The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025

by Nnedi Okorafor (Editor), John Joseph Adams (Series Editor), Caroline M. Yoachim (Contributor)

A collection of the year’s best science fiction and fantasy short fiction selected by award-winning author of Death of the Author and the Binti Trilogy, Nnedi Okorafor, and series editor John Joseph Adams.

The Best American series, launched in 1915, is the premier annual showcase for the country’s finest short fiction and nonfiction, and it is the most respected—and most popular—of its kind.

Nnedi Okorafor selects twenty pieces that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year and explores the ever-expanding and changing world of science fiction and fantasy today.

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Anthologies, Science Fiction Fantasy, Audiobook

416 pages, Paperback

Published October 21, 2025

About the author

Nnedi Okorafor is a New York Times Bestselling writer of science fiction and fantasy for both children and adults. The more specific terms for her works are africanfuturism and africanjujuism, both terms she coined and defined. Born in the United States to two Nigerian (Igbo) immigrant parents and visiting family in Nigeria since she was a child, the foundation and inspiration of Nnedi’s work is rooted in this part of Africa. Her many works include Who Fears Death (winner of the World Fantasy Award and in development at HBO as a TV series), the Nebula and Hugo award winning novella trilogy Binti (in development as a TV series), the Lodestar and Locus Award winning Nsibidi Scripts Series, LaGuardia (winner of a Hugo and Eisner awards for Best Graphic Novel) and her most recent novella Remote Control. Her debut novel Zahrah the Windseeker won the prestigious Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature. She lives with her daughter Anyaugo in Phoenix, AZ. Learn more about Nnedi at Nnedi.com and follow Nnedi on twitter (as @Nnedi), Facebook and Instagram.

Reviews

[Books_the_Magical_Fruit · Rating 4 out of 5]

This anthology is a pretty solid 4 stars, which is good for this type of book. Also, I snapped it up EVEN FASTER once I saw that Nnedi Okorafor was the guest editor this year. She is an amazing writer, and I’m already working my way through her catalogue.

Also, Joe Hill?? I just finished “King Sorrow”, and I’m always up for more Joe. “Ushers” is a great story, and the twist will make your heart drop into your stomach.

“The Audit” is a rambling journal of someone losing it, and it’s surprisingly funny. The premise is a fascinating one, and I do not want to participate in that program…at all..

“The Forgetting Room” ponders what might happen if you could erase some of your memories. My thought was, if you erase something bad that happened to you, how would you know to stay away from someone or something afterward? A significant amount of our memories keep us safe! No, thank you to the altering of my brain.

TJ Klune made me cry, again! “Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!” is achingly poignant.

FYI, there are a fair amount of short stories that veer into horror territory…but I like horror, so it didn’t bother me.

There’s more, but suffice it to say that this collection of stories is well worth your time. Ms. Okorafor has done an excellent job as guest editor.

Thank you to NetGalley and Mariner Books for the eARC! I’m writing this review voluntarily.

[Joe Kessler · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got my hopes up during the introduction to this collection, in which series editor John Joseph Adams explains the selection methodology: he himself read several thousand short stories of genre fiction published throughout a single calendar year, aiming to consume everything that possibly qualified, and picked eighty of his favorites -- forty science fiction and forty fantasy -- to pass to volume editor Nnedi Okorafor with their authorship redacted. She then read through those anonymous finalists and chose the ten she liked best from each category, resulting in the present publication.

I should have remembered that I had given three-star ratings to the two previous Adams-edited anthologies that I've read (Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse and A People's Future of the United States), suggesting in the most neutral of terms that he and I do not share identical tastes in the matter. In this book especially, I feel like he and/or Okorafor -- editing here for the first time -- are often too impressed by a distinctive speculative premise and not putting enough weight into the shape of the tale that follows and the writer's ability to deliver a satisfying ending.

(I have a few minor production critiques, too. Why put 2025 in the title when these pieces were all originally released from January through December 2024? Are we sure 'fantasy' is a more accurate label than 'horror' for certain selections? And why arrange the author notes by last name instead of order of appearance and stick them all together in an appendix far from the contents they describe? These aren't dealbreakers, but they're a little irksome regardless.)

