Customer Reviews

The Year's Best Science Fiction

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm going to briefly review the individual stories since it's an anthology. Don't worry I'm going to try to give little away.

Silverberg's story was not to my taste and it became part of his novel "The Alien Years".

Second Skin was a great example of spy story sf once I warmed up to it, my advice don't judge this story till you're done.

Nancy Kress is perhaps the best sf short fiction author of the '90's, & as always her story does a great job of being both genuinely human and science fictional.

Reasons to be Cheerful is disturbing, I wish I'd never read it.

Moon six has it all, but for some reason it's a hair shy of being one of my favorites in this collection. It is very good though.

Bill Johnson won a Hugo for his story about an unusual small town and that pleases me since I disike bleak urban sf. My only complaint is that the story seemed to lead itself to a sequel or ,perhaps, novel too strongly.

Escape Route had technobabble, starship captains, and aliens without seeming like a Star Trek ripoff. It is pretty good.

James P. Kelly's story was nice, but for some reason I didn't "buy" it.

A Spy in Europa is an entertaining mixture of hard sf, Jame Bond, and Jaws.

The Undiscovered was probably the best alternate history story of its year. I'm glad the author afterward was included because it's one of my favorite parts of the story.

ECHOES is sad and hopeful, science fictional yet human, it's wonderful & surprise it's buy a TV writer!

I wish I had read Marusek's stuff earlier because I liked his story about a device "Getting to Know You".

"Balinese Dancer" was a weird feminist? story.

Like many Robert Reed stories "Marrow" is so excellent I'm surprised the guy has never won a major award. However like many Reed stories it's somewhat unnerving so maybe that's the answer.

"Heart of Whitenesse" is one of those Waldrop stories I just don't get.

Swanwick's story was a pretty good far future story, but swanwick sort of turns me off.

I think I have a much more negative view of the future described in "Pipes of Pan" than the author does, but otherwise it is an intriguing piece of biological and cultural speculation.

Croosing Chao Meng fu was a well done adventure with rock climbing, yep Joel and Crow ROCK CLIMBING.

Yeyuka was a good self sacrifice story, but cold like most Egan.

Frost Painting had nice imagery, but was too New Age involved for me.

Lethe was nicely moody & poetic, but a bit confusing.

Winter fire is probably unusual for Landis in that it's too depresssing for me and is about a future Bosnia-type war.

Nevermore was too graphic a love story for me.

Open Veins was an interesting "Hitchcockian?" near future story.

Not entirely to my taste, but "After Kerry" is one of the most emotionally powerful sf stories I've ever read.

The Masque of Agamemnon is like a star trek episode, but I like Star Trek episodes so I liked it.

Gulliver at Home seemed sort-of forced and artificial yet I found it's outer vs. inner space debate interesting.

A Cold Dry Cradle is a fairly realistic story about a trip to Mars, but I'm glad exotic Martian life was in it to make it interesting.

My favorite stories were Second Skin, Echoes, And Marrow. It seemed like there were more adventure stories than usual, but surprisingly they were some of the best. In conclusion despite a few strange omissions and inclusions it is a great anthology.

This annual series remains a highlight of my science fiction collection. Another good deal thru the Amazon "Used" collections/selections.

Most of the best science fiction being written today comes in the form of short stories, and this enormous anthology collects them. It's a must-buy for anybody who wants to read the best new SF of the year

I look forward every year for this book to come out. This is by far the best science fiction collection. It is a great way to discover authors by reading their short stories in this collection.

Dozios continues to find the best Science Fiction. This book is very good and you will not be disappointed.

Book is great, but kindle edition has many c's swapped out for e's. Not unintelligible, but eertenly distraeting, if you get my meaning.

I saw on ISFDB that he didn't choose "Where Angels Fear to tread" or "the 43 Antarean Dynasties". These stories ended up not only winning Hugoes, but also were tops in the readers poll of HIS magazine. They are definitely Science Fiction, but Hartwell probably didn't pick them because he (& I for that matter) figured Dozois would. Maybe he was afraid of looking like he was biased toward his own magazine, but Asimov's is THE premier sf magazine & considering that he's been quite fair. I hope ISFDB just screwed up, but I doubt it & I'm slowly losing confidence in his tastes. 13th annual was the first one I got & even the stories I didn't like impressed me. The next one had some stories that were less impressive than I expected, but still wonderful overall. Now... Well it's still a must buy, but I'm no longer certain it beats Hartwell's. The summation is a big advantage & he does always choose some great stories. Oh by the way those 2 stories didn't impress me as much as everyone else, but I liked them more then some he chose. Perhaps it's pleasing to know the 2 yr's best ommit enough to make room for a third that's truly BEST, but it's hard enough to keep up with two. Oh well if Rusch is reading & planning to do a third I'd like to say there's definitely room for you, I just hope there's an audience for you too. Otherwise the others said what I wanted except Balinese Dancer was WEIRD. Was it post-apocalyptic or ... well just what was it? He always chooses a few stories that confuse the heck out of me.

Best ear ever. Some years have had stories better then the ones that are in this book, but quantity of good stories was better then any other year. If you've read any of Dozois' yearly collections then you need to read this one!

