The middle of this anthology wasn’t particularly strong, but you can’t go wrong with something that includes Beggars in Spain. Gene Wars, Eyewall, and Desert Rain round out the top stories in the collection, at least according to me. As I’ve noted before, Dozois’ seeming obsession with naming authors as Big Names and Ones to Watch irritates me. While I think who writes a story is important, Dozois spends more ink in his intros on an author’s pedigree than on the story.

Beggars in Spain by Nancy Kress

I think this is the first time I’ve read a short story after reading the novel version. Kress set the standard for the trope I call human evolution: what happens when the next version of humans come along. The idea: genetic engineering allows us to create people who don’t need to sleep. The extra time and some beneficial side effects mean they are smarter and more balanced than normal humans. Who promptly start treating them like crap. Re-reading this is tough precisely because I’ve read so many stories that mimic Kress’.

Living Will by Alexander Jablokov

You are going senile. You know it. You want to off yourself before you get too far gone to be a burden. However, you don’t want to do it while you have some semblance of brain left. The dilemma is that once that semblance has left you, you are no longer capable of making the decision. Could you turn that decision over to someone else? Someone you trusted utterly? Good story.

A Just and Lasting Peace by Lois Tilton

Alternate history in which Reconstruction goes on a lot longer, and southern resistance goes on a lot longer. Rather than the north winning and eventually losing, they never really win. Not bad, but it didn’t impress me either.

Skinner’s Room by William Gibson

I don’t really understand why Dozois’ introduction says this story is about housing the homeless. In a future where cities are falling apart, the poor take over the Golden Gate bridge and build structures for themselves to live in. Nothing earth shattering. Pretty good style though, which sets a mood really well.

Prayers on the Wind by Walter Jon Williams

Sometimes it seems like people disaffected by monotheistic Christianity flock toward Eastern religions or philosophies. Although I don’t share Christopher Hitchens vehement language toward those religions, I do tend to agree on principle. If you can’t find evidence for it, it’s not true. Buddhism is one of those religions that falls into that category for me. If you want to believe it on faith, be my guest, but I need evidence. Reincarnation? Asceticism? Bah! Intentionally or unintentionally, this story fits in very much with my view. A future Buddhist-themed galactic empire runs into conflict with an alien race. But right when things come to a head, the empire’s version of the Dalai Lama dies and the new incarnation of Buddha changes things up a bit. To me, highlights how little sense soul reincarnation makes, as well as how despotic religion can be.

Blood Sisters by Greg Egan

When you do a double-blind test of a new drug, isn’t it kind of unfair (if the drug works) that the control group won’t be cured?

The Dark by Karen Joy Fowler

A dark fantasy/horror tale about a boy raised by wolves who ends up as a C.I.A. experiment. It didn’t do a whole lot for me.

Marnie by Ian R. Macleod

If you could go back to high school/college and do it all over again, would you? Here’s how that might happen.

A Tip on a Turtle by Robert Silverberg

What would it be like to actually have premonition? For the guy in this story who predicts who can win turtle races at a resort, it kinda sucks. Well-written, but I’ve seen this done better elsewhere.

Übermensch! by Kim Newman

A sorta alternative history story. It’s not really alternate to real history. Alternate to the Superman history. Instead of the spaceship from Krypton landing in a Kansas field, and Superman working to save the allies, he grows up in Germany and is a tool of the Nazis. Despite not being particularly fond of alternative history, I did like the story. Maybe because superheros from this kind of perspective are done so rarely (that I run across at least).

Dispatches from the Revolution by Pat Cadigan

Not fond of alternative history unless done really well. This one, not so well. What if… the right wing ascended in 1968?! Yeah, it happened in Germany. Perhaps it could have here. But it didn’t. And I’m not sure we really need another scare piece on what the right wing could do in America. I’m pretty sure we don’t need one at all.

Pipes by Robert Reed

An okay story about environmental restoration. Predicated on cheap food from offshore farms making midwest farming unnecessary.

