2024 LOCUS AWARD NOMINEE
2024 BSFA AWARD NOMINEE
The third annual instalment to the ‘excellent, lovingly curated (Financial Times) The Best of World SF series
The Best of World SF series is a fixture on the global science fiction scene. If you want to find the most exciting SF authors writing today, look no further.
In this third instalment, you’ll discover alien artists, rioting dinosaurs, shape-shifting rabbits, heartbreak-harvesting cafes and one robot on a quest for meaning. You will be transported to the stars and back down to Earth and sideways, with the order of the world turned upside down.
Featuring authors from Austria, Bulgaria, China, Finland, Ghana, Greece, India, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, the Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Singapore and South Africa, this collection’s stories have been selected by award-winning writer, editor and World SF expert Lavie Tidhar.
The most exciting science fiction on the planet comes from all corners of the globe. And it’s all in the Best of World SF series.
Table of Contents:
1. “A Minor Kalahari” by Diana Rahim (Singapore)
2. “Behind Her, Trailing Like Butterfly Wings” by Daniela Tomova (Bulgaria)
3. “Cloudgazer” by Timi Odueso (Nigeria)
4. “The EMO Hunter” by Mandisi Nkomo (South Africa)
5. “Tloque Nahuaque” by Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas (Mexico) translated by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
6. “The Walls of Benin City” by M.H. Ayinde (UK)
7. “The Foodie Federation’s Dinosaur Farm” by Luo Longxiang (China) translated by Andy Dudak
8. “The Day The World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (The Netherlands) translated by Lia Belt
9. “The Worldless” by Indrapramit Das (India)
10. “Now You Feel It” by Andrea Chapela (Mexico) translated by Emma Törzs
11. “Act of Faith” by Fadzlishah Johanabas (Malaysia)
12. “Godmother” by Cheryl S. Ntumy (Ghana)
13. “I Call Upon the Night as Witness” by Zahra Mukhi (Pakistan)
14. “Sulfur” by Dmitry Glukhovsky (Russia) translated by Marian Schwartz
15. “Proposition 23” by Efe Okogu (Nigeria)
16. “Root Rot” by Fargo Tbakhi (US)
17. “Catching the K-Beast” by Chen Qian (China) translated by Carmen Yiling Yan
18. “Two Moons” by Elena Pavlova (Bulgaria) translated by Kalin M. Nenov and Elena Pavlova
19. “Symbiosis Theory” by Choyeop Kim (Korea) translated by Joungmin Lee Comfort
20. “My Country is a Ghost” by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Greece)
21. “Old People’s Folly” by Nora Schinnerl (Austria)
22. “Echoes of a Broken Mind” by Christine Lucas (Greece)
23. “Have Your #Hugot Harvested at This Diwata-Owned Café” by Vida Cruz (Philippines)
24. “Order C345” by Sheikha Helawy (Palestine) translated by Raphael Cohen
25. “Dark Star” by Vraiux Dorós (Mexico) translated by Toshiya Kamei
26. “An excerpt from ‘A Door Opens: The Beginning of the Fall of the Ispancialo-in-Hinirang (Emprensa Press: 2007)’ by Salahuddin Alonto, Annotated by Omar Jamad Maududi, MLS, HOL, JMS.” by Dean Francis Alfar (Philippines)
27. “Ootheca” by Mário de Seabra Coelho (Portugal)
28. “Where The Trains Turn” by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen (Finland) translated by Liisa Rantalaiho
WHAT THEY SAY
As with the second volume in this series, this is exactly what a book of science fiction should be: confronting and examining a range of issues, in varied times and places, through a variety of technological and social lenses. I look forward to the day when anthologies will include writers from places such as Greece, Nigeria, Bulgaria, and the Philippines as a matter of course, alongside American, English, and Australian authors. Until then, I can only hope Tidhar finds the time to keep creating these anthologies, to raise the profile of individual authors and the very existence of ‘‘world SF.’’
Locus
Lavie Tidhar 