Still, the work is more three-star solid than two-star subpar overall, and some of the entries are of course better than others. My own highlights would include:

"The River Judge" by S. L. Huang, in which an innkeeper's daughter loses her childhood and becomes a force to be reckoned with in cleaning up after her father's crimes;
"The Weight of Your Own Ashes" by Carlie St. George, in which an alien existing across multiple physical bodies dies in one, forcing a confrontation with her human girlfriend about the rest in a neat metaphor for more conventional bigotries;
"Yarns" by Susan Palwick, in which an older teacher learns how her perspective remains valuable even in a dystopian future that seems opposed to books and learning;
"A Stranger Knocks" by Tananarive Due, in which a Black couple in the Jim Crow south face off against a vampiric evil; and
"Ushers" by Joe Hill, in which a guy who gets premonitions of death has to explain to the FBI why he keeps narrowly avoiding mass-casualty events (somewhat similar to his dad's recent novella Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream, come to think of it).

It's a mix of familiar voices and ones new to me, whom I'll now need to either check out further or else know to avoid. And in the end, isn't that exactly what you'd hope for from a project like this?

[Content warning for racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexual assault, gun violence, and gore.]

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[Edie · Rating 4 out of 5]

My genre of choice is science fiction. And my format of choice is the short story. Which makes the choice to read this year's collection an easy one. I have most of the previous installments going back quite a few years, although I haven't read them from beginning to end. One thing I appreciate about picking up ARCs is that I feel obligated to read the entire collection, not just the authors I already know I enjoy. Which is a win for me because I get introduced to writers I would not have discovered otherwise. As for this year's collection, it was good. Some of the stories were great. It wasn't my favorite yet I enjoyed it very much. I appreciate all the work which goes into a collection like this. Thank you to the writers and narrators for their contributions, everyone involved in gathering, sorting, and choosing the entries, and NetGalley for the audioARC.

[hanney · Rating 3 out of 5]

as always you win some you lose some

[Dan Trefethen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once again, the guest editor for this series (this year it's Nnedi Okorafor) did an excellent job picking 20 stories out of the anonymous 80 submitted to her by the series editor. Since the guest editor doesn't know who wrote the stories, sometimes you'll see two stories by the same person, normally a taboo in 'year's best' anthologies. This year it didn't happen, though.

Some award winning stories are here, including the lead-off story 'We Will Teach You to Read / We Will Teach You to Read' by Caroline Yoachim, and Isabel Kim's 'Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole?'. There are some robot stories from T.J. Klune and Adam-Troy Castro, and a signature piece by Joe Hill closes out the book. The most affecting to me was Kij Johnson's meditation on mortality, 'Country Birds'. I think I had something in my eye at the end of that story.

Tananarive Due is here with a chiller of the horror story. The anthology also has a story by one of my recent 'finds', Thomas Ha, who had a story (not this one) short-listed for a Hugo this year.

[Jaclyn Hogan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley.

We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read by Caroline M. Yoachim: Aliens that live at a timescale much faster than humans attempt to teach humans how to read their language, which contains multiple threads that need to be comprehended at the same time. An interesting experiment with form, but I want more alien details.

Also, the Cat by Rachel Swirsky: Three elderly sisters die, one after another and discover they're still stuck together haunting their old house. Well drawn characterizations that elicit sympathy for three old women who mostly enjoy being unpleasant to each other. Then there's the cat, which brought a tear to my eye.

The Audit by Olivie Blake: Our narrator participates in a program that estimates how much money you'll earn in your life and gives it to you to do whatever you want with it, only you have to pay it back as an adult. The narrator gets $40 million and spirals.

Country Birds by Kiji Johnson: The protagonist develops a spot in her vision that looks like a bird. As her life goes on, she thinks of all the aches and pains of her aging body as birds. Lyrical, but slight.

Fuck Them Kids by Tatiana Obey: Jaz goes home for a holiday only to find out that one of her nieces has stowed away on her rocket ship, leaving Jaz no choice but to take her along for the race she's competing in. A fun romp, and I always enjoy good auntie representation.

The River Judge by S.L. Huang: Li Li lives and works at her family's inn at a bend in the river. When her father starts solving problems with murder, Li Li and her mother are left to clean up the bodies. This works, until it doesn't, leaving Li Li with more dangerous problems to solve. While fantasy, this story has some undeniable horror elements, which I really enjoyed.

The Weight of Your Own Ashes by Carlie St. George: Yonder is a Myriad, a member of an alien species that has multiple bodies that share a consciousness. When one of their bodies dies, Yonder and their human girlfriend have some stuff to figure out. Some great aliens in this one.

