Customer Reviews

The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection

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

 

 

The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection. Edited by Gardner Dozois.

As usual, Dozois has rounded up mostly excellent stories, whether or not one can ever objectively define "best" (average story quality, in my judgment, comes out to 4.13 out of 5, in this anthology). Also, as in previous years, the huge Summation at the beginning lays out the current condition of science fiction in exquisite detail. For that, I'm adding a bonus to the 4.13 story-average, bringing the final rating up to 5 out of 5.

Key:
++ = Excellent story, would unhesitatingly include it in my own "year's best"... if I had one.
+ = Thought it was good, certainly worth reading, maybe not a definite pick for my own "year's best"...
o = Not bad, but had little effect on me.
- = Actively disliked it.
-- = Wish I hadn't read it!


"Turing's Apples." Stephen Baxter. Sibling rivalry and first contact. One of Baxter's best so far. ++

"From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled." Michael Swanwick. A man among bug-eyed aliens who deal in trust. Typically Swanwick: full of irony and a boatload of postmodern literary tricks. Quite entertaining, though. +

"The Gambler." Paolo Bacigalupi. News reporter takes big gamble on writing social-justice piece in hyper-capitalized information economy. Good character piece, less of a downer than the usual Bacigalupi. +

"Boojum." Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette. Seat-of-your-pants swashbuckler on living pirate ship in outer space! Complete with a plucky heroine and a ship weirder than anything in Pirates of the Caribbean. +

"The Six Directions of Space." Alastair Reynolds. Space-faring, multiverse-exploring Mongol Empire! Reynolds does it again: mind-blowing vastness of space and time, awesome scientific speculation, fine and subtle characterization. ++

"N-Words." Ted Kosmatka. Neanderthal clones suffer racist slurs. Kosmatka is a fine writer, but this one tries too hard to win my pity for the Neanderthals. o

"An Eligible Boy." Ian McDonald. Jane Austen for guys in near-future India. Another fine writer turns to boring (though occasionally funny) social commentary. o

"Shining Armour." Dominic Green. Boonie village has one huge secret weapon. I found myself cheering at the end. ++

"The Hero." Karl Schroeder. Young man goes on quest to save the world(s). Eye-popping descriptions and skilful plotting keep this one moving to an explosive finale. Adventure space-opera at its absolute best. ++

"Evil Robot Monkey." Mary Robinette Kowal. Evil Robot Monkey throws around... The End. -

"Five Thrillers." Robert Reed. A thrilling story full of wonder and excitement, in five parts. The protagonist is bad-ass x5. Robert Reed is too: this guy gets a story published every two weeks (on average), including this rather long novella, and they're all either good or great. ++

"The Sky That Wraps the World Round, Past the Blue and Into the Black." Jay Lake. Yeah.. the title makes more sense than the story. Lake is usually good, and maybe this is "good," but I couldn't wrap my head around it. -

"Incomers." Paul McAuley. Bildungsroman on a moon of Saturn. Fast-paced, but affords plenty of room for thought: in other words, an average McAuley story. +

"Crystal Nights." Greg Egan. Billionaire creates virtual species, but he's no god. To quote Paul Di Filippo, Egan writes "quantum poetry." Beautiful story. +

"The Egg Man." Mary Rosenblum. Dude smuggles eggs into Mexican village in climate-changed future, but witnesses his old friends' sad decline. As always, Rosenblum succeeds in creating more atmosphere than a Ridley Scott film; and her characters really get to you. +

"His Master's Voice." Hannu Rajaniemi. Dog and cat team up to be man's best friends. Excellent writing and charming story make this entry from new writer Rajaniemi one of the best in this volume. ++

"The Political Prisoner." Charles Coleman Finlay. Political officer ends up in prison on Soviet-inspired isolationist colony world. Finlay has a knack for interesting characters; this a fine example. ++

"Balancing Accounts." James L. Cambias. Robots! In Space! I've never seen robots more convincingly rendered (that includes you, WALL-E). ++

"Special Economics." Maureen McHugh. Chinese girl gets job at evil corporation: the kind you can't really quit. McHugh creates an unlikeable character, but somehow kept my attention. +

"Days of Wonder." Geoff Ryman. A Million Years From Now: equine matriarchs roam the plains. Like most stuff Ryman writes: so much unthinking emotion that I stopped caring pretty soon. o

"City of the Dead." Paul McAuley. Crazy old biologist has strange bond with mutant ferrets. Surprisingly good combo of the modern western (think "The Three Burials of Melquiadas Estrada") and hard sci-fi. ++

