The Year's Best Science Fiction

A bit weaker for a Year's Best collection this book, averaging only 3.77, which as all other anthologies go is still excellent. The long introduction and overview by Dozois is still the same quality as other editions. Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Oceanic - Greg Egan Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Approaching Perimelasma - Geoffrey A. Landis Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Cr*phound - Cory Doctorow Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Jedella Ghost - Tanith Lee Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Taklamakan - Bruce Sterling Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : The Island of the Immortals - Ursula K. Le Guin Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Sea Change with Monsters - Paul J. McAuley Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Divided by Infinity - Robert Charles Wilson Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : US - Howard Waldrop Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : The Days of Solomon Gursky - Ian McDonald Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : The Cuckoo's Boys - Robert Reed Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : The Halfway House at the Heart of Darkness - William Browning Spencer Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : The Very Pulse of the Machine - Michael Swanwick Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Story of Your Life - Ted Chiang Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Voivodoi - Liz Williams Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Saddlepoint: Roughneck - Stephen Baxter Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : This Side of Independence - Rob Chilson Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Unborn Again - Chris Lawson Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Grist - Tony Daniel Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : La Cenerentola - Gwyneth Jones Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Down in the Dark - William Barton Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : Free in Asveroth - Jim Grimsley Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : The Dancing Floor - Cherry Wilder Year's Best Science Fiction 16 : The Summer Isles - Ian R. MacLeod A boy growing up in a backward fundamentalist community on another planet begins to understand how much the local biology has altered the people that live there, and why a religion surrounds this. 3.5 out of 5 Black hole wormhole fun. 4.5 out of 5 A human and alien have a rivalry over trash and treasure and other market collecting. 4 out of 5 Local apparition. 3 out of 5 Sneaky Spider seekers suss out secret spaceships and other splendiferous scary and snazzy stuff. 4 out of 5 Carbon based longlife. 4 out of 5 Dragon hunter's misogynist defiance discovery. 4 out of 5 Book fake reasoning stupidity blast. 4 out of 5 Yeager variety. 2.5 out of 5 Dead rebellion expansion. 4.5 out of 5 Genius kid spread plan. 4 out of 5 Game addiction help. 3 out of 5 Moon life message. 4 out of 5 Predicting language. 4.5 out of 5 Rebuilding story is a bit fishy. 3.5 out of 5 Lunar volatility mine life. 3.5 out of 5 Scrap planet. 3.5 out of 5 Butchered baby brain bits disease treatment. 4 out of 5 Ferret girl proves vital in time tweaking titans massive personality conflict. 3.5 out of 5 Twin

Gardner Dozois always comes out with a very good Year's Best collection, but it seems as though the Sixteenth Annual Collection is one of the best in recent memory. There's the obvious mention of Ted Chiang's brilliant Nebula Award-winning "Story of Your Life," which is quite clearly among the finest stories in the past decade. Chiang himself is an accomplished stylist and he uses original and inventive ideas to aid the human element of each story. He is one of the most important new talents to emerge from SF in a long time, and everyone seems to think so; he's won three Nebulas, one Hugo, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, an Asimov's Readers' Poll, a Sidewise Award, the Sturgeon Award, and two Locus Poll Awards, and all with only nine published stories to his credit. "Story of Your Life" is perhaps his best, and it would be worth the price of the collection alone. But there is another story, by another very accomplished writer. "The Island of the Immortals" by Ursula K. Le Guin is among the finest stories I have read in a long time, a highly accomplished work. It is exquisitely put together and delicately crafted, like a detailed wooden carving. Le Guin is a talent that has been in the SF field for many years, and it was refreshing to see a story as good as this in the field. If this nonstop praise seems nauseating to you, then rest assured that there are some stories in the collection that I did not like; but there also other stories that are extremely good, but I felt did not merit particular attention. Also, there are always stories in collections such as this that one does not like. Like most anthologies, however, the outstanding virtues of a relative few are able to make me forgive the rest.

Although some stories were quite good, the overall impact left me wanting more. Some of the stories were more fantasy than science fiction. I especially enjoyed the 14th edition as it had a majority of "hard" science fiction. I keep buying this each year however as the quality is always quite good. More science in the science fiction would have rated 5 stars.