An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow by Xavier Garcia: Tre is a talented rapper looking for his big break. Unfortunately he makes a deal with the devil to get it. Bloody and visceral, I'd consider this more of a horror story than fantasy, but that's more than fine.

The Forgetting Room by Kathryn H. Ross: A man and his wife buy a 'Forgetting Room,' to protect their child's innocence when he walks in on them having sex. Soon the wife is using it every day, tragedy ensues. Here's another one with a horror vibe.

Look at the Moon by Dominique Dickey: Yet more horror as a queer couple go to a stargazing party and stumble into a horrific cult ritual. The relationship between the couple is so sweet and well drawn that I totally forgive this for the unlikely coincidence that allows the story to happen.

Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim: A brilliant, angry response to Le Guin's classic "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." If Omelas was a real place and not a thought experiment, how would you react to it?

The Witch Trap by Jennifer Hudak: I love witches and stories about witches, but this one, told through different kinds of texts like scholarly articles along with narrative segments felt just a little undercooked for me. There's a creepy story here in the details of shoes under floorboards acting as 'witch traps,' but it never really clicked for me.

Yarns by Susan Palwick: This is one of those dystopian worlds that feels unpleasantly close to now. Irene is a teacher and knitter hiding from a gang with surveillance everywhere. It's like witness protection, but the algorithm recognizes you even with new fingerprints. Anyway, Irene charms the assassin sent to kill her by teaching him about knitting and becomes a grandmother figure to him. Dark with a touch of hope, this is about the value of kindness and community even at the end of the world.

The Wonders of the World by 'Pemi Aguda: This is a strange story, not sure I'd classify it as fantasy like the anthology does. Abisola goes on a class field trip to see a place where two rivers of different temperatures converge but don't mix. She spends some time with a boy from her class who claims to be a prophet who can heal people. She wants him to heal her of spells she has where she has trouble breathing and feels like she's floating away.

Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! by TJ Klune: A sweet and heartbreaking story of Douglas the android and the week he has with his human friends. Several tears were brought to both my eyes.

A Stranger Knocks by Tananarive Due: A Black couple in the 1920s get hired to drive a movie producer around to theaters for him to show his films. But the producer's film has a strange effect on people, and soon the couple realize they've bitten off more than they can chew. Some very creepy details, but this felt too much like a piece of a longer story.

The Sort by Thomas Ha: A man and his son are traveling and stop in a small desert town. The man and his son hide the fact that they communicate telepathically, and encounter a few weird sights in the little town, and the worldbuilding is well done and subtle, but the story didn't really go anywhere for me.

What Happened to the Crooners by Russell Nichols: A Black singing group take a wrong turn in the Appalachians, visit a very creepy diner, and stumble into a local legend. This has a very Twilight Zone vibe, but the ending is footnote formatted for some reason, which robs the story of some momentum.

The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics by Adam-Troy Castro: A story, told in almost one very long sentence, about how we created robots to be good slaves, and what one robot thinks as it's being left behind on a planet alone.

Ushers by Joe Hill: hey, I read this one already, (and WDWJKTKITOH) before this anthology. A policeman interviews a guy about a couple of accidents the guy was almost involved in. The guy eventually confesses to seeing beings that portend whatever tragedy is about to happen. Joe Hill is reliably great.

This year's anthology has an unusually high number of tales that I would call horror before anything else. That seems a little out of keeping with the theme of the anthology, but I'm guessing that Ms. Okorafor is a horror fan, which is great.

[Alvaro Zinos-Amaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gary K. Wolfe writes in his Locus review of this anthology: "I came away remembering the characters and their problems more than the neat ideas and their ramifications, and while that might reflect some of Okorafor’s or Adams’s own distinct tastes, it’s not a bad development at all."

I *do* think it's a bad development. For stories with memorable characters and problems, I already have The Best American Short Stories 2025, which on the whole are more finely crafted than these and operate at a higher level.

I thought "Country Birds" by Kij Johnson was a masterpiece. I found Adam-Troy Castro's "The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics" compelling. Isabel J. Kim's "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole" was very good also, as was Susan Palwick's "Yarns." Those are the four stories I truly enjoyed from this batch of twenty.

[Kara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I'm pretty forgiving with short story collections: I really just need one or two stories to dazzle me, and I happily give the whole thing five stars.

