Year's Best SF 11 (Year's Best Sf)

Book Description

Travel farther than you've ever dreamed

Man has mused about the nature of our universe since he first gazed up in wonder at the stars. Now some of the most fertile imaginations in speculative fiction offer bold and breathtaking visions of "what's out there" and "what's next" in the eleventh annual celebration of the very best short SF to appear over the past year.

Once again, acclaimed editors and anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer have compiled an extraordinary collection featuring stunning works from modern masters as well as dazzling gems from brilliant new talents -- tales that carry the reader to the far corners of the galaxy and beyond, into hitherto unexplored regions. Get ready to take glorious flight on a journey to the miraculous.

Customer Reviews:

Nice collection of SF........2007-03-08

You'll find very nice SF stories, although some might seem a little too short, they nevertheless reflect recent themes.

A very good science fiction book.......2006-11-12

I had a lot of fun reading this book. It has number of great stories that make you think about current political and social makings of the world and US. These stories raise number of questions and possibilities.
Overall, a very enjoyable book.

too many too short stories.......2006-07-22

It seems that Hartwell took one too many of the nano short stories
from the magazine 'nature' for this book. They are cute and clever,but a one page story from Ted Chiang? Come on, get real.
Most of the stories are good to very good, especially 'shelia',
'on the brane','oxygen rising'. It seems some of the stories are
begining to suffer from the rudy ruckner school of protoplasmic
farm tractors, something that stross and doctorow have been mucking around in for awhile. For some reason these 'organic fiction'novels have as much of a tendency to sicken one as to excite one. I enjoyed the majority of the book, I just wish
this tendency to publish really short stories would lighten up a
bit.

Good Year Great Stories.......2006-07-19

I have enjoyed "Year's best SF" since the anthology series had started to be edited by Hartwell and Cramer. This year is a very good year for Sci Fi. This year there is a wide variety of stories to both make you laugh and think or both at the same time. The stories run from 40+ page novellas to 2 page shorties. The one thing they all have in common is very good stories.

This year was boon for Hard Sci Fi. Once again Gregory Benford has written a gem. "On the Brane" explores an alternate universe where the inhabitants appeal for help as their universe is dying and they know it. He magically weaves both the hard sci fi and emotions together to write a very powerfull story. Joe Haldeman has written a "Angel of Light" which skillfully blends religion and sci fi toghether very well to bring out a trully wonderfull Christmas tale.

"Second Person Present Tense" looks at a drug that eliminates a person's mind and how family a tries to rebridge the gap with their daughter, who has regained her faculties, but is not the same person emotionally or mentally.

"Years Best Sci Fi 11" is one of the best years releases in years for this anthology series. There isn't a miss among the stories and some of them a true gems. Highly Recommended.

Another great year of SF stories.......2006-06-23

In my review of the 2004 Year's Best SF, I mentioned the dearth of hard SF stories in that year. Year's Best SF 11 rectifies that situation somewhat. I'm still not the biggest fan of hard SF, which is why this year's edition was a bit of a chore for me. It still had a lot of strong stories in it, but I had to struggle at times. Fans of harder SF who were disappointed in last year's edition will probably find this one much better. With stories by Stephen Baxter, Gregory Benford, as well as some good examples by Matthew Jarpe and Ken MacLeod, there is lots of SF action.

The only real problem with this edition, however, is the numerous examples of the short-short stories from "Nature" magazine. I find it admirable that "Nature" would be including short SF stories in their magazine, but I don't think any of them were so good that they needed to be included in a "best of" collection. A couple of them were decent (I loved Greg Bear's "Ram Shift Phase 2", where a robot reviews a book by a fellow robot in a typically pretentious review style). Being a "review," it definitely called for that short length, and it was perfect. Others, however, were not nearly as good, and I think they probably took space away from a couple (or at least one) other good stories.

Still, there were some wonderful stories in this year's edition. I'm a big rat fan, so the two rat stories ("When the Great Days Came" by Gardner Dozois and "Mason's Rats" by Neal Asher) were exceptionally fun. Dozois' story is told from the point of view of a rat making his way across the big city on the night when the great comet hits. It's a "night in the life" of the rat, and it's told wonderfully. The ending is perfect as well, with the realization that no matter what happens to him, his species will survive. "Mason's Rats" is the story of a futuristic farmer with a rat problem. Not only are they infesting his crops, but they're beginning to learn how to use weapons. It doesn't matter what sort of robotic help he might get; sometimes, the two-legged rats are worse than the four-legged variety.

While those two stories are the ones I had the most affinity with, I would say that the best story in the whole collection is "I, Robot," by Cory Doctorow. It's an homage to Asimov (even down to the name), where a society that is fully dependent on robots. A detective who isn't a fan of working with robots has some troubles of his own. His ex-wife defected to the other side immediately after they split up, leaving his daughter with him. But his daughter seems to be misbehaving as well, mixing herself up in things that are way over her head. The detective discovers that things are a lot worse than he thinks, especially when he discovers what his wife has been up to with his daughter. This is a fairly long story, over fifty pages in the book, and it's worth every page of it. The setting leaps off the page and Doctorow's prose perfectly fits the genre. Being my favourite story in this year's book, it's probably fitting that it also ends it. It definitely makes me want to go out and check his other work.

Other strong stories were "The Edge of Nowhere" by James Patrick Kelly (where a young woman librarian in a virtual world is asked for a unique book by three dogs that appear to be products of the virtual intelligence behind their world), "Oxygen Rising" by R. Garcia y Robertson (where a human mediator between "Greenies" and the humans they are trying to wipe off of a planet gets involved with a sinister plot to destroy the planet so it can't be used by anybody else), and "Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play" by Michael Swanwick (where a man and dog, investigators for the British government, go to Greece to track down some statues, only to find some experiments in pheromones and the recreation of Greek Gods).

I can't really point to any of the stories as "bad," though some of the "Nature" ones didn't really appeal to me. Even the hard SF stories were pretty good, just not my favourite. 2005 was a much better year than 2004, and Year's Best SF 11 definitely shows that. If you want to sample some great short stories, definitely pick this one up.

David Roy

Year's Best SF 10 (Year's Best SF (Science Fiction))

Average customer rating:

A decent paperback sampling of 2004's more notable short SF
2004 wasn't the best year for SF
Has It Really Been Ten Years?
Spotty
Less than stellar

Year's Best SF 10 (Year's Best SF (Science Fiction))
David G. Hartwell , and Kathryn Cramer
Manufacturer: Eos
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0060575611

Book Description

The best short form science fiction of 2004, selected by David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, two of the most respected editors in the field.

The short story is one of the most vibrant and exciting areas in science fiction today. It is where the hot new authors emerge and where the beloved giants of the field continue to publish.

Now, building on the success of the first nine volumes, Eos will once again present a collection of the best stories of the year in mass market. Here, selected and compiled by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, two of the most respected editors in the field, are stories with visions of tomorrow and yesterday, of the strange and the familiar, of the unknown and the unknowable.

With stories from an all–star team of science fiction authors, YEAR'S BEST SF 10 is an indispensable guide for every science fiction fan.

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A banner year for speculative fiction has yielded a crop of superb short form SF. Now the very best to appear over the past twelve months has been amassed into one extraordinary volume by acclaimed editors and anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, offering bold visions of days to come that are bright, triumphant, breathtaking, and strikingly unique. Once more, celebrated masters of the field join with exciting new voices to sing of explorations and invasions, grand technological accomplishments, amazing flights into the unknown, horrors and miracles, and the human condition.

Welcome to amazing worlds that could be -- and, perhaps, sooner than you have ever dared to imagine.

