The Dungeons & Dragons video game Baldur's Gate 3 has become a cultural phenomenon, winning countless accolades including Game of the Year. One of the game's biggest fans is science fiction editor John Joseph Adams, who has played Baldur's Gate 3 for more than 1,000 hours. "It's absolutely an amazing game," Adams says in Episode 557 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "I think it's the best game I've ever played." Adams thinks that the story and writing compare favorably to some of the best books and movies he's ever experienced.

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2022, which collects 20 of the best fantasy and science fiction stories of the past year, features a wide range of characters and settings. Guest editor Rebecca Roanhorse made the final selections for this year's volume. "This is not your father's science fiction and fantasy collection," Roanhorse says in Episode 538 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "I'm excited to see what people are writing, and where the genre is going, and what sort of new voices can be discovered, and how far we can push boundaries and still tell universal stories." P. Djèlí Clark's genre-bending "If the Martians Have Magic" features Haitian priests battling the alien invaders from The War of the Worlds. "I always think my stories are too weird," Clark says.

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.

The new anthology The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 includes stories from leading authors such as Victor LaValle, Rebecca Roanhorse, and Charlie Jane Anders. Tobias S. Buckell, whose story "The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex" appears in the book, was particularly impressed with Ken Liu's story "Thoughts and Prayers." "Ken is really a complete master of the short form," Buckell says in Episode 452 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "It's always a pleasure to read a Ken story." "Thoughts and Prayers" is about a mother and father who advocate for gun control following their daughter's murder only to find themselves targeted by internet trolls who harass them with violent deepfakes of their daughter.

In recent months the science fiction world has grown increasingly political, with dozens of writers contributing stories to anthologies such as Resist: Tales from a Future Worth Fighting Against and If This Goes On. Another prominent example is A People's Future of the United States, edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams. "I wanted to use my position as an editor to try to help magnify the voices of the people that we invited to participate in this anthology," Adams says in Episode 354 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "To sort of shout back at the Trump administration, and also to try to imagine some new futures that might help us figure out how to get back to normal from here." The book draws inspiration (and its title) from Howard Zinn's counterculture classic A People's History of the United States, and like that earlier work, A People's Future of the United States tries to present a wide variety of marginalized perspectives.

At the 2018 Worldcon, fantasy author N.K. Jemisin became the first person to ever win three consecutive Hugo awards for Best Novel. Given that level of success, science fiction editor John Joseph Adams felt she'd be the perfect guest editor for the latest edition of his anthology series The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. "Given that she's clearly the face of the genre at the moment, I thought it would be wonderful to have her as guest editor," Adams says in Episode 342 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "And thankfully she said yes." Caroline M. Yoachim, whose short story "Carnival Nine" appears in the book, says the 20 stories selected by Jemisin reflect the growing diversity of the fantasy and science fiction field. "One of the things I loved about the book was just the sheer variety of it," Yoachim says.

Westworld just wrapped up its second season on HBO, and even after 20 episodes, fans of the show like science fiction editor John Joseph Adams are still no closer to understanding how the show's guns are able to kill robots but not humans. "The creators must have some idea how these guns work," Adams says in Episode 316 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. I want to know what they think, how they work. Because it doesn't make any sense to me." Season 2 includes a passing reference to "sim bullets," which makes Geek's Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley think that there must be something special about the bullets themselves. "Maybe all the bullets have little incendiary things in them that cause them to self-destruct if they're flying in the direction of a guest," he says. "But in one scene they just hold the gun right against someone's chest, and I don't see how the bullet's not going to kill you from that range, even if it is sort of programmed to self-destruct." Writer Sara Lynn Michener wonders if maybe it's the guns that are special rather than the bullets. "You can have a gun that has paintball bullets in it, and you can have a gun that has real bullets in it," she says, "and the gun determines, 'All right, who am I aiming at?', and decides which bullet to release based on that." But science fiction author Anthony Ha says that even if there is an explanation for how the guns work, he still doesn't understand how humans are kept safe from other weapons such as arrows and axes. "It definitely drives me crazy," he says. "Do they have safeties on the swords here too?

BBC America's science fiction show Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is based on a pair of novels by Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Science fiction author Tom Gerencer loves the idea of Dirk Gently--a detective who trusts in fate and leaves everything up to chance. "He's not a brilliant detective," Gerencer says in Episode 281 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast, "but in a way he's making these other brilliant realizations that step completely off logic and go into the realm of'let go of all that stuff and get into the flow of things, and you're going to find that things work out a lot better for you that way.'" The show has a lot going for it, including an original voice, brilliant writing, and complex characters, but it's failed to connect with many viewers. Writer Leah Schnelbach loves how the show's many mysteries slowly come together, but acknowledges that Dirk Gently can be a challenge for newcomers.

Maggie Shen King is the author of An Excess Male, a science fiction novel that explores the future consequences of China's one-child policy. The policy was enacted in 1979 in an attempt to curb overpopulation, and even though the country started to phase it out two years ago it led to a huge shortage of potential wives due to so many parents choosing to have sons instead of daughters. "It sounds like dystopian fiction, but in actuality China was the one nation that had the political system and the wherewithal to enforce the policy," King says in Episode 279 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "And 40 years of this is very, very scary to think about." Overpopulation has been a popular theme in science fiction for decades, from the movie Soylent Green, based on the Harry Harrison novel Make Room! Make Room! to the Star Trek episode "The Mark of Gideon."

Even after they set the bar really high, where they've done these amazing things, they still manage to do it." Geek's Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley agrees that episodes like "Total Rickall," about aliens who pretend to be old friends by implanting false memories of themselves, are excellent examples of science fiction. "Even if you took all of the humor out of it, and told it just as a straight, serious science fiction story, it's a good enough story on its own to get published in a science fiction magazine," he says. Parallel worlds are a familiar idea in science fiction, but Rick and Morty pushes the concept almost to the breaking point, with dozens of versions of its main characters scheming against each other. Author Matt London loves the show, but acknowledges that the story is at constant risk of spiraling out of control. "I can understand why it took them years to write Season 3," he says, "because once you open this box it's very hard to get it closed again." Such mind-bending antics aren't for everyone, and Rick and Morty also has a streak of wild misanthropy that will alienate some viewers. TV critic Carli Velocci gives the show a strong recommendation, but warns that it should be approached with caution. "It's definitely not a show for the faint-hearted," she says. "There's so much gore and violence.