But I really did love this one. I thought it was an unusually strong collection with no real duds, and I loved the wide range of stories: the variety of authors was fabulous (from well-known to newer with diverse voices) and pretty much every story was a different subgenre.

My favorites were Carlie St. George’s The Weight of Your Own Ashes, Xavier Garcia’s An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Form, and Tananarive Deive’s A Stranger Knocks.

Thank you to NetGalley and Mariner Books!

[Julia]

This was a really well rounded group of stories! Most short story collections have highs and lows, but I was engaged and excited about every story in this compilation. If asked my favorites I would give you at least half of them.

[hyper saline · Rating 2 out of 5]

a couple good ones but most of this is zoomer bullshit. where are the rockets and weird aliens and monsters? it's all "oh my phone showed me something bad so I built an extension to my apartment" (The Forgetting Room) and "we're gay and we killed our whole family" (The River Judge). the 2024 anthology was so much better.

[Weronika · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy anthologies are always a highlight of my year and I'm immensely grateful to Netgalley and Mariner Books for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For those unaware: each year, editors of this anthology ask a fantasy writer to be a guest editor and select "the best science fiction and fantasy" short form writing (novellettes, short stories, etc) from a pre-selected pool. Besides the guest editor's input, I want to acknowledge the work that it takes to prepare this selection: editors read through printed magazines, online magazines and anthologies, and anthologies of one writer's stories (i.e. a book in which a writer publishes their 5-6 short stories, a couple are published each year). As a reader, I love short-form fantasy and sci-fi; it allows me to glimpse into unique and weird stories and satisfies my appetite for reading on busy days when I can't commit to a longer novel. As a reader, however, I find it increasingly difficult to find short stories because there are too many outlets: I used to subcribe to a printed magazine which is now out-of-print and, despite being a millenial, find navigating online magazines a bit too overwhelming. "The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy" does all this work for me—someone already found the stories and hand-selected the most engaging ones and now I can devour them!

This collection offers a diverse mix of science-fiction and fantasy (divided roughly equally, though I found myself craving more fantasy: it may result from fantasy stories being a bit shorter or from my subjective preference for the genre), of various writers (some famous and known to me, like Olivie Blake and Joe Hill; some new to me; the table of contents does not include their names which is actually awesome and allows lesser-known writers to occupy the same space as their more famous peers) and themes.

It's difficult to sense an overarching theme of such a diverse collection but for me it was intimacy and loss: the stories that caught the most of my attention grappled with these topics. Rachel Swirsky and Kiji Johnson offered moving depictions of protagonists in an old age—their writing merged the sense of loss and disappointment with the gradual sense of acceptance (such stories sometimes depress me but elderly POVs are much needed!). Olivie Blake's "Audit" was a coming-of-age story and grasped the sense of being paralyzed by adulthood (in a dystopian world where youth and freedom seem limited) and craving for intimacy and love. Kathryn H. Ross' "The Forgetting Room" used a memory-altering device to offer a metaphor about family conflicts and struggles of everyday life, as well as coming to terms with grief. My very favorite story was "The Weight of Your Own Ashes" by Carlie St. George—it explored the dynamics of a relationship between an alien-who-pursues-graduate-studies-on-Earth and their human girlfriend, and the alien's gradual realization that the girlfriend's acceptance for their species (an excellent metaphor for racial or gender "otherness") is only superficial. These stories were my favorite to read and at some levels they are very sad and speaking to interpersonal difficulties in the modern era—but maybe it's what we need? In addition to those, there's plenty of weird styles and perspectives, sci-fi chases, witches, a vampire who parasites on movie pictures and Black audiences, and so on. A must for each sci-fi and fantasy lover (moreover, the stories I listed should be appealing regardless of genre; there's a lot of "subtle" supernatural in this collection), either to start with or to compare to previous editions.

[Duarte · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading so much of Nnedi’s work, I wasn’t surprised to find stories here that seem to slip naturally into her imaginative territory. These were the ones that stayed with me:
– Yarns — Ken Liu (Uncanny, 2023)
– Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! Continued — Bruce Sterling (Twelve Tomorrows, 2023)
– The Weight of Your Own Ashes — Carlie St. George (Lightspeed, 2023)
– The River Judge — S.L. Huang (Reactor, 2023)
– Ushers — Joe Hill (Amazon Original Stories, 2023)

Excerpt in super fast-forward mode from:
Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! Continued
After another cycle of nine years, fifty-one weeks, Douglas has a week away from work to see the world around him more calmly.
With curiosity and a strong desire to learn and discover, he sets off on an adventure. And it is in the middle of that week that he makes friends who bring with them new sensations. These sensations, although short-lived, are significant in his desire to be more than he can be. The struggle continues, even if it is internal and silent!