New tales from:

Gregory Benford
Terry Bisson
James Patrick Kelly
Pamela Sargent
Jack McDevitt
Gene Wolfe
and more

Customer Reviews:

A decent paperback sampling of 2004's more notable short SF.......2006-07-07

Like volume #6 in this series, I found #10 to be a fairly entertaining collection of short form science fiction, with the stories, "Burning Day", "Venus Flowers at Night", "The Battle of York", and "Strood" standing out especially. Not constrained to any one corner of the SF field, this volume wanders all over, from sociological to hard, from military to dystopic to fantastic. "Red City" especially strikes me as a tale which could just as easily have been classified a fantasy, and save for the mumbo jumbo about the time curve, it is right at the edge of the two genres.

Like past volumes, #10 also has a couple of stories which try entirely too hard to be deep. "The Risk-Taking Gene as Expressed by Some Asian Subjects" tries to be many things at once: hard SF, sociological SF, and Quentin Tarantino movie. Not sure how well it acquits itself in any of these fields. "Savant Song" is the same, only without the action, and served as a rather anticlimactic ending to the book.

Still, the enjoyable material outweighed the boring or pretentious material, and if you're wanting to get your feet wet in various writers' mental playgrounds without having to plunge in over your head, I would recommend this book.

One warning though: I don't think this is a great book for newcomers to SF. People unfamiliar with the genre, or who are just beginning to graduate to the wider SF realm and move away from the tie-in scene (aka: Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, et al) might find this a slow, somewhat tedious read.

2004 wasn't the best year for SF.......2006-06-08

Yes, it's another year of "Best of" anthologies, and Year's Best SF 10, edited by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer, covers all the best science fiction stories from 2004. Yes, that's right. I'm a year behind. So sue me.

Hartwell & Cramer gives us a wide variety of SF, from the hard stuff (though not much of it is really hard) to some alternate histories and some more character-based stories. In fact, either I'm growing a lot more tolerant or the hard SF was much lighter this time around. Each story was filled with vivid characters and some emotional characteristics, even when the emphasis was on scientific theory (such as the final story in the anthology, Brenda Cooper's "Savant Songs"). All in all, it's not as memorable a book as in year's past, but there is only one story that I couldn't get through. That was Steve Tomasula's "The Risk-Taking Gene as Expressed by Some Asian Subjects," originally published in Denver Quarterly, an issue filled with "fantastic fiction." While this one definitely falls in that category as far as subject matter, the beginning bored me to tears and I had to move on to the next one.

There were definitely some standouts, however. One of the better stories was "Venus Flowers at Night" by Pamela Sargent. Karim al-Anwar is a member of the Council of Mukhtars, the Islamic group that governs most of the Earth in a world where environmental ruin and other factors have brought down most of the West. He's on a tour of North America's Atlantic Federation, ostensibly to show the flag, but he also feels he's been sent away to punish him for his broad theories of terraforming Venus, or perhaps other creative endeavours that they don't want to hear. As he and his wife carry on their tour, he begins to lose himself in virtual recreations of the Venus he has dreamed of, trying desperately to figure out a way to get there, no matter how many generations and technological marvels must be created to facilitate it. As his journey continues, he meets somebody who may be able to help him on his way by approaching the problem from a different angle, enabling his dreams even as he fears he will be put out to pasture by the Council. I began this story with a bit of a chip on my shoulder, not buying into the world Sargent has created at all. However, she won me over as the story went on, creating a loving tribute to what science fiction, used by a creative mind, can inspire people to achieve. While the story isn't high on characterization of anybody but Karim, he is a joy to behold. Creative, visionary, and frustrated by the attitudes of his fellow council-members, his determination shines through in his attempts at a virtual reality reflecting his desires. Some of the transitions from the virtual to the real world are a bit jarring, but otherwise, this is a wonderful tale extolling one of the prime values of science fiction in general.

Probably my favourite story in the book, however, and definitely my favourite from 2004 (though it may not be the "best," it the one I liked the most) is James Stoddard's "The Battle of York." This story is simply awesome. In the year 2700 (or around there), much of Earth's history has been lost because so much of it was put on magnetic storage. But somebody tries to piece together a history of America, creating legends out trying to put as many facts in there as possible. The story is not told as a history, but as if it was a historical novel. Thus, we get "General Washington" with his trusty battle axe, Valleyforge, and his faithful steed, Silver. He's riding home from a war that he feels he's started, but he tries to take a shortcut through a forest. One night, a man appears at his fire, a man named Waynejon (though he's called "The Pilgrim"), who gives him a mission to go to Mount Rushmore to gain the Words of Power to defeat the Gauls and their giant that is going to be attacking York. But will he be able to face down his own guilt, gain allies, and bring the Words of Power back? Or will the four-headed monster at Rushmore kill him before he can even begin? This story means a lot more if you get the historical references, but even if you only get a few, there's enough here to make an entertaining story. It also really makes you wonder how well we've pieced together ancient history, given the lack of facts and only a few written documents to base it on? So it's thought-provoking too.

Other strong entries are Ken Liu's "Algorithms of Love," (where a female AI expert becomes obsessed with creating the perfect virtual child after losing her own daughter), Jack McDevitt's "Act of God" (where a man tells the story of his mentor's creation of a universe, and his attempt to become God for it), and Sean McMullen's "The Cascade" (where a young rebel scientist and her group attempts to force the first manned mission to Mars to become a colonization attempt). While these stories were definitely the best of the bunch for me, all of them (except for "The Risk-Taking Gene") held my attention and wouldn't let me down until I tried just one more.

That being said, the selection wasn't as strong as in 2003, making for an overall weaker volume. It's definitely worth a read if you like SF, and I'd say it covers the best of 2004 pretty well. I guess it just wasn't as good of a year.

David Roy

Has It Really Been Ten Years?.......2006-02-10

Year's Best SF 10, $7.99 US, will charm readers of the speculative and the fantastic, so I'm pleased to update you on the status of this now decade long series -- which is very capably edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. If you love science fiction, you'll find this anthology stacks up very favorably against the Nebula Awards collection.

Each year, Hartwell and Cramer comb five hundred plus nominees (from multiple sources: books, electronic fiction websites, foreign publishers, magazines) and whittle their selections down to somewhere over twenty stories -- filling 500 pages -- that are usually representative of excellence in the genre. They admit to omitting great novellas each year, due to limited space, but that's to be expected.

A general survey of current contributors reveals: American, Australian, Canadian, English, and French backgrounds among its authors. Previous versions of this anthology have also featured the work of Argentinian, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Scottish writers. Quite surprisingly, no sci-fi from India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, or a number of other English speaking countries, has ever appeared in this series.

Readers of this series known that once Hartwell takes a shine to an author, you'll likely be seeing them in subsequent issues of Year's Best. As good as the works of Robert Reed (6 stories in 10 issues) and Gene Wolfe (7 stories in 10 issues) are, the editorial duo should offer "more diverse selection" as the decade rolls onward.

Some of the best stories included in Year's Best SF 10 are by female writers -- Pamela Sargent, Janeen Webb, Liz Williams, Brenda Cooper -- but in this genre, based strictly on numbers, male writers continue to deny them equal series representation. Loosestrife, by Brighton author Liz Williams, (set in post-global-warming London) was truly my favorite story in this entire anthology.

Burning Day, by Montreal author Glenn Grant, is a perfect marriage of cyberpunk, human prejudice, and the police procedural. Set in a gritty urban landscape riddled by chaos and violence, this graphic story about a terrorist attack -- and the human and android cops that pursue them -- simply sizzles. Buildings that "grew on their own" added just the right touch.

Even if you don't care for SF, you'll like smart stories like Mastermindless, by Vancouver Island's Matthew Hughes, which is set in a far future where science indistinguishable from magic, and magic, coexist. The star in this story is one Henghis Hapthorne, freelance discriminator. Written much in the tradition of Sherlock Holmes, this story will make you think while you laugh.

Standouts like Pulp Cover, by Illinoian Gene Wolf, can't be missed. Ostensibly a yarn told by a furniture salesman that wishes to remain anonymous, this narrative retells the account of the alien abduction of the woman that he'd once hoped to marry -- Mariel -- and her mysterious reappearance on his front doorstep seven years after she was declared dead.

