Customer Reviews

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 4 (Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year)

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

 

 

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. +

I end up ordering most of Mr. Strahan's anthologies in the editions from Nightshade Books and I was a bit put off here due to the duplication.

The Pelican Bar and It Takes Two were originally published in Eclipse 3. Mongoose saw print in Lovecraft Unbound. The Island by Peter Watts (easily the best story here) was in The New Space Opera 2. Readers should check the table of contents against their library.

I am also beginning to think I would prefer a single genre anthology as it were, all scifi or all fantasy. The juxtaposition didn't always work well. Of the other stories, there were a few that ended in medias res as far as I was concerned, no doubt striking a chord with the editor but not with me, for example, Dragon's Teeth and This Wind Blowing, and This Tide. I did quite like the feel of Three Twilight Tales by Walton and By Moonlight by Peter Beagle.

A mixed bag then, but that probably means something for everyone and not everything for any one reader.