This is the best short form science fiction of 2005, selected by David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, two of the most respected editors in the field. The short story is one of the most vibrant and exciting areas in science fiction today. It is where the hot new authors emerge and where the beloved giants of the field continue to publish. Now, building on the success of the first nine volumes, Eos will once again present a collection of the best stories of the year in mass market. Here, selected and compiled by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, two of the most respected editors in the field, are stories with visions of tomorrow and yesterday, of the strange and the familiar, of the unknown and the unknowable. With stories from an all-star team of science fiction authors, "Year's Best Sf 11" is an indispensable guide for every science fiction fan.
Year's Best SF 11 (Year's Best SF (Science Fiction))
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
David Hartwell is currently 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 tenth annual paperback volume of Year's Best SF and co-edited five volumes of 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. Kathryn Cramer is a writer, anthologist, and housewife. She has won a World Fantasty Award for best anthology for The Architecture of Fear, co-edited with Peter Pautz; she was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for her anthology Walls of Fear. She has co-edited several anthologies with David G. Hartwell and now does the annual Year's Best Fantasy and Year's Best SF with him.
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More About the Author
Kathryn Cramer is a writer, anthologist, & Internet consultant who lives in Pleasantville, New York. She won a World Fantasy Award for best anthology for The Architecture of Fear, co-edited with Peter Pautz; she was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for her anthology Walls of Fear. She co-edited several anthologies of Christmas and fantasy stories with David G. Hartwell and now does the annual Year's Best Fantasy and Year's Best SF with him. She is on the editorial board of The New York Review of Science Fiction, (for which she has been nominated for the Hugo Award many times). She is a consultant with the Scientific Information Group for Wolfram Research.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Another great year of SF stories,
By David Roy (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Year's Best SF 11 (Year's Best SF (Science Fiction)) (Mass Market Paperback)
In my review of the 2004 Year's Best SF, I mentioned the dearth of hard SF stories in that year. Year's Best SF 11 rectifies that situation somewhat. I'm still not the biggest fan of hard SF, which is why this year's edition was a bit of a chore for me. It still had a lot of strong stories in it, but I had to struggle at times. Fans of harder SF who were disappointed in last year's edition will probably find this one much better. With stories by Stephen Baxter, Gregory Benford, as well as some good examples by Matthew Jarpe and Ken MacLeod, there is lots of SF action.
The only real problem with this edition, however, is the numerous examples of the short-short stories from "Nature" magazine. I find it admirable that "Nature" would be including short SF stories in their magazine, but I don't think any of them were so good that they needed to be included in a "best of" collection. A couple of them were decent (I loved Greg Bear's "Ram Shift Phase 2", where a robot reviews a book by a fellow robot in a typically pretentious review style). Being a "review," it definitely called for that short length, and it was perfect. Others, however, were not nearly as good, and I think they probably took space away from a couple (or at least one) other good stories. Still, there were some wonderful stories in this year's edition. I'm a big rat fan, so the two rat stories ("When the Great Days Came" by Gardner Dozois and "Mason's Rats" by Neal Asher) were exceptionally fun. Dozois' story is told from the point of view of a rat making his way across the big city on the night when the great comet hits. It's a "night in the life" of the rat, and it's told wonderfully. The ending is perfect as well, with the realization that no matter what happens to him, his species will survive. "Mason's Rats" is the story of a futuristic farmer with a rat problem. Not only are they infesting his crops, but they're beginning to learn how to use weapons. It doesn't matter what sort of robotic help he might get; sometimes, the two-legged rats are worse than the four-legged variety. While those two stories are the ones I had the most affinity with, I would say that the best story in the whole collection is "I, Robot," by Cory Doctorow. It's an homage to Asimov (even down to the name), where a society that is fully dependent on robots. A detective who isn't a fan of working with robots has some troubles of his own. His ex-wife defected to the other side immediately after they split up, leaving his daughter with him. But his daughter seems to be misbehaving as well, mixing herself up in things that are way over her head. The detective discovers that things are a lot worse than he thinks, especially when he discovers what his wife has been up to with his daughter. This is a fairly long story, over fifty pages in the book, and it's worth every page of it. The setting leaps off the page and Doctorow's prose perfectly fits the genre. Being my favourite story in this year's book, it's probably fitting that it also ends it. It definitely makes me want to go out and check his other work. Other strong stories were "The Edge of Nowhere" by James Patrick Kelly (where a young woman librarian in a virtual world is asked for a unique book by three dogs that appear to be products of the virtual intelligence behind their world), "Oxygen Rising" by R. Garcia y Robertson (where a human mediator between "Greenies" and the humans they are trying to wipe off of a planet gets involved with a sinister plot to destroy the planet so it can't be used by anybody else), and "Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play" by Michael Swanwick (where a man and dog, investigators for the British government, go to Greece to track down some statues, only to find some experiments in pheromones and the recreation of Greek Gods). I can't really point to any of the stories as "bad," though some of the "Nature" ones didn't really appeal to me. Even the hard SF stories were pretty good, just not my favourite. 2005 was a much better year than 2004, and Year's Best SF 11 definitely shows that. If you want to sample some great short stories, definitely pick this one up. David Roy
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
too many too short stories,
By
This review is from: Year's Best SF 11 (Year's Best SF (Science Fiction)) (Mass Market Paperback)
It seems that Hartwell took one too many of the nano short stories
from the magazine 'nature' for this book. They are cute and clever,but a one page story from Ted Chiang? Come on, get real. Most of the stories are good to very good, especially 'shelia', 'on the brane','oxygen rising'. It seems some of the stories are begining to suffer from the rudy ruckner school of protoplasmic farm tractors, something that stross and doctorow have been mucking around in for awhile. For some reason these 'organic fiction'novels have as much of a tendency to sicken one as to excite one. I enjoyed the majority of the book, I just wish this tendency to publish really short stories would lighten up a bit.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Not Free SF Reader,
By Blue Tyson "- Research Finished" (Legion clubhouse) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Year's Best SF 11 (Year's Best SF (Science Fiction)) (Mass Market Paperback)
The editors certainly seem enamored of the rather short stories found in Nature magazine, and again I think that may hamper a rating, including lots of them, although it certainly adds to a variety. 31 stories here, which is more than the equivalent Dozois volume, although the book is probably only 55% of the length, or something like that.
