told you K. J. Parker’s real name, you wouldn’t recognise it.

  Amal El-Mohtar is a Canadian-born child of the Mediterranean, presently pursuing a PhD at the Cornwall campus of the University of Exeter. She is the author of The Honey Month, a collection of poetry and prose written to the taste of twenty-eight different kinds of honey. Her poem “Song for an Ancient City” received the 2009 Rhysling Award for best short poem, and “The Green Book” received a Nebula nomination for best short story. She also co-edits Goblin Fruit, an online quarterly dedicated to fantastical poetry, with Jessica P. Wick. Find her online at amalelmohtar.com.

  Alice Sola Kim currently lives in San Francisco but occasionally finds herself in St. Louis, where she is completing an MFA program at Washington University. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Asimov’s Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and L
ady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

  Geoffrey A. Landis has been reading science fiction for as long he can remember, but he only seriously started to write it when he entered graduate school. His first story, “Elemental,” appeared in 1984, and since then he’s published a number of stories, poems, one novel (“Mars Crossing”), and a short-story collection (“Impact Parameter and other Quantum Fictions”). He won the Nebula previously in 1989, for his story “Ripples in the Dirac Sea.” Despite wasting vast amounts of time writing science fiction, he did eventually complete his doctorate in physics, and now works for the NASA John H. Glenn Research Center, in Cleveland Ohio, where he works on technology for missions to Mars, Venus, and the sun. He lives in Berea, OH, with his wife, sf writer Mary Turzillo, and four cats. He occasionally appears on television, when a television science special needs a scientist and Stephen Hawking isn’t available.

  Christie Yant tests software by day, and by night writes, acts as assistant editor for Lightspeed Magazine, narrates short fiction for the StarShipSofa podcast, co-blogs at inkpunks.com, and reviews audio books for Audible.com. She lives on the central coast of California with her impossibly patient boyfriend, two wonderful daughters, two terrible dogs, and a cat. Her personal blog can be found at inkhaven.net.

  Steve Rasnic Tem’s next book is Deadfall Hotel, a May 2012 paperback release from Solaris Books. This will be followed in August by Ugly Behavior, a collection of his darker noir fiction from New Pulp Press.

  Matthew Johnson lives in Ottawa with his wife Megan and their sons Leo and Miles. His stories have appeared in such places as Asimov’s Science Fiction, Strange Horizons and Fantasy Magazine, and have been translated into Russian, Danish, and Czech; two of his other stories, “Public Safety” and “Irregular Verbs” appeared in previous editions of The Year’s Best. His first novel, Fall From Earth, was published in 2009 by Bundoran Press and a collection of his short fiction, Irregular Verbs and Other Stories, will be published in 2013 by ChiZine Publications. His website is zatrikion.blogspot.com.

  Charles Yu received the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award for his story collection, Third Class Superhero. His first novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, was a Time Magazine Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His work has appeared in Eclectica, Harvard Review, Lightspeed Magazine, Oxford American, and Playboy, among other publications.

  Rachel Swirsky is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, and been nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula. Her first collection, Through the Drowsy Dark, came out from Aqueduct Press in 2010.

  Adam-Troy Castro’s many books include four Spider-Man novels, a nonfiction work about the TV reality-series The Amazing Race, three novels about his deeply broken far-future crime investigator Andrea Cort, and the macabre alphabet books Z Is For Zombie and V is for Vampire (both illustrated by Johnny Atomic). The winner of the Philip K. Dick award for his novel Emissaries From The Dead, he has also been nominated for two Hugo Awards, two Stokers, and as of 2011 six Nebulas. His next project is a series of middle-school novels starring a very odd young boy by the name of Gustav Gloom, coming from Grossett and Dunlap in 2012. Adam lives in Miami with his wife Judi and a pair of insane cats called Uma Furman and Meow Farrow.

  Bill Kte’pi is a full-time writer with publications in Strange Horizons, Chizine, The Fortean Bureau, and elsewhere; stories available online are listed at ktepi.com. Low Country, a southern haunted house novel, was published by Fey Publishing in 2010. He also writes a food and drink blog, okaycheckitout.blogspot.com.

  Samantha Henderson’s fiction and poetry has been published in Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, Clarkesworld, Fantasy, and the anthologies Fantasy: Best of the Year, Steampunk Reloaded and Running with the Pack. Her second novel, Dawnbringer, was released by Wizards of the Coast in May of 2011. She lives in Southern California with her family and assorted fauna.

  Paul Park has written numerous novels—Celestis, A Princess of Roumania, and The Gospel of Corax, among others—in various genres. His most recent projects include a steampunk story in an upcoming anthology, an apocalyptic science-fiction Icelandic edda, and a Forgotten Realms novel called The Rose of Sarifal, to be published under the name Paulina Claiborne. Ghosts Doing the Orange Dance, nominated for the Nebula Award for best novella of 2010, will soon be reprinted in an expanded, illustrated form, by PS Publishing. Mr. Park teaches writing and literature at Williams College in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife and two children.

