For me, best of 2023 was Red Team Blues by Cory Doctorow. A retirement-age forensic accountant traveling around in an ex-rock star bus from Walmart parking lot to next gourmet dining location does a job for a billionaire and suddenly ends up in a surprising amount of hot water over it. Hijinks ensue.

Runner-up goes to Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman. This is some bleak, bleak humor. Instead of carbon credits, Beauman posits extinction credits. Got a big strip mining operation coming up that will kill off a couple species? Better buy some extinction credits to cover their death! (And remember, it takes more credits to cover for a dead intelligent species, so factor that in!) Next extinction candidate: the Venomous Lumpsucker, but don’t make it extinct until you’ve got all your paperwork done. Researcher and extinction credit manager for a mining company end up in a desperate chase around the planet trying to ascertain if the last of the Lumpsuckers are truly gone or not, and we go along for the ride.