The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Contents

Foreword

Introduction: Plato and the Planogram

How It Unfolds by James S. A. Corey

Eye & Tooth by Rebecca Roanhorse

Zeta-Epsilon by Isabel J. Kim

Bari and the Resurrection Flower by Hana Lee

Window Boy by Thomas Ha

Disassembling Light by Kel Coleman

The Long Game by Ann Leckie

John Hollowback and the Witch by Amal El-Mohtar

Calypso’s Guest by Andrew Sean Greer

The Blade and the Bloodwright by Sloane Leong

Form 8774-D by Alex Irvine

Resurrection Highway by A. R. Capetta

The Four Last Things by Christopher Rowe

Ankle Snatcher by Grady Hendrix

Emotional Resonance by V. M. Ayala

Bruised-Eye Dusk by Jonathan Louis Duckworth

Once Upon a Time at The Oakmont by P. A. Cornell

How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub by P. Djèlí Clark

Falling Bodies by Rebecca Roanhorse

If Someone You Love Has Become a Vurdalak by Sam J. Miller

Contributors’ Notes

Other Notable Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2023

About the Editors

Guest Editors of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy

About Mariner Books

Copyright

About the Publisher

Foreword

Welcome to year ten of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy! This volume presents the best science fiction and fantasy (SF/F) short stories published during the 2023 calendar year as selected by myself and guest editor Hugh Howey.

About This Year’s Guest Editor

#1 New York Times bestselling author Hugh Howey took the publishing world by storm in 2011 with the publication of Wool, which was originally self-published (or indie-published, as we’d say now) on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform as five novellas—and later was collectively republished as the Wool Omnibus. Over the next couple of years, Wool became such a phenomenon that coverage of it appeared everywhere from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal to Forbes—not about the book itself but about the incredible success story of the book’s publication. But everyone loved the book too, readers and critics alike. If you somehow hadn’t heard about any of that, you might know Hugh’s work from the hit Apple+ show Silo, which is an adaptation of Wool and the whole Silo series (which includes Shift and Dust). There’s also a TV show based on his deep-space science fiction novel Beacon 23 currently airing on MGM+, and other novels of his—such as the incredible Sand—are also in development for adaptation.

Although Hugh’s first big success was Wool, before that he published four books in the young adult Bern Saga, starting with Molly Fyde and the Parsona Rescue, and the I’d shelve it in the science fiction/fantasy section, but is also kind of a YA novel novel Half Way Home. (Hugh has something to say too about where books are shelved in his introduction that follows.) Other books include I, Zombie; The Shell Collector; and a collection of his short fiction, Machine Learning. His latest books are the Sand sequel Across the Sand and The Balloon Hunter.

Hugh and I hit it off when we met at the 70th annual Worldcon in Chicago in 2012, and afterward we ended up co-editing The Apocalypse Triptych anthology series and then several years later (with Christie Yant) edited The Dystopia Triptych; then—with Christie and screenwriter Gary Whitta (Rogue One, The Book of Eli)—Hugh edited Resist: Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against.

Aside from writing, Hugh has worked as a bookseller, a computer-repair technician, a roofer, a yacht captain, and for a long time he lived on a catamaran on which he sailed across the world . . . alone. He also was at Ground Zero in New York on 9/11 and had been inside the World Trade Center the night before; many of the autobiographical details of that experience were depicted in his absolutely astonishing short story Peace in Amber. If you’d like to learn more about Hugh, I highly recommend the Who I Am page on his website (hughhowey.com/who-i-am), which is perhaps the best behind the page author bio I’ve ever seen—and, honestly, just a damn fine piece of writing.

Selection Criteria and Process

The stories chosen for this anthology were originally published between January 1, 2023, and December 31, 2023. The technical criteria for consideration are (1) original publication in a nationally distributed North American publication (i.e., periodicals, collections, or anthologies, in print, online, or ebook); (2) publication in English by writers who are North American, or who have made North America their home; (3) publication as text (audiobook, podcast, dramatized, interactive, and other forms of fiction are not considered); (4) original publication as short fiction (excerpts of novels are not knowingly considered); (5) story length of 17,499 words or less; (6) at least loosely categorized as science fiction or fantasy; (7) publication by someone other than the author (i.e., self-published works are not eligible); and (8) publication as an original work of the author (i.e., not part of a media tie-in/licensed fiction program).

