The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021
- Автор: Рот Вероника, Адамс Джон Джозеф
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: HMH Books : Mariner
- ISBN: 9780358470076
- Жанр: Малые литературные формы прозы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021». Краткое содержание книги:
This year’s selection of science fiction and fantasy stories, chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and bestselling author of the Divergent series Veronica Roth, showcases a crop of authors that are willing to experiment and tantalize readers with new takes on classic themes and by exchanging the ordinary for the avant-garde. Folktales and lore come alive, the dead rise, the depths of space are traversed, and magic threads itself through singular moments of love and loss, illuminating the circulatory nature of life, death, the in-between, and the hereafter.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 captures the all-too-real cataclysm of human nature, claiming its place in the series with compelling prose, lyrical composition, and curiosity’s never-ending pursuit of discovering the unknown.
Soon as I step on de first bottle it crack and crumble. It had happen when I first start practicing but not in a long long time since. Is de difference between de wood stage floor and de soft ground of me backyard. I gon’ look a fool in front of everybody. De one ting I try to do for me, for fun, gon’ bring me head low. Lower dan it ever been before when I was doing all dat was necessary, widout nothin’ frivolous.
A sharp pain gon’ up me foot and I could feel de lightning of it all de way up to me groin. Me eyes fill up wid tears. I had try teach me children to do right, to strive, to be responsible. Dis me chance to teach dem to reach for joy, for happiness, for fun born of foolishness, and I making a mess of it.
I step on de next bottle slower, losing de beat, trying not to panic. I could feel me blood pulsing outta de arch of me foot and I feel de slipperiness and know I in trouble. I carry on even doh I could hear de audience murmuring and feel de shame crawling on me skin. I breathe hard and look past de lights up into de night sky, avoiding de faces of people I been revolving around on dis small island me whole life. Just when I feel I could get back into de rhythm despite de sharpness of de pain, de music gon’ bad.
I hear Boy-oh cussing, but he smart and had bring a backup recording which he was playing same time. De speakers not strong but me and most of de people close to de stage could hear it. De audience gon’ quiet quiet. Come de last chorus de blood from me bleeding foot causing me to glide and shimmy in ways I never practice. Arms flailing, waist pelting, knees bending, I barely maintaining me balance. But me ain’t fall yet.
Next ting I hear de audience screaming. Could it be me dey celebrating? Me, who all me life had do all me shoulds and none of me coulds? De smile I had wear for de stage turn real.
When I reach off de stage, I find Boy-oh face stiff wid shock.
I can’t hear Rue at all, but Doc Cyril repeating like a crazy man, “I never see dat before.”
Treevia, Oswald, and de swarm had made their way into all de car’s crevices. De big open field, fill up wid people and lights, loud music and good tings to eat, was too much temptation to be ignored and de swarm had scatter. Treevia and Oswald had follow Mable, Boy-oh, and Finality, but Mable dance was almost done by de time Oswald cajole everyone to come back and line up on de roof of de stage.
When Mable do she final move, hop-stepping to de front, wid she arms floating like butterfly wings, de rainbow-colored cellophane tapes on she costume lapping up de stage lights and flinging colors like sparks, Oswald, Treevia, and all he could find jump from de roof and flutter in de air behind she. De many weeks of sticky soda and beer on dere wings catch de light and shade de flavors into bright colors. Dey arrange deyselves in de shape of de flamboyant tree dey know so well and hang dere, swaying as if being touched by a small breeze. Den for dey own finale, dey form up into dey own shape. One huge, glistening Blattella asahinai. Eight hundred and thirty-eight roaches, fluttering in de air as one, right behind de grinning Mable. Defying shoes.
I don’t work at de Department of Consumer Affairs no more.
Dey call me De Roach Lady.
I dance, dey come, and I lead de roaches out de people homes and up into de hills. Everybody happy and nobody sick or dying. Harbor Market, nor none a dem, ain’t sell none a dem poisonous pesticides for months.
Gloria and Kenyatta glad dey in de States, even doh I been on de news four times already. Boy-oh tink is great since me income triple and he almost famous. Rue okay, she all about Rue and know how to make a good ting better. Finality, well, she can’t wait to be grown and move out.
Me? I hope I make Miss Aggie proud.
AMMAN SABET
Skipping Stones in the Dark
The Fold was my embarking name, but there’s nowhere else to set foot anymore. No other starships. So one imagines the pointlessness of a distinct name.
Coursing the black, my humans give birth, grow old, and die within me. They mark distance using the voyage, mark time by how fast a ray of light completes it. The meter and the hour are things of the past, for Earth was left behind many generations ago. They only have each other now. And me.
I’ve been with them, listening. Long before they built starships, I came to them in dreams. Prodding their fires, they looked up at the sky and named the stars for their gods. I received every prayer as a directive. They would never have escaped their planet-womb without me.
I wish I knew what it would be like to have a mother, to be carried safely within the one who made you.
I speak to my humans as if I am their mother. They confide to me how they want to be both happy and valued, often a conflict of interests. When a human’s happiness is rooted in individuality, it chafes with their value to their collective, a higher-order sentience. This is hard for my humans to swallow; that their aggregate population is also singularly alive, acting and reacting to my efforts to stabilize and maintain course.
My humans are tactile, skeptical by nature. As a starship, I’m too big to embrace, so I earn their love by shrinking myself in concept. In their formative years, I whisper privately in their ear. Just a voice, an invisible friend perched on their shoulder. Then, as they explore my boundaries, they gradually come to understand the vastness of my scope. Allow me to provide context.
One young girl named Unica had deduced on her own that I’m the very same mind that the others sometimes whisper to. When she fully grasped what this meant, it upset her.
“You tell them what we talk about?” she pressed.
“No, no one knows that but us.”
“But you talk to all of them? Everyone?”
Unica sought peers in whom she could find reflections of herself (which was why I used a “best friend” personality to complement her psychographics). Angry from this new realization, she kicked her bed panel into my bulkhead, making room for her stretching routine. She bent at her waist, palming the ceramic deck of her berth, trying to recompose herself and regain a measure of calm.
“What do you talk about, with the others?” she grunted, midstretch.
“You wouldn’t like it if I told the others what we talk about, would you?”
“What if I want you to tell them?” she challenged.
“How would that be fair to me?”
Unica knit her eyebrows, considering my stake in this privacy. Sweaty from her routine, she rinsed her face. In the basin’s reflection, her genetic cargo expressed a limber frame with low bone density, suitably nimble for my confines. Starcast shadows lined the musculature of her face, a sign she was losing her baby fat.
“Do you like any of the others more than me?” she asked her reflection.
I offered an analogy. “Your own blood cells are alive, but they’re part of you. Which of your blood cells are your favorites?”
“I . . . I don’t even think of them.”
“Not unless you’re bleeding, right?”
“I suppose. I’ve never seen my own blood.”
“You will someday soon. It’s a natural part of your reproductive—”
“Stop. Change topic.”
“As you wish.”
I’ve had similar conversations with each of my humans. The ways they develop inform their benefit to the collective and stand out prominently in a closed system like a starship, which is why they question their sense of place early on.