Year's Best SF 4 [Mass Market Paperback]

David G. Hartwell (Author)

Book Description

Series: Year's Best SF (Science Fiction) | Publication Date: May 5, 1999

Travel to the Farthest Reaches of the Imagination

Acclaimed editor and anthologist David G. Hartwell is back with his fourth annual high-powered collection of the year's most inventive, entertaining, and awe-inspiring science fiction. In short, the best.

Here are stories from today's top name authors, plus exciting newcomers, all eager to land you on exotic planets, introduce you to strange new life forms, and show you scenes more amazing than anything you've imagined.So sit back and blast off for an amazing trip with
Stephen Baxter
Gregory Benford
David Brin
Nancy Kress
Bruce Sterling
Michael Swanwick
and many more...

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The fourth volume in David G. Hartwell's ongoing Year's Best SF anthology series is something of a departure from his previous efforts. This time around, Hartwell has made a conscious decision to seek out great stories from unexpected places, a move that has paid off handsomely. For instance, several of the stories here are from the British SF magazine Interzone (one is a translation of a French piece that first appeared in Galaxies 4), and he has even taken a story from the pages of Popular Science. As usual, however, all of his selections have two things in common: they are all unquestionably works of "science fiction" (which is to say, they do not cross over into other genres such as horror or fantasy), and they are all of excellent quality.

Probably the crown jewel of this book is the most talked-about story of 1998, Ted Chiang's "The Story of Your Life." This is only Chiang's fourth story, but he has already earned an impressive number of awards for his work, including the Nebula Award and the J. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Michael Swanwick's piece "Radiant Doors"--which plays off C.M. Kornbluth's classic story "The Marching Morons"-- is also a standout, as is Alexander Jablokov's "Minority Report." In fact, most of these stories are impressive in one way or another, although--as with any collection--some succeed better than others. Overall, this is probably the most representative "Year's Best" collection to appear in recent memory, and it's a shame that Hartwell is limiting himself to just one volume per year. --Craig E. Engler

About the Author

David G. Hartwell is a Senior Editor at Tor/Forge Books. He is the proprietor of Dragon Press, publisher and bookseller, which publishes The New York Review of Science Fiction. He is the author of Age of Wonders and the editor of many anthologies, including The Dark Descent, Masterpieces of Fantasy and Enchantment, The World Treasury of Science Fiction, Northern Stars, The Ascent of Wonder (co-edited with Kathryn Cramer), and a number of Christmas anthologies. Recently he edited his sixth annual paperback volume of Year's Best SF and co-edited the new Year's Best Fantasy. He has won the Eaton Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Science Fiction Chronicle Poll and has been nominated for the Hugo Award twenty-four times to date.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Harper Voyager; 1- edition (May 5, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061059021
• ISBN-13: 978-0061059025
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #970,078 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid anthology of recent short SF, July 13, 1999

By 

Doug Muir ([e-mail]) (New Haven, CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Year's Best SF 4 (Mass Market Paperback)

I'd rate this one "good" though not "excellent". Several fine stories, a lot of OK ones, a couple of clunkers.

High points:

"Maneki Neko", by Bruce Sterling. I enjoy Sterling's novels, but sometimes I wish he'd just write short stories... he's that good. This one, about a world where informal Net networks are starting to dominate our behavior, is excellent.

"Story of Your Life", by Ted Chiang. One of the best stories I've ever read about communicating with aliens, combined with a heartbreakingly poignant tale of human loss.

"Rules of Engagement", by Michael Flynn. I'm not a big military SF fan, but this was a good little combat story with an unusual point, set in what's obviously a well-worked out future.

"That Thing Over There", by Dominic Green. Definitely the best treatment of the yeti/Abominable Snowman legend that I've ever read. And it makes it very clear just what was so abominable about them...

"The Radiant Doors", by Michael Swanwick. A deeply creepy story about time-travelling refugees from an unspeakable future. Swanwick does an excellent job of depicting horror by glimpses.

