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Tarfumes.com - The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection (Year's Best Science Fiction)
![The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection (Year's Best Science Fiction)]()
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List Price: $35.00
Our Price: $18.56
Your Save: $ 16.44 ( 47% )
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.0876208
Format: Bargain Price
Label: St. Martin's Press
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 704
Publication Date: 2006-07-11
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Release Date: 2006-07-11
Studio: St. Martin's Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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In the heart of the new millennium, worlds beyond our imagination have opened up, blurring the line between life and art. Embracing the challenges and possibilities of cyberspace, genetics, the universe, and beyond, the world of science fiction has become a porthole into the realities of tomorrow. In The Year’s Best Science Fiction Twenty-third Annual Collection, our very best SF authors explore ideas of a new world with such compelling stories as: “Beyond the Aquila Rift”: Critically acclaimed author Alastair Reynolds takes readers to the edge of the universe, where no voyager has dared to travel before---or so we think. “Comber”: Our world is an ever-changing one, and award-winning author Gene Wolfe explores the darker side of our planet’s fluidity in his own beautiful and inimitable style. “Audubon in Atlantis”: In a world not quite like our own, bestselling author Harry Turtledove shows us that there are reasons some species have become extinct. The twenty-nine stories in this collection imaginatively take us far across the universe, into the very core of our beings, to the realm of the gods, and the moment just after now. Included here are the works of masters of the form and of bright new talents, including:Neal Asher, Paolo Bacigalupi, Stephen Baxter, Elizabeth Bear, Chris Beckett, Dominic Green, Daryl Gregory, Joe Haldeman, Gwyneth Jones, James Patrick Kelley, Jay Lake and Ruth Nestvold, Ken MacLeod, Ian McDonald, Vonda N. McIntyre, David Moles, Derryl Murphy, Steven Popkes, Hannu Rajaniemi, Alastair Reynolds, Robert Reed, Chris Roberson, Mary Rosenblum, William Sanders, Bruce Sterling, Michael Swanwick, Harry Turtledove, Peter Watts, Liz Williams, and Gene Wolfe. Supplementing the stories are the editor’s insightful summation of the year’s events and a lengthy list of honorable mentions, making this book both a valuable resource and the single best place in the universe to find stories that stir the imagination and the heart.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Not Free SF Reader
Comment: This is an above average quality Dozois Year's Best anthology, the average being 3.87. A few average stories, and several standouts, along with Bacigalupi's brilliant entry, 'The Calorie Man' go Reynolds, Gerrold, Swanwick and Asher.
David 'Infiltrator' Moles seems to be trying to live up to his namesake with yet another planetary spying type mission story, but again a good one.
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : The Little Goddess - Ian McDonald
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : The Calorie Man - Paolo Bacigalupi
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Beyond the Aquila Rift - Alastair Reynolds
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Second Person Present Tense - Daryl Gregory
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : The Canadian Who Came Almost All the Way Back from the Stars - Jay Lake and Ruth Nestvold
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Triceratops Summer - Michael Swanwick
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Camouflage - Robert Reed
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : A Case of Consilience - Ken MacLeod
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : The Blemmye's Strategem - Bruce Sterling
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Amba - William Sanders
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Search Engine - Mary Rosenblum
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Piccadillly Circus - Chris Beckett
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : In the Quake Zone - David Gerrold
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : La Malcontenta - Liz Williams
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : The Children of Time - Stephen Baxter
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Little Faces - Vonda N. McIntyre
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Comber - Gene Wolfe
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Audubon in Atlantis - Harry Turtledove
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Deus Ex Homine - Hannu Rajaniemi
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : The Great Caruso - Steven Popkes
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck - Neal Asher
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Zima Blue - Alastair Reynolds
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Planet of the Amazon Women - David Moles
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : The Clockwork Atom Bomb - Dominic Green
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Gold Mountain - Chris Roberson
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : The Fulcrum - Gwyneth Jones
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Mayfly - Peter Watts and Derryl Murphy
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Two Dreams on Trains - Elizabeth Bear
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Angel of Light - Joe Haldeman
Year's Best Science Fiction 23 : Burn - James Patrick Kelly
Aeai multi-skull skill Nepal getaway.
3.5 out of 5
Generipper murder massacre's unlikely Johnny Appleseed monopoly breaker.
5 out of 5
Lost In Space.
"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how
vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is.
4.5 out of 5
Zen and the art of personality maintenance.
4 out of 5
Stardrives can take a long time to blow up, you know.
4 out of 5
Time loop holiday.
4.5 out of 5
Multiple marriage murder mystery mayhem.
4 out of 5
Genetic message.
3.5 out of 5
Alien assistant Crusade martyrdom.
3.5 out of 5
Global warming speedup tiger bait.