As series editor, I attempted to read everything I could find that meets the above selection criteria. After doing all of my reading, I created a list of what I felt were the top eighty stories (forty science fiction and forty fantasy) published in the genre. Those eighty stories—hereinafter referred to as the Top 80—were sent to the guest editor, who read them and then chose the best twenty (ten science fiction, ten fantasy) for inclusion in the anthology. The guest editor reads all of the stories anonymously—with no bylines attached to them, nor any information about where the story originally appeared.

The guest editor’s top twenty selections appear in this volume; the remaining sixty stories that did not make it into the anthology are listed in the back of this book as Other Notable Stories of 2023.

2023 Selections

One author this year performed the very rare feat of having not one, but two stories selected for inclusion in the anthology: Rebecca Roanhorse, with her stories Falling Bodies and Eye & Tooth. Five authors selected for this volume previously appeared in BASFF: P. Djèlí Clark (2), Kel Coleman (1), Isabel J. Kim (1), Sam J. Miller (3), and Rebecca Roanhorse (1). Thus, V. M. Ayala, A. R. Capetta, James S. A. Corey, P. A. Cornell, Jonathan Louis Duckworth, Amal El-Mohtar, Andrew Sean Greer, Thomas Ha, Grady Hendrix, Alex Irvine, Ann Leckie, Hana Lee, Sloane Leong, and Christopher Rowe are all appearing in BASFF for the first time.

The selections were chosen from fifteen different publications: Beneath Ceaseless Skies (2), Clarkesworld (2), Fantasy Magazine (2), The Far Reaches from Amazon Original Stories (3), and the following, which all had one selection each: Asimov’s; The Book of Witches edited by Jonathan Strahan; Creature Feature from Amazon Original Stories; The Dark; Escape Pod; Lightspeed; Out There Screaming edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams; Reactor (formerly Tor.com); The Sunday Morning Transport; Uncanny; and one single-story digital chapbook from Amazon Original Stories.

Several of our selections this year were winners of (or finalists for) some of the field’s awards*: How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub by P. Djèlí Clark (Locus winner, Hugo finalist); Once Upon a Time at The Oakmont by P. A. Cornell (Nebula and Aurora finalist); John Hollowback and the Witch by Amal El-Mohtar (Locus finalist); Window Boy by Thomas Ha (Locus and Nebula finalist); and If Someone You Love Has Become a Vurdalak by Sam J. Miller (Stoker finalist).

2023 Top 80

In order to select the Top 80 stories published in the SF/F genres in 2023, I considered several thousand stories from a wide array of anthologies, collections, and magazines.

The Top 80 this year were drawn from thirty-two different publications: seventeen periodicals, twelve anthologies, two single-story chapbooks, and one single-author collection.

Tochi Onyebuchi had the most stories in the Top 80 this year, with three; several authors were tied for second most, with two each: Violet Allen, P. Djèlí Clark, Jonathan Louis Duckworth, Andrea Kriz, Yoon Ha Lee, Sam J. Miller, Nnedi Okorafor, Malka Older, Rebecca Roanhorse, and Daniel H. Wilson. Overall, seventy-one different authors are represented in the Top 80.

In addition to the selections that were nominated for awards, several Notable Stories were winners of (or finalists for) various awards as well: A Soul in the World by Charlie Jane Anders (Locus finalist); What I Remember of Oresha Moon Dragon Devshrata by P. Djèlí Clark (Locus finalist); Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200 by R. S. A. Garcia (Nebula winner); The Most Strongest Obeah Woman of the World by Nalo Hopkinson (Aurora finalist); Reckless Eyeballing by N. K. Jemisin (Locus finalist); I Am AI by Ai Jiang (Aurora, Hugo, Locus, and Nebula finalist); The Sound of Children Screaming by Rachael K. Jones (Hugo, Locus, Nebula, and Stoker finalist); The Year Without Sunshine by Naomi Kritzer (Nebula winner, Hugo and Locus finalist); Prince Hat Underground by Kelly Link (Locus finalist); and Stones by Nnedi Okorafor (Locus finalist).

Outside of my Top 80, I had around one hundred additional stories this year that were in the running, and the difference in quality between the stories on the inside and the ones on the outside looking in was often imperceptible—thus the choice came down to pure editorial instinct.