  Gene Wolfe worked as an engineer, before becoming editor of trade journal Plant Engineering. He came to prominence as a writer in the late 1960s with a sequence of short stories in Damon Knight’s Orbit anthologies. His early major novels were The Fifth Head of Cerberus and Peace, but he established his reputation with a sequence of three long, multivolume novels—The Book of the New Sun, The Book of the Long Sun, and The Book of the Short Sun. His short fiction has been collected in The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories, Endangered Species, Strange Travelers, and, most recently, The Best of Gene Wolfe. He is the recipient of the Nebula, World Fantasy, Locus, John W. Campbell Memorial, British Fantasy, British SF, and World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Awards. Wolfe’s most recent book is the novel An Evil Guest. Upcoming is his new novel The Sorcerer’s House.

  Carol Emshwiller grew up in Michigan and in France. She lives in New York City in the winter and in Bishop, CA in the summer. She’s been doing only short stories lately. A new one will appear in Asimov’s soon. She’s wondering if she’s too old to start a novel but if a good idea came along she might do it anyway. PS Publishing is publishing two of her short story collections in a single volume (sort like an Ace Double), with her anti-war stories on one side and other stories on the other.

  C.S.E. Cooney grew up in an Arizona desert, spent her twenties in the Midwest, and is about to embark on an East Coast adventure. Her fiction and poetry can be found in Clockwork Phoenix 3, Subterranean Press, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Ideomancer, Goblin Fruit, and Mythic Delirium. She has novellas forthcoming with Drollerie Press, Cabinet des Fées, and Black Gate (where she is Blog Editor). Her novel-in-progress includes one really big wolf, a shapeshifter with identity issues, and several feisty kitchen maids. She keeps her own blog at csecooney.livejournal.com.

  Bestselling author Neil Gaiman has long been one of the top writers in modern comics, as well as writing books for readers of all ages. He is listed in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as one of the top ten living post-modern writers, and is a prolific creator of works of prose, poetry, film, journalism, comics, song lyrics, and drama. Some of his notable works include The Sandman comic book series, Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. Gaiman’s writing has won numerous awards, including World Fantasy, Hugo, Nebula, IHG, and Bram Stoker, as well as the 2009 Newbery Medal. Gaiman’s official Web site, www.neilgaiman.com, now has more than one million unique visitors each month, and his online journal is syndicated to thousands of blog readers every day.

  Willow Fagan is a queer writer living in Portland, Oregon. They’re genderqueer, which for them means that they feel more like a pirate princess than like a man or a woman. Their fiction has appeared in Fantasy Magazine and Behind the Wainscot. Their non-fiction is forthcoming in the anthologies Dear Sister, Why Are Faggots So Afraid

  of Faggots? and Queering Sexual Violence. To read more about their writing and adventures, go to willowfagan.livejournal.com.

  Peter Watts owes at least part of his 2010 Hugo (for the novelette “The Island”) to fan outrage over an unfortunate altercation with armed capuchins working for the Department of Homeland Security. This year he has decided to play the Sympathy card, by nearly dying of flesh-eating disease contracted during a routine skin biopsy. The strategy seems to have worked insofar as “The Things” has made the finals for this year’s short-story Hugo. Watts is already hard at work
on The Next Horrible Thing to catapult him towards future trophies. Given his past life as a marine mammalogist, the smart money is on being gang-raped by dolphins.

  Paul M. Berger has been a Japanese bureaucrat, a Harvard graduate student, an M.I.T. program administrator, an Internet entrepreneur, a butterfly wrangler and (God help him) a Wall Street recruiter, which, in the aggregate, may have prepared him for nothing except the creation of speculative fiction. His fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Interzone, Polyphony 6, Twenty Epics, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, Ideomancer and Escape Pod. The story of his battle against giant Japanese spiders was the first true-life memoir published in Weird Tales. He is a 2008 graduate of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop. His website is www.paulmberger.com.

  Alexandra Duncan is a frequent contributor to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. She blogs about wizards, pie, birds, and books at alexandraduncanlit. blogspot.com.

  Robert Reed is the author of many short stories and a few beefy novels, including the well-received space opera epic, Marrow. He has been nominated for various Hugos, a Nebula, and the World Fantasy award. In 2007, he won a Hugo for his novella, “A Billion Eves.” Reed lives in Lincoln, Nebraska with his wife and daughter. For fun, he runs. In his life, he has run more than 60,000 miles, give or take.

  Charlie Jane Anders is the managing editor of io9.com. Her writing has appeared in the McSweeney’s Joke Book of Book Jokes, Mother Jones, the San Francisco Chronicle, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and other places. She organizes the Writers With Drinks reading series in San Francisco.

  Matthew David Surridge lives in Montreal with his One True Love, writer Grace Seybold. His fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Black Gate, and he has a weekly column on the Black Gate blog. A former critic for The Comics Journal, he also helped cover the 2009 Worldcon for The Montreal Gazette. You can find his ongoing fantasy adventure serial at Fellgard.com.