This episode of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy is brought to you by The Great Courses.com,

where you can watch or listen to thousands of lectures from top professors and experts.

Get up to 80% off select classes by visiting The great courses.com slash galaxy.

The

Wired.com presents

The Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. And here is your host, David Barr-Kirtley.

Hello, Antwer. David Barr-Kirtley.

Hello and welcome to episode 177 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Today on the show we'll be discussing the new anthology The Best American Science fiction and fantasy, edited by our producer John Joseph Adams. And for the first time in the history of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy, John and I are recording in the same room.

So John, welcome to the show.

Good to be here.

And so John and I don't get to see each other much these days

since I live in New York and he lives in California.

But this week, John's in town because he's serving as a judge for the National Book Awards in the Young Adult category.

And he'll be attending their Gala Award ceremony on Wednesday, so that's very exciting.

And while he's here, John's done a few bookstore appearances.

So on the 9th, he and I appeared at Forbidden Planet to discuss the best American science fiction and fantasy with Joe Hill,

Shannon McGuire, Carmen Maria Machado, and Jess Rowe.

And we'll have the audio from that in just a bit

But first I wanted to ask John a few questions about the book

So John first of all just give us a bit of background on the best American series

Well the best American series started about like a hundred years ago or so with Best American Short Stories and it's been publishing, you know, annually ever since.

...