ECO24: The Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction

This first of a series exploring humanity’s “communal fears, grief, and passion as we try to protect our natural world” is a triumph. Van Uden (editor of The Off-Season) brings together 23 stellar tales offering creative and varied takes on the book’s themes. Established genre names like Eugen Bacon, Hiron Ennes, and K-Ming Chang appear alongside some impressive relative newcomers, including F.E. Choe and Trae Hawkins. Jennifer Hudak’s exceptional parable “The Colonists” recounts the fate of a human colony on a planet populated by Champignon fungi, who have been crushed in their thousands by colonists who considered them to be “just” plants. Colonist Etan’s discovery that the Champignon are not just sentient but intelligent leads to an unsettling but satisfying conclusion. Another standout is Louis Evans’s “A Seder in Siberia.” In the near future, a family scrounges together seder fare from what remains available (leading to hazelnut matzoh, for example), and, for the first time, the family’s patriarch declines to lead the ritual. As his wife steps in, flashbacks to the man’s past gradually reveal its parallels with the Exodus story. Every entry is equal parts thought-provoking, insightful, and impactful. (Nov.)