[…] “Fuck the rules,” Jesse snaps at him. “They don’t help you. They "control" you.”
Douglas says, “Why do you like being alive?”
Jesse blinks. Then, “I . . . don’t—”
“I like birds,” Douglas says. “And the way light can change shape. I like music and Oz and walking. I like films and sitting down. I like the way people smile. I like leaves and the sound my shoes make on concrete.”
“Don’t you want that forever?” Jesse asks.
Douglas shrugs, something he learned from Simon. “Forever is a long time. How can I appreciate it if I always have it for the rest of time?”
[…]
Douglas says, “I don’t understand how the world works, but I think if there are people like all of you, it can’t be so bad, right?”
Jesse falls asleep on his shoulder, breaths slow, drooling just a little.
Later, when Douglas is the only one left awake, he thinks, "I wouldn’t change this moment for anything."
And with no one watching, he kisses the top of Jesse’s head. It’s not like how he’s seen in films or read about in books. It feels like more.
Like everything.
He leaves them sleeping. It’s easier this way. They will wake up and he will be gone, but he thinks maybe they will remember him. He hopes the memory makes them smile.
Before he leaves the apartment for the last time, he does something he’s never done before.
He leaves a note.
Thank you for teaching me how to be human. I had a wonderful week. If you ever miss me, please click your heels together three times and say, “There’s no place like home.”
Your friend,
Douglas
[…]

Even after a hard reset, the feeling remains. Faint but resilient, a remnant of “humanity”.

[…] “There’s no place like home,” it says for reasons it doesn’t fully understand, but the ache is real. It’s in its chest and it’s real. As it clicks its heels together three times, it repeats: “There’s no place like home.” […]

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

In contrast to the Short Story collection from this year, this Science Fiction and Fantasy collection was chock full of authors and stories that I noted down in my "look for more stuff by this person" list; this year I marked 8 (so nearly half) of the stories I read. There was an impressively broad range of styles and subgenres here which allowed for a lot of extremely affecting and memorable stories.

The 8 stories that stood out to me:

We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read by Caroline M. Yoachim -- an incredibly inventive story with a bit of experimental form that is ostensibly about an alien race but also about the ways we think and learn and conceptualize ourselves as human

The River Judge by S.L. Huang -- just a really fun feminist ghost story about a girl helping her family run an inn by a river

The Weight of Your Own Ashes by Carlie St. George -- another great sci-fi story ostensibly about an alien's complex relationship with a human but clearly a metaphor for identity (I got the distinct impression it was specifically speaking to the relationship of a queer person to someone more...I don't want to say "naive" or "conservative" but definitely someone a bit less open minded in certain aspects)

An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow by Xavier Garcia -- an extremely visceral and arresting horror story about sacrifices made for art and maybe more specifically wealth and fame

Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim -- an absolutely hilarious response to the famous Le Guin story where the author imagines activists mercy killing the kid in the Omelas hole and the escalating results

The Witch Trap by Jennifer Hudak -- a incredibly cleverly structured story about an old folk practice of hiding an old shoe in a houses floorboards/walls to trap witches, told from multiple points of views including the trapped witch, the homeowner whose contractor discovers the shoe during a remodel, and even a professor giving a lecture on the practice

Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! by TJ Klune -- a heartbreaking story about a robot who gets a week to live a after a decade of constant work and makes friends and learns what it means to be alive

Ushers by Joe Hill -- not necessarily as emotional powerful as some of the others but a story with a clever twist, about a kid who survives two mass death scenarios (first a school shooting when he was in high school and then a train derailment) and two police officers who question him about it

[Reading Our Shelves · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review at: https://readingourshelves.wordpress.c...

Obviously, with a work like this, there is a lot of variety. I can’t say every story was my cup of tea, but they all had some interesting elements. There were a few ghost stories in here. Also a lot of stuff that I could see being made into Jordan Peele productions. I’ll highlight just a few.

We had one story that was literally a space race. A racer, whose underage niece stowed away on her ship, tries to pass the niece off as her co-pilot so she can still run the race. This was a fun, female-led action jaunt with no scary elements. Just my speed.