Anthologies

The following anthologies had stories in our Top 80 this year: Out There Screaming** edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams (6); The Far Reaches* from Amazon Original Stories (6); The Book of Witches* edited by Jonathan Strahan (4); Life Beyond Us edited by Julie Nováková, Lucas K. Law, and Susan Forest (4); New Suns 2 edited by Nisi Shawl (3); Creature Feature* from Amazon Original Stories (2); All These Sunken Souls edited by Circe Moskowitz (1); Communications Breakdown edited by Jonathan Strahan (1); A Darker Shade of Noir edited by Joyce Carol Oates (1); Fit for the Gods edited by Jenn Northington and S. Zainab Williams (1); Luminescent Machinations edited by Rhiannon Rasmussen and dave ring (1); and Qualia Nous, Vol. 2 edited by Michael Bailey (1). Anthologies marked with an asterisk had stories selected for inclusion in this volume.

Other anthologies that published fine work in 2023 that didn’t manage to crack the Top 80 include: Adventures in Bodily Autonomy edited by Raven Belasco; Christmas and Other Horrors edited by Ellen Datlow; Dark Matter Presents: Human Monsters edited by Sadie Hartmann and Ashley Saywers; Dark Matter Presents: Monstrous Futures edited by Alex Woodroe; The Digital Aesthete edited by Alex Shvartsman; Fourteen Days edited by Margaret Atwood; The Good, the Bad, and the Uncanny edited by Jonathan Maberry; Jewish Futures edited by Michael A. Burstein; Mermaids Never Drown edited by Zoraida Córdova and Natalie C. Parker; Mothersound edited by Wole Talabi; Never Too Old to Save the World edited by Addie J. King and Alana Joli Abbott; Never Wake edited by Kenneth W. Cain and Tim Meyer; Never Whistle at Night edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.; The Reinvented Detective edited by Cat Rambo and Jennifer Brozek; Rosalind’s Siblings edited by Bogi Takács; and Swords in the Shadows edited by Cullen Bunn.

Collections

Only one collection had a story in the Top 80 this year: White Cat, Black Dog * by Kelly Link. But naturally, many other collections were published in 2023 that contained fine work. All of the following were released in 2023 and meet the broad American focus of this book; some contained only reprints, but I’m including them here anyway as part of my overview of the year: Old Babes in the Wood by Margaret Atwood; I’d Really Prefer Not to Be Here With You by Julianna Baggott, Monstrous Alterations by Christopher Barzak; Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance by Tobias S. Buckell; The Wishing Pool and Other Stories by Tananarive Due; Blood from the Air * by Gemma Files; The Collected Enchantments by Theodora Goss; The Last Catastrophe by Allegra Hyde; The Privilege of the Happy Ending by Kij Johnson; The Secrets of Insects by Richard Kadrey; The World Wasn’t Ready for You: Stories by Justin C. Key; Thirteen Plus-1 Lovecraftian Narratives by Nancy Kilpatrick; No One Dies from Love by Robert Levy; Uranians by Theodore McCombs; No One Will Come Back for Us and Other Stories by Premee Mohamed; Jackal, Jackal by Tobi Ogundiran; Skin Thief by Suzan Palumbo; Lost Places by Sarah Pinsker; Who Lost, I Found: Stories by Eden Royce; The Whole Mess and Other Stories by Jack Skillingstead; The Beast You Are by Paul Tremblay; and Jewel Box: Stories by E. Lily Yu.

Periodicals

Lightspeed* had the most stories in the Top 80 (7); followed by Clarkesworld* (5); Uncanny** (5); Beneath Ceaseless Skies* (4); The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (4); Reactor* (4); Asimov’s* (3); The Sunday Morning Transport* (3); Fantasy Magazine* (2); McSweeney’s (2); and the following all had one each: Bourbon Penn; Cast of Wonders; Escape Pod*; FIYAH; Nightmare; PseudoPod; and The Dark.* Periodicals marked with an asterisk had stories selected for inclusion in this volume. The Sunday Morning Transport, Escape Pod, and The Dark all had stories selected for inclusion for the first time.

Appearing in the Top 80 for the first time are Bourbon Penn, Cast of Wonders, and PseudoPod. The following magazines didn’t have any material in the Top 80 this year but did publish stories that I had under serious consideration: Analog; Apex Magazine; Apparition Lit; Baffling Magazine; The Kenyon Review; khōréō; Vastarien; and Weird Horror.

