The Year's Best SF 5 (Year's Best SF (Science Fiction)) [Mass Market Paperback]

This compilation of stories by a assortment of authors surprised me with it's Fifth Edition. I'm more a patron Gardner Dozois' annual collections, but to tide the time till that came out, I read this one and must say it ran the full spectrum of grand to absolutely terrible. First off the utopian "Everywhere" by Geoff Ryman felt like it had something to say about spiritualism, but rather became a predictable jab at spirtualism that was 11 pages too long (it was 11 pages in length) and left me offended greatly. The second story was much better and from a first time writer, no less. "Evolution Never Sleeps" by Elizabeth Malartre tells the tale of chipmunks, the most unassuming creatures in the world, becoming rather combative and violent. Rationalized, the plot was a tad plodding in parts, focusing rather needlessly on wasted character romance but the pay off of the story is rewarding, if abrupt. The third one, an appallingly ignorant story by the otherwise brilliant Kim Stanley Robinson called "Sexual Dimorphism". I loathed a story named "Marrow" last year by Robert Reed, oddly enough one of the best of the years choices by the other collection. "Game of the Century" surprised me though, pleasantly, but I think he should have come up with a much better name for the gene-spliced animal-people than 1-1-2041s. A bit ungangly to say. "Kinds of Strangers" by Sarah Zettel delved a tad too much into madness, but succeeded all in all. My favorite "Visit the Sins" by Cory Doctorow was unique and inventive, focusing on a switch for consciousness and well as the generational gap. Greg Egan's entry "Border Guards" utterly mysterifies the reader with it's setting, a good or a bad thing depending on your viewpoint. Rather mediocre. Terry Bisson's "Macs" had an excellent twist at the end, a dying breed of sci-fi and dealt with profound concepts of morality or culpability for crimes against humanity. "Written in Blood" by newbie Chris Lawson, if nothing else, presented a stark view of the Islamic world. Gene Wolfe's "Has Anyone Seen Junie Moon?" bored me terribly and seemed more like fantasy than sci-fi. Robert J. Saywer's "The Blue Planet" definitely felt like newspaper sci-fi, pre-digested for the masses. "Lifework" by Mary Soon Lee, another gem, presented a world far too close to reality. "Rosetta Stone" by Fred Lerner was a bit tough to swallow, though fascinating. Brian Aldiss' "An Apollo Asteroid" overglofied sex and presented characters no one would much care about losing if the asteroid smacked them right on the head. Curt Wohleber's "100 Candles" was familar, but pleasantly familar. G. David Nordley's "Democritus' Violin" thrilled and showed us that maybe the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Tom Purdom's "Fossil Games" plodded along to no avail and felt more like an ad for a long novel which the writer is undoubtedly writing. "Valor" by Chris Beckett proved it's point that no one much cares about a philosophical lesson. Steven Baxter's "Huddle" fit the mold of Baxter's recent ice age fascination. "Ashes and Tombstones" by Brian Stableford actually fascinated me with it's mention the Hardinist Cabal and their far reaching intentions, but perplexed me with its disapproval of their actions. Michael Swanwick's "Ancient Engines" was another one with a twist, but one rather elusive on the surface about immortality. Hiroe Suga's "Freckled Figure" was what Small Soldiers should have been like not a publicity ad to sell toys. Barry N. Malzberg's "Shiva" felt hurried, but had many interesting things to say about the inevitability of history. The last story by Lucy Sussex "The Queen of Erewhon" overglorified alternative lifestyles with absolutely no point to its madness. I got sick about halfway though. Had there been a rhyme or reason to this then I might have been able to get through, but I was fed up. Unfortunately, compared with the other collection, this one disappointed in many ways, far more than the other. That's why I'm currently reading Gardner Dozois' collection with much pleasure. David G. Hartwell, you could learn a thing or two from him.

Working backward, issue by issue, I have arrived at the fifth installment of David Hartwell's annual review of science fiction. The volume contains 25 well-chosen stories, each preceded by an informative introduction to the author, the author's other works, and the story to come. My five favorites are described below.