Another one that stuck in my mind was about a family who bought a memory-erasing device… because their young son had walked in on the parents being intimate. This tech had existed in their world for a short while, but they were not interested in it until this event happened. I felt that this set-up was great, because the situation is easily one that occurs in real life now… but with one small technology existing in this world that we don’t (yet) have in ours.

In one story, one main character is of an alien species who has several bodies living at the same time. They are on different planets, even, although we are initially following the body living on Earth. This iteration is in a romantic relationship, with someone who presents as being cool with all this… but still refuses to meet her partner’s other bodies.

One story involves an old lady who likes to knit, and eventually bonds with a gang member as she teaches him the long-lost skill. There’s one about a robot who tastes freedom for a few days before being “recycled” – but also, maybe this isn’t his first time through the system? In another, people get their lives audited, to find out how much earning potential they have – and then they get to spend it while they’re still young, instead of waiting until retirement age to travel and have fun.

[Lorena · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated the diverse voices and styles in this anthology of 20 speculative fiction short stories published in 2024. The stories are fairly evenly split between sci-fi and fantasy with a couple of horror stories thrown in. I didn’t enjoy all the stories, but collections like this are a great way to step outside your literary comfort zone and discover new authors.

Some of the stories deal with violence, discrimination, and other injustices, and some of them were either too dark for my taste or just didn’t grab me. I was delighted to find that many of the stories were told with tenderness, humor, and optimism. My favorites include “Yarns” by Susan Palwick, “Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!” by TJ Klune, and “Ushers” by Joe Hill.

I really appreciated the Contributors’ Notes section at the end, and I’d like to be able to reread some of these stories immediately after reading the notes. The first story, Caroline M. Yoachim’s story “We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read,” doesn’t really work as intended if you can’t see it, and I wouldn’t have known that without the author’s note.

The audiobook production was good. Each story had a single narrator. I enjoyed the narration by Zach Villa, Cary Hite, Liz Femi, Eunice Wong, and Rebecca Stern. These narrators all have good pacing and pronunciation, distinctive voices and speech patterns to suit each character, and the ability to convey mood and emotion effectively.

I received a free advanced review copy of the audiobook through NetGalley. I volunteered to provide an honest review.

[Erin Crane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection! Just a few duds for me, and even then it was mostly that I thought they were meh, not horrible.

As other reviewers have noted, there are a lot of dark stories and even horror. That made the collection work even better for me! Nnedi and I are on the same page there.

I found two of these stories frustrating in that they engaged with themes in unoriginal way, but I think most other readers list them as favorites. The Forgetting Room and Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! The latter especially annoyed me because the device of it all was so transparent and manipulative. If a society has robots in a factory that it doesn’t view as alive, why would it ever give the robots a week of freedom before recycling? It would’ve been so easy to create a scenario that made more sense.

My favorites:
1. Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole: as an Ursula K. Le Guin fan, it was fun to read a story that revisits her story and reacts to it.
2. The River Judge: historical “good for her” ish story with lots and lots of murder.
3. The Weight of Your Own Ashes: tackles what grief and death look like for an entity that has multiple bodies, including the gap in understanding with someone who only has one body.
4. Ushers: saw where this was going, but it was fun to get there. Couple detectives interview a young man who conveniently has death happen around him but he’s never a victim himself.

[Marlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

As much as I enjoyed these stories – and I generally did – there was so much dark fantasy and outright horror in this collection that after I finished I needed a cocoa, a lie down, and a comfort read to get over it. Together, these stories do not exactly paint a pretty picture of the world these authors were thinking of as they wrote, but then again, the world we’re living in right now often feels as dark as they painted.

Because this is a collection of the best stories of the previous year, I had read a few of them before – in my Hugo Nomination readings as the publication periods overlapped. Where I have already posted a review of the story, I’ve linked to it instead of repeating myself.

The Escape Rating for the collection as a whole is a very much fudge-factored A-, and it feels like there’s a horrifying monster lurking in the dark eating that fudge. Or something like that.

I need to go find myself another cocoa while you read the reviews of the individual stories. Just FYI, you might need one too.

