The New Voices of Science Fiction

This is a great collection of SFF by relatively new writers. While many of them have become well-established by now, getting major awards and big publishing deals, this is still a good introduction to the work of Rebecca Roanhorse, Amal El-Mohtar, Alice Sola Kim, Sam J. Miller, E. Lily Yu, Rich Larson, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Sarah Pinsker, Darcie Little Badger, S. Qiouyi Lu, Kelly Robson, and others. I love the diverse viewpoints and characters created by this group of writers and recommend this highly for anyone interested in the current state and trends of SFF and its future.

The New Voices of Science Fiction collects today’s best and brightest science fiction writers in one extremely entertaining tome. There are names I’d definitely heard of like Rebecca Roanhorse and Sam J. Miller, and others I wish I’d gotten to know sooner. Each of these stories provide a prime example of strong writing and character work, sending you throughout space and time to discover compelling futures. I was excited to discover a few new authors whose careers I’ll be watching closely.

I'm loving this science fiction collection of stories. Highly recommend, at least 3/4 of the stories are well worth reading, very impressed by the variety of the selection and writers. Hurrah for New Voices.

There's frankly nothing NOT to like in this excellent collection of perfectly-written short stories. They all brought me back to my childhood days of reading the brilliant works of some of the best science fiction authors of the late 1950s and 1960s - in particular, Dick, Ellison, Asimov, Norton, and Ray Bradbury, whose excellent "All Summer in a Day" is heavily lifted but expanded broadly with a time-travel twist. I felt compelled to read this in a few weeks' time, as I was reading against the clock - sincere thanks to NetGalley for their pre-publication copy in exchange for this review - but this is a book I'll purchase in order to read and enjoy spread throughout the year. A collection of stunning short stories that really brought me back.

Thanks, also, to the editors for expanding my reading list as I chase down other works by these exceptional authors.

The New Voices of Science Fiction by Hannu Rajaniemi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This short story collection caught my eye primarily because Hannu Rajaniemi's name was on the cover, but I wasn't fooled. Not really. This just happens to be a collection of the best SF stories to come out in the last five-ish years, as selected by him and Jacob Weisman.

Was I still interested? Yeah! After all, those guys have good taste. :) And when it comes to good tales as a whole, I enjoyed this entire book.

I've read a number of these stories already, and if I have, I'm lightly skimming over them. Otherwise...

Openness by Alexander Weinstein - A cool, scary look at intimacy worthy of a Black Mirror episode, where giving another person access to all your secret kinks, buttons, and memories can be either a great boon or a relationship killer. Me likey.

The Shape of My Name by Nino Capri - Time travel done in a very interesting way, focusing more on a strained familial relationship than anything else. The focus is clear but all the side discoveries are quite visceral.

UTOPIA, LOL by Jamie Wahls - Clever take on virtual reality and memes, with the added benefit of AIs and badass choices. Cool twist.

Mother Tongues by S. Qiouyi Lu - Linguistics-focused tale of parenthood and only wanting the best for the child with a very dark twist. It made me very sad.

In The Sharing Place by David Erik Nelson - What seems to be a tale set in the brackets of the Stages of Grief eventually becomes something much more interesting, more creative. Very chilling.

A Series of Steaks by Vina Jie-Min Prasad - I've read this twice and have seen it reprinted all over the place. If you haven't read it, enjoy a printed tale as tasty as steak. Don't ask if it's a forgery. :)

Secret Life of Bots by Suzanne Palmer - Also a commonly reprinted tale, but quite fun. A Hugo winner.

Ice by Rich Larson - Probably my least favorite of the collection, this was a tale of sibling rivalry on an ice planet. Genetic jealousy.

One Hour, Every Seven Years by Alice Sola Kim - Very oppressive in isolation and loneliness, this time travel tale seems to have lots of hidden gems in it. The descriptions of Venus and Mars and their places in the tale struck me as rather important. Time to see the sun!

Toppers by Jason Sanford - This one really caught my imagination. Apocalyptic New York meets a creepy Whispering Mist that is a lot more than it seems. Two thumbs up.

Tender Loving Plastics by Amman Sabet - AIs and foster care. What could go wrong?