The Dark Side of Town, by New Hampshire resident James Patrick Kelly is another tale told in the cyberpunk tradition that sparkles. Despite downcast trappings (young couples can't afford children, or homes) this short piece of fiction ends on an upbeat note, when a troubled couple takes refuge in a VR world tailored mapped to their own innermost secret desires.

Since I follow Year's Best, I've got questions about how the Editors determine the final slate. I think it would be a nice touch if David and Kathryn included a list of fifty Honorable Mentions that missed the cut. Basic information like author name, story title, story source, and publication date would be advantageous for both the genre and fandom.

F&SF first published six of the above stories, you'll probably want to subscribe to that digest mag. Asimov's first published four of these stories (before they were included in Year's Best) and that's another monthly worthy of your dollars. These periodicals are struggling to survive because they can't secure enough distribution and sales -- support them because they're great reading.

Spotty.......2005-07-28

Anytime an anthology claims it is the best, there will alwyas be an argument of why was so-and-so leftout. At the beggining of this book, the editors explain their parameters of why they chose what they did. The editors only chose science fiction and nothing else such as horror laced or speculative fiction. The problem is that this last year for the anthology was from a shallow pool of available material. Science fiction is in a bit of a lull. This does not mean "Year's best SF 10" is bad. It is not, most of the book is very good. Some of the stories that do not work are just unremarkeable and one or two of them, I wonder what the editors were thinking. My two personal favorite stories are "Wealth" by Reed and "Time As it Evaporates" by Dunyack. Both of these stories are excellent are are worth the price of the book alone. "Strood" is also fun to read and should not be missed. I enjoy this particular series every year and this year is no exception. As you will find with any series, some years are better than others and once again this is the case again. The book is worth the purchase, but not as good as other years such as year's 1, 4, 5, and 9.

Less than stellar.......2005-07-26

The tenth edition suffers from the trouble that hangs around this series: About half its volumes simply don't have truly memorable reading in them. That doesn't make it a waste of time, and this volume isn't one, but it's undistinguished - especially after last year's sparkling collection.

Unremarkable contributions came from frequently reliable writers like Gene Wolfe, Gregory Benford, Pamela Sargent, and James Patrick Kelly. Stories like those by Ray Vukcevich or James Cambias I might not have included at all. Brenda Cooper's and Neal Asher's stories, among others, outshine the ones surrounding them.

I buy the anthology every year because it often contains a couple of stories that raise the whole book's sea level, and it's a good price. I'll buy next year's as well. But when I look back over the line of Year's Best editions on the shelf for one to pick up again, this year's probably will sit right where it does now. If you didn't buy Year's Best 9, try that one first. This one's readable, just not remarkable.

Average customer rating:

Best SF collection of the year

Year's Best SF 8
David G. Hartwell , and Kathryn Cramer
Manufacturer: Eos
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 006106453X
Release Date: 2003-05-27

Book Description

The best science fiction short stories of 2002 and 2003, selected by David G. Hartwell, one of the most respected editors in the field.

The short story is one of the most vibrant and exciting areas in science fiction today. It is where the hot new authors emerge and where the beloved giants of the field continue to publish.

Now, building on the success of the first seven volumes, Eos will once again present a collection of the best stories of the year in mass market format. Here, gathered by David G. Hartwell, one of the most respected editors in the field, are stories with visions of tomorrow and yesterday, of the strange and the familiar, of the unknown and the unknowable.

With stories from some of the best and brightest names in science fiction, the Year's Best SF 8 and SF9 is an indispensable guide for every science fiction fan.

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Brave New Worlds To Explore and Conquer

The astonishingly possible is once again showcased in a breathtaking volume of the best short form SF the past year had to offer. Contributed by some of the most revered and exciting voices in the genre -- and compiled by acclaimed editor and anthologist David G. Hartwell -- these stories of wonder and terror, astounding technologies and miraculous discovery, stretch the imagination into realms and universes never dreamed of before. Each tale is a dazzling gem, rocketing readers across light years and into unknown dimensions -- exploring the intricate cultures of alien races and the strange, secret workings of the human mind. And together they form an unparalleled whole -- a collection of luminous visions that shines more brightly than a newborn sun.

New tales from:

Nancy Kress
Ursula K. Le Guin
Greg Egan
Bruce Sterling
Michael Swanwick
Gene Wolfe
and many more

Customer Reviews:

Best SF collection of the year.......2004-03-03

I used to regularly have a problem with being so captured by a book that I'd neglect relatively unimportant things like eating and sleeping. I hadn't had that experience in quite a while, but this collection brought it back. Nearly every story is excellent. This book doesn't have the range of the massive _Year's Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection_, but it benefits from its comparative selectivity. If you're only planning to get one of the two, I'd go for this one.

Year's Best SF 6 (Year's Best SF (Science Fiction))

Average customer rating:

Nice, thick volume featuring some pretty profound speculative stories!
Great start
A good start to a "Best of" series
An extraordinary anthology
2001 edition not up to par

Year's Best SF 6 (Year's Best SF (Science Fiction))
David G. Hartwell
Manufacturer: Eos
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 0061020559

Amazon.com

David Hartwell's guiding principle for his annual science fiction anthologies is that the stories be clearly science fiction--not fantasy, horror, or postmodern. As always, for the 2001 edition he has chosen stories representing the best of the SF field, along with several short pieces published in Nature magazine as part of a millennium celebration.

Don't miss Tananarive Due's "Patient Zero," which assumes Greg Egan's frequent spotlight on medical SF (this year Egan covers philosophy vs. science in his alternate history "Oracle"); Stephen Dedman's detective story about amputation, "The Devotee"; Stephen Baxter's hard SF "Sheena 5," which is about an enhanced squid and her mission; Ursula K. LeGuin's anthropological tale "The Birthday of the World"; or Nancy Kress's succinct, pithy "To Cuddle Amy."

2001 Hugo Award nominees include "Seventy-Two Letters" by Ted Chiang, "Oracle" by Greg Egan, and short story winner "Different Kinds of Darkness" by David Langford. --Bonnie Bouman

Book Description

Get Ready To Expand Your Mind...

Acclaimed editor and anthologist David G. Hartwell is back with the sixth annual collection of the year's most impressive, thought-provoking, and just plain great science fiction.

Year's Best SF 6 includes contributions from the greatest stars of the field as well as remarkable newcomers -- galaxies and into unexplored territory deep within your own soul.

Here are stories from:

Brian W. Aldiss

Stephen Baxter

David Brin

Nancy Kress

Ursula K. Le Guin

Robert Silverberg

and many more...

Download Description

Get Ready To Expand Your Mind...

Acclaimed editor and anthologist David G. Hartwell is back with the sixth annual collection of the year's most impressive, thought-provoking, and just plain great science fiction.

Year's Best SF 6 includes contributions from the greatest stars of the field as well as remarkable newcomers -- galaxies and into unexplored territory deep within your own soul.

Here are stories from:

Brian W. Aldiss

Stephen Baxter

David Brin

Nancy Kress

Ursula K. Le Guin

Robert Silverberg

and many more...

Customer Reviews:

Nice, thick volume featuring some pretty profound speculative stories!.......2006-07-07

I actually thought the last story was the best one of all. "72 Letters" is a provoking piece of steampunk/alternative history which turns biology on its ear and introduces God as a substrate of 19th century physics and engineering. By rights, "72 Letters" should be classified as Hard Fantasy, given its fantastical premise combined with a rigorous setting and well-thought-out exploration of the Golem myth. The subject of the story, far more than its characters, grew more fascinating with each page, and when I closed the back cover of the book I thought, wow, that was a hell of a way to end the volume! Terrific!

Other standout stories that I enjoyed were, "Patient Zero", "Different Kinds of Darkness", "The Birthday of the World", "Sheena 5", "Grandma's Jumpman", and "Built Upon the Sands of Time."