Robert Reed's "Game of the Century" achieves impressive characterization of the coaches, genetically-engineered players, and parents involved in the most physically--and emotionally--intense game of college football ever.

Greg Egan's "Border Guards" skillfully braids the stories of a game of quantum soccer, the lives of those who compete in it, and the future history which gives them their burdens and releases.

Mary Soon Lee's "Lifework" is an artistic depiction of a woman's life and the support her society provides to change it.

G. David Nordley's "Democritus' Violin" is set in a charming little college with an authentic cast of eager students and self-absorbed faculty. It's hard to believe they invent a down-to-the-molecule matter duplicator. It isn't hard to believe what they do with it.

Michael Swanwick's "Ancient Engines" is a bar conversation between an aging robotics engineer and his two dissimilar children. Each of the three ends with a different perspective on the future.

Fred Lerner's "Rosetta Stone" gets an honorable mention for the story with the best idea that stops short of fulfilling its potential. The main character's expertise in library and information science reveals the path to understanding unseen aliens through the method they use to catalog their large collection of Earth's books. The story would have been my favorite of the collection if it had continued after this insight to intuit a description of these aliens and their society. The abrupt ending left me feeling that the story's characters went on to have all the fun without me.

The book is highly recommended to fans of science fiction, both new and experienced.

Science fiction is an immensely broad category. It encompasses stories as diverse as standard monster fare (the movie ALIEN, for example), social satire (the TV series THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN, the movie THE BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET), farce (THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS), adventure (STAR WARS) as well as more traditionally science oriented tales of our society (1984) or imaginary worlds far beyond ours (2001) and much more. Editing an anthology which proports to represent the best short science fiction published in a year must be an incredibly demanding task, and David Hartwell is to be commended for attempting to represent a fair share of this variety. But if this book genuinely represents the best of SF published in 1999, I have to wonder if some bizarre millennial fever didn't strike the SF world a bit early. As SF writers are, by definition, imaginative folks, did they as a group get a bit too worked up worrying about Y2K to concentrate on their writing? Well, of course not; and interestingly enough there is no looming sense of catastrophe in the vast majority of this anthology. Instead, the tales generally treasure our humanity over technology and offer a hopeful view of the future (with a few notable exceptions). And yet...

Hartwell's anthology is sizable, containing 25 short stories. Of these, less than half were memorable enough that as I write this review while looking at the table of contents, I actually remember the stories--this only a few days after completing the book. I'm definitely getting older, sure, and more crotchety; but as yet I've no noticable symptoms of Alzheimer's. The one word that comes to mind with regard to most of these stories is "ordinary".

However, about 10 of the stories were worth a read. Of these, the two best were Cory Doctrow's "Visit the Sins", portraying family relationships that developed after an attempt to cure Attention Deficit Disorder goes horribly awry; and Chris Lawson's "Written in Blood" was an engaging look at the border between faith and technology, with prejudice and hope entangling one another.

Robert Reed's "Game of the Century" posited a future in which genetic engineering gives us superhuman athletes, but more importantly explores how they would feel growing up as such. Sarah Zettel's "Kinds of Strangers" follows the psychological breakdown of the crew of a deep-space craft after a devastating equipment failure. Stephen Baxter's bleak "Huddle", about a future molded by genetic engineering and planetary catastrophe was easily the darkest story in the book. Curt Wohleber's "100 Candles" and Chris Beckett's "Valour" were genuinely well written, well conceived stories with interesting characters. Finally, translated from the Japanese, Hiroe Suga's "Freckled Figure" was a beautifully told tale that somehow bound together the spirit of ancient Japanese craftsmanship with the love of anime and technology that drives so much of Japan today.

For the sake of these stories, YEAR'S BEST SF 5 is worth a look. But if you really want great sci-fi, I'd HIGHLY recommend STARFISH by Peter Watts. I've just finished it and have to say it is the best sci-fi books I've read in many many years. I hope that David Hartwell is able to find fiction of that quality for future anthologies.