Year's Best SF 11 (Mass Market Paperback)

~ David G. Hartwell (Author), (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

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.

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.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Eos (May 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060873418
• ISBN-13: 978-0060873417
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #776,152 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Another great year of SF stories, June 22, 2006

By	David Roy (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

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, July 21, 2006

By	Thomas D. Gulch "tdgulch" (Pennsauken, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice collection of SF., March 8, 2007

By	Jesus Andrade Velasco (Barquisimeto, LARA Venezuela) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

You'll find very nice SF stories, although some might seem a little too short, they nevertheless reflect recent themes.