Matter’s End by Gregory Benford

I did not like this story one little bit. A lot of melodrama about India hating scientists so much any scientist/Westerner will get beaten or killed. Westerner comes to secret Indian physics experiment that is measuring proton decay, which will determine the end of the universe. And then things really go to hell. Everything except the actual experiments felt false to me.

A History of the Twentieth Century, with Illustrations by Kim Stanley Robinson

This seems more like a fictionalized travel essay than science fiction or fantasy. A lot more. Maybe I missed something. As travel writing, it seems pretty decent. I want to travel to the Orkney Islands now. As speculative fiction, it seems lacking.

Gene Wars by Paul J. McAuley

I really liked this story about genetic engineering. Not that it’s necessarily likely to happen. The story follows more along the lines of take something to it’s extreme to good effect.

The Gallery of His Dreams by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Interesting concept. Interesting writing. Interesting point. But for some reason I just didn’t get into the story. Mathew Brady, a photographer who sought to chronicle the horrors of war during the U.S. Civil War, went penniless from his efforts. The story has a time traveler whisking Brady to wars throughout time to use his skills and equipment to chronicle wars of all kinds. In the end, people view his work as art, not history. Good story, but perhaps I just wasn’t in the mood.

A Walk in the Sun by Geoffrey A. Landis

Good mundane-SF (at least by my estimation) story about rescuing a person from the surface of the moon. The walk in the sun refers to the fact that the castaway’s life support in her space suit is solar powered. She can’t let sundown catch up to her or her ability to breathe will shut off for 15 days (you try holding your breath that long!). So she has to walk ahead fast enough to stay in the moon’s daylight for a month (at least) until a rescue rocket can reach her from earth. Kind of like the premise of Stephen King’s The Long Walk; walk or die.

Fragments of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria by Ian McDonald

A Jew during and before World War II is visited by an angel? I think. I’m not really sure what her visions represent. Another story that didn’t resonate with me, but again probably more me than the story.

Angels in Love by Kathe Koja

A girl overhears her apartment neighbors having loud sex, and she wants some of it. Enough that she starts spying on the woman hoping to get a glimpse of her boyfriend, to see if she can horn in on the action. Nice to see a story about a hard-up undersexed loser being a woman instead of a pasty white geek boy for once. Anyhow, she never sees the man enter or leave the place, despite increasingly stalkerish behavior. What’s going on over there?

Eyewall by Rick Shelley

I loved this story. I have Shelley’s book Fires of Coventry which I really want to read now. Not technically a mundane SF story, but all the key parts of the story are. Basically, a category 5 hurricane leaves 20,000 dead in Florida and a million homeless. A hurricane study group must bow to political pressure. Instead of pure science research, they are supposed to conduct experiments using explosives (including nuclear) to disrupt the eye of a hurricane to get it to dissipate. They don’t like the applied research, and they don’t like using nuclear weapons, and they don’t like that their scientific existence depends on something they don’t like. The non-mundane part is that the experiments occur on a water covered world that has lots of hurricanes and is mostly untouched by human hands. The awesome part is the simmering conflict between the political guys and the original science people. Awesome tension and buildup.

Pogrom by James Patrick Kelly

Another story I liked. Near future story where the young are in conflict with a richer older generation. What I loved is the hypocrisy of the main character, an older woman, commenting on how the younger generation blames the entire older generation for the sins of a few.

The Moat by Greg Egan

Interesting but not compelling (gah! I just used compelling in a review!) idea about people who create their own alternate D.N.A. and why they might want to do so. Hint: it’s an us vs. them thing.

Voices by Jack Dann

Boy talks to the dead. Friend doesn’t believe him. Not inspiring.

FOAM by Brian W. Aldiss

FOAM stands for Free Of All Memory. Unscrupulous people steal other people’s memories to sell, kind of like drugs. Eh.

