For almost a quarter of a century, Gardner Dozois has been selecting his choice for the best science fiction stories of the year. The Twenty-fourth annual collection (St Martin's Press 2007, 704pp, ISBN 9780312363354) contains twenty-eight stories.
Of the nine short stories, Benjamin Rosenbaum's wonderful "The House Beyond Your Sky" appears in competitor Jonathan Strahan's volume, along with the novellettes, "Yellow Card Man" by Paolo Bacigalupi, Cory Doctorow's "I, Row-boat," Walter Jon William's "Incarnation Day," and the Hugo-winning "The Djinn's Wife" by Ian McDonald.
Meanwhile, two short stories, Michael Swanwick's "Tin Marsh" and Paul J. McAuley's "Dead Men Walking," plus Darryl Gregory's chilling novelette "Damascus," and Mary Rosenblum's "Home Movies" appear in the David G. Hartwell and Kathrun Cramer Year's Best.
The Year's Best
But over two-thirds of the collection --including all five novellas-- appears in no competitor volume --the only overlapping story in the Nebula Award anthology comes from last year's selection-- and it is this sheer overwhelming size and diversity that gives the collection its strength.
Kage Baker's "Where The Golden Apples Grow," is both an update and a rebuttal to Heinlein's classic Red Planet; Baker's vision of Mars, and what youngsters will have to do to survive there is far harsher than anything written in the 1940s, it vies with Robert Charles Wilson's "Julian: A Christmas Story" --a harsh After-The-Fall story for the best of the novellas.
Alastair Reynolds
Alastair Reynolds is on a fantastic run at the moment, appearing in almost all of the various Best ofs. He has two stories in the Dozois volume, the best of which is "Signal to Noise," a muted low-key examination of loss and love across parallell universes, when a man abruptly widowed by a freak accident has a few last days to say goodbye to an alternate version of his wife.
Also highly recommended at novellette length is Canadian A.M. Dellamonica's "The Town on Blighted Sea," a gripping thriller set in a post-apocalypse refugee city on another world, where humans survive on sufferage, but where a few try to keep their vision of Earth alive, only to find the younger generation don't share their dreams.
Stephen Baxter
Briton Stephen Baxter delivers an enjoyable alternate history that isn't quite what it seems in "The Pacific Mystery." Long-time readers of Baxter's will find too big a clue in the title for any real mystery, but nonetheless the pleasure is in watching events unfold, and marvelling at Baxter's power of speculation.
Of the short stories, the pick of those unique to this volume are Bruce McAllister's "Kin," about a young boy on an overcrowded future Earth who strikes up an unusual relationship with an alien assassin. McAllister has been writing vastly under-rated stories for over forty-five years, and has been shamefully neglected by a field that too often lauds more ephemeral talents.
David D. Levine
Several of the best short stories come from small presses, as is the case for Hugo-winner David D. Levine's "I Hold My Father's Paws," which was reprinted from Irish magazine Albedo One. Even if Levine's character does over-romanticize the 'unconditional love'aspect of human-canine relationships, it's an unusual, thought-provoking and poignant story.
Almost as good is Greg van Eekhout's "Far As You Can Go," taken from his debut collection Show and Tell. It's a delightful story of a constrained future world where a young boy scrabbles for survival with his damaged robot friend, and tries to support his mother. It's one of four such appearances from single author collections, and is charming and affecting.
Another first-rate selection.
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