Customer Reviews

The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Gardner Dozois has once again put together a collection of short speculative fiction that every reader of science fiction should have on their shelf. It is filled with a twenty year progression of stories that both reflect the times they were written, and their relevance today as well.

Dozois did a very wise thing while putting together this anthology by choosing stories that made the most significant impact on him as a reader, rather than picking award winners or short stories that have been widely reprinted. Therefore you get Nancy Kress's "Trinity" rather than her much published "Beggars in Spain," and James Patrick Kelly's "10(16) to 1" instead of his "Think Like A Dinosaur."

Some of my favorites I was happy to find enclosed as well by Pat Cadigan, Joe Haldeman, Ursula K. Le Guin and Eileen Gunn. A stellar group of stories that comes Highly Recommended.

From the way this volume is marketed, you could be forgiven for thinking that you are buying a collection of the best short fiction written in the field of science fiction over the past 20 years. Beware, this book does not contain the best of the best over the past twenty years. It does not even contain the best stories from The Year's Best Science Fiction from the past twenty years. On the other hand, it does contain some excellent stories (e.g. A Cabin On the Coast-Gene Wolfe, Salvador-Lucius Shepard, Dinner In Audoghast-Bruce Sterling, The Pure Product-John Kessel, Recording Angel-Ian MacDonald, and others.) But it also contains inexcusably slight and, in some instances, downright unreadable stories (e.g. Trinity -Nancy Kress, execrable chick-lit of the worst kind, The Winter Market-William Gibson, pretentious, narcissistic drool, Coming of Age In Karhide-Ursula K. Le Guin, if I want to read the gory details about puberty I'll stick to medical manuals which at least deal with humans, Lobsters-Charles Stross, twenty pages of supercool, pseudo-hightech gibberish that will make you look forward to your next root canal.) Another problem, when Dozois does get the author right, he often gets the story wrong. (e.g. He chose the slight, silly Even the Queen-Connie Willis, when he could have chosen Cibola or Last of the Winnebagoes. He chose the good but excruciatingly slow Story of Your Life-Ted Chiang, instead of the brilliant, exotic Tower of Babylon, while Salvador-Lucius Shepard is a good story, A Spanish Lesson and The Ends of the Earth are much better. Tales From the Venia Woods-Robert Silverberg is also a good story but pales beside A Long Night's Vigil In the Temple and Sailing to Byzantium -so what if it's a bit long, it's a true classic, None So Blind-Joe Haldeman is okay, Graves would have been a much better choice, etc.) And why would Dozois feel he should limit his best authors to just one story in the volume? If this is supposed to be the best of the best why not put in two Silverberg or three Shepard stories instead of including piffle like Bears Discover Fire-Terry Bisson? And why no George R.R. Martin, one of the top five short story writers over the past thirty years? Under Siege belonged in this volume. Why no Gregory Benford? Of Space/Time and the River belonged in this volume. Alphas belonged in this volume. Why no John Varley? Press Enter belonged in this volume. If this is supposed to be the best science fiction in the past twenty years, why isn't the profoundly disturbing The Angel of Violence-Adam Wisniewski-Snerg included? So, while I think this is a good collection of stories, it should have been a great collection of stories, but isn't.

First of all, let it be known that I bought this collection for one story by one of my favorite authors: "The Wedding Album", which did not disappoint. Of course, I had to get my money's worth by reading the whole thing.

There are some real gems in this collection: Bear's gruesome classic "Blood Music", Ian Macleod's superb "Breathmoss", Sterling's "Dinner in Audoghast", "Daddy's World", and a few others. Unfortunately, these excellent works stand up like islands in a sea of others that range from "good" to merely "competent". There was one story in particular that had me scratching my head as to why it was included.

I agree with another reviewer, in that I understand that Dozois wanted to create a well-rounded collection precisely by not picking the most widely-read works. That said, a collection of stories with the equally visceral punch of "Blood Music" and "The Wedding Album" would have really rocked my world.

Recommended.

I am a reasonable fan of Gardner Dozois' "Year's Best" anthologies, having devoured three of them (I think). There were some stories I considered clinkers, sure, but I always ascribed this to differences in taste, and reading others' reviews of the contents of those volumes confirmed this.

So I excitedly purchased _The Best of the Best_ -- at an airport, if I recall correctly -- and anticipated the direct hits would asymptotically approach a heady, dizzying 100%. To my surprise, the Insanely Great Quotient went in the opposite direction! While I wouldn't say any of Dozois' selections here are "bad" stories, there are far too many that simply feel like trifles: pleasant throwaways, good for a single read, but hardly deserving of inclusion in an anthology that purports to be as exclusive or definitive as this one does. In this "forgettable" category I would even include the offering by Gene Wolfe, a writer I consider to at least approach the "great" category in many ways.