As such, a standard type edition of one of these Hartwell and Cramer volumes, with a 3.79 average. Only three standouts in the 31, McAuley, Reynolds and Doctorow. However, only 2 average stories, despite all the short pieces, so rather well done there, so along with the Year's Best SF 10 they have done a fine job avoiding stories of not much interest. Apart from actual real natural disasters, they mention one anthology - Constellations by Peter Crowther, in the introduction, which would appear to have a lot of British SF talent in it, with stellar based stories the theme. With all that, pretty much a 4.75 I think, and given this scale, may as well be a 5 given the consistency. Year's Best SF 11 : New Hope for the Dead - David Langford Year's Best SF 11 : Deus Ex Homine - Hannu Rajaniemi Year's Best SF 11 : When the Great Days Came - Gardner R. Dozois Year's Best SF 11 : Second Person, Present Tense - Daryl Gregory Year's Best SF 11 : Dreadnought - Justina Robson Year's Best SF 11 : A Case of Consilience - Ken MacLeod Year's Best SF 11 : Toy Planes - Tobias S. Buckell Year's Best SF 11 : Mason's Rats - Neal Asher Year's Best SF 11 : A Modest Proposal - Vonda N. McIntyre Year's Best SF 11 : Guadalupe and Hieronymus Bosch - Rudy Rucker Year's Best SF 11 : The Forever Kitten - Peter F. Hamilton Year's Best SF 11 : City of Reason - Matthew Jarpe Year's Best SF 11 : Ivory Tower - Bruce Sterling Year's Best SF 11 : Sheila - Lauren McLaughlin Year's Best SF 11 : Rats of the System - Paul McAuley Year's Best SF 11 : I Love Liver: A Romance - Larissa Lai Year's Best SF 11 : The Edge of Nowhere - James Patrick Kelly Year's Best SF 11 : What's Expected of Us - Ted Chiang Year's Best SF 11 : Girls and Boys Come Out to Play - Michael Swanwick Year's Best SF 11 : Lakes of Light - Stephen Baxter Year's Best SF 11 : The Albian Message - Oliver Morton Year's Best SF 11 : Bright Red Star - Bud Sparhawk Year's Best SF 11 : Third Day Lights - Alaya Dawn Johnson Year's Best SF 11 : RAM Shift Phase 2 - Greg Bear Year's Best SF 11 : On the Brane - Gregory Benford Year's Best SF 11 : Oxygen Rising - R. Garcia y Robertson Year's Best SF 11 : And Future King - Adam Roberts Year's Best SF 11 : Beyond the Aquila Rift - Alastair Reynolds Year's Best SF 11 : Angel of Light - Joe Haldeman Year's Best SF 11 : Ikiryoh - Liz Williams Year's Best SF 11 : I Robot - Cory Doctorow EGAN electronic eternal existence expensive. 4 out of 5 Baby deity a bother, makes me want to kill some 4 out of 5 Rat's eye armageddon. 3.5 out of 5 Zen and the art of personality maintenance. 4 out of 5 Soldier Unit. 4 out of 5 Genetic message. 3.5 out of 5 I dread to blow off my head. 4 out of 5 James Herbert book, and the natives are arming, if not as numerous. 3.5 out of 5 Not much left. 3 out of 5 Brane-assisted painter time-snatch. 3.5 out of 5 Kid stasis. 4 out of 5 A Better Way would be Highly Fantastic. 4 out of 5 Physics commune advances. 4 out of 5 Supercomputing antimeat plot. 4 out of 5 Transcendent hunter-killer chase experiment. 4.5 out of 5 Escape organ. 3 out of 5 Bad dogs and old stories. 4 out of 5 Simon already Says. 4 out of 5 Godmaking and removal, squid variety included. 3.5 out of 5 Star wrapping investigation. 3.5 out of 5 Sometimes it is just old directions. 4 out of 5 Conflict kill choices. 3.5 out of 5 Human revival project. 3.5 out of 5 Robot review parody. 3.5 out of 5 Counter-Earth trip. 3.5 out of 5 Greenie peace preferred. 4 out of 5 Programmed government's Arthurian overlord. 3.5 out of 5 Lost In Space. "Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is. 4.5 out of 5 Thrilling Wonder Stories alien xmas deal. 4 out of 5 Kappa bad kid bit minder. 3.5 out of 5 Baby arrival brings brainy Big Brother bot researcher's defection and later reunion desires in multiple. 4.5 out of 5
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