Welcome To Your Authentic Indian Experience by Rebecca Roanhorse - Another Hugo winner. And it's easily one of the best stories I've read in the last few years. :) Quite sharp.

Strange Waters by Samantha Mills - Another re-read for me, Water is not always water, and fishing is not always fishing. Great worldbuilding, interesting mash.

Calved by Sam J. Miller - Another re-read. Excellent setting with a frustrated dad just trying to do right but unable to get a grip on the future world or his own slightly estranged son.

The Need for Air by Lettie Prell - A virtual reality warning. Pretty heartbreaking but my sympathies are all for the son.

Robo-Liopleurodon! by Darcie Little Badger - Nanotech in the ocean. Need I say more? Aren't you excited? I was! And am!

The Doing and Undoing of Jacob E. Mwangi by E. Lily Yu - The transformation from gamer to ... dreamer. Pretty mild, but interesting.

Madeleine by Amal El-Mohtar - Probably one of my favorites in the bunch, it combines a voluntary medical trial with horrible time-travel-ish side effects, reality modifications, and the very uneasy feeling that memory inside time is all that we have. Parts of me would call this a horror.

Our Lady of the Open Road by Sarah Pinsker - Very enjoyable tale of aging traveling rockers butting heads against a VR tech world.

A Study in Oils by Kelly Robson - I can't decide whether I think this is the best one in this collection or not, but it's really close. I'm a sucker for redemption stories... especially when it comes tied to horrible sanctioned free-range revenge and art. :)

The New Voices of Science Fiction is an excellent companion to The New Voices of Fantasy published by Tachyon in 2017. So often genre is lumped together, especially science fiction and fantasy, but, just like me, if you enjoyed The New Voices of Fantasy, you will almost certainly enjoy The New Voices of Science Fiction. All of the stories included in this anthology were originally published or written within the last five or so years? Some of the names are unfamiliar to me, but a lot of these names have come to critical acclaim within those last five years, so it's an excellent introduction if you're also wondering where to begin with the genre. Yes, the entire SF genre. A lot of the older "classic" science fiction feels dated in tone, terminology, and technology and can at times feel intimidating for someone who may be unfamiliar with the genre, and this anthology elevates the newer voices we should be paying attention to. And yes, there are foundational genre works that act as cornerstones, but sometimes we have to smash the past and build something new.

My favorite stories in this anthology were Rebecca Roanhorse's "Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience," Amal El-Mohtar's "Madeleine," and Suzanne Palmer's "Madeleine," but all of them have something to consider and were all enjoyable to read. One of the things I loved most about this was that the writers included in this collection are so diverse, elevating a lot of different cultures, ideas, ways of looking at the world, and storytelling styles, and that is exactly what I hope for when I read any anthology, and this one ticked all of the boxes for me. This collection also made me want to go read the longer works by the authors included, and I realized I've had several books on my shelves already!

I started this ARC while I was waiting at the doctor's (always a good place to read) and I was so engrossed reading the I nearly missed my turn.
It's a great anthology that features tons of great authors new to me.
I loved theirs stories, the different approaches and genres and all of them are well crafted and fascinating.
Back home I started to search books by the authors I read and I hope I will be able to read some of their works.
It was a great reading experience, highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

The New Voices of Science Fiction is an anthology of new SF short fiction expertly curated and introduced by Hannu Rajaniemi & Jacob Weisman. Released 13th Nov 2019 by Tachyon, it's 432 pages and available in paperback and ebook formats. These stories (20 by my count), were originally published between 2015 and 2019 and are gathered here for the first time.

This is top shelf fiction. One of the reasons I like anthologies and collections is that they're often full of new-to-me authors for further reading. I've always had a particular fondness for collections/anthologies because short fiction is spare and technically challenging, so you get a better feel for an author's expertise with the form. Short fiction is less of a time commitment as well, so if one story is not working for you, there's another piece readily available in a few pages.This is a showcase of up and coming authors; it's a sister volume to The New Voices of Fantasy from 2017. The short introductions for each story are interesting and well written and add a lot of interest.

The quality of the stories is very high. They are well written, varied, well curated stories. Of the 20 included stories, only a few were from authors familiar to me.

It's unclear from the publishing info available online, but the eARC I received has a handy interactive table of contents. I hope the ebook release version does also. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately. Presumably that feature will carry through to the final release version.