Jack by Connie Willis

I don’t usually like stories of this type. A type I won’t reveal here so as not to spoil the story, but also partially because the relevant word is never actually used in the pages. But I liked this one. Thought it was a novel take on the idea, and some of the things left unsaid intrigued me. For instance, how down and out would Jack have to be to resort to the kind of subterfuge he does?

La Macchina by Chris Beckett

Yet another version of robots gain awareness. Nothing about this screams best of the year to me, though I wouldn’t call it bad either.

One Perfect Morning, with Jackals by Mike Resnick

I like this story because of what a bastard Koriba Kimante (the elder) is, so beholden to his convictions that he cannot be a father.

Desert Rain by Mark L. Van Name and Pat Murphy

The miracle of artificial intelligence illustrates this story about one woman’s one person bubblehead validation brigade. A BVB is always a little more empty than you’ll think it will be. I’m not sure if this is my favorite story in the book or not. I guess it depends on how I think people relate to their BVBs. Most days, I don’t think most people get that a BVB is skin-deep. Those days I probably will like this story even more.

I kinda do want to know why this particular year is still in print. I bought this new from Amazon. New. It was published over 15 years ago and every other edition of the series older than a year or two has to be purchased used. So why this one?

Title: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Ninth Annual Collection
Editor: Gardner Dozois
Cover creator: Bob Eggleton (artist)
Series: Year’s Best Science Fiction; 9
Imprint / publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Format: Paperback
Length: 575 p.
Publication date: 1992
ISBN-10: 0-312-07891-9

I don’t know if it’s the steampunk sub-genre or the fact that the publisher is U.K. based, but a lot of the stories in this original anthology have a distinctly British flavor to them. Certainly a Dickens style world lends itself well to steampunk’s low-technology ethos, dark brooding and full of all sorts of intrigues that can serve as a basis for a plot. On the other hand, it starts to feel a bit monotonous after a bit. The last four stories thankfully aren’t Brit themed, but you gotta read a while to get to them (or intersperse them out of order now that you know).

I definitely appreciate getting the chance to read a few authors I haven’t been exposed to prior to this, at least beyond seeing their names mentioned in a few reviews here and there. I think this is my first reading of eight of the twelve authors appearing.

My favorites of the anthology are from Roberts, VanderMeer and Lake. Lovegrove’s Steampunch is a good opener as well. There’s nothing I hated or couldn’t get through, even with Youmans’ confusing Static. I normally hate the stories that confuse me, but this offered other delights. Good to see a fairly new imprint in SF making a name for itself. As they say on EBay, AAA+++.

Steampunch, James Lovegrove

An old hand at a penal colony tells a newcomer his story. He used to train Steampunch, the mechano-boxing legend, before robot fighting was declared illegal. Battlebots with an edge. Decent story.

Static, Marly Youmans

I couldn’t really figure out most of what’s going on here. There’s a lot of electricity in the air. Not tension. Electricity. And a woman abuses and/or treats poorly her ward, her grand-niece. On the good side though, Youmans uses some great metaphors in the story. Nothing was thrown away at The Towers, so time accumulated its sediments inside hatboxes and wardrobes. Great stuff. If only I understood what was going on.

Speed, Speed the Cable, Kage Baker

Saboteurs scheme to destroy the Trans-Atlantic cable before it’s even been laid. Counter-schemers plot to prevent this from happening so their secret world domination plans aren’t disrupted. Kind of eh, but not bad.

Elementals, Ian R. MacLeod

I’ve never much been fond of Law of Attraction kinds of things. I’m a born skeptic. If science ever shows that it’s true, I’ll gladly go along. But until then, it’s a lot of hooey (like most of the anti-Obama bull-crap that right-wing ignoramuses spout on blogs and chain email). Elementals is a law of attraction kind of story. Not that MacLeod believes it (I’ve no evidence either way), but it’s mere presence as the unifying theme of the story biases me against it (like it did against a similarly premised Ursula K. Le Guin story from an anthology). The premise here is that elementals are energy spirits that can inhabit people or things and provide them a life of their own. The key this time is that people have to believe in them for them to be effective (or at least believe in their effect, kind of like a self-additive bubble). The scientist who has discovered them and determined a process to use/enhance them can’t convince people his theory is sound, and so he falls by the wayside because no one believes in his elemental self. To sum up, eh.

