The Year's Best Science Fiction : Sixteenth Annual Collection [Paperback]

Gardner R. Dozois (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Year's Best Science Fiction | Publication Date: July 1999

Science Fiction routinely explores the future, but it takes the hand of a master to capture the farthest reaches of time -- futures almost unimaginably distant. The Furthest Horizon collects 17 of the most inventive and audacious visions of the future by many acclaimed writers, including:

Brian Aldiss -- Poul Anderson -- Avram Davidson -- Joe Haldeman -- Alexander Jablokov -- Paul J. McAuley -- Ian McDonald -- Michael Moorcock -- Frederik Pohl -- Robert Reed -- Keith Roberts -- Robert Silverberg -- Cordwainer Smith -- James Tiptree, Jr. -- Jack Vance -- Walter Jon Williams -- Gene Wolfe

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Gardner Dozois once again proves himself to be among the best editors in science fiction with The Year's Best Science Fiction Sixteenth Annual Collection. Whether you like your SF hard or soft, with a twist or straight, you'll find something to love in here. Dozois picked perfect 1998 stories from the likes of Greg Egan, Bruce Sterling, and Ursula K. Le Guin for celebrity sparkle, but he didn't overlook relative newcomers either. It's hard to pick favorites from such a varied and delightful bunch. Paul J. McAuley's "Sea Change, with Monsters" is a thriller taking place in the icy seas of Europa, where genetically engineered weapon-creatures battle humans for survival. Cory Doctorow weighs in with the funny and poignant "Craphound," a tale of two secondhand junk entrepreneurs who find out that the love of good kitsch transcends all barriers. Liz Williams's "Voivodoi" explores one family's anguish and triumph in an Eastern Europe scarred by mutagens. And as usual, Dozois provides a stylish wrap-up of the previous year in science fiction, fantasy, and horror publishing. It speaks well for the health of the genre that Dozois picked these winners from hundreds of stellar nominees (he lists them in the back). And it's a rare treat to enjoy every single story in a collection. --Therese Littleton

From Publishers Weekly

Dozois, the most celebrated editor in SF (10 Hugo Awards and counting) and himself a story writer of great distinction, has for the 16th time gleaned some of the most interesting and literate short fiction of the year for this most respected of best-of's. The 25 chosen works encompass pyrotechnic cyberpunk in dystopic future worlds, alien landscapes and transgalactic politics rigorously extrapolated, cutting-edge physics, metaphysics, comedy low and high, and a touch of fantasy, all of it carried off with wonderful style. And many are the styles. Ursula K. Le Guin is represented by a fantasy in the classic mode, "The Island of the Immortals," a meditation on a theme of Swift's: the true consequences of immortality. Allen Steele's comic Martian Christmas story, "Zwarte Piet's Tale," reads like a Reader's Digest essay, and that is part of its artAto make the alien seem utterly familiar. By contrast, Robert Charles Wilson's "Divided by Infinity" implies the existence in things most familiar of something deeply alien. There are hard SF stories by Greg Egan, Geoffrey Landis and the prolific Robert Reed. Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life," one of only four ever published by him, typifies Dozois's editorial aesthetic, offering genuine scientific insights in an emotionally rich contextAthe nature of causality itself is illumined through a careful dialogue with extraterrestrials and the tragic death of a child. Some of the stories trace modern trends to their horrible future conclusionsAthe evil results of genetic engineering, the continued evolution of weaponry, the depletion of world resources. Others point to solutions outside Earth: the colonization of other worlds, the mining of the asteroids or the branching proliferation of whole quantum universes. Once again, Dozois delivers an exemplary volume of exemplary SF.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 609 pages
• Publisher: Bluejay Books; 16 edition (July 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312204450
• ISBN-13: 978-0312204457
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #621,361 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not as strong as previous years, November 1, 1999

By A Customer

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

Although some stories were quite good, the overall impact left me wanting more. Some of the stories were more fantasy than science fiction. I especially enjoyed the 14th edition as it had a majority of "hard" science fiction. I keep buying this each year however as the quality is always quite good. More science in the science fiction would have rated 5 stars.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Free SF Reader, December 21, 2007

By 

Blue Tyson "- Research Finished" (Legion clubhouse) - See all my reviews

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

A bit weaker for a Year's Best collection this book, averaging only 3.77, which as all other anthologies go is still excellent. The long introduction and overview by Dozois is still the same quality as other editions.

Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Oceanic - Greg Egan
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Approaching Perimelasma - Geoffrey A. Landis
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Cr*phound - Cory Doctorow
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Jedella Ghost - Tanith Lee
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Taklamakan - Bruce Sterling
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : The Island of the Immortals - Ursula K. Le Guin
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Sea Change with Monsters - Paul J. McAuley
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Divided by Infinity - Robert Charles Wilson
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : US - Howard Waldrop
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : The Days of Solomon Gursky - Ian McDonald
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : The Cuckoo's Boys - Robert Reed
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : The Halfway House at the Heart of Darkness - William Browning Spencer
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : The Very Pulse of the Machine - Michael Swanwick
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Story of Your Life - Ted Chiang
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Voivodoi - Liz Williams
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Saddlepoint: Roughneck - Stephen Baxter
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : This Side of Independence - Rob Chilson
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Unborn Again - Chris Lawson
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Grist - Tony Daniel
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : La Cenerentola - Gwyneth Jones
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Down in the Dark - William Barton
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Free in Asveroth - Jim Grimsley
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : The Dancing Floor - Cherry Wilder
Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : The Summer Isles - Ian R. MacLeod

A boy growing up in a backward fundamentalist community on another planet begins to understand how much the local biology has altered the people that live there, and why a religion surrounds this.

3.5 out of 5



Black hole wormhole fun.

4.5 out of 5


A human and alien have a rivalry over trash and treasure and other market collecting.

4 out of 5


Local apparition.

3 out of 5


Sneaky Spider seekers suss out secret spaceships and other splendiferous scary and snazzy stuff.

4 out of 5


Carbon based longlife.

4 out of 5


Dragon hunter's misogynist defiance discovery.

4 out of 5


Book fake reasoning stupidity blast.

4 out of 5


Yeager variety.

2.5 out of 5


Dead rebellion expansion.

4.5 out of 5


Genius kid spread plan.

4 out of 5


Game addiction help.

3 out of 5


Moon life message.

4 out of 5


Predicting language.

4.5 out of 5


Rebuilding story is a bit fishy.

3.5 out of 5


Lunar volatility mine life.

3.5 out of 5


Scrap planet.

3.5 out of 5


Butchered baby brain bits disease treatment.

4 out of 5


Ferret girl proves vital in time tweaking titans massive personality conflict.

3.5 out of 5


Twin disappearance.

3.5 out of 5


Leftover people life discovery.

4 out of 5


Losing to the space invaders.

3 out of 5


Android archaeology.

4.5 out of 5


Post-war bad.

4 out of 5