Another annual anthology of 18 sci-fi short stories from a variety of authors. As with most anthologies its a bit of a lucky dip, but there should be something for every sci-fi reader in here. There's some hard SF, a bit of fantasy, some cyberpunk and some that are drifting into niches of their own. Its a pretty chunky book so not the sort of thing that most folk will be able to plough through on a single flight or train journey, but ideal holiday reading, as each story will only take up an hour or so to read.

Paul McAuley: "The Choice" - dull
David Moles: "A Soldier of the City" - OK
Damien Broderick: "The Beancounter's Cat" - ok
Elizabeth Bear: "Dolly" - good
John Barnes: "Martian Heart" - good
Ken MacLeod: "Earth Hour" - OK
Karl Schroeder: "Laika's Ghost" - dull
Michael Swanwick: "The Dala Horse" - ok
Peter S. Beagle: "The Way It Works Out and All" - ok
Carolyn Ives Gilman: "The Ice Owl" - dull, didn't finish
Paul Cornell: "The Copenhagen Interpretation" - dull, didn't finish
Stephen Baxter: "The Invasion of Venus" - dull
Ian McDonald: "Digging" - good
Alastair Reynolds: "Ascension Day" - good
Maureen McHugh: "After the Apocalypse" - good
Catherynne M. Valente: "Silently and Very Fast" - dull
Jay Lake: "A Long Way Home" - ok
Dave Hutchinson: "The Incredible Exploding Man" - good
Geoff Ryman: "What We Found" - dull
Tom Purdom: "A Response from EST17" - dull, didn't finish
Ian R. MacLeod: "The Cold Step Beyond" - good
David Klecha and Tobias S. Buckell: "A Militant Peace" - dull
Robert Reed: "The Ants of Flanders" - ok
Gwyneth Jones: "The Vicar of Mars" - good
Lavie Tidhar: "The Smell of Orange Groves" - ok
Michael Flynn: "The Iron Shirts" - good
Pat Cadigan: "Cody" - very good
Michael Swanwick: "For I Have Lain Me Down on the Stone of Loneliness and I'll Not Be Back Again"
Yoon Ha Lee: "Ghostweight" - ok
Jim Hawkins: "Digital Rites"
Alec Nevala-Lee: "The Boneless One"
Peter M. Ball: "Dying Young"
Chris Lawson: "Canterbury Hollow"
Ken MacLeod: "The Vorkuta Event" - quite good
Kij Johnson: "The Man Who Bridged the Mist" - very good ( )

There is a vast amount of science fiction published in any given year. For almost thirty years Gardner Dozois has culled through the published stories to compile The Year's Best Science Fiction. This edition contains a breadth of stories that spans from fantasy and horror to hard science fiction and space opera. The anthology was included in my reading for a summer course at the University of Chicago. In addition to preparation for our discussion each week the stories share another aspect that kept me reading; they were all well written, some exceptionally so. With thirty-five stories I can only share a list of some of my favorites among them. These included "The Beancounters Cat" by Damien Broderick, "Martian Heart" by John Barnes, "The Invasion of Venus" by Stephen Baxter, "After the Apocalypse" by Maureen F. McHugh, "The Smell of Orange Groves" by Lavie Tidhar (perhaps the most poetic of the stories), "Cody" by Pat Cadigan, and "The Boneless One" by Alec Nevala-Lee (This last a true Science Fiction horror story).
For this reader the best story was the last in the collection, "The Man Who Bridged the Mist" by Kij Johnson. I liked it because it won me over in the sense that when I began to read it I thought I would not like it both because it was too long (one of the two longest in the collection) and because it appeared to be too fantasy-oriented for my taste (a taste that runs more to science--believable or not). It defied my expectations with beautiful writing while demonstrating universal themes of love, friendship, achievement, and death while providing a consistent alien background in both the social and scientific sense. Johnson's story proved a worthy capstone to a great collection of twenty-first century Science Fiction.With more than two dozen other stories there are sure to be several that will please the reading palate of any who enjoy Science Fiction. ( )

Up to the usual standard. A few good ideas scattered about the collection. ( )

Every year, I look forward to Gardner Dozois's anthology, The Year's Best Science Fiction, this year up to the Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection. I'm a fan of short-length science fiction, but these days regularly only read one magazine in that genre, so this volume gives me the chance to discover the best work in that format from the previous year. Of course, my taste and that of Dozois are not identical, and there are stories here that did not appeal to me (mostly the farther ranges of the "hard science" part of sf/f, although my previous complaint that writers of such stories tend to give short shrift to character development is less true than it used to be). But there are also stories that I loved: Damien Broderick's "The Beancounter's Cat"; "The Copenhagen Interpretation," by Paul Cornell; Maureen F. McHugh's "After the Apocalypse"; "A Long Way Home," by Jay Lake; "The Vicar of Mars," by Gwyneth Jones; and probably my favourite, Kij Johnson's "The Man Who Bridged the Mist." This handful of titles encompasses stories ranging from far-flung planetary adventures to the day after tomorrow here on Earth; the style and length of each varies, but all are excellent examples of the very large body of work loosely described as sf/f. If you're interested in short and novella-length science fiction and don't know where to start, this volume is, in my opinion, the single best investment you could make, but be warned: once you discover this world, there's no turning back! Highly recommended. ( )