The Year's Best Science Fiction

on Earth 2

Edited by Allan Kaster

This is a collection of the best science fiction stories set on planet Earth published in 2023 by leading voices of the genre.

• “A Soul in the World” by Charlie Jane Anders—A childless woman is given a most unusual child to raise as her own.

• “A Kingdom of Seagrass and Silk” by Cécile Cristofari—An elderly couple fend for themselves on a deserted island while waiting out an epidemic.

• “LOL, Said the Scorpion” by Rich Larson—Wealthy tourists wear bio-filtering suits to go on live vacations to impoverished countries.

• “A Borrowing of Bones” by Karin Lowachee—Dusters assimilate the experiences of other people into their own lives.

• “Devil in the Deep” by Lucie Lukačovičová—A Bolivian mining community blames lady scientists for their bad luck.

• “Gravesend, or, Everyday Life in the Anthropocene” by Paul McAuley—An army veteran, suffering from the aftereffects of a psych bomb, convalesces in the eco-stressed marshes of the Thames.

• “Sigh No More” by Ian McDonald—The show must go on despite a solar flare that has crashed London’s electrical grid.

• “Cuttlefish” by Anil Menon—A family seeks to escape the modern world at an old fashioned Indian guesthouse.

• “Highway Requiem” by T. R. Napper—A trucker’s way of life on the roads of the Outback is threatened by automation.

• “Contracting Iris” by Peter Watts—A novel microbial infection changes the behavior of a woman diagnosed with MS.

• “Deep Blue Jump” by Dean Whitlock—Children are forced to pick drug-like dreamberries in desert canyons under austere conditions.