Debuting in 2023 were the flash fiction–only publication Small Wonders; the no plot, just vibes magazine Tales & Feathers; the relationships-oriented Heartlines Spec; and New Edge Sword & Sorcery, which does what it says on the tin. Permanently closing were Fantasy Magazine and Cossmass Infinities (which wasn’t eligible for BASFF, but a notable closure), and ceasing magazine publication and shifting to an anthology series format were Dark Matter and Galaxy’s Edge; Future Science Fiction Digest is also shifting to an anthology series format, but they plan to release the stories from their anthologies online over the course of several months. The long-running Daily Science Fiction also went on indefinite hiatus.

Given the announcement last year that a Certain Online Bookstore named after a rainforest discontinued their ebook periodicals program, this year’s death toll was surprisingly small. That said, it seems likely more disruptions to the short fiction ecosystem are still to come, and I’ll say again that short-fiction magazines need your support now more than ever. Subscribe, post reviews, spread the word—it all helps and can make a difference.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to my assistant series editor Christopher Cevasco and to in-house BASFF-wrangler Nicole Angeloro for all their hard work behind the scenes. Special shout-out to David Steffen of The Submission Grinder writer’s market database, who helps me stay apprised of market openings and closures. And, as always, I extend my eternal gratitude to the authors who write short fiction (and those who continue to write short fiction even when they have successful novel careers)—and to everyone who reads, appreciates, and tells people about great short fiction; there are too few of us and too many of those out there who are readers but don’t even really know short stories exist.

Submissions for Next Year’s Volume

Editors, writers, and publishers who would like their work considered for next year’s edition (the best of 2024), please visit johnjosephadams.com/best-american for instructions on how to submit material for consideration.

—John Joseph Adams

Introduction: Plato and the Planogram

I’ve been a book nut since my mom introduced me to a certain cat in a hat. In school, I got in trouble for ignoring my teachers by reading under my desk. My parents often told me to put my reading away at the dinner table, and the back pocket of my jeans was invariably stretched out in the shape of a mass-market paperback. Hell, I’d even read while walking down the street. Trailing behind my brother and sister, I’d slam into lampposts and trash cans. I’m not kidding.

In college, I tried to support my reading habit by getting a job in a Barnes & Noble, lured in by the smell of fresh pulp and that juicy employee discount. It was a brand-new store in North Charleston, South Carolina, just a huge space full of empty shelves. A week before opening, a tractor trailer backed up and disgorged pallet after pallet piled high with unopened boxes of fresh books.

My first job as a young bookseller was to fill those empty shelves before the grand opening. Amazingly, there was a dedicated place for every single book. This was my introduction to planograms, an industry term for a detailed schematic showing where each book should be placed on every table and shelf. Almost immediately, I saw how often this plan defied logic and common sense.

Horror had its own section, but Frankenstein belonged in general fiction. Science fiction and fantasy were lumped together, but Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1984, and anything by Michael Crichton could also be found in general fiction. So was Stephen King. And Kurt Vonnegut. In the years ahead, I would spend a considerable amount of my workday guiding a confused shopper away from the logical place they started their search to some other spot in the bookstore.

The Time Machine? That’s in the classics. War of the Worlds too. They get shelved with The Odyssey, when it would perhaps make sense to shelve The Odyssey in fantasy.

It didn’t take long for me to see nefarious purposes behind these planograms. Folks who love Literature with a capital L seemed to be protecting their disdain for science fiction and fantasy by removing anything from those sections that had merit or gained wide appeal with the masses. This explained why major bestsellers like King, Shelley, and Vonnegut went in the general fiction section. And classics that everyone was familiar with were taken out of the SF/F realm as well. If your premise was that these nerdy genres didn’t matter, an easy way to prove the point was to rob science fiction and fantasy of the works you think matter.

My conspiratorial thinking felt confirmed when I worked in an independent bookstore many years later while trying to make it as a writer. Once again, science fiction and fantasy were lumped together, and any book my boss thought he’d like to read was removed and shelved elsewhere. In logic, we call this begging the question, where you set up conditions so they prove your point. The science fiction and fantasy section of the bookstore felt like a field left to go fallow. When Hunger Games took off during those years, we set up its own table to avoid putting anything so popular in the far, dim reaches of the bookstore. As an aspiring sci-fi writer, I quietly fumed.

When I learned how much Plato hated poets, things began to make more sense.

