The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection [Paperback]

Gardner Dozois (Editor), Kage Baker (Collaborator)

Book Description

Series: Year's Best Science Fiction | Publication Date: August 5, 2000

In science fiction's early days, stories often looked past 1984 to the year 2000 as the far unknowable future. Here now, on the brink of the twenty-first century, the future remains as distant and as unknowable as ever . . . and science fiction stories continue to explore it with delightful results:

Collected in this anthology are such imaginative gems as:

"The Wedding Album" by David Marusek. In a high-tech future, the line between reality and simulation has grown thin . . . and it's often hard to tell who's on what side.

"Everywhere" by Geoff Ryman. Do the people who live in utopian conditions ever recognize them as such?

"Hatching the Phoenix" by Frederik Pohl. One of science fiction's Grand Masters returns with a star-crossing tale of the Heechee---the enigmatic, vanished aliens whose discarded technology guides mankind through the future.

"A Hero of the Empire" by Robert Silverberg. Showing that the past is as much a province of the imagination as the future, this novelette returns to an alternate history when the Roman Empire never fell to show us just how the course of history can be altered.

The twenty-seven stories in this collection imaginatively take us to nearby planets and distant futures, into the past and into universes no larger than a grain of sand. Included here are the works of masters of the form and of bright new talents.

Supplementing the stories are the editor's insightful summation of the year's events and a lengthy list of honorable mentions, making this book a valuable resource in addition to serving as the single best place in the universe to find stories that stir the imagination and the heart.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As in previous volumes in this series, Dozois, who has won the Hugo for Best Editor 11 times, again presents a large helping of stellar short SF. Nine of the 27 stories are, quite appropriately, from his own magazine, Asimov's, which continues to dominate the various genre awards. Dozois also includes four stories each from Fantasy and Science Fiction and the British Interzone. Also represented are Analog, Amazing, Science Fiction Age, and two semi-pro magazines, Absolute Magnitude and the Australian Altair, as well as such original anthologies as Moon Shots, Not of Women Born and the Canadian Tesseracts. Among the high points are two time-travel pieces, Kage Baker's story of San Francisco before the great earthquake, "Son Observe the Time," and Michael Swanwick's pre-historic time-paradox tale, "Scherzo with Tyrannosaurus"; Eleanor Arnason's understated story of alien gender-role reversal, "Dapple"; Kim Stanley Robinson's "A Martian Romance," which is set not in the world of his Mars trilogy but in a subtly alternate universe; and Greg Egan's "Border Guards," hard-SF that imagines a future in which immortality is a given and soccer is played using the principles of quantum physics. Also included is quality fiction by such luminaries of the field as James Patrick Kelly, Frederik Pohl, Ben Bova, Robert Silverberg and Paul McAuley, plus such rising stars as David Marusek, Alastair Reynolds and Sage Walker. As usual, the anthology begins with a detailed survey of the year in SF and ends with a long list of Honorable Mentions. Dozois's annual volume remains a standard by which the field of SF should be judged. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

From David Marusek's tale of a future where reality's borders collide with the unreal ("The Wedding Album") to Kage Baker's latest novella featuring the time-traveling "Company" ("Son Observe the Time"), the 27 stories in this annual collection bear witness to the vitality of the sf short story. Including tales by Tanith Lee, Frederick Pohl, Hal Clement, Michael Swanwick, and others, this volume displays the best and brightest of the genre to good advantage. Suitable for most sf or short story collections.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 696 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 1st edition (August 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312264178
• ISBN-13: 978-0312264178
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #472,941 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best volumes ever, July 26, 2000

By 

"sdixonsf" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection (Paperback)

I've been reading Dozois's annual collection of science fiction since the 3rd volume, and every year I am amazed at the consistent quality of the stories he selects. Every story is always enjoyable, and every volume always has a few gems that usually turn to be the best science fiction I read in a given year, regardless of length. This year is no exception.

I think my favorite thing about this series is the shear size, which allows Dozois to include several novella-length stories, while still having room for a good mix of shorter length fiction as well. This year's volume includes several novellas that are not to be missed.

My favorite story is the lead-off novella, "The Wedding Album" by David Marusek. It is set in the same future as his incredible "We Were Out of Our Minds With Joy" and I would be hard-pressed to say which story I prefer. "The Wedding Album" is the story of a young couple's marriage and future life, as explored through the viewpoint of virtual simulations of themselves taken on the day of their marriage. The story is both entertaining and poignant, and Marusek's vision of the future is dazzling.

