The Best Science Fiction of the Year

Starred review from May 27, 2019
The 29 stories in Clarke’s excellent annual span the SF spectrum, and though they vary significantly in their approaches and tones, many are built around the idea of humankind’s often uneasy relationship with advanced technologies. Elizabeth Bear includes both humor and grimness in “Okay, Glory,” an account of a smart house that becomes a prison when extortionists hack its AI to blackmail the owner. Alyssa Wong’s elegiac “All the Time We’ve Left to Spend” concerns a fan who spends her life in the company of simulations of dead members of a band she obsessively follows. Both Simone Heller’s “When We Were Starless” and Sofia Samatar’s “Hard Mary” are set in provincial human enclaves to whom high tech is a near-mystical revelation. Clarke has also selected distinguished stories by Ken Liu, Ian McDonald, Linda Nagata, and other well-known talents whose topics include rogue robots, first contact, and human consciousness downloads. The care with which he has drawn from both print and online sources makes this a year’s-best that truly lives up to its title.

June 1, 2019

In his introduction, editor Clarke (Clarkesworld magazine) presents an analysis of the field of short sf, noting the death of Nebula and Hugo Award winner Gardner Dozois (among others listed in memoriam), other award winners, translated works, the changing business of print and digital short sf magazines, and acclaimed anthologies, collections, and novellas. Here, he curates some of the best stories from 2018, highlighting established and new authors such as Madeline Ashby ("Domestic Violence"), Alastair Reynolds ("Different Seas"), and L.X. Beckett ("Freezing Rain, a Chance of Falling"). VERDICT Scrutinizing politics and personal journeys, artificial intelligence and human emotion, this anthology will give new sf readers a breadth of material to ponder, while showing established fans new writers to follow. Recommended for all libraries.--Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.