Both well-established and famous writers (such as Ursula K. Leguin) and relatively obscure names cohabitate between the covers of this book, and like others in the series, #6 offers a decent sampling of SF from all over the map: sociological, hard, bio/eco, dystopia, etc.

Note: not necessarily a great book for people new to the SF field, or who are seeking light fare. Several of the stories in this volume, like "Patient Zero", are downright depressing, and a story like "Reef" is so obviously on the cutting edge of hard SF, a reader more familiar with mainstream fiction or franchise SF material (Star Trek, Star Wars) might be offput.

Great start.......2003-01-21

The art of the short story is disappearing. It is a joy when a compilation is released and it is very good. This is such a release. Are these the best of the Science Fiction genre for 1995? I don't know, but these stories are wonderfull. When I buy short story anthologies I tend to look for authors I have enjoyed over the years. The true gift is when I find an author I know nothing about or a new and rising author that is going to be fun to follow. This anthology has some of the big names such as Le Guin and Silverberg who both have written execellent stories. The true find for me was Nancy Kress. Her 'Evolution' is about a plague and the ramifications of genetic manipulation. Kress wrote 'An Alien light' in 1988 and I had lost track of her since. She is truly an amazing find. This book is well worth the time.

A good start to a "Best of" series.......2002-07-11

When David Hartwell started his own annual series of the year's best SF with this volume in the mid nineties, the doorstopper series edited by Gardner Dozois had been running for over a decade. Hartwell made some passing references to other anthologies being unfocused but otherwise he avoided the issue and that begged the question of why this series started and should you buy it instead of or as well as the Dozois book?

On the strength of this, the first volume, I am happy to recommend Hartwell's choice to anyone who is into SF in the traditional sense. That does not mean that the contents are old fashioned just that the contents are certainly Science Fiction and not some related genre.

The fourteen stories here, all of which were written in 1995, include works by a selection of the best of contemporary SF authors. Writers like Silverberg, Baxter, Benford, Kress, Haldeman, Woolfe, Zelazny and Sheckley rarely disappoint though the last of those is represented here by one of his weaker recent works.

The highlights for me were Joe Haldeman's "For White Hill" and Robert Silverberg's "Hot Times in Magma City". The first is a tale of war, art, love and sacrifice set on a ruined Earth in the far future and the second is set in a near future LA beset by volcanic eruptions. The producers of "Volcano" and "Dante's Peak", a pair of similarly themed disaster movies should have studied Silverberg's tale to see how to inject some real humanity into the subject.

Like the Silverberg story, William Spencer's "Downloading Midnight", Gene Wolfe's "The Ziggurat" and "Evolution" by Nancy Kress are all set on a contemporary or near future Earth and all three are compelling and rewarding stories.

Stephen Baxter's "Gossamer" and Gregory Benford's "A Worm in the Well" demonstrate that the traditional setting of space travel in the Solar System can still give rise to highly enjoyable and original ideas that bring "golden age" styles right up to date.

This is not a perfect book, there are still a couple of stories here that left me wondering what the editor was thinking (or smoking) when he included them but on the whole, the book stands as justification for the fact that there is certainly room for another "years's best" series. If you buy Gardner Dozois' books, you should give this volume a go as well.

An extraordinary anthology.......2001-11-08

This strong anthology proves that there is room in the science fiction market for two Year's Best anthologies. I was slightly surprised by this anthology because I have been underwhelmed by previous editions.

This year was a different story. I enjoyed nearly every offering in the book. I was particularly impressed with the stories that Mr. Hartwell culled from unusual sources. Robert Silverberg's 'The Millennial Express' from Playboy magazine was particularly impressive. Robert Reed's story 'Grandma's Jumpman' from Century magazine was above average. I enjoyed the 5 or 6 1-2 page stories from Nature magazine. The stories from David Brin and Dan Simmons stood out from the rest.

The anthology also included excellent stories from Howard Waldrop (an amusement-park attraction attains sentience and rebels against its masters) and Ted Chiang (an alternate reality story where Jewish kabbalistic tradition is real and powerful). Brian Stableford's fascinating 'The Last Supper' continues the author's recent exploration of the future of genetics.

Not to be overlooked are two award-winning stories, Ursula Le Guin's excellent 'The Birthday of the World' and David Langford's 'Different Kinds of Darkness'. I thoroughly enjoyed this anthology. Highly recommended.

2001 edition not up to par.......2001-08-10

This book didn't quite do it for me, I'm afraid. The main problem with the book was the overabundance of two-page short shorts (most culled from Nature). These things are worth reading, I suppose, and they're not as bad as Analog's Probability Zero pieces, but do they really belong in a Year's Best anthology? Ford's "In the Days of the Comet" and Kress's "To Cuddle Amy" could have been worthy of an inclusion here, had they been fleshed out a little more. With the advent of Internet -only fiction, short-shorts have become more and more popular as e-zines attempt to appeal to the average short-attention-span Web surfer. Call me old-fashioned, but I'll take a big fat novella any day.

Average customer rating:

Best Year's Best SF in Years
Butler, Swanwick, and others deliver some great tales
This book ain't the one
Refreshment for a Post-Nebula Fan
Another year, more great stories

Year's Best SF 9
David G. Hartwell , and Kathryn Cramer
Manufacturer: Eos
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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Short Stories | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 006057559X
Release Date: 2004-05-25

Book Description

The Future Boldly Imagined From Breathtaking New Perspectives

The world as we will know it is far different from the future once predicted in simpler times. For this newest collection of the finest short form SF to appear in print over the preceding year, acclaimed editors and anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer have gathered remarkable works that reflect a new sensibility. Courageous and diverse stories from some of the finest authors in the field grace this amazing volume -- adventures and discoveries, parables and warnings, carrying those eager to fly to far ends of a vast, ever-shifting universe of alien worlds, strange cultures, and mind-bending technologies. Tomorrow has never been as spellbinding, terrifying, or transforming as it is here, today, in these extraordinary pages. Hang on!

New tales from:
Kage Baker • Gregory Benford • Terry Bisson Rick Moody • Michael Swanwick • John Varley and many more

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The Future Boldly Imagined From Breathtaking New Perspectives

New tales from:
Kage Baker • Gregory Benford • Terry Bisson Rick Moody • Michael Swanwick • John Varley and many more

Customer Reviews:

Best Year's Best SF in Years.......2006-05-13

I have been reading Year's Best book from Year's Best SF 3. I was somewhat disappointed with stories in SF 7 and 8, but SF 9 delivers extremely interesting and thoughtful stories. I really enjoyed stories by Gene Wolfe, George Benford, and my favorite "Four Short Stories" by Joe Haldeman. Buy and read this book, you will not be disappointed.

Butler, Swanwick, and others deliver some great tales.......2005-07-14

"Year's Best SF 9," edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, collects 20 stories into a 500 page anthology. The stories range in length from 6 to 71 pages. Some of the highlights are as follows.

"Amnesty," by Octavia E. Butler: looks at relations between humans and a radically different intelligent species of communal life forms that have invaded Earth. This story deals with issues of power, control, language, and communication; it is as penetrating and thought-provoking as Butler's other great works. "Birth Days," by Geoff Ryman: explores human reproduction, homosexuality, and biological research and experimentation. "Ej-Es," by Nancy Kress: a very moving story about a team investigating a seemingly failed human colony; the story addresses themes of disease, communication, cultural difference, and the human brain. "Rogue Farm," by Charles Stross: a funny tale about a farming couple defending their property against a mutant creature; this story is full of bizarre dialogue and images. "In Fading Suns and Dying Moons," by John Varley: an entomologist is enlisted to discover the meaning behind an invasion of the Earth by weird, butterfly-collecting aliens. This story refers to and cleverly builds on the ideas in the science fiction classic "Flatland."