Also not to be missed is the final novella in this volume, Kage Baker's "Son Observe the Time." Set in the same timeline as her novels In the Garden of Iden and Sky Coyote, this story stands on its own, and I think is the best writing Baker has produced to date. In it, representatives of a future company are in San Francisco just before the 1906 earthquake. They cannot change the past, but they are attempting to salvage as much art and knowledge as they can before the quake. Unfortunately, some of the company's own distant past emerges to cause problems even as the earthquake approaches... A fantastic story.

This rest of the stories in this volume are just as worth reading. I especially enjoyed the stories by Geoff Ryman, Eleanor Arnason, Robert Reed, Greg Egan, and James Patrick Kelly.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Many Diamonds in the Ruff, September 22, 2001

By 

OhSayCanYouSee1 "ohsaycanyousee1" (Elmhurst, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection (Paperback)

Was 1999 the greatest year ever for short SF? Definately not. That's exactly why reading through Volume 17 of Gardner Dozier's "The Year's Best Science Fiction" is worth the investment. I wish I had the time to buy and read the great SF magazines like Asimov's and Interzone. But I don't; so I let the editor and his associates do it for me.

When I read books in this series, I start by skipping to the editor's comments at the beginning of each story. Gardner's degree of narrative excitement generally helps the reader quickly decide which stories to enjoy first. Also, the reader will find many authors in each volume that should list among their favorites in the genre.

Highlights from Volume 17 include:

1. "The Wedding Album", by David Marusek. Highly original and creative. This story seems just on the verge of possibility as our 21st Century technology rapidly advances. Use a daytimer? Remember, kids today don't know what a daytimer is. Maybe their Palm will tell them what it did back in the old days.

2. "10 (to the 16th Power)", by James Patrick Kelly. Haunting. Really. Read it.

3. "People Came From Earth", by Stephen Baxter. Have enjoyed many previous Baxter pieces in the "Year's Best" series. This story is very short, very well done, and very sad.

4. "Hatching the Phoenix", by Frederick Pohl. Give me all the Heechee you can. Please. Especially stuff this good.

5. "A Martian Romance", by Kim Stanley Robinson. Essential for fans of the already classic Mars series.

6. "Son Observe the Time", by Kage Baker. Best written story in the entire Company series. Worth the price of the book in itself. Everything else is gravy.

All these gems, plus: Ben Bova, Hal Clement, Greg Egan, Tanith Lee, Robert Silverberg, and many other fine modern writers. Short works are the foundation of SF. Books like the Dozier edited "Year's Best" series help remind fans that most creative and fun ideas don't necessarily require 300 or more pages to provide major enjoyment.

Previous volumes have rated higher, but this year's effort contains many good stories fans want to read. I would most accurately rate this book at 3.80 stars, rounded up to 4.00.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New Writers to Watch, September 4, 2000

By 

Nancy J. Moore (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Year's Best Science Fiction, Seventeenth Annual Collection (Paperback)

The only trouble with a year's best anthology is that it invariably includes some stories you don't like-and leaves out some you thought were great. Such are the vagaries of taste. That said, Gardner Dozois's seventeenth annual collection of the Years Best Science Fiction offers plenty of worthy things to read. Many of the stories feature highly imaginative settings-Robert Reed's "Winemaster" comes to mind at once, as does Kage Baker's "Son Observe the Time." And there are compelling stories from well-known writers: James Patrick Kelly uses childhood and cold war fears while Michael Swanwick integrates dinosaur fantasies with human frailty. But perhaps one of the most important thing this anthology does is introduce readers to newer and less well-known writers. Chris Lawson's "Written in Blood" impressed me when I first read it in Asimov's-such a quirky turn on what we know of DNA. "The Dragon of Pripyat" by Karl Schroeder gives us hint of a future just around the corner. And Richard Wadholm's "Green Tea" shows what a sure hand can do when combining a vivid imagination with very old concepts of love and revenge. His world includes wondrous elements chemistry hasn't yet found; his people cut commodities deals in the Bright Matter Exchange and live in worlds along the French Violet. But the part of the story that breaks my heart every time is when the narrator wonders what his friend Frances saw in him: "A man of honesty beneath the lies, compassion beneath the avarice? You will find this most amusing-because I could not bear to let her down, I would have been that man." Read this collection. Be overwhelmed by the great stories in it, and argue with your friends about the ones you think don't qualify. And mark the new writers: you're going to want to read more from them.