I’m on the road in London most of today, so here’s a post I prepared earlier.

Over the weekend Jonathan Strahan posted the Table of Contents for The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Six. Jonathan’s a friend, and we often like the same books, but I’m still always pleased to see that we are still in sync. There are many great stories on the list, and many more stories by great writers that I haven’t yet read, but now plan to. What I want to focus on, however, are the two stories that Jonathan picked from Clarkesworld. They are as follows:

• “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees”, E. Lily Yu, (Clarkesworld, 4/11)
• “The Book of Phoenix (Excerpted from The Great Book)”, Nnedi Okorafor, (Clarkesworld, 3/11)

This pleased me, because if you had asked me to pick my two favorite stories from this year’s issues, these two would probably be the ones I would have chosen. Of course I love Cat Valente’s “Silently and Very Fast” as well, but that’s a novella and therefore not likely to get into Jonathan’s anthology.

So, if you are looking for short fiction to read, and are wondering what Jonathan and I might recommend, click those two links and enjoy.