I think this might be the first time I've given an anthology 5 stars. These stories are varied in tone, execution, length, subject matter, but they're all really good.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

I love science fiction, I love finding new authors, and this delivered perfectly! There were so many interesting perspectives and voices that even in spite of its weaknesses I couldn't help but love it. It touched on all my favorite topics like technology, robots, climate and foreign worlds, with many stories having familial themes (which I didn't know I would enjoy so much! For my taste and preferences, there weren't many stories that were just 'okay.' It either felt like I loved them and I really did not like them (a risk, for me, with collections that feature multiple authors). All in all, would highly recommend!

I won't review all the individual stories, but my favorites from the collection are:
Mother Tongues by S. Qiouyi
The Secret Life of Bots by Suzanne Palmer
Tender Loving Plastics Amman Sabet
Welcome to You Authentic Indian Experience™ by Rebecca Roanhorse
Strange Waters by Samantha Mills

A strong collection that introduced me to some new writers I'm excited to explore further. If you want to know what's happening in the sci-fi world right now, this is a great place to sample a lot of the flavors that are emerging right now.

It’s a tough thing to edit an anthology – finding stories that match the anthology theme, making sure the stories are varied enough that readers will enjoy most of the offerings and hopefully find new writers to follow, and somehow keeping it all sequenced to showcase the individual offerings.

Hannu Rajaniemi, too, as an author is, for me, right out on the edge of the current generation of hard scifi writers – technical, fiercely explorative and vibrant – so I was excited to see what he selected. The result is a good range of contemporary and diverse scifi voices and stories: robots, climate change, time travel, progressive gender and familial dynamics, new diasporas and cultural shifts.

I was familiar with some of the stories here already (not uncommon, very good pieces often get reprinted in multiple anthologies and I read a fair number of them each year) but I was pleased that some of my recent favourites were included: Sarah Pinsker’s Our Lady of the Open Road, Mother Tongues by S. Qiouyi Lu, and Openness by Alexander Weinstein.

Of those new to me my favourites were: The Secret Life of Bots by Suzanne Palmer, Tender Loving Plastics by Amman Sabet, and Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™ by Rebecca Roanhorse.

My only gripe was with the ‘new’ part. This is likely subjective, but a lot of these authors have won Hugos for their work, have been writing for almost a decade, have been collected in ‘years best anthologies’ or are otherwise established short fiction writers. It’s a minor thing and doesn’t take away from the strength of the stories collected here, but the title does imply the collection will be casting further afield or finding cutting edge, emerging writers.

If you want a great roundup of what this generation’s scifi looks like – the topics and dilemmas it’s grappling with and the breadth of voices and experiences being included and portrayed, this is well worth your time.

An advance copy of this book was kindly provided by Tachyon Publications and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

If you liked this collection, you may also be interested in the companion volume published in 2017: The Best New Voices of Fantasy.

Sometimes, you read a short story and you come away feeling that you've just been part of something important. It's a powerful feeling. Like an author has shared a secret with you, whispered into your ear something profound. A truth you didn't know that you were holding in your heart, an idea you hadn't yet polished into belief. Well, this collection managed to give me that sensation multiple times. Rajaniemi and Weisman have curated something beautiful here.
The title is a bold claim, "The New Voices of Science Fiction." You could not be blamed for being skeptical. But as an avid fan of the genre, I feel it has lived up to its promises, and more. After almost every story in this collection I scrambled to GoodReads to follow an author or mark a first novel as 'to read'. I feel like this anthology has turned me on to authors that I'll be following for many years to come, a series of stars on the rise.
The collection opens with a story that could best be described as a Black Mirror cautionary, if Black Mirror were even half as clever as it thinks it is. It ends with a meditation on remorse and the power of art, in a world where bots and nanotech can handle everything. The two stories couldn't be more different, but they felt perfectly connected by the thread uniting the collection.

Personal standouts:
The Shape of My Name by Nino Cipri
Mother Tongue by S. Qiuoyi Lu
Madeleine by Amal El-Mohtar
Ice by Rich Larson
The Doing and Undoing of Jacob E. Mwangi by E. Lily Yu

While reading this book I kept thinking of the cliche "Always leave them wanting more." Here each author left me hanging. Their stories were great, I wanted more and so I'll keep these authors in mind when looking for a new science fiction series.