There are ten sections, or books, of Plato’s Republic—a classic work that attempts to define the perfect society. Two of those ten books are mostly about how much Plato hates poets and poetry. No joke. By appealing to emotions rather than sticking to facts, Plato accused poets of poisoning our minds. By writing what isn’t instead of what is or ought to be, they endanger his perfect society. In his own words:

And the same may be said of lust and anger and all the other affections, of desire and pain and pleasure, which are held to be inseparable from every action—in all of them poetry feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up; she lets them rule, although they ought to be controlled, if mankind are ever to increase in happiness and virtue.

He goes on to suggest that only religious tales and biographies of powerful people should be allowed, and I suspect he has this opinion in order to not be struck down by either:

[B]ut we must remain firm in our conviction that hymns to the gods and praises of famous men are the only poetry which ought to be admitted into our State. For if you go beyond this and allow the honeyed muse to enter, either in epic or lyric verse, not law and the reason of mankind, which by common consent have ever been deemed best, but pleasure and pain will be the rulers in our State.

Plato was terrified of how poets arouse our passions. And in his lamentations, I can hear my old boss from my bookstore days decrying anything too far out there for public consumption. Suddenly, the old system of shelving books made perfect sense. When works like Gulliver’s Travels or Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea are around long enough, or sell enough copies, or enter the public imagination, they no longer feel threatening. Even the oddness of Vonnegut is something we get used to in time. It was never about which books were most worthy—it was about which ones were most worrisome.

This also solved another question that often came up among bookstore browsers: Why are science fiction and fantasy shelved together? What do dragons and spaceships have in common? Why are ancient wizards and cyborgs on the same shelf? I remember how in grade school, when my mom would drop me off at Waldenbooks for hours at a time, I would skip past all the sci-fi looking for a Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms book I had not yet read. What was all this futuristic junk doing among my swords and sorcery? I’d bump into a sci-fi kid asking a similar question about all these books with half-clad men wielding swords as tall as they were.

My old theory would’ve been that bookstores were clumping together all the literature not deemed good enough. But when bookstores started carrying graphic novels, manga, and video game guides, these were often put in the same dark corners of the store. The thing in common with these works was that most people didn’t understand what happened among those shelves. These were the dangerous poets of the world, writing about what isn’t instead of what is. Writers who inspire our passions, who challenge us. The books that make us feel dizzy with wonder.

When I was asked to edit this volume, I was warned there would be a lot of reading involved. As if I haven’t been training for this under school desks and at the dinner table my entire life. Threatening me with words is like waving a red flag in front of a bull. As I dove in, I found myself awash with stories that Plato would’ve loathed. Stories that challenged my worldview, that made me exercise new mental muscles, and stories that brought me to tears. These were not always easy stories to read—they strained my imagination, made me cringe, some are outright terrifying. Even more difficult was choosing my favorites. What they all have in common is that I know where they would be shelved: where they might only be discovered by those who were somewhat ready for them.

These two genres have more in common than I used to think. Reading them as presented here should drive that point home. If you think you lean toward fantasy, you might be surprised to discover that your favorite story here is categorized as science fiction. And the opposite might very well be true. What binds them together and makes each one worthy of inclusion is that Plato would’ve hated them, and planograms would’ve banished them. These are dangerous stories. The kind that warp reality and threaten to change the world.

Are you ready?

I hope not.

—Hugh Howey

How It Unfolds

James S. A. Corey

from The Far Reaches

Science Fiction

Interviewer: It must feel a little strange to spend all this time preparing for something that you aren’t actually going to do.

Roy Court: Except that I am. When the package unfolds, the Roy that comes out of the assembler is going to remember having this exact conversation with you. It’s just that he’s going to be on some other planet trying to figure out how to restart the human race, and I’m going to be here worrying about my taxes. [laughs]

Interviewer: I can’t imagine knowing there’s some other me out there.

Roy: It’s not really going to be like that, though. We’ve located tens of thousands of exoplanets that look promising for colonization, but the closest really good candidates are fifteen, twenty light-years out. We call it slow light for a reason. The beams we’re transmitting aren’t quite as speedy as the normal stuff. That’s four, maybe five decades before the first unfold could set up a transmitter and send us a hello. We’re all mortal here. Those other Roys are going to be doing what they do long after I’m gone.

Okay, I’m going to start the anesthetic in a few seconds here. You might get a little light-headed, the technician said. She was a petite redhead with a small chin and dainty little teeth. If they’d met at a bar, Roy might have tried flirting with her.

Instead, he put a hand in his pocket, reassuring himself that the little velvet box really was where he thought it would be, then nodded. Copy that.

