The Very Best of the Best

Starred review from November 5, 2018
The 38 stories in this culling of the last 15 annual anthologies edited by the late Dozois testify to the breathtaking scope of science fiction and the diversity and talent of its writers. Eleanor Arnason’s “The Potter of Bones” concerns an artist in a primitive society applying the scientific method to her work. John Kessel’s “Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance” is set on a world where technology and religious superstition dovetail. Michael Swanwick’s “Tin Marsh” and John Barnes’s “Martian Heart” both elaborate on the challenges humans face in extraterrestrial environments, while Charles Stross’s “Rogue Farm” and Pat Cadigan’s “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi” speculate on the strange forms future life might take. Forward-looking as all the stories are, several are tributes to the groundbreaking genre fiction of Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, and Edgar Rice Burroughs by, respectively, Kage Baker, Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, and Allen M. Steele. Dozois was one of the great editors of science fiction over the last 50 years, and this book features some of the best science fiction written in the 21st century. Agent: Vaughne Lee Hansen, Virginia Kidd Agency.

Since 1984, The Year's Best Science Fiction has highlighted more than 600 stories from authors around the world. Each year the collection brings together writers who run the length and depth of sf themes and tropes. Dozois, editor of Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine for 20 years and a Nebula Award winner, has assembled a third--and final, after his May 2018 passing--curated anthology from the series, drawing on short fiction published in the 20th through 35th annual collections, from 2003 to 2017. Popular names such as Ken Liu ("The Long Haul, from the Annals of Transportation, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009"), Stephen Baxter ("The Invasion of Venus"), and Elizabeth Bear ("The Hand Is Quicker...") all grace the pages, along with 35 other authors of note. VERDICT This anthology is another illuminating look into some of the best current sf from the last decade and more, offering a glorious range of characters, plots, and themes as well as forgotten fiction from sf's favorite authors.--Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton

Starred review from December 1, 2018
This selection from the annual anthology series pays tribute to the late Dozois' brilliant editorial skills. The authors selected range from widely anthologized giants to more recently discovered talent. Some stories provide variations on well-established subgenres, such as John Kessel's space opera of monks and gods, "Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance"; the embattled supervillain's kingdom of Daryl Gregory's "The Illustrated Biography of Lord Grimm"; or the Gene Wolfe-esque science-fantasy world divided into perfect halves of Day and Evening in Indrapramit Das' "Weep for Day." Other stories explore the human condition, such as Eleanor Arnason's "The Potter of Bones," about one alien woman's exploration of her world's prehistory, or Gwyneth Jones' "Emergence," in which a woman living among diverse life forms in the outer solar system must reckon with the limits of her human body. And then there are stories that just luxuriate in strangeness and invention, such as Yoon Ha Lee's brief but beautiful "Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain," in which an immortal woman wields a gun capable of transforming history in a single shot. This anthology is highly recommended for anyone interested in all of the rich and varied possibilities sf as a genre has to offer.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)