The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025

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.

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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.

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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.

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Fantasy 

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• Look at the Moon by Dominique Dickey
  from Lightspeed

• The Witch Trap by Jennifer Hudak
  from Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet

• Ushers by Joe Hill
  from Amazon Original Stories

• Country Birds by Kij Johnson
  from Sunday Morning Transport

• The Wonders of the World by ‘Pemi Aguda
  from Ghostroots: Stories

• Also, the Cat by Rachel Swirsky
  from Reactor

• What Happened to the Crooners by Russell Nichols
  from Nightmare

• The River Judge by S.L. Huang
  from Reactor

• A Stranger Knocks by Tananarive Due
  from Uncanny

• An Ode to the Minor Arcana in a Triplet Flow by Xavier Garcia
  from Death in the Mouth, Vol. 2

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Science Fiction

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• The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics by Adam-Troy Castro
  from Lightspeed

• The Weight of Your Own Ashes by Carlie St. George
  from Clarkesworld

• We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read by Caroline M. Yoachim
  from Lightspeed

• Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole by Isabel J. Kim
  from Clarkesworld

• The Forgetting Room by Kathryn H. Ross
  from FIYAH

• The Audit by Olivie Blake
  from Januaries

• Yarns by Susan Palwick
  from Asimov’s

• Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! by T.J. Klune
  from In the Lives of Puppets

• Fuck Them Kids by Tatiana Obey
  from FIYAH

• The Sort by Thomas Ha
  from Clarkesworld