Science fiction roundup

“The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 11,” edited by Jonathan Strahan, 697 pages, Solaris, $19.99

Not so long ago, readers of science fiction could get a good sense of short fiction by reading a handful of magazines, but with so much current fiction being published in so many venues, mostly online, “year’s best” anthologies have become an almost indispensable guide to the field’s trends and developments.

Jonathan Strahan’s is among the most reliable, especially for readers whose tastes range from reimagined fairy tales to the most daunting far-future science fiction.

Nina Allan’s “The Art of Space Travel,” a model of restrained literary science fiction, is narrated by a housekeeper in a British hotel hosting a spaceship crew bound for Mars, decades after a failed expedition. Geoff Ryman’s “Those Shadows Laugh” imagines how the discovery of an all-female island society might have affected history.

Further along the hard science fiction scale is Ian R. MacLeod’s “The Visitor from Taured,” cleverly combining an urban legend with ideas from quantum mechanics, and Ken Liu’s “Seven Birthdays,” a family drama that flings us into successively bizarre and distant futures. It also touches upon climate change, as do stories by Paul McAuley and Catherynne Valente.

Other stories look to older traditions. Sam Miller’s “Things With Beards” recalls the classic movie “The Thing,” while fantasy stories by Amal El-Mohtar, E. Lily Yu, Daryl Gregory, Theodora Goss and Charles Yu deftly reimagine fairy tale materials, often in surprisingly contemporary settings.

“Wicked Wonders” by Ellen Klages, 288 pages, Tachyon, $15.95

As a novelist, Ellen Klages is best known for young adult historical fiction dealing with the start of the nuclear age, but her adult stories are equally sensitive to the perspectives of childhood. In her second collection, she tells us of a young girl preparing to leave the Earth for a generationslong spaceship voyage who, on a last bike ride with her best friend, lists all the common life experiences she will never have.

In another story, a 6year-old on her first sleepover finds herself drawn into a strange fantasy world, while yet another tells of a girl whose fascination with the Disney witch Maleficent unsettles her parents and teachers but just might pay off for her.

Klages writes from the emotional center of a tale rather than from the science fiction conceit. So when an astronaut on a voyage to Mars discovers she’s pregnant and gives birth there, we feel her loneliness, knowing that since the child could not survive on Earth, she too will be a lonely exile. One of the best stories isn’t fantastic at all, but nostalgically evokes a summer at camp, with an unusual surprise at the end. The funniest piece isn’t even fiction, telling of a “scary ham” that she and her sister inherited after her father died. Even here, Klages’ mastery of the telling detail is evident.

“The House of Binding Thorns” by Aliette de Bodard, 356 pages, Ace, $27

This second novel in Aliette de Bodard’s “Dominion of the Fallen” series, set in an alternate Paris ruined by a war between fallen angels, introduces an exotic Dragon Kingdom beneath the Seine River. Paris is still ruled by the warring “houses” of the fallen angels, but as new threats emerge, House Hawthorne struggles to avoid the fate of the House Silver spires (destroyed by the House of Shattered Wings).

De Bodard’s themes of exile and colonialism are embodied in the Vietnamese exile Philippe and the Dragon Kingdom, but other characters are equally compelling. The alchemist Madeleine struggles to overcome her addiction to “angel essence,” made from the bodies of fallen angels. The angel Asmodeus schemes to keep House Hawthorne intact, while Berith, his powerful gender-shifting “fall-sister” — both fell from heaven together — lives a reclusive existence in Paris with her pregnant partner. She ignores the warring factions of angels and the increasingly rebellious humans. De Bodard introduces enough new elements to expand on her original concept and develop a plot that works perfectly well on its own, in a setting that is as unique as any in modern fantasy.