The Year's Top Science Fiction

An unabridged collection showcasing the best science fiction stories and novellas published in 2025 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster.

• “Low-Tide Salvage” by Matthew Claxton—Rival groups use highly advanced biotech to manipulate their biomes.
• “The Robot and the Winding Woods” by Brenda Cooper—Intransigent docents lying low in a shuttered campground are confronted by a government robot.
• “In the Tangle of the Sea” by Cécile Cristofari—Amidst a plague and rising seas, a secluded archaeologist’s neatly-ordered life is at risk after rescuing a drowning stranger.
• “Barnacle” by Kate Elliott—An elderly combat medic turned nurse bridges the gap between life and death in a highly regimented company town near a drowned city.
• “Girls Night Out” by Henry Herz—High school teenage girls fight aliens after watching the movie Alien at the mall.
• “Wire Mother” by Isabel J. Kim—A daughter has trouble bonding with the digital mother her father loves.
• “Most Things” by Rich Larson—Two gig-workers accept a darkmarket contract to kidnap a quantum biologist.
• “Excerpts from The Unauthorized Autobiography of Benjamin Brick” by John P. Murphy—The autobiography of a recently deceased author is written posthumously.
• “The Hidden God” by T.R. Napper—As AI evolves, billionaires begin dying in bizarre accidents.
• “The Apology Tour” by Nnedi Okorafor—The creator of sentient, personal AIs goes on a public relations tour to repair her reputation.
• “We, the Fleet” by Alex T. Singer—Mechanical creatures use machine parts to repair a human, who has crash-landed on their planet.
• “Darwin’s Rocket” by Alan Smale—Charles Darwin’s controversial experiments in rocket science raise eyebrows in this alternate history chronicled by one of his sisters.
• “The Recovery of Lemuria 7” by Allen M. Steele—The daughter of a tech billionaire aids the recovery of her father’s spacecraft that vanished from the Moon 25 years earlier.
• “Missing Helen” by Tia Tashiro—A woman is unnerved by her ex-husband’s engagement to her younger clone.
• “Prime Purpose” by Steve Rasnic Tem—An old man and robot grow older together.
• “Pandora’s Formula” by Hannah Yang—A couple’s honeymoon in Cozumel is eclipsed by news of the discovery of a simple way to kill all humans that’s accessible to everyone.