First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual request; a family’s pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous ...First contact with a mysterious race of aliens reveals an unusual request; a family’s pet dog comes to grips with the newly bestowed gift of human-like intelligence; a poet, in danger and alone on a distant world, makes unlikely allies; hundreds of years in the future, a famous hermit lives in the sea above the now-underwater Harvard University; former friends navigate unsteady peace between human refugees and the technologically superior race that saved them; in a future where human life can be infinitely extended through cybertronic rebirth, one woman declines immortality. For decades, science fiction has compelled us to imagine futures both inspiring and cautionary. With The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Two, award-winning editor Neil Clarke provides a year-in-review and twenty-seven of the best stories published by both new and established authors in 2016.
TABLE OF CONTENTS “The Visitor from Taured” by Ian R. Miller (Drowned Worlds, edited by Jonathana Strahan) “HigherWorks” by Gregory Norman Bossert (Asimov’s, December 2016) “A Strange Loop” by T.R. Napper (Interzone, January/February 2016) “Night Journey of the Dragon-Horse” by Xia Jia (Invisible Planets, edited by Ken Liu) “Pearl” by Aliette de Bodard (The Starlit Wood, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe) “The Metal Demimonde” by Nick Wolven (Analog, June 2016) “The Iron Tactician” by Alastair Reynolds (Newcon Press) “The Mighty Slinger” by Tobias S.
Miller (Clarkesworld, June 2016) “Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit—Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts” by Ken Liu (Drowned Worlds, edited by Jonathana Strahan) “Touring with the Alien” by Carolyn Ives Gilman (Clarkesworld, April 2016)