A couple of worthwhile stories out of eight

 kw: story reviews, science fiction, fantasy, anthologies, collections

I read at least parts of eight more stories in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025, guest edited by Nnedi Okorafor. I liked three to varying degrees, I rejected three after reading no more than a half page, and I didn't like the other two even well enough to mention their titles. I'll comment on the better three.

I have noticed that the genre notes are alternating: The first story is science fiction, the second is fantasy, and so forth. I seldom like a fantasy offering, but I read most of them anyway. The first was actually rather good: "The River Judge" (Fantasy) by S.L. Huang. I call this a "murder non-mystery". The drama isn't in who committed the many murders that occurred during about a decade of life in a poor Chinese village; it is in how they were covered up, and eventually, how the Imperial magistrates and investigators were motivated to leave the area alone. This would be a simple alternate history story except that a ghost is involved. The ghost is not talkative—that would be too easy. But it is able to make its desire known.

I like the concept in "The Weight of Your Own Ashes" (Science Fiction) by Carlie St. George, of an alien species that inhabits multiple bodies. There is no explanation how the shared consciousness of this multi-body person works when those bodies are separated by many light years. It isn't important to the progress of the story, which involves the death of one body. Another of the four remaining bodies is soon standing in the room formerly shared with a girlfriend, holding the urn containing the cremains of the dead member. This person has many legal papers and processes to go through, and his/her own emotional turmoil to overcome. The girlfriend has her own emotional reactions. A side vignette has the protagonist getting advice, but not much comfort, from a friend of a different alien of a species that typically inhabits thousands of bodies.

Finally, "Yarns" by Susan Palwick is placed in a dystopia in which the Combine runs things. Not some one-world government, but more like a one-world crime syndicate that has an uneasy but dominant relationship with the police authorities of various quasi-nations. Pervasive surveillance prevails. The protagonist, a schoolteacher named Irene, is targeted for assassination, but she distracts her assassin, a teen of the Combine, with knitting, until they become allies and a relative of the boy helps them both go into hiding in a more effective way. This is the one story that redeems the prior failures.

I generated the image using Gemini. Seven stories to go. Is there another that is worthwhile? I'll soon know.