This is a collection of the best science fiction stories set on planet Earth published in 2023 by leading authors of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster.
"A Soul in the World" by
Charlie Jane Anders
-A childless woman is given a most unusual child to raise as her own.
"A Kingdom of Seagrass and Silk" by
Cécile Cristofari
-An elderly couple fend for themselves on a deserted island while waiting out an epidemic.
"LOL, Said the Scorpion" by
Rich Larson
-Wealthy tourists wear bio-filtering suits to go on live vacations to impoverished countries.
"A Borrowing of Bones" by
Karin Lowachee
-Reality blurs as people become menageries of other lives.
"Devil in the Deep" by Lucie Lukačovičová
-A Bolivian mining community blames lady scientists for their bad luck.
"Gravesend, or, Everyday Life in the Anthropocene" by
Paul McAuley
-An army veteran, suffering from the aftereffects of a psych bomb, convalesces in the eco-stressed marshes of the Thames.
"Sigh No More" by
Ian McDonald
-The show must go on despite a solar flare that has crashed London's power grid.
"Cuttlefish" by Anil Menon
-A family seeks to escape the modern world at an old fashioned Indian guesthouse.
"Highway Requiem" by
T. R. Napper
-A trucker's way of life on the roads of the Outback is threatened by automation.
"Contracting Iris" by Peter Watts
-A novel microbial infection changes the behavior of a woman diagnosed with MS.
"Deep Blue Jump" by Dean Whitlock
-Children are forced to pick drug-like dreamberries in desert canyons under austere conditions.