Furthermore, the physical book displays haste and a lack of care that I find shocking. The paper quality is poor -- that is, poorer than what I am used to from the individual "Year's Best" collections. It is almost like newspaper, and the book's pages have already yellowed visibly. Finally ... for gosh sake, who proofread this thing? There are gaffes that ruin moments of delicacy and power in stories like Tony Daniels' "A Dry, Quiet War" and Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life" (where -- help us all -- "deaf" parents becomes "dead" parents). Both of these stories, in my opinion, are spot-on choices ... and they certainly deserve better treatment than that.

I will return to more of the "Year's Best" collections with pleasure and profit, since they include Dozois' estimable "Summations" of the year in science fiction, but I am going to finish _The Best of the Best_ and ... well, just scratch my head and wonder what happened.

Following twenty for the most part superior collections of the "Year's Best Science Fiction', Gardner Dozois provides a look back cross section of those he felt were the best, albeit a relative term in this case. This new compilation of stories previously published in the series does not contain one tale from each annual, but instead has multiples from the same year with only the 1987 and 1991 book omitted. The tales represent some of the genre's top guns over the past two decades with each entry top rate. This reviewer has been a long time fans of the series not just because the selections are always superb, but because they can be savored over a week or two; the same holds true for the all star selection. Fans of the series will appreciate this look back with fond memories while newcomers will get a taste of what has been consistently one of best science fiction short story anthologies.

Harriet Klausner

Am not a big-reader of science fiction but love a few collections and novels of Philip Dick and Arthur Clarke. When I saw the title 'Best of the Best', I was anticipating a thorough delight. Sadly, this is not the case.

If you notice the selections of most movie critics, you will see them veering towards the off-beat. This is easy to see why because after a while, the thrills/effects of mainstream movies would cease to move anyone. Perhaps years of reading sci-fi did the same for this editor.

Am exactly a third through the book and except for two stories - 'A Cabin On the Coast' and 'Dinner In Audoghast'(delightful but I cannot see why this is in a collection of sci-fi stories), there was nothing else that me close the book and savor what I had just partaken and I have to conclude that the editor did not create this anthology for the general public. I was not looking for any exotic settings or obligatory twists but just for good reads. Think of the magical story 'The Sentinel' of Arthur Clarke; plot-wise there is very little in it but the language/setting and just the implications/possibilities of the discovery elevates the story to something you remember forever.

If you are totally into sci-fi, your opinion will no doubt differ from mine but if you are a casual reader, you might want to borrow this from your library instead of spending 20 bucks. Honestly, even if you don't, you aren't missing much.

2.5 stars and an additional half for the variety.

I don't envy Gardner Dozois his task of selecting the thirty-six stories in this book from 20 years of his Best of the Year collections--which in themselves required painful decisions to exclude many first-rate stories. I am glad he put himself through it, though. These are the stories that made the greatest impression on him as a reader--a reader with an educated palate earned through decades of fine reading.

My favorites:

Pat Cadigan's "Roadside Rescue" is a brief tale about a man whose car breaks down and is repaired through the generosity of an alien visitor. Perhaps generosity isn't quite the right word...

John Crowley's "Snow" introduces a new, high-tech method of remembering a loved one after they die. It has its complications, both technical and emotional.

Terry Bisson's "Bears Discover Fire" is one of my very favorite stories. Enough with super-intelligent aliens and artificial intelligences! What would it be like if ordinary animals became just a little bit smarter? Well...

Greg Egan stretches the imagination with "Wang's Carpets," a new kind of life that exists in the same physical world as humans, but several layers of abstraction away from us. Sort of...

In Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life" a mother pieces together the narratives of her life and of her daughter's life. It's a little hard to follow without some translation.

Please don't let my taste affect your reading more than it should; all thirty-six of these stories are very good. I suggest reading every one of them then trying to select your own top five. It's interesting to experience some small fraction of Gardner Dozois' pain in selecting them.

"The best" is a interperative phrase. Dozois leaves out many worthy stories but if he included all that desrved it the book would probably be 5000 pages long. All in all he has made good descisions for this anthology, it is very worthy of owning.

The quality of the writing was consistently high. The subject matter varied greatly from story to story. The stories are thought provoking and entertaining. Science fiction has gone well beyond outer space.

If you read SF as a young adult but fell away from it, or if you want a sense of the themes and styles of the last 20 years, you absolutely cannot do better than this anthology. There's a wide variety of stories, themes, voices, most of them both brilliant and beautifully written. For a $20 paperback, you absolutely cannot get a more concentrated fix of recent SF.

I've read some of the negative reviews here and can accept some of the specific complaints. But anyone who rates this below four stars is measuring it only against itself, or against what they wished it would be. I like David Hartwell's anthologies and James Gunn's multiple-volume Road to Science Fiction; I like Ursula LeGuin's Norton; in fact, I own more than 50 SF anthologies, and I can make a case for many of them along particular lines. But none of them is as concentrated as Best of the Best on recent SF, and nearly all of them cost 2x or 3x as much. The only book that compares in quality and price is Silverberg's The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, and of course that book focuses on a much earlier period of SF history.

Buy this book and you will be happy. I promise.