This is the first Strahan "Best of..." that I've read. Previously, I've been reading Gardner Dozois's "Year's Best" anthologies. I decided I wanted some good fantasy with my good sci-fi. I see that Strahan has different tastes from Dozois (although the two do overlap somewhat), but I would consider his taste just as good. There is, in fact, a remarkable consistency of quality work in this volume: on the 5-point scale, the story average here comes out to 4.28. Since I like a good whole number, I'll say that my overall enjoyment of the volume, including the variety of subject-matter and the artful arrangement of stories, bumps up the rating to a 5.
Challenge: count the number of Teenage-Girl protagonists.
Key:
++ = Excellent story, would unhesitatingly include it in my own "year's best"... if I had one.
+ = Thought it was good, certainly worth reading, maybe not a definite pick for my own "year's best"...
o = Not bad, but had little effect on me.
- = Actively disliked it.
-- = Wish I hadn't read it!
"It Takes Two." Nicola Griffith. Jet-setter and stripper find love, but not the kind anyone expects. The sci-fi love is less surprising than the uncommon viewpoint. +
"Three Twilight Tales." Jo Walton. Three discrete fairy tales, all with moonlight magic. Interesting structure: three tales, loosely connected. Prose so beautiful, it hurts. ++
"The Night Cache." Andy Duncan. Teenage girl's treasure hunt begins (unwitting) in a bookstore and goes to more mundane places from there. There's a spiritual quest in there somewhere. o
"The Island." Peter Watts. A lonely, increasingly dysfunctional crew, laying interstellar highways, encounters a star of unknown properties. Brain-exploding hard science fiction; also, devastating human truths. ++
"Ferryman." Margo Lanagan. Hell's ferryman teaches his daughter the family business. Sorrowful and sincere. +
"'A Wild and a Wicked Youth'." Ellen Kushner. A boy and his buddy come of age, with their swords. Barely even fantasy: it's set in an alternate world much like high-medieval Europe, but there's nothing out-of-this-world about it. Still, a good one. +
"The Pelican Bar." Karen Joy Fowler. Teenage girl is sent to special boarding school. This is definitely not Hogwart's. +
"Spar." Kij Johnson. Sex with an alien in zero-g! This is truly out-there. +
"Going Deep." James Patrick Kelly. Mariska and mother are AUs apart. Nothing shocking here, just your good old-fashioned well-written plot & character. +
"The Coldest Girl in Coldtown." Holly Black. Oh, she wants to be a vampire soooooooo hard! Way, way better than Teem Edwurd. ++
"Zeppelin City." Michael Swanwick & Eileen Gunn. Zeppelins, goggles, and steam-powered mechanical brains -- yes, it's steampunk... but there are Marxists! That's an interesting twist... +
"Dragon's Teeth." Alex Irvine. A beautiful Queen sends a hearty Man on a dangerous Quest to slay a mighty Dragon. A whole world, spanning coast to coast and mountains in-between, opens up to a single mind. Brilliant and profound. ++
"This Wind Blowing, and This Tide." Damien Broderick. Think like a dinosaur. No, seriously. Crunchy hard sci-fi with a soft and silky core. ++
"By Moonlight." Peter S. Beagle. A rogue tells a disillusioned priest about his romantic adventures in Faery. I have some inexplicable prejudice against Faery stories, but there's enough narrative complexity here to keep me interested. +
"Black Swan." Bruce Sterling. A hacker opens new worlds for a straight-arrow, with his laptop. Sterling's prose alone is enough to transport you to another world. ++
"As Women Fight." Sara Genge. Gender-bender: man and wife fight, then switch bodies. Felt clumsy in places, but the idea is fascinating. +
"The Cinderella Game." Kelly Link. Two kids play Cinderella, but roles get reversed, with a touch of lycanthropy. Amusing/melancholy. +
"Formidable Caress: A Tale of Old Earth." Stephen Baxter. A man, on a future Earth where time is fractured, slowly figures out the end of time. Baffling at first, because it's so hard to imagine. But give it time -- it's astonishing. ++
"Blocked." Geoff Ryman. There might be aliens, or global warming, or peak-oil. It's all just too much to deal with; let's just forget about it and gaze mournfully at one another. o
"Truth and Bone." Pat Cadigan. Teenage girl has a special power -- incorrect use is
inevitable. It's a long-ish story, but the writing carries you along without you noticing. +
"Eros, Philia, Agape." Rachel Swirsky. The Greeks had different words for different kinds of love. But a robot and his lover cannot distinguish. This story has everything: plot, character, pacing, lyricism, humanity. Another one on the long side, but you'll read it in one sitting if you can. ++
"The Motorman's Coat." John Kessel. A near-future man sticks to a very old-fashioned business model. Very subtle, this one - I may have to read it again someday to make a final judgement. +
"Mongoose." Sarah Monette & Elizabeth Bear. A famed hunter tracks Lovecraftian terrors on a remote space station. Engrossing. +
"Echoes of Aurora." Ellen Klages. Metamorphosis of a woman's love for her girlhood
treehouse. Enchanting! +
"Before My Last Breath." Robert Reed. A coal-company geologist (and others) find a really big secret with multiplicitous implications. What more could you want from good sci-fi? ++
"JoBoy." Diana Wynne Jones. Find your inner dragon! The tale is a little condensed - still, an interesting take on dragons. +
"Utriusque Cosmi." Robert Charles Wilson. Teenage girl gets swept away on magnificent trip across universes. Old-school sense-of-wonder sci-fi, incredibly awesome. ++
"A Delicate Architecture." Catherynne M. Valente. A bitter world has its way with a sweet girl. This one tastes like a decadent, heavy chocolate cake. +
"The Cat Who Walked a Thousand Miles." Kij Johnson. This is the story of a cat who explores a wide, wide world in old-time Japan. A more-or-less traditional quest, but with cats. Amusing and heartfelt. +
