Think Weirder: The Year's Best SciFi Ideas

A murder mystery that subtly skewers both overzealous AI projections and absurd longtermist positions, refocusing our attention to the here and now in a refreshing way, in DEATH AND THE GORGON by GREG EGAN

Is it dystopia or utilitarian utopia when a company sells nanobots to optimize human brains toward perfect happiness, in THE BEST VERSION OF YOURSELF by GRANT COLLIER?

A raw tale about a terminal patient in a bad situation, showing that sometimes technologically-enabled small mindset shifts can ease terrible situations even if they can't really be made better, in A GRAY MAGIC by RAY NAYLER

A humorous, incisive response to Ursula K. Le Guin's The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas in ISABEL J. KIM's WHY DON'T WE JUST KILL THE KID IN THE OMELAS HOLE

Humans using technology to understand non-human cultural norms for the first time in RICH LARSON's BREATHING CONSTELLATIONS

A domestic AI helper becomes the sole keeper of forbidden memories when the state erases a dissident's existence. How will it use these memories, while simultaneously protecting its young charge, in THE LARK ASCENDING by ELEANNA CASTROIANNI?

What begins as a seemingly impossible venture reveals itself as a meditation on legacy and the courage to pursue transformative projects whose results we'll never live to see, in STARS DON'T DREAM by CHI HUI

DAVID W. GOODMAN shares a beautiful vision of a spacefaring culture that coheres through better empathy for one another, but will a political zealot bring it all crashing down in BEST PRACTICES FOR SAFE ASTEROID HANDLING?

LANCE ROBINSON applies extremely near-future technology (arguably technology that we could achieve today) to soil revitalization efforts, but doesn't shy away from complicated principal-agent issues that all bureaucracies must contend with in MONEY, WEALTH, and SOIL