I love my wife, Betty, and the children she gave me. They are my only defense against a memory that otherwise I could not possibly live with.

The best science fiction and fantasy stories of 2021, selected by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor Veronica Roth.

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.

Pete Quint finds a hot market for air conditioning.

What happens when artificial intelligence comes online, only to find itself locked in a room with a madman?

It was Christmas Eve, but this year Paul wanted to leave the house and its memories.

The Caretakers by David Nickle is a strange tale about a group of people called to a meeting with their intimidating boss. The newest member of their organization is not so sure she wants to even be there.

Time travel doesn’t actually solve problems. It just makes them more complex….

When Ythna is sent to serve the Beldame Thakkra, she is only a child, but as she grows, so does her love of her mistress. When tragedy strikes, Ythna has no idea what to do, or how to save herself from Obsolescence, until she meets the mysterious Jemima Brookwater. Ms. Brookwater claims to come from the future, and wants Ythna to come on a terrifying journey that uses a most unusual mode of travel.

At the publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.

When Sam Gregory wakes up to find he has turned into a big cockroach, he is understandably dismayed. Luckily, the condition appears to be a little contagious.

Meet me at the end of the world…As civilization comes to an end, Lewis and Karen take their last vacation to the only cold place left on Earth, the remote resort town of Cold Pools. There, they will say goodbye…The Cold Pools — a short story of 3,000 words, is taken from the author’s collection Ms Ito’s Bird & Other Stories.Chris Ward is the author of more than 80 short stories (33 of them published) and the novel The Tube Riders, available now on Amazon.

A stunning new ebook original story by J. M. SidorovaIncludes an exclusive excerpt of Sidorova’s acclaimed debut novel, The Age of Ice. Speculative fiction icon John Crowley calls J. M. Sidorova’s The Age of Ice “marvelous.” Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club, hails it as “everything you could want in a novel.” Now, in this special ebook-only story, Sidorova returns to the world of The Age of Ice—her captivating blend of fiction, history, and fantasy—offering a mesmerizing new tale of the power of cold.In April 1814, just days after Napoléon’s defeat by the coalition of the European powers, Prince Alexander Velitzyn, the hero of The Age of Ice, is drifting around Paris, coming to grips with the brutality of the war and his role in it. Unbeknownst to him, Alexander strolls through the same passageways as another human being just like him.Hidden behind costume and makeup, twenty-two-year-old Cherie performs a daily show in the Palais-Royal, a noble palace where shopkeepers and showgirls have set up all manner of risqué commerce—boutiques, gambling rooms, and pubs designed to satiate every desire of the senses. Cherie, though, is an unusual act. Her feat relies on physics, not trickery. She is a young woman making do with the fate she’s been dealt—not just the terror of revolution, but her own, crippling coldness. Then, one evening, a wounded young soldier named Julien comes to her room, and what happens threatens to upend Cherie’s notion of the world and herself.The Colors of Cold is a beautifully imagined glimpse into two lives trapped by frost—metaphorical and literal—set amid one of the most stirring moments in the history of Paris.

As this issue goes to press, the U.S. mid-term elections are only a couple of weeks behind us, which makes the following story seem timely. It’s a tale about the ruthlessness of politics in our age — and how that ruthlessness might lead to something more dangerous…. Ms. Callahan has been contributing to EQMM for many years.

In a futuristic, fascistic Rome, a brilliant, unstable scientist proves that she can transcend the human body’s limitations. The test subject? Her own daughter. A mother-daughter mad scientist story, THE DESTROYER asks how far we’ll go to secure our own legacies—and how far we’ll run to escape them.

One person only had faith in him, but that was the girl in the snappy blue car.

A short story about the universe.

Some people will tell you that world-class fame is better than living to a contented old age. Other people disagree. One of those other people might possibly be the protagonist of The Eighth-Grade History Class Visits the Hebrew Home for the Aging by Harry Turtledove, master of the counterfactual.

At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

“I’m living proof that dreams do come true,” says Laura Benedict. “I wrote fiction for almost 20 years before selling my novel Isabella Moon (releasing in September) to Ballantine Books.” The book is not, however, the author’s first major fiction sale. She debuted in our Department of First Stories in ‘01 under the byline Laura Philpot Benedict.

Their specialty was spotting the soft deal, the shrewd angle, and giving the business to whoever interfered. But what happens when you make a fool of the wrong guy?