3 out of 5
Data debris discovery drug deal decimation detection drawdown drilling departure.
4.5 out of 5
Consensual withdrawal.
3 out of 5
Harvesting hire test.
4.5 out of 5
Shorn woman is torn between foxy pursuits.
3 out of 5
Prehistoric leftovers at the End of Time.
3 out of 5
Symbiote, shag, ship, sibling, seeya.
4 out of 5
Swiftly tilting city.
4 out of 5
Huge honking bird watching expedition.
3.5 out of 5
Baby deity a bother, makes me want to kill some.
4 out of 5
Smokin' singin' nanos.
3.5 out of 5
Wave bye-bye to the monster, now.
4.5 out of 5
Enhanced artist megastar is really Kreepy Krawly.
4 out of 5
Fever
In the manly side
Fever all caus-al like
4 out of 5
Mondo Bombo Congo Mundo Blammo Stoppo Checko.
4 out of 5
Lust for vertigo.
4 out of 5
Anti-information score dangerous.
3 out of 5
An experiment with an enhanced child doesn't go how its parents expect, an they are unaware of her surprising evolution.
4 out of 5
A hard-working mother despairs of her son putting his artistic talent to good use, instead he makes graffiti raids on ships in the spaceport.
3.5 out of 5
Thrilling Wonder Stories alien xmas deal.
4 out of 5
Local yokel pyro protest saviour secret.
4 out of 5
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great book - Just didn't like the font
Comment: As I said in the title...a really nice collection of SF; different types
and styles, all good. Lots of stuff for a great price. I just didn't like
the typeface they used; that is obviously a personal preference.
As usual, Amazon service is tops.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Dozois' Usual Suspects
Comment: Dozois prefers the long short story or what might be called the condensed novel, and most of these stories are in that vein. Very few stories here are short. Dozois also prefers stories that are more about millieu and atmosphere rather than stories filled with metaphor or operate on some kind of ironic level (as did the stories in the old Wollheim/Carr anthologies). Perhaps this is due to the kind of science fiction being written today: it's mostly about predictable futures or predictable alien cultures, long on atmosphere and short on story. Many stories, in fact, don't really get going (the McDonald, the Reed, the Gerrold, the Turtledove) for several pages. (I was halfway through the McDonald before I had any understanding what the story was about, let alone what its conflict was--the story had almost no dramatic tension).
And there are a lot of lost opportunities. Robert Reed's story involves a ship larger than several worlds, but ends up becoming a mere - and unexciting - detective story. The trope or conceit of living in a HUGE space ship is lost both on Reed and the protagonist. What would human life be like if one were traveling the rim of the galaxy in a giant spaceship? Wouldn't that DO something to you? Well, apparently not. The story becomes just another murder mystery that needs to be solved. The same is true of the David Gerrold story. It's a time travel story involving "timequakes" in the L.A. region (brilliantly realized by a man who's lived there all his life) but becomes devolves into a rather sordid homoerotic detective story in the end (with an ending that's so cliched that I'm surprised Gerrold let himself get away with it). And some of the stories are plain unpleasant, such as the Vonda McIntyre story. How it ended up here I have no idea. Another odd choice is the Alastair Reynolds story, "Along the Aquila Rift". I'm surprised that ANY editor published it: imagine a story told in the first person where, in the end, the person forgets what he has just told you. As a creative writing teacher, I would NEVER have a student tell a story in the 1st person and have it end: "And then I died" or "And then I was given amnesia". One can justifiably wonder how the heck the story got written down in the first place. How did it appear on the printed page? (Alan Brennert, an otherwise notable writer, won a Nebula years ago by writing a story told by a ghost. I guess fantasy and science fiction writers can do things that mainstream writers cannot. Or perhaps everyone's taking their cues from John Gardner's GRENDEL wherein the monster, telling his tale, is, as we all know, killed in the end. I would let Gardner get away with the conceit, not so Mr. Reynolds. I want my money back!)
This anthology really is a collection of stories that Dozois would have published had he seen them all for Asimov's Science Fiction. To his credit, he has culled many of these from internet and other non-traditional publishing sources. But mostly these stories weren't a lot of fun, and most took a lot of patience to wade through. I did like the Wolfe story; but, again, the conceit of the story gets lost in a twist ending that can only be appreciated if one has endured a bad marriage and suffered inklings of spousal revenge. I miss Donald Wollheim and Terry Carr and Judith Merrill and Frederick Pohl and Groff Conklin. What happened to stories that were fun? Where is the sense of wonder here? Yes, there are dazzling depictions of India in the future and the wonders of genetic engineering and nanotechnology, but, really, who cares? What is present in this volume are stories written by the very best we have. But they're like weightlifters with these enormous muscles lifting really tiny weights. Is it because they have to crank out two stories a month and three novels a year in order to make a living? Find an old anthology edited by Damon Knight called THE DARK SIDE. It's out there somewhere. It's far better than these anthologies--collections that suggest a paucity of imagination in our field that's been around now for about twenty years. These people, and this editor, can do MUCH better than this.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Preeminent Science Fiction Anthology
Comment: I was especially anxious for this year's volume because I recently read Mr. Dozois' Amazon Short in which he describes how he goes about preparing his annual best-of volume and in which he recommends that the volume be read cover to cover without skipping through the various stories. In this my twentieth year of reading Mr. Dozois' annual volume, I found that it truly does make a difference to read the stories sequentially as it gave the volume a much more powerful impact.