Also worthy of note--"The Day We Went Though the Transition," by Ricard de la Casa and Pedro Jorge Romero: a time travel story with a Spanish setting. This story also deals with terrorism. "A Night on the Barbary Coast," by Kage Baker: a colorful, highly entertaining tale about a pair of time-traveling cyborgs--who also happen to be father and daughter--on an adventure in 19th century San Francisco. "The Madwoman of Shuttlefield," by Allen M. Steele: a story of life in a human colony on a distant planet. This is a full-bodied, richly evocative tale that covers many aspects of life in the colony--food, architecture, government, etc. Steele creates memorable characters and powerfully drawn human relationships.

But my favorite piece in the anthology is the brilliant "Coyote at the End of History," by Michael Swanwick. This cluster of five short fable-like tales, reminiscent of Native American animal trickster tales, tells about Coyote and his relations with the "Star People." Sort of like folk tales from a distant future, these Coyote tales are ironic, deliciously funny, and surprisingly poignant. Overall, "Year's Best SF 9" is a wonderfully diverse and mind-expanding anthology. This is the kind of book that reminds me why I fell in love with the science fiction genre in the first place. This collection offers excellent examples of why the short story is such an ideal format for science fiction.

This book ain't the one.......2005-01-03

I've been working hard on a Ph.D. so it was with great relish that I turned to this book after getting some time for myself. However, I was sorely disappointed with what I read. Octavia Butler's story started off quite decently but the ending was not up to the rest of the story. And it was downhill from there. I've never read two science fiction stories in a row I haven't liked but this book represented a series of them. Some of the stories had good potential but the writers didn't develop them well and some were just not good. It is my opinion that many of the stories would have been much better if the writers had a publisher/mentor like the early sci fi authors who critiqued their stories and helped make them better. Perhaps critiquing or mentoring is what sci fi needs more of. I have started another sci fi anthology and already it is better than this one.

Refreshment for a Post-Nebula Fan.......2004-07-09

What I like best about science fiction is its vast facility for plot, setting, tone, and characters--the essences of story-telling. I like my stories far-flung, imaginative, and well-crafted. That's what I like about this book. I virtually never hand out 5-star ratings, but for a good read at a value price, I think this collection's hard to beat... a star in the series and good on its own.

For many years I read the Nebula Award winners as examples of the best science fiction had to offer. Over the past several years, though, I feel like the Nebulas have steadily gone downhill, and I've reluctantly stopped buying those anthologies. I've transferred my annual purchase allegiance to this series, and this is my favorite of the nine hands down.

The tales by Joe Haldeman, John Varley, and Michael Swanwick alone are worth the price, and those in-between don't bore. In addition, Rick Moody's volume-ending novella is one of the best tales to spin off the elusive-reality themes that Philip Dick wove in "Palmer Eldritch" and "Ubik" that I've ever read, and that's high praise for me. Caveats: Not all stories worked for me (true for any anthology). Hartwell emphasizes that his selections are science-based, but hard science isn't a threshold requirement and I think he now simply means he doesn't include Fantasy (one here borders on magic realism). Finally, veteran SF readers will recognize most all the writers... in other words, the authors mostly have been around awhile, and few new or unfamiliar writers made the cut, as usual. But the $8 I spent on this was a bargain, and those who want an entertaining cross-section of the genre with bang for the buck will likely find more than a few stories to like here.

Another year, more great stories.......2004-07-09

One of these days, Kage Baker is going to get me into trouble. Not personally, of course (having never had the honour of meeting the lady), but her stories. See, the problem is that I'm such a big fan of hers that I now have to track down every thing she has written and at least read it. I happened upon this year's edition of Year's Best SF, the ninth, and saw that she had a story in it. Of course, this meant I had to buy it. However, doing this leaves me at the mercy of the rest of the stories. I'm not a big fan of hard SF stories, and I prefer fantasy to science fiction in any case. Will I have paid a lot of money (especially with Canadian prices) for a book that I only like 20 pages out of 500? Would this be the time that she's cost me more money then I want to spend?

Thankfully, no. While I didn't care for every story in Year's Best SF 9, I did like them well enough to thoroughly recommend the book. At 500 pages, there's a lot of stories in here, varying from hard science fiction to near-future character-driven stories, and everything in between. While Baker's story, "A Night on the Barbary Coast," is among the best stories in the collection, I would have to say that the best is actually John Varley's "In Fading Suns and Dying Moons."

Baker's story is another in the continuing adventures of The Company, where a bunch of immortal cyborgs try to make money for the time-traveling Dr. Zeus Corporation by harvesting soon to be extinct species of plants and animals, as well as other rare items that will eventually disappear. In this story, Joseph needs the botanist Mendoza to help him identify a rare fungus related to a quartz deposit that the Company wants in California. Their personal relationship has always been rocky, ever since Joseph forced her to sit and watch her English lover be burned at the stake, rather than intervene, in the 1550s. The story takes a nice twist at the end, but as ever Baker's strength is in the characterization, and the banter between the two protagonists. Mendoza is as anti-social as ever and Joseph is just as witty as he always is. It made me even more anxious for the next installment of the Company books.

Varley's "In Fading Suns and Dying Moons" is the story of an unstoppable line of alien beings, humanoid and apparently holding hands, are sweeping across the country, and ultimately, the planet. They are harvesting the world's butterflies for some unknown reason. Dr. Richard Lewis, an insect expert, is called upon to see if he can figure out why they are doing this. Slowly, with the help of other people (including a mathematical specialist), what these aliens are doing dawns on them, with possibly horrific consequences. I found this story fascinating, with the alien scourge being very mysterious and intriguing. There were a couple moments where I laughed, but the ending left me very cold, but in a good way. I even shivered. Now *that's* getting the reader involved in the story!

There are definitely some other good ones too. There's Allen M. Steele's "The Madwoman of Shuttlefield," the story of a musician befriending an old hermit in a run-down section of a far-off colony world where the original colonists aren't too happy with the influx of new people. There's also "The Waters of Meribah" by Tony Ballantyne, which involves the creation of an alien species by turning a rapist into one. The end result isn't quite what the scientists expected. Finally, there's "Night of Time," by Robert Reed. This is a story of a man whose job it is to restore memories, and how an alien known for remembering everything has come to him because he has forgotten one small item. The character work in this story is great, with special kudos for the alien's assistant, whose earliest memories appear to be of food and feasts. As with most of these stories, there's a nice twist near the end to lead the reader down a different path then expected. Most of the other stories certainly had their strong moments and I enjoyed reading them. They just weren't the best.

The only exceptions were some of the harder SF stories, and that could very well just be a matter of personal taste. Even these stories, however, were interesting in their own way. Stephen Baxter's "The Great Game" is the only one that I really had a problem with other than that, and it's mostly to do with the one-dimensional aspect of the story. A military team is inserted onto a planet to extract an academician who has been studying the planet's problems to see if the Xeelee are involved. If so, a war could erupt. This is an anti-war story that portrays something like the military industrial complex here on Earth, but makes the general in favour of starting the war way too obvious. It's a caricature more than a character.

If you like your science fiction in short doses, this is a great anthology. I am not as versed in the science fiction field as I am fantasy, but I'd say there's definitely a good cross-section of the best of the field in 2003. The stories are definitely interesting, and if there's better stuff out there, then the field is pretty healthy. Highly recommended.

Book Description

A banner year for bold, provocative, brilliantly inventive science fiction has produced some of the most enthrallingly original short sf since the genre's conception. In their twelfth remarkable collection of the very best of the last twelve months, award-winning editors and anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer present amazing stories of galaxy-shaking events, alien contact, utopian science, and technology run amok—tales that celebrate the continually evolving literary artistry of some of the form's finest, most respected practitioners . . . while showcasing the magnificent talents of the science fiction superstars of the near future.