She shifted, put a needle into the drip feed going to his arm, and made a little sound that seemed like satisfaction. Okay. Just count backward for me from ten to one.

Ten, nine, eight, seven—

Roy opened his eyes. He was alone in the landing couch, just the way he was supposed to be. He lay there for a little while, getting used to the feeling of his body. His arms and legs felt heavy, like he’d just had ten hours of hard sleep. The knot that always seemed to rest in his belly had untied itself. He felt great.

The room itself was small, spartan, engineered to have not just the least mass but the least information that the package would have to encode. It seemed silly to take a snapshot of two hundred human bodies and brains and then try to economize with simplistic shelving, but here he was. He checked his pocket. The box was still there.

What’s the word, folks? he said.

Scan went great, Roy, Sandor, the director of operations, said through the speakers. No data loss, minimal overhead.

Great. That means I can retire now?

Wait a few minutes to get your legs back before you start running down the street, but yeah, man. We did it.

Roy smiled. After three years of active training, it felt a little anticlimactic. He’d come into the program at thirty years old with six years as an officer in Air Command behind him, a dual master’s in engineering and applied math, and he’d still barely qualified. The program had been boot camp and graduate school and team-building intensives all in one. And this was the last time he’d be looking up at the gray ceiling of the package module. The last time he’d be talking to Sandor and Chakrabarti and Foch. The last day he’d spend with most of the team.

Maybe not all of them, though. There was room to hope.

The farewell banquet was the next day at a hotel ballroom just off the base. Three hundred and fifty people, mostly women, mostly in their late twenties, around fifty tables with ceramic pumpkins for centerpieces and plates of rubbery chicken or gritty lentil tacos. An open bar. Sandor had given a tipsy speech about the nobility of the human soul and the work of becoming not just a multiplanetary but a multisystem species and started weeping. It had actually been pretty moving, in the moment. The president of the National Space Agency sent a message of congratulations and thanks that had been projected onto a blank wall behind the empty bandstand.

Now, Roy was leaning back in his chair with a whiskey sour in his hand while Zhang Bao and Emily Pupky leaned in on either side, talking across him. After three years of a strict no-alcohol policy, even the watered-down drink was hitting him hard.

Bringing men at all was a mistake, Emily said. "No offense, Roy. But every male in the package is one less uterus. And there are what? Fifteen hundred sperm samples? We’re going to kick founder effect’s ass. She pointed an exuberant finger at Bao. Kick its ass."

Replacement is an issue, yes, Bao said. But how many babies are we really going to need in the first stage?

We’ll have to have some pretty fast or there won’t be anyone to do the work when we get old. Populations with inverted age distribution—

It’s going to have to be a game-day decision, Bao said. Every situation is going to be different. And really, Emily, do you want to commit to living the rest of your life without cock?

Emily cackled. You’re going to be a lucky man, Roy.

Oh, not me, Roy said. I’ve stood my watch. Now I’m going back to Ohio and looking for a job.

He caught sight of Anjula across the room. She was wearing a pale-yellow dress that brought out the warmth of her skin. Her hair was flowing down one shoulder, and her smile was the same wry near-smirk he’d loved and hated and loved again.

Now or never, he thought. He teetered on never, then shifted his chair back. Doctors. You’ll excuse me, I hope, from your very erudite conversation on the long-term value of cock.

He got stopped three times as he made his way across the ballroom, people he now knew as well as his own family, all saying their goodbyes. He disengaged as quickly from each teary farewell as politely as he could. Anjula was putting on her coat when he reached her.

Hey there, former wife, he said, the way he often did.

Hey there, former husband.

Taking off?

Yeah. Traveling early tomorrow.

Let me walk you out.

They passed into the hotel lobby, a fantasy of black tile and fluted columns with a wide fountain along one wall. Megan Lee from the engineering team waved from across the room, looking wistful. Gabriel Hu, head of their data operations team, was sprawled on one of the couches, grinning drunkenly at everyone who passed but not making a scene. Anjula paused and bowed to him. Gabriel, unspeaking, inclined his head and waved his hand like an emperor accepting the obeisance of his subjects. They both chuckled, and Anjula moved on, Roy at her side. He didn’t touch her arm, and she didn’t lean against him. They knew each other too well for that.

We pulled it off, he said.

We did. I should thank you.

For what?

Not making them choose between us. I know admin was concerned those first couple years.