My complete review is too long to be posted here, because I reviewed each of the individual stories. It's published at Reading Reality

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This audiobook gets off to a rough start with a short story that I think really only works in pint-- and is probably pretty awesome in that format, but not in this one. Or maybe it works for others on audio and just not for my brain; after trying with it for quite a while, I had to skip the rest and my hopes weren't high for the rest of the volume. While there were a few stories that seemed mildly paranormal (not full "fantasy"), it ended up being an enjoyable mix with a lot of authors I've never read before.

Most readers were good or at least did a good job of being part of the background. One or two seemed like odd choices-- there were pronunciations that were different from how I'd ever heard those words, and that didn't seem down to accent or regional variations. One in particular seemed to break up sentences oddly, in a way that made it seem they didn't understand what they were reading.

Overall, though, a pretty great reading experience and I would certainly read future volumes. Suggest this in either format to genre readers with wide-ranging interests, or to readers looking to break into sci-fi/fantasy/paranormal but who are unsure what they might like.

eARC from NetGalley.

[Robert Yokoyama · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories about machines, outer space and ghosts appealed to me the most. "Reduce" Reuse "Recycle" is my favorite story about machines. This story is about how a machine named Douglas gets to experience the outside world after spending his entire life working in a factory. Douglas experiences what it is like to make friends with human beings, enjoy listening to music and the joy of reading books. I really like creative premise of machines interacting with humans. "Fuck Them Kids" is my favorite story about outer space. This story's title drew me in, but this story is about a young woman's passion for racing her spaceship. "Fuck Them Kids" is also about living in domes on the moon Europa, which is on the planet of Jupiter. The theme of living on another planet interests me as a fan of science fiction. "Also, The Cat" is a story about the ghosts of people and animals have unfinished business to complete before moving on to the afterlife. This is a special story that makes me feel empathy for the humans and the cat in this story. These stories are creatively written and entertaining to read.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this anthology as a bit of a stretch for myself. I’ve been feeling more confident in my reviewing lately, and I wanted to see how I’d do with a collection of short stories rather than a single, cohesive narrative. I’ll admit, this one challenged me more than I expected.

As with most anthologies, I enjoyed some stories more than others, but that had far more to do with personal taste than with quality. I tend to gravitate toward fantasy over science fiction, so it’s no surprise that certain pieces resonated more strongly with me. That said, even the stories that weren’t quite my thing were clearly well-crafted. With an editor of this caliber, the overall level of storytelling is consistently strong.

There’s a noticeable range of styles, themes, and tones here, which is exactly what I want from a “Best of” collection. While not every story landed for me, I never felt like I was reading anything weak or careless.

If you enjoy science fiction, fantasy, or simply sampling excellent short-form speculative fiction, this anthology is well worth your time. It’s a solid collection, and a good reminder that sometimes “not for me” is very different from “not good.”

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've enjoyed this series for some time. It can be uneven at times. I've never read one series that completely solid but they always have some stand outs.
My favorite is definitely The Water Outlaws by S.L. Huang. It's great example of fantasy in short form.
T, J. Klune's Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! absolutely pulled me in and I couldn't put it down. It's not exactly a new story but Klune put's his own spin and came out with something very remarkable.
The runner-up for me was Ushers by Joe Hill. This is fun and funny and great in the way only Joe Hill can do. I really liked this story but it's just that it's been done and somewhat derivative. I just can't say no to anything Joe Hill though.
This collection is definitely worth picking up for these three stories alone.
I will say that in closing that for the life of me I didn't get We Will Teach You How To Read I Will Teach You How To Read.

[Aisling · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great collection. Some stories were better than others, but none was outright bad. Maybe this is a weird thing to zero in on, but I liked the placement of each story. It felt like a lot of attention was given to where a story would go, how each tone would interact with the one that came before and the one that comes after, and the whole thing has a really nice canter. That's impressive for a wide-reaching anthology like this, and I've read more focused ones that do a worse job at sequencing.

The first story ("We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read") is one of the most formally AND narratively inventive stories I've ever read, and the two weave together in perfect concert. Genuinely made me gasp multiple times on public transit while reading. Just incredible.

Other high points were "Country Birds," "The River Judge," "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole," "Yarns," and "Ushers."

[Steph S · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved this anthology, but if you're looking for any 'sword & sorcery' type fantasy, you won't find it here. You will, however, find a smattering of horror.

