Year's Best SF 8 (Year's Best SF (Science Fiction)) [Mass Market Paperback]

I used to regularly have a problem with being so captured by a book that I'd neglect relatively unimportant things like eating and sleeping. I hadn't had that experience in quite a while, but this collection brought it back. Nearly every story is excellent. This book doesn't have the range of the massive _Year's Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection_, but it benefits from its comparative selectivity. If you're only planning to get one of the two, I'd go for this one.

Working my way further backward through the Year's Best SF series, I have encountered and assimilated number eight. It was, as usual, delicious. I keep worrying that I will pass the year in which David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer adopted their very effective editorial approach. No worries yet. I enjoyed all 23 stories, my appreciation sharpened by the brief, but informative introductions to each story.

Before I go off to download Year's Best SF 7 into my iPhone Kindle app, let me take a few minutes to praise my five favorites:

Geoffry Landis's "At Dorado" is a time-shuffled love story about a spaceman who braves wormhole travel between the starts and the girl who waits for him. They fight before he leaves on his last trip. There is one chance to change this sad ending to a better one.

Ken Wharton's "Flight Correction" introduce a couple and their child living on the future Galapagos Islands in the shadow of a working space elevator. She studies birds, he drinks to forget his research failures, and both watch their child's love not quite hold them together. Then their professional and personal interests come together.

Ursula Le Guin's "The Seasons of the Ansarac" describes the life patterns of an alien species that migrates between two different climates--and cultures. There is a lesson to be learned from another alien race's efforts to "cure" the Ansarac from their instincts. Le Guins story is ethnographic and excellent, if a bit moralistically heavy-handed. It is my favorite.

Terry Bisson's "I Saw the Light" takes us along with an astronaut who leaves her dog behind when she travels to the moon to help decipher a Sentinel-like artifact. We learn that powerful aliens knew humanity in the past. And are eager to see what we have become.

Paul Di Filippo's "Ailoura" retells the "Puss and Boots" fairy tale in a futuristic setting. Clever technology, alien human-animal hybrids and an intriguing planetary setting bring new life to a familiar story.

The collection is recommended for science fiction fans and would be critics. I learned some things about storytelling from a few of these stories. I enjoyed them all.

As per the last several, Hartwell and Cramer point out they could have done three volumes this size with all the good stories they found.

The editors mention a couple of anthologies as decent, but mostly not for SF, and single out Peter Crowther's Mars Probes as the best of the lot for the year, although not with huge enthusiasm - however they have selected some stories from this book.

Not as many standout stories here this year, and as such, only a 3.77 average.

Year's Best SF 08 : In Paradise - Bruce Sterling
Year's Best SF 08 : Slow Life - Michael Swanwick
Year's Best SF 08 : Knapsack Poems - Eleanor Arnason
Year's Best SF 08 : At Dorado - Geoffrey A. Landis
Year's Best SF 08 : Coelacanths - Robert Reed
Year's Best SF 08 : Flight Correction - Ken Wharton
Year's Best SF 08 : Shoes - Robert Sheckley
Year's Best SF 08 : The Diamond Drill - Charles Sheffield
Year's Best SF 08 : The Seasons of the Ansarac - Ursula K. Le Guin
Year's Best SF 08 : Halo - Charles Stross
Year's Best SF 08 : I Saw the Light - Terry Bisson
Year's Best SF 08 : A Slow Day at the Gallery - A. M. Dellamonica
Year's Best SF 08 : Ailoura - Paul Di Filippo
Year's Best SF 08 : The Names of All the Spirits - J. R. Dunn
Year's Best SF 08 : Grandma - Carol Emshwiller
Year's Best SF 08 : Snow in the Desert - Neal Asher
Year's Best SF 08 : Singleton - Greg Egan
Year's Best SF 08 : Geropods - Robert Onopa
Year's Best SF 08 : Afterlife - Jack Williamson
Year's Best SF 08 : Shields of Mars - Gene Wolfe
Year's Best SF 08 : Patent Infringement - Nancy Kress
Year's Best SF 08 : Lost Sorceress of the Silent Citadel - Michael Moorcock

Phone dead? Let's walk instead.

3 out of 5


Flying first contact breakdown breakthrough confession comeback.

4 out of 5


Single bodied monster.

3 out of 5


Port wife.

3.5 out of 5


Life history lesson appearance.

3 out of 5


Space elevator a bit of an albatross.

4 out of 5


Smart footwear very annoying.

3.5 out of 5


Alien artifacts are a boy's best friend.

3.5 out of 5


Migratory pattern.

4 out of 5


Life aboard the Field Circus for Amber, with some occasional advice from dad.

5 out of 5


Moonlight message SETI trip.

4 out of 5


Alien art, human art, crazy people.

4 out of 5


Rejuvenation prevention murder motives.

4 out of 5


AIs, ain't Jacks worth it?

4 out of 5


Superpowers not inherited it seems, as a young girl is taken in by her famous grandmother after the death of her parents.

4 out of 5


Immortality bounty is more than a load of old bollocks.

4 out of 5


A scientist couple decide to have an artificial child, some years after a natural pregnancy miscarries.

"Carlos said breezily, 'Why not? There are so many others now. Sophie. Linus. Theo. Probably a hundred we don't even know about. It's not as if Ben's child won't have playmates.' Adai ' Autonomously Developing Artificial Intelligences ' had been appearing in a blaze of controversy every few months for the last four years. A Swiss researcher, Isabelle Schib, had taken the old models of morphogenesis that had led to software like Zelda, refined the technique by several orders of magnitude, and applied it to human genetic data. Wedded to sophisticated prosthetic bodies, Isabelle's creations inhabited the physical world and learnt from their experience, just like any other child."

There is plenty of discrimination, but their daughter has plans for all the other quantum branches in the long run, given the technology she has already.

4 out of 5


Old fashioned posse.

3.5 out of 5


Death scam skip.

3.5 out of 5


Planetary romance end.

4 out of 5


Gene litigant genie.

4 out of 5


Are your MacShards, gunning?

3 out of 5




4.5 out of 5

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 3 reviews  4.7 out of 5 stars