This is a book full of science fiction—every story in the book is clearly that and not something else. It is our opinion that it is a good thing to have genre boundaries. We have a high regard for horror, fantasy, speculative fiction, and slipstream, and postmodern literature. We (Kathryn Cramer and David G. Hartwell) edit the Year’s Best Fantasy as well, a companion volume to this one—look for it if you enjoy short fantasy fiction too. But here, we choose science fiction. This volume is intended to represent the variety of fine stories published in the year. But bear with us for a few paragraphs as we first give some characterization of the year in SF.

In 2011 the earth quaked for the publishing industry, especially in the U.S. The third largest bookseller, Borders, the bookstore chain that accounted for about 20 percent of everyone’s business, went bankrupt. There were five other important bankruptcies in the U.S. bookselling business, and in Canada, one big one, The H.B. Fenn Company. Fenn was the largest distributor in Canada of U.S. books. Together, these events hurt the profitability of book publishing a lot. Specifically, the lack of so many formerly supportive distribution channels for books lowered the initial printings, and therefore the sales, of nearly all new books.

But what rankles most publishers is that first, when a store or customer goes bankrupt, they don’t pay for the books shipped to them, but do get to sell them at a going-out-of-business sale—the money goes to the secured creditors, the banks that loaned the stores money, not the suppliers. And second, because the books were sold, even though they were not paid for, the authors must be paid royalties by the publishers as if they had been paid, increasing the publisher’s losses. Wow!