But let me take a stab at why the book represents more than the sum of its parts: Following Mr. Dozois' absolutely encyclopedic summary of events in the science-fiction world, we first encounter a story by Ian McDonald that treats some timely themes of Artificial Intelligence and the effects of governmental limitations on technology that mirror current attempts to limit internet access. This story has an upbeat and hopeful ending. The theme of the triumph of good over bad continues with Paolo Bacigalupi's story of a dystopic future in which farming is controlled by multi-national corporations--again, a type and shadow of fears concerning control of technological development by virtue of intellectual property rights.
Dozois follows two clearly thematically chosen stories with a first-rate Alastair Reynolds story about a future sailor who gets a bit more than he bargained for that is just excellent science fiction. It is followed by Daryl Gregory's piece about the effects of a future designer drug, an excellent piece of technological extrapolation.
Next are four stories that are surprisingly similar in that they primarily focus on the impact of events upon an individual character: Jay Lake & Ruth Nestvold's superbly rendered story of an eccentric billionaire who develops star travel on his own with fateful consequences to his wife is followed by a Michael Swanwick story about time manipulation and its effect upon the person who understands the ultimate fate of his timeline. Robert Reed's story of a character making his way across the galaxy in a gigantic ship has much to say about the power of one individual to do good. The next story likewise presents Ken MacLeod's tale of a missionary who desires to bring Christianity to an alien lifeform.
Bruce Sterling's story of the Blemmye brings a new perspective to the crusades and thoughfully explores the question of whether our history is everything we believe it to be is followed by a dystopic future-vision of a world destroying itself; William Sanders' Amba. Just as Amba deals with unforseen consequences, so too does Mary Rosenblum's story about a world in which any information is available for a price, Chris Beckett's vision of a world that turns inward to the ultimate rejection of all that is corporeal, and David Gerrold's exploration of the unintended environmental impacts of time travel in Southern California.
He changes gears with a solid work by Stephen Baxter, who has the audacity to present a story of humanity spanning the very life of our Earth but which subtly highlights the interconnection between our civilzation and our environment--albeit on a geologic level. This is followed by a unique future vision by Vonda McIntyre in which humanity exists in a symbiotic relationship with its own technology. Dozois then turns to alternative histories--Gene Wolfe's world adrift and Harry Turtledove's portrayal of Audubon's search for unique birds on a unique continent. These are followed by an utterly unique story by Hannu Rajaniemi about ultimate power and a similar story by Steven Popkes about how the health benefits bestowed by nanobots may come with a price that is not entirely welcome.
Dozois is obviously a believer in saving the best for last because he then throws in two stories that were my personal favorites: Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck by Neal Asher--a story about a hunting expedition gone awry and Zima Blue by Alastair Reynolds which was in my estimation worth the entire volume just by itself, a story about what is truly important. Unfortunately, anything that followed these two stories was bound to suffer by comparison: David Moles' story about a planet where males inexplicably die yet the women are doing just fine; Dominic Green's sobering tale of high technology gone wrong in Africa; Chris Robertson's alternate history in which China is the superpower; and Gwyneth Jones unnecessarily profane and graphic story about space travel.
Peter Watts and Darryl Murphy offer a story about the unintended consequences of creating a conscious program that has a searing ending followed by a likewise emotional story by Elizabeth Bear about the power of expression. The volume ends with a James Patrick Kelly novella that harkens back to Thoreau and asks whether it might be better to live simply and to forego the benefits of modern technology.
I'm convinced that the best way to experience Mr. Dozois' efforts is to start at the beginning and read straight through--despite the fact that the volume presents many different stories and styles, there is an impact carefully designed by the editor that requires this approach. Highly recommended.
Customer Rating:
Summary: looks good, but has stories included in other collections
Comment: This books looks real good, it is very large and weighty. I ordered it specifically to get the Alastair Reynolds story in it, after reading about the story online. Only to find out a day after a received it, that the story was already in another SF Best of book that I already had, but did not read yet, until after getting this one. Anyways, it looks good and I would recommend it to others with interest in such material.
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