'The Beast Adjoins' Is Seriously Creepy Sci-Fi

The new anthology The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2021 collects 20 of the best short stories of the year. Series editor John Joseph Adams was particularly impressed with Ted Kosmatka's story "The Beast Adjoins," which presents a fresh take on the idea of an AI uprising. "It's so great," Adams says in Episode 492 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "It pushes all the sense-of-wonder buttons; it's got all this cool character stuff in there. The story riffs on the Von Neumann-Wigner interpretation of quantum mechanics, positing a future in which advanced AIs are unable to function without humans present. Guest editor Veronica Roth, author of Divergent, found the story extremely creepy. "I reached the part where the machines were using people attached to the front of themselves to keep time moving, and I was like, 'This is revolting.