Editor Donna Scott is a director and former chair of the BSFA, as well as being a distinguished poet, writer, and stand-up comedian. Donna is also a free-lance editor who has worked behind the scenes for a number of major publishers over the course of several years. She has been the series editor for the Best of British Science Fiction since its launch in 2017.

Editor Donna Scott is a director and former chair of the BSFA, as well as being a distinguished poet, writer, and stand-up comedian. Donna is also a free-lance editor who has worked behind the scenes for a number of major publishers over the course of several years. She has been the series editor for the Best of British Science Fiction since its launch in 2017.

Editor Donna Scott is a director and former chair of the BSFA, as well as being a distinguished poet, writer, and stand-up comedian. Donna is also a free-lance editor who has worked behind the scenes for a number of major publishers over the course of several years. She has been the series editor for the Best of British Science Fiction since its launch in 2017.

Best of British Science Fiction 2022 edited by Donna Scott

A volume that gathers together the very best science fiction stories by British and British-based authors published during 2022. Two dozen stories, varying greatly in subject matter and style, exploring every facet of science fiction.; includes stories by Lavie Tidhar, Keith Brooke, Eric Brown, Ida Keogh, Tim Major, Fiona Moore, Ian Whates, Val Nolan, Neil Williamson, E.M. Faulds, and more.

Table of Contents:
Introduction by Donna Scott
A Moment of Zugzwang – Neil Williamson
A Quickening Tide – Andrew Wilson and A J McIntosh
In the Weave – David Whitmarsh
The Marshalls of Mars – Tim Major
The Amelioration of Existence in Spite of Truth and Reconciliation – EM Faulds
Last Bite at the Klondike – Liam Hogan
For I Shall Consider My Cat J/FRY – Alice Dryden
The FenZone – Ian Whates
Translation – Philip Irving
Long Live the Strawberries of Finsbury Park – Stephen Oram
Eternal Soldier – L.N. Hunter
I Know What You Are – Matt Thompson
Gortcullinane Man – Val Nolan
The Spreads of Space and Endless Devastation – Stewart Baker
Call of the Void – J.K. Fulton
Retirement Options for (Too) Successful Space Entrepreneurs – Brent Baldwin
The Memory Spider – Fiona Moore
Sunrunner – Robert Bagnall
Assets – Keith Brooke and Eric Brown
The Flamingo Maximizer – Dafydd McKimm
Wheel of Fortune – Ida Keogh
Those We Leave Behind – Vaughan Stanger
Junk Hounds – Lavie Tidhar


CURATOR'S NOTE

Donna's assembled a terrific anthology here, which itself won a British Science Fiction Award! Start our bundle in style with some of the best new British science fiction! – Lavie Tidhar

 

REVIEWS

  • "Best of British Science Fiction 2022 and its predecessors provide a useful snapshot of SF today and an entertaining read."

    – SFCrowsnest
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

This is the seventh Best of British Science Fiction, and for the previous six I have included in my introduction a bit of a snapshot of what I'm up to, and a little of my impressions of what is going on in the world of short science-fiction stories: the sorts of things people are writing about. The zeitgeist if you will.

This year it was good to see a wide variety of publications to choose from, including many I'd not received stories from previously. The short fiction market appears to be a healthy one.

Each year I do this, I try to see if I can detect any common themes among my submissions. There still seem to be a few pandemic-inspired stories in the mix, but they have tailed off considerably. Sifting through the rest of the stories it became clear that there were two simmering societal concerns feeding into the creative psyche: colonisation and the disruption of AI.

AI in particular has been of growing concern to creatives of all kinds, and it concerns me too. AI content scrapers that produce convincing images in any bespoke style following just a few prompts, or Language Learning Models that can churn out any type of prose or poetry in seconds have grown from the laughable crudeness seen by early adopters to more and more sophisticated and convincing outputs as the months have passed. 2022 saw an outcry as first a theatre company advertising a ballet, then a major publisher revealing a cover for a popular author were discovered to have used AI art instead of employing a human artist.

Remember the government poster from a few years ago of a ballerina tying up her shoes saying, "Fatima's next job could be in cyber"? Well, Fatima had probably best stick to dancing, as it turns out the LLMs are getting better and better at coding too.

It would be a very strong-willed person indeed who hasn't experimented a little with these 'toys.' I myself was curious enough to try Craiyon – just for making some throwaway visual jokes to share in an online chat, and I had a go at prompting ChatGPT, just to see what it could do. The results weren't terribly good, but they were delivered speedily, and that was the scary thing to me. Writing copy was not bringing in the big bucks for friends, but they have already seen their work opportunities diminish as a result of AI. There is a certain tone to AI writing that can't really be flattened out using the provided filters and parameters, but it seems the corporations who just want some copy aren't that discerning.

It's enough to make you wonder what will happen with story writing. Clarkesworld editor Neil Clarke announced in February that the magazine would be closed to submissions temporarily due to being flooded with an unmanageable quantity of AI-generated stories. Other editors have shared similar tales of an uptick in spammy submissions. And yes, AI stories are nothing but spam. If you can't write the story yourself, why bother? I would urge any writers who are tired of rejection to just keep writing and improving, and one day it will happen. Not every story is good. Not every good story is published. Not every good, published story gets picked up for anthologies like this one. Take it from me, rejection is character building… and world building… and prose tightening. You will get there. Please don't use AI.

When it comes to writing ourselves out of the singularity, I noticed several stories in the submissions pile had the robots falling in love with us. Perhaps one day, we will be living together in a sort of electric dream, but for now at least I'm confident that ChatGPT and its like could not write with the skill and nuance of the writers we have, and we can cut a clear channel between true art and the cheaters' prose.

Many stories were about making deep explorations in space, terraforming and colonisation. In many ways this theme is harking back to the 'Golden Age' as it is often termed. Now, though, following many billionaire-funded rocket launches over the past couple of years, it's not difficult to see what could be possible, eventually. And there are tinges of future-past anxiety in some of the stories that engage the reader on a deeper philosophical level. We could, but should we? Why would we even go? Perhaps, here too, is a buried dread of venturing further out than our home in a much more down to earth sense: the end of the Global Pandemic; general feelings of reluctance at the idea of leaving the place where we feel safest.

All of these stories are ones that really made me feel something – that's the kind of story I like, be it hard or soft SF, space opera, technological, parallel dimensions, alternative history, quirky, satirical, militaristic, or funny.