Customer Reviews:

I sure hope that wasn't the best the year had to offer.......2007-06-18

There are about 3 or 4 good stories in this anthology. It leans heavily toward aimless, perfunctory end-of-the-world scenarios and bland conceits, and there are the usual "science diction" stories that take standard SF formulas and insert the pop-science buzzwords of the day ("nano" comes up a lot). I think the sense of "best" here is "best story by each author that appeared in some venue somewhere" and I guess a lot of them weren't really concentrating on short fiction that year or something. I will single out the Liz Williams story as memorably worthy.
In short, it could be worth 8 bucks, but don't let the "best" in the title fool you into thinking that this is the "best" in the sense in which we Earthlings normally use the term.

Another Winner from Hartwell and Cramer.......2007-06-10

Of the various annual SF anthologies, this one and Gardner Dozois's are consistently the best. You should buy both. the 2007 Hartwell is different and perhaps superior to #11, which had an unusal emphasis on short-shorts that is not the case with #12. And if you've never read Hartwell's #8, pick that up too--or all of the prior 11. Great quick reads.

Year's Best SF 6 (SFBC Edition) (Year's Best SF, 6)

Average customer rating:

Year's Best SF 6 (SFBC Edition) (Year's Best SF, 6)

Manufacturer: EOS/Harper Collins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Anthologies | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0739418564

Product Description

Hardcover version of ISBN# 0061020559

Average customer rating:

Curl Up Reading
Missed the mark
Not a good selection
Disappointing Anthology for the Turn of the Millennium
Comment on SF 5 as a sample for aspiring writers

Year's Best SF 5
David G. Hartwell
Manufacturer: Eos
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

Anthologies | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Anthologies | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

General | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

Short Stories | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0061020540

Amazon.com

In 1996, editor/critic David G. Hartwell began selecting his best-of-the-year stories in an anthology providing an interesting juxtaposition to Gardner Dozois's long-running Year's Best Science Fiction series.

Most of Hartwell's picks are by leading authors such as Kim Stanley Robinson, Robert Reed, Gene Wolfe, Brian Aldiss, Stephen Baxter, Brian M. Stableford, and Sarah Zettel; several are by less-well-known writers.

Don't miss "Game of the Century," "Visit the Sins," "Kinds of Strangers," or "Huddle." Hugo nominees include "Ancient Engines" by Michael Swanwick, "Fossil Games" by Tom Purdom, "Border Guards" by Greg Egan, and "Macs" by Terry Bisson (which also won the Nebula short story award).

Small, light, and less costly than most anthologies, Hartwell's fifth collection is one of the series' strongest; almost every one of the 24 stories (plus one poem) makes an enjoyable read. --Bonnie Bouman

Book Description

Experience New Realms

Acclaimed editor and anthologist David G. Hartwell returns with this fifth annual collection of the year's most imaginative, entertaining, and mind-expanding science fiction.

Here are works from some of today's most acclaimed authors, as well as visionary new talents, that will introduce you to new ideas, offer unusual perspectives, and take you to places beyond your wildest imaginings. Contributors to The Year's Best SF 5 include:

Brian Aldiss
Stephen Baxter
Michael Bishop
Terry Bisson
Greg Egan
Robert Reed
Kim Stanley Robinson
Hiroe Suga
Michael Swanwick
Gene Wolfe
and many more...

Download Description

Experience New Realms

Acclaimed editor and anthologist David G. Hartwell returns with this fifth annual collection of the year's most imaginative, entertaining, and mind-expanding science fiction.

Brian Aldiss
Stephen Baxter
Michael Bishop
Terry Bisson
Greg Egan
Robert Reed
Kim Stanley Robinson
Hiroe Suga
Michael Swanwick
Gene Wolfe
and many more...

Customer Reviews:

Curl Up Reading.......2003-08-31

At first glance, the cover may not be as appealing as the other volumes. The collection of authors is formidable though, as one takes a glance at the back cover. The book is cheap, and you get more than your share of reading material. It's a pity that only a dozen of the stories are worth much notice.

Robert Reed's "Game of the Century" and Stephen Baxter's "Huddle" are geniuinely engaging, and struck me as two of the best in the anthology. Michael Bishop's poem "Secrets of the Alien Reliquary" is worth a read too. Some, frankly, were dissapointing. Perhaps some tried a notch too hard to be imaginative.

Nevertheless, a pedant of SF would enjoy this throughly, so snap the paperbacks up.

Missed the mark.......2002-05-26

Beginning in the mid nineties and running at least to the present, David Hartwell produces the alternative "year's best" anthologies. The primary series is of course the similarly titled one edited by Gardner Dozois. In some years the Hartwell selection is at least as good as the generally larger Dozois version. In the fifth year of his endeavours though he missed the mark and this book is not so good. Certainly it is not up to the standards of some of the earlier anthologies.

Of course, there are some good stories in here. A competant editor could hardly gather together 25 tales and disappoint with them all but the truth is that less than a dozen of them are better than average for current SF and that hardly counts as "year's best" even if you take into account the fact that there is no overlap with Gardner Dozois' book which presumably gets first choice with the authors.

I think that the best story here is Steven Baxter's "Huddle" which tells of a future Earth stricken in an ice age and populated by people genetically engineered to survive the bitterly cold conditions. Perhaps it is a sign of the times but all of the best stories here deal with the alteration of humans in order to deal with the pressures of life in the future. Terry Bisson's "Macs" introduces the ides of creating clones of criminals just so that they may be killed by the families of their victims while Curt Wohleber's "100 Candles" and Tom Purdom's "Fossil Games" are set in futures in which it is normal for people to be extensively altered and those who have no, or few, alterations feel increasingly excluded from their worlds.

If you are the kind of fan who just cannot get enough short SF then this is worth getting as you will find some interesting stories but otherwise, you might as well give this a miss and hope for a better effort next year.

Not a good selection.......2001-06-18

The choices of stories in this book are not very good. Some of them are repeats of other anthologies. Others are do not present very original ideas. I couldn't really get into any stories in this book. It's average at best.

Disappointing Anthology for the Turn of the Millennium.......2001-03-18

Science fiction is an immensely broad category. It encompasses stories as diverse as standard monster fare (the movie ALIEN, for example), social satire (the TV series THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN, the movie THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET), farce (THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS), adventure (STAR WARS) as well as more traditionally science oriented tales of our society (1984) or imaginary worlds far beyond ours (2001) and much more. Editing an anthology which proports to represent the best short science fiction published in a year must be an incredibly demanding task, and David Hartwell is to be commended for attempting to represent a fair share of this variety. But if this book genuinely represents the best of SF published in 1999, I have to wonder if some bizarre millennial fever didn't strike the SF world a bit early. As SF writers are, by definition, imaginative folks, did they as a group get a bit too worked up worrying about Y2K to concentrate on their writing? Well, of course not; and interestingly enough there is no looming sense of catastrophe in the vast majority of this anthology. Instead, the tales generally treasure our humanity over technology and offer a hopeful view of the future (with a few notable exceptions). And yet...

Hartwell's anthology is sizable, containing 25 short stories. Of these, less than half were memorable enough that as I write this review while looking at the table of contents, I actually remember the stories--this only a few days after completing the book. I'm definitely getting older, sure, and more crotchety; but as yet I've no noticable symptoms of Alzheimer's. The one word that comes to mind with regard to most of these stories is "ordinary".

However, about 10 of the stories were worth a read. Of these, the two best were Cory Doctrow's "Visit the Sins", portraying family relationships that developed after an attempt to cure Attention Deficit Disorder goes horribly awry; and Chris Lawson's "Written in Blood" was an engaging look at the border between faith and technology, with prejudice and hope entangling one another.