This is a down volume for this series, with a well below the norm story average of 3.61. It starts really well, and tails off, including a couple of likely not science fiction candidates like Kessel's Gulliver story - proto sf metafictional background, perhaps, if you like.

So, after the start, quite a bit of average and even a couple of below that, with the usual good intro.

Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Beauty in the Night - Robert Silverberg
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Second Skin - Paul J. McAuley
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Steamship Soldier on the Information Front - Nancy Kress
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Reasons to Be Cheerful - Greg Egan
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Moon Six - Stephen Baxter
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : We Will Drink a Fish Together - Bill Johnson
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Escape Route - Peter F. Hamilton
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Itsy Bitsy Spider - James Patrick Kelly
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : A Spy in Europa - Alastair Reynolds
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : The Undiscovered - William Sanders
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Echoes - Alan Brennert
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Getting to Know You - David Marusek
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Balinese Dancer - Gwyneth Jones
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Marrow - Robert Reed
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Heart of Whitenesse - Howard Waldrop
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : The Wisdom of Old Earth - Michael Swanwick
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : The Pipes of Pan - Brian M. Stableford
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Crossing Chao Meng Fu - G. David Nordley
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Yeyuka - Greg Egan
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Frost Painting - Carolyn Ives Gilman
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Lethe - Walter Jon Williams
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Winter Fire - Geoffrey A. Landis
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Nevermore - Ian R. MacLeod
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Open Veins - Simon Ings
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : After Kerry - Ian McDonald
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : The Masque of Agamemnon - Sean Williams and Simon Brown
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : Gulliver at Home - John Kessel
Year's Best Science Fiction 15 : A Cold Dry Cradle - Gregory Benford and Elisabeth Malartre

Quisling proxy punishment payback.

4 out of 5


Spies sort of like us.

4 out of 5


Reasons to be on the road.

4 out of 5


A boy discovers he has a serious brain tumour, and it was causing him to be amazingly happy. Removed, he becomes despondent, and undergoes a new and extensive treatment eventually, with a form of brain network, to try and get back to a more useful life many years later.

4.5 out of 5


Parallel world accidental stranding.

4 out of 5


Summit society protection detail deal.

4.5 out of 5


Old ship find time shift.

4 out of 5


Girlbot minder actor's filial substitute.

3.5 out of 5


A spy and infiltrator gets a lot more than he wanted, and a mortal shock, when he agrees to a mission for a lot of money using severe body altering technology.

3.5 out of 5


Shakespeare good at shaking spears.

3 out of 5


Quantum life possibilities.

4 out of 5


Buggy accessories.

3 out of 5


Stuck in France, with weird cat.

3 out of 5



Burroughsian Love Boat in space's passengers rather older than the average.

3.5 out of 5


Plotters and drinkers.

2.5 out of 5


Posthuman a tad fragile on holiday.

3.5 out of 5


Growth target overrun epidemic.

3.5 out of 5


"But the milieu of the Gentleman Adventurer requires that one return from the adventure to recount it."

4 out of 5


Medical technology advances are making surgery unnecessary in the wealthier countries. A surgeon takes a trip overseas to somewhere less fortunate to do some work, and comes across an interesting project.

"Recycling. Twenty or thirty years ago, the computer industry ran an elaborate sc*m: software companies wrote deliberately inefficient programs, to make people buy newer, faster computers all the time -- then they made sure that the faster computers needed brand new software to work at all. People threw out perfectly good machines every three or four years, and though some ended up as landfill, millions were saved. There's been a worldwide market in discarded processors for years, and the slowest now cost about as much as buttons. But all it takes to get some real power out of them is a little ingenuity."

I stared at the wonderful contraption. "And you wrote the Yeyuka software on this?"

Their project is to try and replicate for next to nothing the expensive commercial HealthGuard stuff.

4 out of 5


Unrealistic artists.

3.5 out of 5


Pairing memory recreation problems.

3.5 out of 5


Salzburg shelling unlikely survival situation.

4 out of 5


Arty unreality.

2.5 out of 5


Hotwired immune resistance upload death defense.

4 out of 5


Sororal personality permanent split.

3.5 out of 5


Trojan analogue with spacefleets, AI and Von Neumann probes.

3 out of 5


Travel leftovers.

3 out of 5


Marsmat discovery goodbye.

4 out of 5





4.5 out of 5

There were some stories that ,although good, made me ask "Is that really one of the best?". "Escape Route" & "Agamemnon" for example & I wish he'd chosen Landis's "Eciopesis" instead of his "Winter Fire". Regardless there is a great variety in this anthology. Two stories each about spies on moons & alternate Elizabethan times. Far future tales about earth & generation starships. A fair amount on genetics & even an alien invasion story. As for women well the sad truth is only about 30 percent of science fiction stories are written by women. True this still makes this issue (& the previous one) an underrepresentation of them, but it means the thirteenth & several others were accurate. Best not to make too much of such statistical fluctuations. The intro seemed even more internet involved then in recent years. I bring that up because in previous years some of my favorite stories were from the Internet & this year that wasn't quite true. Although I liked "Open Veins" & "Masque of Agamemnon" they weren't as good as previous online stories like "Feigenbaum Number" for example. Oh well probably just another statistical anomaly. The strongest stories have pretty much been covered so I'l wrap up there.