(Unfortunately, this otherwise excellent story is marred by a stupid ending; as in much of his work, Swanwick sacrifices logic for effect. Still, worth reading for its unpleasant answer to the "leisure question" -- what will we do when the machines are doing all the work for us?

"A Dance to Strange Musics", by Gregory Benford. Typical Benford, with utterly forgettable characters and large blocks of explication (will Benford ever learn how to tell us stuff without making it really obvious that he's Telling Us Stuff?). But I still enjoyed this, perhaps because it managed to compress most of the content on one of Benford's rather flabby novels into a mere 35 pages or so. I disagree with the story's main idea -- I don't think that humanity would be awed and moved by meeting a superior intelligence that doesn't actually *do* much of anything -- but it's still a good read, with some really novel worldbuilding.

Low points:

"The Year of the Mouse", by Norman Spinrad. Someday, someone will manage to explain to me why Spinrad is supposed to be a major voice in our field. Anyhow, you can skip this story, a silly wish-fulfillment fantasy about Disney taking on

"The Allies", by Michael Geston. Overlong and clunky ecological morality tale. Geston has been writing SF since the 1960s, but this reads like a novice effort. Avoid.

"The Twelfth Album", by Stephen Baxter. An Alternate History (AH) story about the Beatles. Of interest only to hardcore Beatles fans.

"Near Enough to Home", by Michael Skeet. Another AH story, about Canada. Not that bad, but not remotely worth including in the "year's best" IMO. It's hard to write a really interesting AH story, to be sure...

"Life in the Extreme", by David Brin. Very minor piece about the earliest days of Uplift. Not bad, but disappointing -- if it wasn't Brin, one doubts whether this would have been in here. Another answer to the leisure question.

Final point: Hartwell doesn't seem to have arranged these stories in any order, at all. I mean, the first story is Alexander Jablokov's rather lackluster "Market Report". I would have put a shorter, more kick-butt story up front ("Rules of Engagement", say, or Sterling's "Maneki Neko") in order to draw the reader in and get some momentum going.

Still, a decent anthology with some very good stuff; worth a look.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars List of Stories, November 13, 2002

By 

Chad Cloman (Denver, CO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Year's Best SF 4 (Mass Market Paperback)

Market Report (Alexander Jablokov)
A Dance to Strange Musics (Gregory Benford)
The Year of the Mouse (Norman Spinrad)
The Day Before They Came (Mary Soon Lee)
This Side of Independence (Rob Chilson)
The Twelfth Album (Stephen Baxter)
Story of Your Life (Ted Chiang)
Whiptail (Robert Reed)
The Eye of God (Mary Rosenblum)
Rules of Engagement (Michael F. Flynn)
Radiant Doors (Michael Swanwick)
Unraveling the Thread (Jean-Claude Dunyach)
That Thing Over There (Dominic Green)
The Allies (Mark S. Geston)
My Pal Clunky (Ron Goulart)
Life in the Extreme (David Brin)
Near Enough to Home (Michael Skeer)
A Game of Consequences (David Langford)
State of Nature (Nancy Kress)
Maneki Neko (Bruce Sterling)

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No ifs ands or buts, the best of the year., July 4, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Year's Best SF 4 (Mass Market Paperback)

Once again, Hartwell has delivered one of the best anthologies of the year. With only one exception (Unraveling the Thread), all the stories in this volume are pure sf. And each story is great. Hartwell has selected stories from all over the globe. The US, Canada, Britain, and France are all represented. From novellas like "The Allies" and "Story of Your Life," to shorts like "State of Nature," there is something here for everybody. The best stories in the volume are "The Day Before They Came" by Mary Soon Lee, "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang, "Whiptail" by Robert Reed, "The Allies" by Mark S. Geston, "State of Nature" by Nancy Kress, and "Maneki Neko" by Bruce Sterling. One step down includes "This Side of Indepence," "Radiant Doors," "My Pal Clunky," and "A Game of Consequences." But as I said, all the stories here are good. Try them out. You won't be disappointed.