Robert Reed's "Game of the Century" posited a future in which genetic engineering gives us superhuman athletes, but more importantly explores how they would feel growing up as such. Sarah Zettel's "Kinds of Strangers" follows the psychological breakdown of the crew of a deep-space craft after a devastating equipment failure. Stephen Baxter's bleak "Huddle", about a future molded by genetic engineering and planetary catastrophe was easily the darkest story in the book. Curt Wohleber's "100 Candles" and Chris Beckett's "Valour" were genuinely well written, well conceived stories with interesting characters. Finally, translated from the Japanese, Hiroe Suga's "Freckled Figure" was a beautifully told tale that somehow bound together the spirit of ancient Japanese craftsmanship with the love of anime and technology that drives so much of Japan today.

For the sake of these stories, YEAR'S BEST SF 5 is worth a look. But if you really want great sci-fi, I'd HIGHLY recommend STARFISH by Peter Watts. I've just finished it and have to say it is the best sci-fi books I've read in many many years. I hope that David Hartwell is able to find fiction of that quality for future anthologies.

Comment on SF 5 as a sample for aspiring writers.......2001-01-11

I bought this book in order to study the kinds of short science fiction that are considered top-of-the-line to give me an idea on how I should write my science fiction. What I found overwhelmed me. Strict application of `science' to the fiction is common; most stories have discussions of scientific principles in them, even in the most simple of tales. Rare are the stories you see the science only applied and not discussed. Even Gene Wolfe's simplistic protagonist in `Has Anybody Seen Junie Moon?' describes a scientific discussion on gravity. So with the primitive Night-Dawn in Stephen Baxter's `Huddle', who puts forth a theorem in a scientific manner, though it was done simply; I take the message to be that whatever humanity mutates into, it will retain scientific reasoning. I hope this does not aggravate the impression of science fiction being `hifalooting'. A couple of stories are mostly talk (Stableford's and Swanwick's); action and movement does not seem to be a looked-for element in a sci-fi story. Of course, I do not disagree that science can be left out of SF, but the acronym can mean just `speculative fiction', and the science need not necessarily be flatly explained. But I do assume that `hard' sci-fi, with scientific explanations, is what most editors are looking for. For me, it seems that applauded sci-fi stories can be hard to understand; I barely got what the authors were trying to put across in `Sexual Dimorphism' and `Everywhere' (The former is especially heavy in scientific jargon). Michael Bishop's poem is a mystery to me. Guess I'm not that sharp a reader of SF as I thought. Traditional themes can be found, like space opera, alternative history, time travel and cyberpunk, but are not easily identifiable unless you've really read between the lines. But there is a trend. Most of the stories here project humanity in various future situations, having moved to new states of life, gone to new places or using new technology, but they still have to deal with problems spawned by these new states. We have human-animals specifically bred for a brutal sport, people living for thousands of years and trying to bear with it, an Attention Deficit Disorder sufferer being treated with a cyborg implant, people living on a threatened moon, among others. New ideas have ceased to appear, so the themes are now more on problems caused by these ideas, and how to solve them. With regard to the editor's comments, I would say that Hartwell gives pertinent info on background. Revealing where the story was first published helps to identify those markets. Analog looks for problem-solving stories, Artemis is about the moon, so forth. His picks were also as varied as possible; different themes, different styles, different origins (Nice to know that there was one Japanese work there, one of those I liked more in this collection). But I wish he'd tell simply why those stories he chose were the best for him. Anyhow, I have an idea on what the editors of the various Sci-fi magazines are looking for. Thanks, David.

Average customer rating:

A Good Batch of Stories
A good bet for solid science-fiction stories
Taken together the 2 yrs bests make a wonderful whole.

Year's Best SF 3
David G. Hartwell
Manufacturer: Eos
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

Anthologies | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Anthologies | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

General | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

Short Stories | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0061059013

Amazon.com

This is the third installment of David G. Hartwell's annual Year's Best collection, and he writes that it is "full of science fiction--every story in the book is clearly that and not something else."

Hartwell chose 22 stories this time around, a healthy increase from last year's collection. (This doesn't represent more pages, but rather in selecting stories of shorter length, Hartwell was able to fit more of them into the same space.) As usual, Hartwell does a masterful job of picking wonderful works from a variety of venues, and the names here include Ray Bradbury, William Gibson, and Gene Wolfe. This is the perfect collection for readers seeking stories that are quintessentially science fiction. Year's Best SF is rapidly becoming one of the most important annual anthologies in the science fiction field. --Craig Engler

Book Description

Enjoy today's most awesome and innovative science fiction, chosen by acclaimed editor David G. Hartwell from the best short fiction published over the last year.

Like its two distinguished processors, Year's Best SF 3 is a cybercopia of astonishing stories from familiar favorites and rising stars, all calculated to blow your mind, scorch your, senses, erase your inhibitions, and reinitialize your intelligence.

With stories from:

Gregory Benford, Terry Bisson, Greg Egan, William Gibson, Nancy Kress, Robert Silverberg, Gene Wolfe and more...

Download Description

Enjoy today's most awesome and innovative science fiction, chosen by acclaimed editor David G. Hartwell from the best short fiction published over the last year.

With stories from:

Gregory Benford, Terry Bisson, Greg Egan, William Gibson, Nancy Kress, Robert Silverberg, Gene Wolfe and more... "

Customer Reviews:

A Good Batch of Stories.......2003-07-29

The one piece of dross comes from an unexpected source: William Gibson and his story "Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City". It's a minute, camera-eye examination of a cardboard structure in a Tokyo subway and obviously inspired by J.G. Ballard's work. I detected no point to the series of descriptions, or, indeed, anything of a fantastical or science fictional nature.

Nancy Kress' "Always True to Thee, in My Fashion" gives us a witty satire with a world where the seasonal variations of fashion cover not only clothes but also your pharmaceutically modulated attitudes.. The caged dinosaur of Gene Wolfe's "Petting Zoo" represents not only the lost childhood of the story's protagonist but a vitality lost from the race of man. Tom Cool gives us "Universal Emulators" with its future of economic hypercompetition that has created a black market for those who impersonate, in every way, the few employed professionals. In effect, the emulators grant them an extra set of hands. Its plot and characters would have done Roger Zelazny proud.

The voice of past science fiction writers echos through many of the anthology's best stories. Jack London's _The Sea Wolf_ provides the inspiration for Michael Swanwick's "The Wisdom of Old Earth". Its heroine realizes, despite whatever dangers she overcomes guiding posthumans through the Pennsylvania's jungles, she will never bootstrap herself into being their equal. H.G. Wells looms over Robert Silverberg's "Beauty in the Night". Its child hero undertakes the first successful assassination of the brutal aliens that have occupied Earth, but his reasons have more to do with his oppressive father rather than the aliens' behavior. John C. Wright's "Guest Law" is a welcome return to the flashy decadence of Cordwainer Smith's fiction. Its hero, a slave-engineer, watches in disgust as his aristocratic overlords corrupt the customary requirements of hospitality to justify piracy in deep space. Gregory Benford's "The Voice" responds to Ray Bradbury's _Fahrenheit 451_. Here the convenience of implanted intelligent agents, hooked up to a computer network, led to literacy fading, and not a repressive regime of firemen. Benford agrees with Bradbury about literacy's value but also undercuts him on the supremacy of writing as a means of communication.

James Patrick Kelly and Brian Stableford tackle similar themes in two excellent tales about children, the needs they fufill for parents, and the possiblity of replacing them with surrogates. The heroine of Kelly's "Itsy Bitsy Spider", estranged from her actor father for 23 ages, is horrified to discover that her enfeebled father's legal guardian is also equipped to simulate her as a child. Stableford's "The Pipes of Pan" has a future recovering from ecological catastrophe where real children are not allowed. However, parents can have children genetically altered to never age and reproduce. But those children suddenly start growing up.