Still, this is a really stand-out selection. Favorites include:

- The River Judge, by S.L. Huang (a bit of feminist revenge fantasy)
- The Weight of Your Own Ashes, by Carlie St. George (I read a lot of stories, and I've never read one from quite this perspective. This was fantastic.)
- The Forgetting Room, by Kathryn H. Ross (always love a good story about what happens when you can selectively shed memories; strong Bradbury vibes here)
- Ushers, by Joe Hill (creepy af)
- We Will Teach You How To Read, We Will Teach You How To Read by Caroline M. Yoachim (I recommend the audio version on the Lightspeed Magazine podcast)
- The Sort, by Thomas Ha (a bit sci-fi, a bit Shirley Jackson)

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly excellent collection of sci-fi and fantasy short stories, with a few horror tales thrown in. There is a strong focus on work that explores “otherness,” in species or abilities in the sci-fi works, and in the several fantasy and horror stories that had racism at their core. The collection alternates sci-fi and fantasy selections, with excellent narrators of the audiobook.
I don’t read enough short fiction to say these are the best, but it’s the best, most even, of a collection I’ve read in a while. 4.75 rounded up.
My thanks to the author, @MarinerBooks, @HarperAudioAdult, and #NetGalley for early access to the audiobook of #TheBestAmericanScienceFictionandFantasy2025 for review purposes. Publication date: 21 October 2025.

[Tales Untangled · Rating 5 out of 5]

My thanks for the ARC goes to NetGalley and HarperAudio Adult, Mariner Books. I'm voluntarily leaving a review.

Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy
Format: Anthology with multiple authors

I enjoy anthologies to find new authors and see what's new in the genre.

This is a fabulous collection with historical, paranormal creatures, contemporary, and social issues all dressed into fantastic worlds. I also enjoyed the diverse voices. The cultural influence is apparent in the language and circumstances of the stories—one of my favorite things about sci-fi and fantasy is gaining a new perspective, and this is especially true of being able to see different races.

I highly recommend this anthology.

Happy reading!

This is a review of the audiobook.

[Agatha · Rating 4 out of 5]

4? 4.5?

I loved reading stories chosen by my favorite author, getting to see what stories and works inspire her and that she finds notable. I enjoy how Nnedi Okorafor didn't try to box herself in within rigid confines of "science fiction" and "fantasy" in the traditional sense of the genres.

The intro was a great read, getting a background about Okorafor and her history of loving stories, but also the note that "genre fiction" like fantasy but especially sci fi isn't appreciated as works of writing that convey deep, important ideas (most of them time, actually).

Great read, thanks so much NetGalley and Mariner Books for the opportunity to read my favorite author's favorite stories of the year.

[Trish · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorites:
The River Judge, S.L. Huang
After years of disposing of corpses for her father, a young woman comes into her own as an assassin and inn keeper

Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole, Isabel J. Kim

Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!, T. J. Klune
After almost 10 years of service, an android is granted a week to live in the world. he reads Descartes, dances, finds friends, and sees The Wizard of Oz before reporting back to have his mind wiped and start the cycle again.

Ushers, Joe Hill
Told through two interviews between government agents and a young man who has twice avoided mass casualty situations. They suspect he may have been involved, but he actually has the ability to see the figures who usher people into death.

[Denice Langley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Collections of short stories are one of my most recommended books to family and friends. When asked for author recommendations, I always offer up the numerous collections in my personal library, as this is where I find so many wonderful authors that I would never have chosen. Short stories require an author to flex their writing skills, capturing readers in fewer pages than many chapters in a novel. They must immediately immerse readers into a story in progress and bring the characters to life so quickly, all the "meat" of the mystery is revealed in just a few pages. This collection includes the best of the best and will be appreciated by my reading circle as we choose new books to share.

[Critter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an audio ARC.

I thought this was a very solid short story collection. I loved the variety of voices in this collection. Not every story worked for me, but that was fine. The ones I enjoyed, I really liked. I did appreciate that I got to see lesser known authors and well known authors in this collection. The style of the first story in this collection also really intrigued me. I also loved the variety of narrators which also helped to highlight the different voices and storytellers in this collection. They also all dod a great job with their performances.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this collection of science fiction and fantasy short stories that ran the gamut of what those two genres can include. I always enjoy how these collections introduce me to new authors. There were three standouts for me: We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read by Caroline M. Yoachim, Country Birds by Kiji Johnson, and The Weight of Your Own Ashes by Carlie St. George. I had also previously read and enjoyed The Audit by Olivie Blake.

Thanks to Netgalley and Mariner Books for an early copy.