I can see why. People get divorced, they don’t always play well together after. But I can bounce that right back at you. If you’d pushed the point, there’s no reason to think I’m the one they’d have kept.

They reached the main doors and stepped out into the night. A warm breeze was blowing from the east, carrying the smell of the ocean. The transports waited in a sedate line, ready to whisk hotel guests anywhere in the city. The stars shone above them, billions of points of light pressing down through the backsplash of the city. They stood together for a moment, looking up, each with their own thoughts.

I’m glad I got to know you again, Roy said. It feels like a blessing after . . . you know.

We were too young. Everyone gets to be an idiot at nineteen.

Here’s to getting old, right? But we’ve got a few good years left in us.

I hope so, she said.

When she turned to look at him, he had the box out and open. The old ring glimmered in the new light. She looked from it to him. Her expression was surprise. Then horror.

Oh God, Roy, she said. No.

Interviewer: It’s odd that this is the application we’re making of the Hamze-Grau slow light, isn’t it? If we can make copies of things from . . . what? Enriched light? Shouldn’t we be using this to make habitats for people here on Earth? Medical supplies for war zones? Food?

Anjula Farah: Not really. It’s an economics question. The energy it would take to manufacture something using slow light is just an order of magnitude more than it would take using traditional means. Slow light can build you a house; it’ll just cost a hundred times the energy a hammer and nails would. What makes this interesting isn’t the duplication possibilities, though that is fascinating in its own right. It’s the distribution.

Interviewer: Distribution?

Anjula: Moving matter across interstellar space has never made sense from an energy expenditure standpoint. And in that use case, suddenly duplication using slow light begins to make economic sense. There are other ways to manufacture things. But delivering and unfolding a package on an alien world light-years away in the galaxy? This is the only way to do it.

Interviewer: Going back to economics, what’s the return on this investment?

Anjula: Lots of people will give you the all your eggs in one basket argument for spreading out to multiple solar systems. But that’s not the reason for me. For me, some chances you take just because the possibilities are beautiful.

Okay. Just count backward for me from ten to one.

Ten, nine, eight, seven—

Roy opened his eyes. He was alone in the landing couch, just the way he was supposed to be. He lay for a little while, getting used to the feeling of his body. His arms and legs felt heavy, like he’d just had ten hours of hard sleep. The knot that always seemed to rest in his belly had untied itself. He felt great.

What’s the word, folks?

The silence that followed seemed to last an eternity. The voice that answered him wasn’t Sandor. It was Gabriel Hu.

Well. Holy shit.

Roy sat up a little too fast, and the room swam around him. Adrenaline fought against the fading anesthetic and slowly, surely won. The public address system clicked as a new connection came on. Elizabet Aldo’s voice was as bright, excited, and controlled as a puppy on a leash. All teams, please report to your stations for startup checks. Local gravity is a pleasant one g, but let’s not hurry, people. We’re all still a little groggy.

They weren’t on the base. They weren’t on Earth. They’d unfolded the package. The room around him, the gray, softly lit hall, wasn’t the one he’d been scanned in. Hell, he wasn’t the Roy Court who’d been scanned. The idea was simultaneously everything he’d hoped for and still totally surreal.

He walked down the hall, keeping one hand on the wall even though he didn’t feel unsteady. The air smelled like cleaning supplies and dust filters, the same as it always did. The gravity was heavy but not oppressive, so wherever they were, it wasn’t on one of the outlier worlds with significantly more or less mass than Earth. But the sound was different. He couldn’t put his finger on it at first, but there was a different resonance in the quiet. Wind hitting the base station from some unaccustomed direction. Or maybe rain or hail outside. A new outside that humans had never even seen before. Roy let that sink in for a moment.

He fought the temptation to detour through the observation deck. He wanted to see this new world, and if he was being honest, he wanted to see if Anjula was there, giving in to the same temptation. The first moment looking on the planet they were there to remake would be a hell of a time to pull out a ring.

Megan Lee was already at the reactor room when he arrived. The room was small and jammed to overflowing with their equipment. With both engineers at their workstations, they had to be careful not to elbow each other. Below them, the pocket reactor lay quiet. The control panels were up, everything on standby, waiting to kindle the little nuclear fire that would keep their batteries topped up for—if things went right—the rest of their lives. Megan looked stunned. She looked like he felt.

Ain’t this a kick in the pants, she said.

You know, Roy said, it’s exactly what we planned for, and somehow, I’m still really surprised. You and me and all the others? We’re the first people to travel between stars.

