The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year

March 31, 2014
Strahan remains confident and competent following his series’ move to a new publisher. He makes a point of invoking the venerable tradition of “annual snapshot of the SF field,” name checking editorial luminaries like Judith Merril, David G. Hartwell, and Gardner Dozois. While there are one or two false notes, such as Val Nolan’s interminable “The Irish Astronaut,” most of the 28 stories reward reading. Of particular note are Yoon Ha Lee’s “Effigy Nights,” in which an occupied people turn to books to protect themselves from an occupying force; Eleanor Arnason’s “Kormack the Lucky,” whose protagonist struggles to win freedom in a world founded on slavery; K.J. Parker’s cheerfully amoral “The Sun and I”; and Ian McDonald’s comic “The Queen of Night’s Aria.” Small-press anthologies and independent zines are well represented in the table of contents; the Big Three print magazines are notable mainly by their absence—an indication of the evolving face of speculative fiction. Strahan’s work doesn’t quite achieve Merril’s literary range, but it compares favorably with Hartwell’s steadfast traditionalism and Dozois’s weighty tomes.

February 21, 2011
Strahan's fifth anthology contains 29 wide-ranging tales. Neil Gaiman's "The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains" is a deceptively simple folktale-styled story of the price one may pay for gold. "The Sultan of the Clouds" by Geoffrey Landis untangles a complex knot of childish power. Sarah Rees Brennan's "The Spy Who Never Grew Up" gives a beloved childhood icon a sinister update; Diana Peterfreund's "The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn" turns unicorn lore on its head; and Rachel Swirsky's "The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Window" puts a fantasy spin on the temporal culture shock of immortality. This year the fantasy tales outdo the SF in depth of storytelling and characterization, though all the inclusions are strong, with few ideas left by the wayside.

April 15, 2010
As for previous volumes of this annual, Strahan picks a stellar array of stories, the best of an apparently very good year. With authors including Nicola Griffith, Damien Broderick, Peter S. Beagle, Diana Wynne Jones, and Robert Charles Wilson, its impossible for a reader to go wrong, and theres something here for every taste, as well. From Griffiths unnerving story of emotions and chemicals, It Takes Two, to Beagles By Moonlight, a variation on the old Scots ballad Tam Lin, this years best contain both the simple things we take for granted about being human and the most luminous impossibilities that we might imagine. There are intelligent dinosaurs, steampunk gyrocopter air-chases, magic, alternate universes, technology thats almost magic, and everything else one could ask of a collection of the fantastic. And if theyre not enough, a list of stories that would appear in this volume if space permitted concludes.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)