Year's Best SF 9
The Future Boldly Imagined From Breathtaking New PerspectivesThe world as we will know it is far different from the future once predicted in simpler times. For this newest collection of the finest short form SF to appear in print over the preceding year, acclaimed editors and anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer have gathered remarkable works that reflect a new sensibility. Courageous and diverse stories from some of the finest authors in the field grace this amazing volume -- adventures and discoveries, parables and warnings, carrying those eager to fly to far ends of a vast, ever-shifting universe of alien worlds, strange cultures, and mind-bending technologies. Tomorrow has never been as spellbinding, terrifying, or transforming as it is here, today, in these extraordinary pages. Hang on!New tales from:Kage BakerGregory BenfordTerry BissonRick MoodyMichael SwanwickJohn Varleyand many more
Fiction, Science Fiction, Short stories, Science fiction, american, American Science fiction
Octavia E. Butler, Geoff Ryman, Tony Ballantyne, Nancy Kress, Joe Haldeman, Angélica Beatriz del Rosario Arcal de Gorodischer, Michael Swanwick, John Varley, Gene Wolfe, Gregory Benford, Ricard de la Casa Pérez, Pedro Jorge Romero, Cory Doctorow, Robert Reed, Kage Baker, Allen M. Steele, M. Rickert, Stephen Baxter, Rick Moody
An American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field.

[Comment by Tricia Sullivan, on The Guardian][1]:
Octavia E Butler (1947–2006)

> I was teaching in New York when I came across Octavia E Butler's Kindred in a secondary-school catalogue of novels recommended to support diversity. It caught my attention because Butler was described as a science-fiction writer. I thought I was familiar with science fiction, but I'd never heard of her – nor have a great many other readers, I suspect. For many years, Butler was the sole African-American woman novelist in science fiction. Kindred tells the wrenching and unforgettable story of a young black woman who time-travels and saves the life of her slaveholder ancestor, but it is, in Butler's words, "a grim fantasy", not science fiction.

> Beginning in the 1970s, Butler wrote three sequences of novels: the Patternist books, the Lilith's Brood series and the Parable novels (incomplete at her tragic death in 2006). Critically respected, she won the Hugo and Nebula awards, received a Clarke nomination, the PEN lifetime achievement award and a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant. A serious writer working in a field that is seldom taken seriously, Butler addressed biological control, gender, humanity's relationship with aliens, genetics and even the development of a fictional religion. Her narratives leave space for the reader's involvement while exploring the nature of change. They gaze unflinchingly on power dynamics. "Who will rule? Who will lead? Who will define, refine, confine, design? Who will dominate? All struggles are essentially power struggles," Butler stated, "and most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together." Butler's writing is courageous, stimulating and infused with a rare purity of intention. Crushingly, she died at the height of her powers. [Bloodchild and Other Stories][2] is a good place to begin discovering her work.


  [1]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/may/14/science-fiction-authors-choice
  [2]: http://openlibrary.org/works/OL35621W/Bloodchild_and_other_stories || American science fiction writer || Joe William Haldeman (born June 9, 1943) is an American science fiction author. He is best known for his novel The Forever War (1974). That novel and other works, including The Hemingway Hoax (1991) and Forever Peace (1997), have won science fiction awards, including the Hugo Award and Nebula Award. He was awarded the SFWA Grand Master for career achievements. In 2012 he was inducted as a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Many of Haldeman's works, including his debut novel War Year and his second novel The Forever War, were inspired by his experiences in the Vietnam War. Wounded in combat, he struggled to adjust to civilian life after returning home. From 1983–2014, he was a professor teaching writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). || Angelica Gorodischer was an Argentine writer who was known for her short stories, which belong to a wide variety of genres, including science-fiction, fantasy, crime and stories with a feminist perspective. || Gene Wolfe was born in Texas. After dropping out from Texas A&M University, he served in the Korean War, and later graduated from the University of Houston. He worked first as an engineer, notably designing part of the machine that produces Pringles potatoe chips, and later as the editor of a professional engineering magazine, *Plant Engineering*.

Wolfe was a prolific writer, publishing over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories in his life. He was known for the complexity of his narratives and the depth of his characters, frequently using unreliable or fallible narrators to enhance his thematic focus on memory. His work explores topics of morality, often through the lens of his Catholic faith. 

Primarily recognized for his science fiction and fantasy works, Wolfe received a litany of recognition in those genres including the British Science Fiction, World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Locus, Nebula, and Campbell Memorial Awards. In 2012 he was recognized as the 29th Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. 

Information from [Tor Publishing][1] and [The New Yorker][2].


  [1]: https://www.tor.com/2019/04/15/gene-wolfe-in-memoriam-1931-2019/
  [2]: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/sci-fis-difficult-genius || Gregory Benford (Gregory Albert Benford) is an astrophysicist and science fiction author who is on the faculty of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine.  He is also a contributing editor of Reason magazine.  Benford is best known for the Galactic Center Saga novels, a series that postulates a galaxy in which sentient organic life is in constant warfare with sentient electromechanical life.

Greg was born in Mobile, Alabama.  He received his Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of Oklahoma, followed by his Masters and then his Doctorate from the University of California, San Diego.  Having published more than 200 scientific papers, his research encompasses both theory and experiments in the fields of astrophysics and plasma physics.

Greg is a two-time winner of the Nebula Award and has also won the John W. Campbell Award, the Australian Ditmar Award, the Lord Foundation Prize, and the 1990 United Nations Medal in Literature.  

Source: Secular Policy Institute || From his website: Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger -- the co-editor of Boing Boing (boingboing.net) and the author of the bestselling Tor Teens/HarperCollins UK novel LITTLE BROTHER. He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in London.


2 Creative Commons-licensed photos: cindiann: http://www.flickr.com/photos/trucolorsfly/2625294688/ & Joi Ito, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. || Robert David Reed