The latest volume in the BSFA Award-winning series. Editor Donna Scott has been rigorously selecting and rejecting stories by British and Irish authors, setting aside the good in order to produce a volume of the very good. Twenty-one outstanding stories gleaned from anthologies, collections, websites and magazines (including Analog, Asimov's, Clarkesworld, ParSec, Uncanny, Apex, Shorelines of Infinity, and more), representing some of the very best science fiction published in 2025, all gathered within the covers of one book.

Contents:

Introduction - Donna Scott

An Examination of the Trolley Problem Using a Sentient Warship

and a Rotating Black Hole - Gareth L Powell

The Swap - Lavie Tidhar

The Flaming Embusen - Tade Thompson

Last Gasp - Stark Holborn

The Time Traveller's Husbands - Garry Kilworth

On the Night Shift - Zohar Jacobs

The Walled Garden - Fiona Moore

Alba and the Great Crystal - Eric Brown and Keith Brooke

Coriander - Ana Sun

Dark Matter - Caitriana NicNeacail

Hand of Fire - E.M. Faulds

Four Fabrications of Francine Descartes - Tim Major

Going Out on a Limb - David Cleden

The Big Outside - Anne Charnock

Twin Engines - Lyle Hopwood

One by One - Lindz McLeod

My Vagus Proxy - Stephen Oram

Bone-eater Earth - Emma Burnett

To Reap, To Sow - Lyndsey Croal

Wheat Futures - Vaughan Stanger

Merlin's Hole - Allen Ashley