It wasn’t the first time he’d had the thought. It was the first time it had been true. Roy grinned.

Prepare for check, primary reactor, Elizabet Aldo said. And go.

Megan started the system running. Each computer and subsystem cycled through its routine. Each indicator came up within its expected range.

I’m seeing nothing but green, Megan said. Confirm?

Confirmed, Roy said. I’ve got green across the board.

Admin, Megan said. This is engineering. Primary reactor is good to go.

Roy pulled up the start sequence, just waiting for the order to begin. Over the speaker, he heard Elizabet, but only distantly, like she had her hand over the microphone. Megan frowned. The voices over the speaker grew harsh. A drop of unease spilled into Roy’s blood.

So, hold up for a second, Gabriel said over the speaker. Megan? Roy? Tell me you haven’t started that reactor.

We haven’t started the reactor, Roy said. What’s going on?

Gabriel’s sigh shuddered. Turns out that if you had, it would have killed us.

[Roy Court is looking into the camera. The right side of his face is visibly blistered. The image stutters, freezes, and begins again.]

Roy Court: There is . . . there is a faulty coolant pressure sensor. I think it’s in the H line. It isn’t showing that there’s backflow from a stuck valve. Um. We’re on battery now. I don’t know how long we have. We’re going to try and send this out. The others are . . . Anjula’s . . . um . . . Okay. Okay. Any future missions, we need to get this to them as soon as they unfold. Like to the minute. It’s important . . . It’s critical.

[He shakes his head. His hands tremble.]

Roy: We got so far, and now this. It’s just not fucking fair.

Normally, it wasn’t a meeting Roy would have attended, but since the fault had been in his equipment and the warning had come from some version of him, Elizabet had brought both engineers to the table. Gabriel Hu was there, and Anjula. Kiko, the head of medical and psychological support. Roy and Anjula were two of the oldest people there. Most of the package had been built with people in their twenties. Roy was the oldest man on the planet. Probably the oldest within a dozen light-years.

The meeting room was small, like everything. Four benches around a fake wood-grain table. Elizabet had a mug of smoky tea beside her. The light was soft and full spectrum, designed to look like a sunny afternoon. Outside, it was stormy. If he listened carefully, sometimes he could hear the thunder.

Megan Lee gave a quick report—the stuck valve had been identified, the faulty sensor had been replaced, the reactor was up and running. Then she got out of the way to let the site group report.

The good news is that it’s a better fit than we’d hoped. Same size and water percentage as Earth. One moon, about the same size as Luna, but about five percent farther out, Anjula said. The sun’s older. There’s only one gas giant, and the asteroid belt between here and there is much, much thicker, and it has a lot of activity outside the ecliptic. You get the feeling something bad happened there. The atmosphere is plausible. High nitrogen, enough oxygen that it’s pretty clear there’s something respirating out there, or was at some point. The big challenge is that there’s a lot of chlorine dioxide too.

Bleach planet. So no walks outside, Elizabet said.

Not if you enjoy having lungs.

Something we can terraform? Megan asked.

We? No, Anjula said. Our great-grandchildren can maybe get started on it. In theory, perfectly doable, but we have a lot of infrastructure to build and a lot of surviving to do first.

Roy had to pull his attention away from her mouth and the memory of the way the lip balm she’d liked in college had tasted after they’d kissed. This was a serious, professional meeting as much as anything that had happened during their years of training. There was no room for him to be mooning over her like they were kids again. His hand shifted to his pocket, checking that the little box was still there.

"What’s the bad news?" Elizabet asked.

We’re still figuring out where we are. We were expecting some lensing and occlusion to make things weird, but beyond some very consistent landmarks like the galactic core, everything seems to have moved around a lot.

Which means what? Megan asked, folding her arms. Roy knew the answer before Anjula spoke, but mostly because it was the kind of thing they’d talked about back in the before times.

It would be stranger if things hadn’t, Anjula said. Everything moves, everything ages, everything changes. That’s normal. Stars shift spectra; they move in relation to each other. She lifted her hands, fingers splayed just a little like the feathers of a peacock. It was a gesture he remembered her mother using too. Genetics or mirroring. We’ll figure it out. If we can get an idea of how long has passed since we left Earth, that’ll help a lot.

Yes, well, Gabriel Hu said. Our ears are up and listening.

Roy shifted in his seat. This was the meat of the proceeding. The