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bev_reads_mysteries's review
4.0
I have been working on The Year's Best Science Fiction 17th Annual Collection edited by Gardner Dozois all year. When I signed up for Jay's Deal Me In Challenge, it required that we submit a list of short stories that we we would like to read over the course of the year--one per week, dealt to us at random with the luck of the draw. I decided that this would be the chance to finally read this huge collection of science fiction stories that I got for Christmas one year. Dipping into it now and then would be less difficult than reading 640 pages all in one go.
Dozois does an excellent job selecting stories representative of each year in science fiction--the stories range from hard science fiction to fantasy and everything in between. There are cautionary tales and what ifs; there are peaks at the future and the past. Overall, a fine collection.
Please see full review at my blog My Reader's Block for short summaries of each story.
Dozois does an excellent job selecting stories representative of each year in science fiction--the stories range from hard science fiction to fantasy and everything in between. There are cautionary tales and what ifs; there are peaks at the future and the past. Overall, a fine collection.
Please see full review at my blog My Reader's Block for short summaries of each story.
spacenoirdetective's review
4.0
Going down the list by order...
* "The Wedding Album" by David Marusek - One of my favorite sci fi stories period. It's a singularity story of an AI created in the moment of a wedding photograph. I can't even begin to describe it but trust me when I say it's totally unlike anything you've ever read.
* "10^16 to 1" by James Patrick Kelly - Amazingly well done story taking place in the 1960s where a young boy is told he must change history. It's a lot of pressure for a kid to handle...sometimes children take on too much responsibility...
* "Winemaster" by Robert Reed - Didn't Eddie Murphy kind of steal the plot to this for "Meet Dave"? He did? Oh. Awkward.
* "Galactic North" by Alastair Reynolds - I love me some Reynolds and this is no exception. A truly epic, no holds barred space opera thriller.
* "Dapple: A Hwarhath Historical Romance" by Eleanor Arnason - ugh. Just. Ugh. Just skip this one. You'll thank me.
* "People Came From Earth" by Stephen Baxter - zzzzzzzzzz
* "Green Tea" by Richard Wadholm - Semi okay vengeance story but somewhat typical of its genre.
* "The Dragon of Pripyat" by Karl Schroeder - Meh.
* "Written in Blood" by Chris Lawson - Future Muslims doin their future Muslim thing. Not that interesting.
* "Hatching the Phoenix" by Frederik Pohl - Neat little story of humans spying on a species that used to be like us as they have their own Cold War and nuclear showdown. Pretty decent.
* "Suicide Coast" by M. John Harrison - Dark, depressing
* "Hunting Mother" by Sage Walker - very Darwinian story that takes survival of the fittest literally. I was not a fan of the ending.
* "Mount Olympus" by Ben Bova - zzzzzzzzzz
* "Border Guards" by Greg Egan - Not horrible but not really thrilling, either.
* "Scherzo with Tyrannosaur" by Michael Swanwick - Yay dinosaurs! Yay time travel!
* "A Hero of the Empire" by Robert Silverberg - alternate universe where Mohammad got killed off by the Roman Empire, which survived. Not really a point, but I think definitely conservative wank fodder.
* "How We Lost the Moon, A True Story by Frank W. Allen" by Paul J. McAuley - Meh.
* "Phallicide" by Charles Sheffield - Woman gets back at her ultra religious rapist Mormon relatives by making the men infertile. Kickass.
* "Daddy's World" by Walter Jon Williams - One of the most brilliant virtual reality or dystopia stories I've ever read. Hell is your parents trying to make you live in their universe.
* "A Martian Romance" by Kim Stanley Robinson - Semi okay.
* "The Sky-Green Blues" by Tanith Lee - Lyrical. Tanith Lee always writes lush, oddly beautiful stories.
* "Exchange Rate" by Hal Clement - boring
* "Everywhere" by Geoff Ryman - Awesome.
* "Hothouse Flowers" by Mike Resnick - Hitting us over the head with the moral of treating elderly people well. Satire dystopia, but good.
* "Evermore" by Sean Williams - Atmospheric, creepy, deserving of the Raven semi reference.
* "OF Scorned Women and Causal Loops" by Robert Grossbach - A great story of teleportation and irony.
* "Son Observe the Time" by Kage Baker - Kage Baker always rocks the house.
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