Machine Maid, Margo Lanagan

I could see where this story was headed fairly soon in, so there’s a strike against it. On the other hand, Lanagan wrote something that affected me in a way that doesn’t happen all that often. She wrote a character that I really dislike, but also one for whom I felt a lot of sympathy. Mr. Goverman owns a remote Australian tract of land, and moves there with his wife (the story is about her) to better track his investments in nearby gold mining. Mrs. Goverman hates sex, and detests contact with her husband. Then she discovers that the electric maid, Clarissa, has functionality to service male owners. I dislike the character for being both insufferable and a prude. And I sympathize with her for accepting/allowing that which she so clearly hates as well as her distaste for her position in general that she feels forced into by society. The plot isn’t anything to write home about, but the character and some of the moral implications are quite interesting.

Lady Witherspoon’s Solution, James Morrow

I don’t doubt that Morrow’s tale is a take off on Hitler’s Final Solution what with references to Nietzsche spread throughout the text. In the satire, Morrow not only spoofs 19th century feminism but also the Nietzschean übermensch. A couple of spots in the story made me laugh here sitting in my favorite coffee shop. And that ain’t easy to do.

Hannah, Keith Brooke

The intro by Nick Gevers says Hannah is about medical ethics gone bad. Seemed more like a garden variety cloning story to me.

Petrolpunk, Adam Roberts

An alternate reality version of steampunk. Featuring a writer Adam Roberts and an editor Nick Gevers in a world where steam technology continued to be dominant because of a Compound that is added to water to lower the boiling point to 40° C. Of course, Compound is also toxic. But from an alternate reality comes other people who want to steal the petroleum and ship it through dimensional gates to their petroleum based worlds. Quite good, even if I really am tired of British themed stories at this point.

American Cheetah, Robert Reed

Finally a non-British theme! Robot Abraham Lincoln faces off with robot Jesse James gang. Reminded me a little too much of Asimov’s robot stories for me to go hey neat. That and there’s already been a couple of robot stories in the anthology. I prefer the less intelligent versions of Steampunch or Machine Maid if we’re going to have a steampunk story. Again, it’s not bad. But it didn’t stand out either.

Fixing Hanover, Jeff VanderMeer

Another robot story, but this one stood out for me. Not quite sure why. I liked the interplay between Daniker, Lady Salt, and jealous Blake. The steampunk aspect isn’t the important part of the story, though it adds spice. Though it could use a better title.

The Lollygang Save the World on Accident, Jay Lake

I’ve generally been a sucker for created worlds. I don’t mean world-building, though that is nice and has a part in created worlds. I mean artificial worlds, like ringworld, or Dyson spheres, or the smoke ring, or Virga. But they don’t have to be space-based. I loved the Linear City. This story features a created world consisting of a very large Pipe of indeterminate size. Where is it? Doesn’t matter. Could be in space. Could be on a planet somewhere. People live in decks inside. It’s been created by beings as an experiment, and most likely left to rot. Many parts of it lay disused and in disrepair. Unused communications devices. Pipes and tanks with unknown fluids. Totally awesome! The Lollygang (which is as you might think from the name, a youth gang), come across Gloves which let them perform feats unimaginable in their world. “Magically” opening locks and whatnot. Not really sure what they can do, and for once I didn’t care that I didn’t know. But the gloves have a way of taking over. Sounds contrived when I write it out, but it really works in the story.

The Dream of Reason, Jeffrey Ford

I believe Jeffrey Ford is the author that told me to kill myself this summer. And you all thought I was cranky one on the internet! The Dream of Reason is a good story about one man’s scientific experiments to determine the composition of stars. His theory, if he slows light enough eventually diamond dust will fall off it. Dust picked up by bouncing off far away stars. But how to slow it down enough? And how to build a big enough device to conduct the experiment (it’s like a steampunk version of the Large Hadron Collider!).