"The Voyage Out." Gwyneth Jones. Woman on mysterious space voyage discovers some unsettling secrets about herself and her lover. Lyrical and intimate, and ultimately quite chilling. Very effective. +

"The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm." Daryl Gregory. Iron Men rule the skies in alternate-world Baltic lands. Rip-roaring war story with a kind-of superhero ethos hanging around the edges but affecting everyone. +

"G-Men." Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Alternate-history mystery starring J. Edgar Hoover, RFK, and LBJ! Never saw a more crooked bunch... an entertaining who-dunit. +

"The Erdmann Nexus." Nancy Kress. Ageing physicist faces psycho mystery. The idea feels at least 60 years old, but it gives steady proof of Kress's never-faltering quality. ++

"Old Friends." Garth Nix. Arborial samurai! Simultaneously depressing and entertaining story from an author I'd never read before. +

"The Ray Gun: A Love Story." James Alan Gardner. Boy meets Ray Gun, etc. Truly astounding coming-of-age tale; probably THE best of the year. ++

"Lester Young and the Jupiter's Moons' Blues." Gord Sellar. Who knew aliens would like jazz? This is a toe-tappin' good read and a convincing argument for the appreciation of jazz (yes, I said it...). +

"Butterfly, Falling at Dawn." Aliette de Bodard. Another alternate-history mystery: a "Mexica" magistrate searches for both a murderer and her own soul in Fenliu (=Los Angeles, I think). An unexpectedly moving story; I *really* hope this French writer shows up more often in English-language publications. +

"The Tear." Ian McDonald. Manifold personality on a literally cosmic scale. McDonald never does anything small, does he? This story is almost too rich, too dense for the human mind to encompass. A work of genius, nonetheless. +

This anthology always lives up to its title as there are thirty strong short stories with 628 pages of contributions included. The Summation of 2008 is a deep fascinating essay that focuses on the good with overall strong creative writings especially in book anthologies; and the bad being the collapse of several print magazines with those surviving cutting back the number of pages in each copy and reducing the number of releases per year. The stories are for the most part super but in spite of the rise of the on line magazines most of the compilation comes from print magazines and book anthologies. My personal favorites are those I had not previously read (thus I discount the excellent "Boojum" by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, "The Gambler" by Paolo Bacogalupi, and "Eligible Boy" by Ian McDonald, etc.). "The Six Directions of Space" by Alastair Reynolds, "Five Thrillers" by Robert Reed and the "Erdmann Nexus" by Nancy Kress are tremendous; the rest are quite good too. This collection with its Honorable Mention list and reference guide is a short story delight.

Harriet Klausner

Gardner Dozois gives us the grand tour of top-notch science fiction stories from 2008. As in previous anthologies, he treats readers to a chapter-length summation of developments in the field during 2008, a set of well-chosen stories, and an impressive list of "Honorable Mentions" that motivated readers can track down and enjoy. I read all 30 stories and felt my time was well-spent with each one.

My six favorites from this year's collection all deal with our humanity, skillfully using the innovations of technology and the wonders of other worlds to examine our hearts:

Ted Kosmatka's "N-Words" explores love, pain and prejudice in a relationship between a woman and one of modern man's closest cousins.

Karl Schroeder's "The Hero" tells the story of a boy who pays forward a kindness.

Mary Robinnette Kowal's "Evil Robot Monkey" asks whether animals are made more human by increasing their intelligence or increasing our empathy.

Greg Egan's "Crystal Nights" shows that the evolution of a new species can be more effective and efficient if the right man is in charge.

Garth Nix's "Old Friends" shows us that our roots are at home, even when we don't want to return there.

Ian McDonald's "The Tear" is an action- and concept-packed tale of childhood friendship under change--after change, after change.

This collection is highly recommended. I enjoyed it all the more as a "guilty pleasure" read on my iPhone Kindle app while those around me assumed I was scheduling or engaging in some other grown-up activity.

WARNING: The thirty stories in this collection are exactly the same 30 stories found in The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 22. In fact, these two books seem to be the same except for different titles and covers. Don't buy both expecting them to be separate books.

I've been a huge fan of Dozois's anthologies for years, having purchased roughly half of the editions when they were first published, and then several earlier ones as used copies. I won't repeat what other negative reviewers have to say, but I'll add my own reason that I've been enjoying each new anthology less and less over the past five years: the decreasing human quality of the human protagonists and antagonists in many of the stories. It's not just that there are too many post-human stories, or near post-human. It's also that even when the characters are ostensibly human, they might as well be robots, psychopaths/sociopaths, or simply amoral but not necessarily logical characters. Whatever the flavor, I find that I can't care less about them, or what happens to them. I'm very much in favor of alien or alien-like characters and contexts, but when it's just another so-called human going against another one, I'd rather watch Battlestar Galactica reruns.

