I am delighted to announce the table of contents for The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 8. This year’s book covers stories first published in 2013, and should be out in stores from new publisher Solaris(!) in May.

As always, there’s still a lot to do – the cover needs to be finalised (some design elements are under discussion), copyedits to be done, the running order may change and so and so forth – but this is the essence of the book you’ll see later this year.  I am particularly excited because this is the first year the book will be published in the UK and Australia.

• Introduction, Jonathan Strahan
• “Some Desperado”, Joe Abercrombie (Dangerous Women)
• “Zero for Conduct”, Greg Egan (Twelve Tomorrows)
• “Effigy Nights”, Yoon Ha Lee (Clarkesworld)
• “Rosary and Goldenstar”, Geoff Ryman (F&SF)
• “The Sleeper and the Spindle”, Neil Gaiman (Rags and Bones)
• “Cave and Julia”, M. John Harrison (Kindle Singles)
• “The Herons of Mer de l’Ouest”, M Bennardo (Lightspeed)
• “Water”, Ramez Naam (An Aura of Familiarity)
• “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling”, Ted Chiang (Subterranean)
• “The Ink Readers of Doi Saket”, Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Tor.com)
• “Cherry Blossoms on the River of Souls”, Richard Parks (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
• “Rag and Bone”, Priya Sharma (Tor.com)
• “The Book Seller”, Lavie Tidhar (Interzone)
• “The Sun and I”, K J Parker (Subterranean)
• “The Promise of Space”, James Patrick Kelly (Clarkesworld)
• “The Master Conjurer”, Charlie Jane Anders (Lightspeed)
• “The Pilgrim and the Angel”, E. Lily Yu (McSweeney’s 45)
• “Entangled”, Ian R Macleod (Asimov’s)
• “Fade to Gold”, Benjanun Sriduangkaew (End of the Road)
• “Selkies Stories are for Losers”, Sofia Samatar (Strange Horizons)
• “In Metal, In Bone”, An Owomoyela (Eclipse Online)
• “Kormack the Lucky”, Eleanor Arnason (F&SF)
• “Sing”, Karin Tidbeck (Tor.com)
• “Social Services”, Madeline Ashby (An Aura of Familiarity)
• “The Road of Needles”, Caitlín R Kiernan (Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales)
• “Mystic Falls”, Robert Reed (Clarkesworld)
• “The Queen of Night’s Aria”, Ian McDonald (Old Mars)
• “The Irish Astronaut”, Val Nolan (Electric Velocipede)