Jack Williamson's "The Firefly Tree" is a Bradbury-like tale of aliens who travel far but whose invitation to join an intergalactice republic goes no further than a farm boy. Though I usually hate stories narrated by smart-alecky teenagers, I didn't mind S.N. Dyer's "The Nostalginauts" with its problem of time travelers going back 25 years to reminisce about their younger selves. The technological speculations of Greg Egan's "Yeyuka" are interesting. However, I didn't find the political criticisms inherent in this story of First World companies exploiting the misery of a Third World cancer epidemic that convincing or plausible, and they seemed a bit of a repeat of those in his novel _Distress_. While Terry Bisson's "An Office Romance" was fun and poked fun at, in passing, Microsoft and those who find the computer screen a satisfying substitute for the world outside, its romance, in the bowels of a computer system, reminded me of _Tron_ in that both stories borrowed computer terminology to create a cyberverse that only superficially resembles the real thing.

Inspiring two works in this book, Ray Bradbury also puts in a direct appearance with "Mr. Pale". As to be expected with Bradbury, its superficial science fiction trappings clothe a fantasy tale of a doctor encountering a desperate Death aboard a spaceship.

The abrupt ending of Tom Purdom's "Canary Land" is at odds with what, at first, seems a tale of corporate espionage on the moon. However, Purdom's real story centers around the bitter experiences of an American immigrant to an Asian dominated lunar society and how his life replays the themes of past immigrants. R. Garcia y Robertson's "Fair Verona" features a virtual-reality obsessed hunting guide who discovers that the joys of his Renaissance Verona might not live up to rescuing a real damsel in danger of being murdered. Kim Newman's "Great Western" has some problems. Rather than just examine the real effects of an alteration to past events, it seeks to gain some signifcance by throwing together a mishmash of non-contemporenous events and cultural icons. Here we have mad cow disease, British political disputes about privatization, and the aftermath of a war fought to free England's serfs. Newman makes the whole thing readable by using the plot of the movie and novel _Shane_, but it doesn't say anything interesting about culture or history.

Paul Levinson's "The Mendelian Lamp Case" has a great premise: a forensic scientist encountering a centuries-old battle between groups that practice genetic engineering via old practices of selective breeding. However, while the biological speculations are detailed and interesting, Levinson should have provided more details about the Amish genetic engineers and their foes. It would have been nice to know their exact motives for spreading allergies, disease, and general social unrest. Michael Moorcock's "London Bone" has plenty of interesting details about London geography and history. However, I think a little too much of the cantankerous Moorcock showed through in its complaints about British and American culture.

The anthology also has a couple of humorous stories. "Turnover", by Geoffrey A. Landis centers around a real scientific question about the seemingly uniform age of Venus' craters. Katherine MacLean's puzzling, but somewhat funny, "Kiss Me" involves several questions about frogs, including what happens when you kiss them.

A good bet for solid science-fiction stories.......1998-11-14

As with most anthologies, there are some hits and misses depending on the reader's personal taste. Easily recognizable SF conventions are recognizable in some, but a new, intriguing spin is put on them to put things in a new light. Some stories, however, are just bizarre. "Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City" by William Gibson is just that, thirteen views of a city at different angles and locations. My favorites were "Petting Zoo" by Gene Wolfe, "The Firefly Tree" by Jack Williamson, "The Nostalginauts' by S.N. Dyer, "The Voice" by Gregory Benford, "Mr. Pale" by Ray Bradbury, and "Great Western" by Kim Newman. There were other good ones, but these stand out.

Taken together the 2 yrs bests make a wonderful whole........1998-08-13

They complement each others strengths & weakness quite well. Dozois chooses more long serious stuff while Hartwell chooses more short humorous stuff. Humor & shorts was the one area I thought Dozois' was weak, but Hartwell's covers that pretty well. To be brutally honest though this isn't quite as impressive as Dozois' usually is. There were fewer stories I hated, but also fewer that impressed me. In its defense it did a better job with the truly SHORT stories & three of that kind were by "legends" in the field. Legends meaning those respected for decades. Williamson's surprised me by being more aware of the modern world then I expect a 90 yr old be. If that's sounds insulting let me say it was more aware of the modern world then I'll probably be at 90. It was nice to see a Katherine MacLean story anywhere since her works have largely disappeared. Vintage Bradbury's still in print so it wasn't really necessary to pick one of his stories except to have a big name linked to the anthology. Bisson's story about office romance is the kind of story I usually don't like, but I was surprised to find it was one of the ones I liked best. It was a great deal more risque then the others & since some seemed Young Adult I was surprised by it. By the way the risque parts were what I meant by "kind of story I usually don't like" well that & the computer jargon was a bit heavy. The Kress, Dyer, & Purdom I enjoyed in Asimov's. Tom Cool's was also good, but that name is so goofy I'm guessing it has to be real. Benford's "Voice" retread old ground, but I liked it anyway. I could go on & on & rate each story, but I'll stop there. In Dozois' a story generally amazes or infuriates me, in Hartwell's I generally liked it or was indifferent. I didn't avoid reading some the way I do with Dozois' so I'm of a mostly mixed opinion. Nevertheless if Rusch is coming out with one I think I'd probably stop buying this one before I'd stop buying Dozois'. One last thing "Turnover" by Landis was neat in that it talked about a scientific debate I'd just recently heard about, but I think he wrote "Ouroboros" which was the best short/humorous story I'd read last year. I hope it's in Dozois', but his isn't really good with short humorous stories. Oh well I still have the issue of Asimov's it's in I was just hoping it would get recognition. I just mentioned that because some reviewer was saying Landis wrote more worthy stories that year, but I thought I understood the choice since he was trying to counter-balance Dozois'lack of short/humorous stories.

Average customer rating:

Still very good
Awesome, simply awesome.
I'd rather like it to be "Month's best SF"

Year's Best SF 2
David G. Hartwell
Manufacturer: Doubleday Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1568654383

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Editor David G. Hartwell started this annual anthology series because he felt that the "other" best science fiction anthology (The Year's Best Science Fiction) included stories that weren't quite science fiction. Now in its second year, this anthology is proving that there is plenty of great "traditional" work being published in the field, and enough good stories to go around for both anthologies (although there is some overlap between them). In this edition Hartwell showcases talents such as Terry Bisson, James Patrick Kelly, Gene Wolfe, and Allen Steele. No matter how you define science fiction, you'll find something of interest in this excellent collection.

Book Description

Building on the unprecedented success of last season's Year's Best, award-winning editor David G. Hartwell has once again scoured the magazines and anthologies to bring together the very best of today's edgy, audacious, and innovative SF. Here are machines that dream and stars that sing; tales from notable pros and heretofore unknowns;wondrously diverse stories that share the sense of wonder that is the mark of great science fiction. "

Includes stories by:

Gregory Benford, Terry Bisson, James Patrick Kelly, Damon Knight, Joanna Russ, Bruce Sterling, Connie Willis, and many others!

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Includes stories by:

Gregory Benford, Terry Bisson, James Patrick Kelly, Damon Knight, Joanna Russ, Bruce Sterling, Connie Willis, and many others!

Customer Reviews:

Still very good.......2003-01-21

The second in a series for Hartwell. Once again he gathers an eclectic group of Science Fiction writers that cover a wide variety of sub-sections to the genre. He has included two tributes to science the fiction forefathers Well and Verne. My personal favorite of this anthology was 'The Bride of Elvis', a tongue and cheek look at a religion developed around the death of the King. I also loved 'Counting Cats in Zanzibar' by Gene Wolfe. A robot story about a contract killing. If you are looking for easy reading that can also provoke thought, this is a good place to start.

Awesome, simply awesome........2001-12-20

I love the way this collection was put together. All of the stories were well-written and easy to follow, and most of them were quite thought-provoking. One of the best books I've ever read!

I'd rather like it to be "Month's best SF".......1999-01-20

It opens with a tribute to H.G. Wells and ends with an homage to Jules Verne.In the middle are 18 more stories that span from side to side of the SF spectrum and, even though they might not be all in the reader's preferences, are sure worth reading, if not thought-provoking. Talking about preferences, I can't help mentioning Terry Bisson's "In the upper room" and Damon Knight's "Life edit" as the best of the lot. Look forward for number 3, and 4, and...

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