Year's Best Science Fiction

A fair bit down this volume, for a Dozois Year's Best. A 3.62 average, and a lot more than usual of the fairy pollution. The only one worthy of inclusion as being particularly good is Somtow's extremely funny Thai supernatural story. While it is good to know that Robert Sampson has written about pulp heroes, and worth chasing up, that story couldn't be any more lightweight if you put it in a balloon full of helium. Probably the most pointless Connie Willis story I have seen, too. This volume, therefore, is sneak into over 4.25 round up to 4.5 territory. The other standout is also amusing, just not in the laugh out loud way, and belongs to Charles Sheffield. You can certainly see a marked contrast in tone between this volume, and some of the recent variety, too. Dozois references one of his earlier series commentaries on publishing, remarking that it is almost amazing that good SF books are still published, even though publishing declined a little in this year, in general. Given that he was bemoaning the climbing amount of tie-ins etc., in 1977 and this book is in 1990, and the trend is still upward in both tie-in properties and in numbers of books published. Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : Tiny Tango - Judith Moffett Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : Out of Copyright - Charles Sheffield Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : For I Have Touched the Sky - Mike Resnick Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : Alphas - Gregory Benford Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : At the Rialto - Connie Willis Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : Skin Deep - Kathe Koja Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : The Egg - Steven Popkes Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : Tales from the Venia Woods - Robert Silverberg Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : Visiting the Dead - William King Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : Dori Bangs - Bruce Sterling Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : The Ends of the Earth - Lucius Shepard Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : The Price of Oranges - Nancy Kress Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : Lottery Night - S. P. Somtow Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : A Deeper Sea - Alexander Jablokov Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : The Edge of the World - Michael Swanwick Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : Silver Lady and the Fortyish Man - Megan Lindholm Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : The Third S3x - Alan Brennert Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : Winter on the Belle Fourche - Neal Barrett, Jr. Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : Enter a Soldier Later Enter Another - Robert Silverberg Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : Relationships - Robert Sampson Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : Just Another Perfect Day - John Varley Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : The Loch Moose Monster - Janet Kagan Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : The Magic Bullet - Brian M. Stableford Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : The Odd Old Bird - Avram Davidson Year's Best Science Fiction 07 : Great Work of Time - John Crowley AIDS survival crossdress meltdown mutant melon alien hibernation. 4

Dozois is, and has long been, one of the best editors and anthologizers in all of SF. The anthology ranges over the many different sub-genres of Science Fiction, and I therefore cannot say I enjoyed all of his stories; nevertheless, all were well-written, and some of the stories were among the best I've ever read. I strongly recommend this and any other of Dozois' "Year's Best..." series.