And a Rebecca Roanhorse story too. You can't go wrong if you buy this book.

I would strongly consider this book for a short class on modern science fiction for the high school level. What I particularly liked was that unlike so much if the science fiction of the past few decades, this book doesn't leave the reader depressed. The integration of technology in ways that is just now starting to seem normal us carried forward to tease out the idea what it may become. Communicating text-style mind-to-mind, bioprinting meat, AIs making decisions in war situations....the stories in this book draw you in, make you care about the issues, and for me, at least, almost always made me smile at the resolution of the story. I definitely will add this to my personal collection and have recommended it to our schools library for purchase.

This is a great collection of stories, many of which written by writers I was not familiar with previously. Now I'm looking forward to reading their other works, because all of the stories in this anthology are superbly done. This is an excellent sampling of today's emerging sci-fi writers. My favorite story was "Mother Tongues". I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for top-notch science fiction!

I normally find it hard to review anthologies but not this time. This is a great collection of new sci-fi authors and their stories. There's something for every kind of sci-fi fan in this book.

I definitely recommend this to any sci-fi fans. While the topics are wide ranging, I could still enjoy them all.

Collections like these make me mad at myself for not getting into the short fiction genre sooner. Up until a couple years ago I didn't really read short stories because I felt I had too many full length novels on my never-ending TBR to read. I had no idea the disservice I was doing to myself as a reader!

This collection has solidified my belief that short fiction can be just as powerful and engrossing as longer works. Each story was better than the last, covering a wide range of settings and plots within the science fiction genre. It was so impressive how fully immersed I felt in some of the stories despite their shorter length. It takes true talent as a writer to be able to achieve this.

Rebecca Roanhorse was the only author I was familiar with and her story “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™” was easily one of my favorites. It really got under my skin, but in that awesome way only the most provocative of stories can do.

Even though I'm terrified of robots, another story that stood out was “The Secret Life of Bots” by Suzanne Palmer. Most would assume the trials the crew was facing on a doomed mission would be at the forefront, but it was just a bit of noise in the background as these robots went about their tasks. It was a fascinating concept.

Sarah Pinsker’s “Our Lady of the Open Road" was a lonely yet empowering look into people trying to have human connections in a world becoming increasingly disconnected. I would have loved to have read more of this world!

“Robo-Liopleurodon!” by Darcie Little Badger was another one I adored and would have wanted more from, but the few pages we were given were amazing.

Honestly, I could rave nonstop about most of the stories but those were the ones that stood out the most for me. The New Voices of Science Fiction is a seriously impressive anthology of writings that have turned me on to a host of new writers I can't wait to read more from.

Full review to come on my blog!

An excellent collection of 20 short stories by new authors. Every one was good, and now I have many new authors to explore the works of!

My favorites:
The Shape of My Name by Nino Cipri: A trans man from a family of female time-travelers
Mother Tongues by S Qiou-yi Lu: A woman sells her fluent Mandarin to send her daughter to college
A Series of Steaks by Vina Jie-Min Prasad: Helena and Lily, steak forgers
The Secret Life of Bots by Suzanne Palma: an old retired bot is brought back into use due to desperate times
Strange Waters by Samantha Mills: Mika, a fisherwoman in time, is trying to get home

But really, every story was good, and every author in this anthology writes interesting stuff.
———
Thanks to NetGalley and Tachyon for the egalley

A great look at new science fiction voices! Highly recommend for fans of the genre and those looking to expand their genre experiences. Purchasing for library.

This is one of the best Anthology I have read in a long time. The story's are all very different and some of the voices very innovative in their own right. But the best thing for me was that there was no story that I did not like. Most of the time when one reads an Anthology one encounters (sooner or later) a story that one does not like. This was not the case in this Anthology. While I did not love all stories, I liked all of them and this is really a surprise.
Very good selection of stories and a good starting point for someone who wants to start reading speculative short fiction.

This was a great collection with quite a few interesting stories to enjoy. There is certainly something here for everyone and it has a great selection of new sci fi authors.

-- This review is several years past the release date due to the many issues of 2020, but a huge thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an early copy of the book.