Petra Mayer writes: “This year’s summer reader poll was shaped by a series of ‘what ifs’—most importantly, what if, instead of looking at the entire history of the field the way we did in our 2011 poll, we focused only on what has happened in the decade since? These past 10 years have brought seismic change to science fiction and fantasy (sometimes literally, in the case of N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth series), and we wanted to celebrate the world-shaking rush of new voices, new perspectives, new styles, and new stories.”