The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1 Quotes

“looks while you’re beating it in. Mix the baking soda, salt, and flour together, then gradually beat in the mayo mixture, and stir in your chips. Drop by rounded spoonfuls—oh, you know how to make cookies. You don’t have to grease your cookie sheets. Bake at 375F for about ten minutes and if you want them to stay chewy and soft, put them away in an airtight container before they’re all the way cool. If you like your cookies crunchy, well, what’s wrong with you? But in that case cool them before you put them away, and in fact you’ll probably be happier storing them in something that’s not airtight, like a classic cookie jar.”
― Neil Clarke, The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1

“•2½ cups flour •1 tsp baking soda •1 tsp salt •1 cup of vegetable oils (preferable 2 T sesame oil + canola oil to equal 1 cup) •¾ cup white sugar •¾ cup brown sugar •1 tsp vanilla extract •6 tablespoons of mayonnaise •12 ounces of whatever sort of chips you have in the house, or chopped up chocolate Cream the sugar and the oil, then beat in the mayonnaise. I promise the cookies will turn out fine, no matter how gross the mayo smells and”
― Neil Clarke, The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1

“Carole’s amazing roast chicken. Because how better to deal with fears of bird flu than by eating a bird, am I right? Here’s how you can make it yourself. You’ll need a chicken, first of all. Carole cuts it up herself but I’m lazy, so I buy a cut-up chicken at the store. You’ll need at least two pounds of potatoes. You’ll need a lemon and a garlic bulb. You’ll need a big wide roasting pan. I use a Cuisinart heavy-duty lasagna pan, but you can get by with a 13x9 cake pan. Cut up the potatoes into little cubes. (Use good potatoes! The yellow ones or maybe the red ones. In the summer I buy them at the farmer’s market.) Spray your pan with some cooking spray and toss in the potatoes. Peel all the garlic (really, all of it!) and scatter the whole cloves all through with the potatoes. If you’re thinking, “All that garlic?” just trust me on this. Roasted garlic gets all mild and melty and you can eat it like the potato chunks. Really. You’ll thank me later. Finally, lay out the chicken on top, skin-down. You’ll turn it halfway through cooking. Shake some oregano over all the meat and also some sea salt and a few twists of pepper. Squeeze the lemon, or maybe even two lemons if you really like lemon, and mix it in with a quarter cup of olive oil. Pour that over everything and use your hands to mix it in, make sure it’s all over the chicken and the potatoes. Then pour just a tiny bit of water down the side of the pan—you don’t want to get it on the chicken—so the potatoes don’t burn and stick. Pop it into a 425-degree oven and roast for an hour. Flip your chicken a half hour in so the skin gets nice and crispy.”
― Neil Clarke, The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1

“When you’re young, money is important, a house is important, a car is important—everything is important—and yet you still end up neglecting the most important things of all. By the time you earn all your money and get all the things you ought to have, some things are lost forever. Lao Sun understood now, but he was already old.”
― Neil Clarke, The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1

“Consciousness is expensive,” she said. “This is a problem for totalitarian states. A human being with interest in leisure, art, agency—a human being who is aware of her own self-interest—cannot be worked to maximum potential. I speak of more than simple slave labor. I am sure that many of your professors wish you could devote yourselves more completely to your studies.”
― Neil Clarke, The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1

“The story of resource extraction has only two cases, okay? In the first case, the extractors arrive and make the local ruler an offer. Being selfish, he takes it and he becomes rich—never so rich as the extractors, but compared to his people, fabulously, delusionally rich. His people become the cheap labor used to extract the resource. This leads to social upheaval. Villages are moved, families destroyed. A few people are enriched, the majority are ruined. Maybe there is an uprising against the ruler. In the second case the ruler is smarter. Maybe he’s seen some neighboring ruler’s head on a pike. He says no thanks to the extractors. To this they have various responses: make him a better offer, find a greedier rival, hire an assassin, or bring in the gunships. But in the end it’s the same: a few people are enriched, most are ruined. What the extractors never, ever do in any case, in all your history, is take no for an answer. Zia, much as I enjoy our historical discussions— Ah, you see? And there it is—your refusal to take no. Talk is done, now we move forward with your agenda.”
― Neil Clarke, The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1

“People were like parasites burrowed into the smog.”
― Chen Quifan, The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1