Aneil Mishra

The stories vary from very good to not so good, in my opinion...BUT the lack of a functioning table of contents is a deal wrecker...an anthology without a table on contents, totally unacceptable on the Kindle!

I have bookmarked the beginning of each story, which will be fine if I ever want to find a story again, but I will not buy this anthology again without a functioning table of contents.

Not every story in this collection is a gem. But, so many are so good that this collection deserves 5 stars.

I recently have been using the kindle app on an iphone, and picked this up as this series has been a yearly purchase for me since about the 14th edition. I have read the first few stories, and liked what I've read. What I don't like is the lack of a table of contents, or any way to jump between stories. No offense to Mr. Dozois, but I usually (at best) skim his introduction detailing what happened in the world of SF in the past year, both in the printed word, and on the silver screen. I couldn't skip it on the kindle edition and had to simply turn the pages until I got to the first story. I've since been adding my own bookmarks at the beginning of each story.

Gardner Dozois annual Year's Best Science Fiction series has for many years justly enjoyed acclaim and influence. In its early years it boldly and effectively highlighted strong, creative writers who shook up some of the stale tropes of science fiction. It supported and highlighted terrific authors like Greg Egan (who's brilliant "Caress" appeared in the eighth edition); Ted Chiang; and others.

The series was appreciated not only for its interesting selection of stories, but also for the quality of its physical presentation. The type was large and easy to read, the book was bound carefully, the paper was good. One felt reading it that the publishers cared about what was in it. This was in sharp contrast to the custom of the time, when anthologies typically appeared in low-quality mass-market paperback editions, with small, somewhat blurry print. I own all 26 of the Dozois collections, and the early ones from twenty years ago still look good.

For the past five years, however, the quality of the Dozois collections has been slowly deteriorating, and with this latest edition, it reached a nadir.

Most importantly, the stories are generally difficult to slog through. Their prose style tends to be awkward and sloppy. Dozois has lately been indulging an almost obsessive affection for profanity: nearly every story in this collection contains profanity or offensive language. There may be nothing wrong with the occasional swear word, if it fits the story, but it's becoming a joke in the sci-fi authoring community that to get published in Dozois, you have to stick in as many swear words as you can. (I realize pop-culture has become similarly infatuated with profanity, but I do not believe literature should follow this irritating fad).

Where Dozois has included mediocre and poorly-written crafted stories, he's also overlooked superb ones. Most egregious is the omission of Ted Chiang's haunting "Exhalation." Chiang's writing towers above the work in this collection - but at the same time, Chiang's work repays and perhaps requires close reading. Dozois, I get the sense, just skims the stories he selects, and seems to have no sense of the difference between an enthralling prose stylist, like Chiang, and pedestrian ones.

The physical quality of the book remains quite good by comparison with most paperbacks these days, but it's not nearly as good as it used to be. The paper is thinner and yellower than in the past. My eighth edition from more than a decade ago still looks better, with higher-quality, thicker paper, than this one does. On the other hand, sometimes paper quality varies a bit even within an edition, so maybe other readers will have a better experience.

Some would say I am being too harsh here. But the effect of the poor quality of this edition is not merely that it's a bad book that wastes readers' money. The tragedy is that, because of the high profile and wide distribution of the series, the anthology likely still has influence on science fiction writers trying to get published. Because the edition highlights weak, unsubtle writing, authors are more likely to write that way. And it's unfair to much better writers who are passed over because their characters don't swear at each other enough.

To be fair, not every story was unreadable if you can look past the ubiquitous profanity. James Alan Gardner's "The Ray Gun" was excellent and very cleverly plotted. Steven Baxter's story, "Turing's Apples," would have been worth reading but for its pointless inclusion of distasteful imagery (of course, without something disgusting, Dozois no doubt would not have selected it at all, so Baxter is in somewhat of a dilemma).

For a far, far better anthology, without the artistic compromises of this anthology, I recommend Eclipse 2.

I do not read this sort of fiction but one of my sons does. I do wish the year was included in the title because I sure don't know what "annual" it is.

BOOK ARRIVED TIMELY AND IN EXCELLENT CONDITION> STORIES ARE WONDERFUL> WOULD ORDER FROM THIS COMPANY AGAIN>