Customer Reviews

Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2007 Edition (Science Fiction: The Best of ... (Quality))

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

 

 

As J P Rich noted, none of the authors on the cover (Joe Haldeman, Alistair Reynolds, Michael Swanwick) had any material in this book. They all had stories in the 2006 edition and apparently the cover designer just carried their names over on to the new edition.

Well, who could pass up stories by SF greats "Haldeman," "Reynolds" and "Swanwick," as prominently advertised on the cover of Horton's 2007 Best SF anthology? I snapped the book off the shelf at my local B&N and was ready to buy it when I happened to peruse the table of contents....
The problem is that nothing from any these three writers is actually represented in the book! As the oft-repeated recording on late L.A. radio sports reporter Jim Healy's show used to ask, "Who goofed? I've got to know!"

There are far fewer stories in this anthology than in the Dozois, Strachan and Hartwell edited competitors, each of which are invariably superior to Horton's. Not that there aren't good stories in Horton's 2007 anthology (thought anyone who has had a subscription to Asimov's already has read half the stories); I wouldn't buy this book on principle, due to the false advertising on the cover.

This book, if you have the paper version, and not the electronic, is not putting you in as much danger of bonebreaking if dropped it seems as some of the others, being a fairly normal sort of book length, leaving room for around a dozen stories.

The editor also writes an introduction to explain how he chooses, saying he generally finds a few stories he has to have, has a whole bunch more to select from, then takes a look at those again to try and get a balance of length, and hopefully include a couple of new writers, which is an admirable goal. Some people will then see a story by those writers, really like them, and chase up other work. I have certainly done so. Such a goal perhaps may make the average rating for stories go down a little bit, and perhaps this volume is a touch on the low side for a Year's Best grouping, at 3.67. Slightly under Strahan's for the same year, and a bit under the SF part of that. However, one of the Dozois volumes I have rated was only a 3.50 average, so like anything else, these will vary.

He gives a brief story list overview by way of plot, noting that a few stories are weird. On the whole, those are the entries I didn't like quite as much, I think. The other thing is, if you really dislike stories with religious themes or elements there are quite a few of those here, and he does point that out in his intro.

The last useful part of the editorial intro is a brief review of the field of publication for the year, and he points out some online publications that have SF stories. Thefore, this is worth a bit of a bonus, ratingwise.

The other thing for which the publishers of this book should be congratulated is the no DRM multiformat edition they have for sale at Fictionw1se. For such a small, foreign niche publisher that their books aren't too likely to be on a shelf here, and maybe even not so much in a more specialist shop, if you are lucky enough to have one, this makes it easy to get and read wherever for everyone else. This means you can get the book in pretty much any format you want, turn it into any format you want, and read it on any machine you want, print it out, have text to speech read it to you, or anything else you can think of.

To those of you to whom this is important, I definitely suggest supporting these books, and there is an equivalent Fantasy volume for those that prefer that genre, available exactly the same way.

Hartwell anthologies are available in a similar format, but the latest I have seen is three years ago. I know publishers can be slow, but this is rather ridiculous.

The Dozois volumes are even older, and in DRM laden formats, so if you look at the ratings/sales are nowhere near as popular in this way. Latest I have seen of these is 2002 I think. Bizarre, and, quite frankly, not too smart. To shamelessly misuse James Patrick Kelly's most excellent story title:

Think Like A Dinosaur = bad. Get over yourselves publishers, you are leaving money on the table. Hopefully Wildside is getting some of it, as they deserve it.

Wildside have done a smart thing, there, so for people that like books like Year's Best, and don't want to have to pay people that own planes a lot of money to get them, this series has to be highly recommended, both in quality of material appearing to be, from the one example, to be as good as other books of this type, and ease of access.


SF Best of the Year 2007 : Another Word for Map is Faith - Christopher Rowe
SF Best of the Year 2007 : Okanoggan Falls - Carolyn Ives Gilman
SF Best of the Year 2007 : Saving for a Sunny Day - Ian Watson
SF Best of the Year 2007 : The Cartesian Theater - Robert Charles Wilson
SF Best of the Year 2007 : Hesperia and Glory - Ann Leckie
SF Best of the Year 2007 : Incarnation Day - Walter Jon Williams
SF Best of the Year 2007 : Exit Before Saving - Ruth Nestvold
SF Best of the Year 2007 : Inclination - William Shunn
SF Best of the Year 2007 : Life on the Preservation - Jack Skillingstead
SF Best of the Year 2007 : Me-Topia - Adam Roberts
SF Best of the Year 2007 : The House Beyond Your Sky - Benjamin Rosenbaum
SF Best of the Year 2007 : A Billion Eves - Robert Reed


Religiously correct landscaping writ large.

3 out of 5


Alien invasion imitation co-operation landscaping strategy.

4.5 out of 5


Barcode karma cycle conversation sought.

4 out of 5


AI's secret hiring post double death act suic1de promotion of philosophy.

4 out of 5


Well, it is sword and planet time.

3.5 out of 5


Parental supervision control program subversion.

4.5 out of 5


Absent fraternal experimental transformation overload.

4.5 out of 5


Basic Machine boy gets retooled.

3.5 out of 5


Daily alien revisit.

3 out of 5


Neanderthal uplift planetary exclusion.

4 out of 5


Making a universal mess of it.

2.5 out of 5


Multiversal misanthropy.

3.5 out of 5





4.5 out of 5

This is a great selection of stories; some better than others, as usual. But the "Edited by Rich Horton" should be read as "Slapped Together by Rich Horton", because there are typos on almost every page of the Robert Reed story, which would have been an excellent read without that distraction. There were more sprinkled through the other stories. It's obvious that Rich's idea of "editing" is to pass the text through a spell checker and consider it ready to go. It's depressing that a book can get into print without at least one literate person reading through the text for glaring errors.

I'll give Mr. Horton's anthologies one more try, but if I see more of this mess, I'll stick to the more professional editors and hope that enough of the same stories show up elsewhere. I can't stomach a great story being ruined by sloppy editing.

I just received my copy of the trade paperback yesterday, and the cover copy now reflects the actual contents. From the earlier complaints, I suspect an art director or graphic designer somewhere is even now being flogged...