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David G. Hartwell

Kathryn Cramer

Year's Best SF 11 Mass Market Paperback – May 30, 2006

by David G. Hartwell (Author), Kathryn Cramer (Author)

4.3 63 ratings

Book 11 of 17: Year's Best SF Series

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Travel farther than you've ever dreamed

Man has mused about the nature of our universe since he first gazed up in wonder at the stars. Now some of the most fertile imaginations in speculative fiction offer bold and breathtaking visions of "what's out there" and "what's next" in the eleventh annual celebration of the very best short SF to appear over the past year.

Once again, acclaimed editors and anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer have compiled an extraordinary collection featuring stunning works from modern masters as well as dazzling gems from brilliant new talents -- tales that carry the reader to the far corners of the galaxy and beyond, into hitherto unexplored regions. Get ready to take glorious flight on a journey to the miraculous.

Book 11 of 17

Year's Best SF Series
Print length

512 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Harper Voyager
Publication date

May 30, 2006
Dimensions

4.19 x 1.02 x 6.75 inches
ISBN-10

0060873418
ISBN-13

978-0060873417
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David G. Hartwell
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David G. Hartwell is a senior editor of Tor/Forge Books. His doctorate is in Comparative Medieval Literature. He is the proprietor of Dragon Press, publisher and bookseller, which publishes The New York Review of Science Fiction, and the president of David G. Hartwell, Inc. He is the author of Age of Wonders and the editor of many anthologies, including The Dark Descent, The World Treasury of Science Fiction, The Hard SF Renaissance, The Space Opera Renaissance, and a number of Christmas anthologies, among others. Recently he co-edited his fifteenth annual paperback volume of Year's Best SF, and co-edited the ninth Year's Best Fantasy. John Updike, reviewing The World Treasury of Science Fiction in The New Yorker, characterized him as a "loving expert." He is on the board of the IAFA, is co-chairman of the board of the World Fantasy Convention, and an administrator of the Philip K. Dick Award. He has won the Eaton Award, the World Fantasy Award, and has been nominated for the Hugo Award forty times to date, winning as Best Editor in 2006, 2008, and 2009.

Kathryn Cramer is a writer, critic, and anthologist, and was coeditor of the Year's Best Fantasy and Year's Best SF series. A consulting editor at Tor Books, she won a World Fantasy Award for her anthology The Architecture of Fear.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Voyager (May 30, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Mass Market Paperback ‏ : ‎ 512 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0060873418
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0060873417
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.19 x 1.02 x 6.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,813,329 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,601 in Science Fiction Short Stories
- #7,321 in Fantasy Anthologies
- #7,700 in Science Fiction Anthologies (Books)

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4.3 63 ratings

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David G. Hartwell
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Kathryn Cramer
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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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63 global ratings

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Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 19, 2015

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years best is always a good mix, fun to read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 25, 2015

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One of those books that you put on your night stand for bed time reading. Good range of sci-fi stories.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 20, 2014

Good stories.

Another great year of SF stories

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 23, 2006

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

16 people found this helpful

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John M. Ford

Thoughtfully-Collected Set of Science Fiction Stories

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 28, 2010

David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer have done fine work collecting these 31 stories from authors who have also done some fine work. I enjoyed most of these stories very much. Although there were some that didn't work for me, there are none which I regret the time spent reading. I always appreciate well-written introductions with author bios, brief descriptions of their other work, and web addresses that point to more information. This volume met this expectation well--as I have come to expect from these editors. I had to do some winnowing to get my favorites down to these five:

Ken MacLeod's "A Case of Consilience" is a rare beast--a science fiction short story that treats religion with respect without sinking into either sarcasm or apology. A missionary's message that seems to go unheard by an alien fungal intelligence is accepted, slowly digested and finally understood.

Neal Asher's "Mason's Rats" describes a farmer's high-tech war with unwelcome invaders. And reminds us that winning allies can be as important as winning battles.

Paul McAuley's "Rats of the System" is space operate in the most complementary sense. Along with the action, readers learn about transcendent intelligences and two very different cultures' ways of dealing with them.

Bud Sparhawk's "Bright Red Star" describes the last mission of a squad of specialized commandos who will sacrifice their lives to keep human colonists from being captured and horribly used by an alien enemy. This is a particularly well-written story.

Alastair Reynolds' "Beyond the Aquila Rift" gives me one more reason to consider him a favorite author with a story outside of his usual universe. We learn a couple of things about how to help a space traveler who wakes up from "an unusually long hypersleep."

The collection does contain an unusually large number--ten of the thirty-one--of short science fiction stories that originally appeared in "Nature." I suppose this might irritate "Nature" subscribers who feel they aren't getting enough new material. I think all ten are good stories. None are among my favorites because a personal preference for longer stories. The editors' distribution of these stories among the longer stories has a positive effect on the reader's pacing through the collection. My favorite among these shorts is Peter Hamilton's "The Forever Kitten" for its sly wink at the difficulties of being a parent.

As always, I am grateful to be able read this collection on my iPhone Kindle app. Nothing beats reading great science fiction surreptitiously while in a meeting with other researchers, supposedly doing great science. I'm not sure it hurts the science all that much. It's a great collection. Enjoy it in your own way.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Papaphilly

Good Year Great Stories

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 18, 2006

I have enjoyed "Year's best SF" since the anthology series had started to be edited by Hartwell and Cramer. This year is a very good year for Sci Fi. This year there is a wide variety of stories to both make you laugh and think or both at the same time. The stories run from 40+ page novellas to 2 page shorties. The one thing they all have in common is very good stories.

This year was boon for Hard Sci Fi. Once again Gregory Benford has written a gem. "On the Brane" explores an alternate universe where the inhabitants appeal for help as their universe is dying and they know it. He magically weaves both the hard sci fi and emotions together to write a very powerfull story. Joe Haldeman has written a "Angel of Light" which skillfully blends religion and sci fi toghether very well to bring out a trully wonderfull Christmas tale.

"Second Person Present Tense" looks at a drug that eliminates a person's mind and how family a tries to rebridge the gap with their daughter, who has regained her faculties, but is not the same person emotionally or mentally.

"Years Best Sci Fi 11" is one of the best years releases in years for this anthology series. There isn't a miss among the stories and some of them a true gems. Highly Recommended.

2 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Doug Fowler

Consistent series

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 17, 2019

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Just the odd one or 2 stories I didn't take to. On the whole in the series (of the ones I have read) the stories have proved to be of a good quality.

James Bowman

Great Stories

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 22, 2015

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Great Stories from a Master Anthologist year on year

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