Solaris Books provided this mass-market edition of Extraordinary Engines free of charge through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program. In return for a free copy, I am obligated to post a 25 word (or longer) review on LibraryThing. This entailed no other obligations.

Title: Extraordinary Engines: The Definitive Steampunk Anthology
Editor: Nick Gevers
Cover creator: Adrian Wood (photo) / Alex CF (artwork)
Imprint / publisher: Solaris
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 441 p.
Publication date: September 2008
ISBN-10: 1-84416-634-1
ISBN-13: 978-1-84416-634-3

Of all the Year’s Best S.F. collection’s by Gardner Dozois, this one might be my favorite so far. There weren’t any stories that just blew me away, but there were only a couple I hated and I quite liked quite a bit. Best stories: Bears Discover Fire, Tower of Babylon, and Learning to Be Me. And now thoughts on the stories…

Mr. Boy, James Patrick Kelly

There’s nothing in this story about genetic manipulation/body modification that I haven’t read before. But it’s still really really good. Mr. Boy is the assumed named of Peter Cage, a 25 year old boy. He’s been genetically modified to stay the age of 13, and acts that age. His mom is a ¾ scale statue of liberty. Being rich, they can do all this. And then he meets Treemonisha Joplin, whose family isn’t rich. She wants in, and Mr. Boy increasingly wants out. It was really easy to get in to the character of Mr. Boy, despite the strangeness.

The Shobies’ Story, Ursula K. Le Guin

Uh. Okay. I think this is about some sort of new instantaneous space travel that ends up requiring those who do the traveling to believe in it. Or something.

The Caress, Greg Egan

Performance art gone bad. Evil genius genetically creates human/animal hybrids to mimic paintings he’s seen. And more. Very twisted. Pretty good. I especially liked the ending, where the victim doesn’t feel anger.

A Braver Thing, Charles Sheffield

Good story about a physicist who wins the Nobel Prize. This is his first-person account of how he made the discovery. Only tangentially science fiction. The meat of the story could take place at any time.

We See Things Differently, Bruce Sterling

Since this story first saw publication, not a whole lot has changed. In fact the story seems even more relevant, even if the time line in the story places the plot nearly a decade ago. U.S. and Russia in decline. The Arab world ascendant. It’s been unified into a caliphate, and although it’s clearly won the cultural battle there’s still resentment against the U.S. An Arab journalist travels to the U.S. to cover a patriotic rock singer who is galvanizing the populace. I saw the ending coming a mile away, so it is kind of predictable. Well written though.

And The Angels Sing, Kate Wilhelm

Kind of a first contact story. Small town newspaperman comes on a being stumbling around town. At first he takes it for one of the local girls, but when he gets her inside he realizes she isn’t a she. The story could be his ticket out. Very well written. I liked it.

Past Magic, Ian R. MacLeod

This story didn’t resonate with me. In a somewhat dystopian future, a rich person tries to hold on to her memories by re-creating her daughter. Told from the viewpoint of the ex-husband father. Not bad, but seemed old hat and I couldn’t get into the characters.

Bears Discover Fire, Terry Bisson

Just an awesome story. One day, bears do what man did tens of thousands of years ago. The bears discover fire. I love the mixture of the practical and absurd. This is begging to be made into a short film.

The All-Consuming, Lucius Shepard and Robert Frazier

Lucius Shepard seems to write stories that I either love or that just bore me. This is one of the boring ones. I can see where some folks will like this one, but the style just doesn’t suit my tastes. In this fantasy story, a rich person decides to grok the world by eating it. Our protagonist is a jungle guide type person who provides the rich guy with meals from a magical jungle, and they all begin to notice a change.

Personal Silence, Molly Gloss

This is one type of science fiction I really like, where the science fiction is integral to the story, but it’s presence is not overwhelming. A protester walks around the world engaging in a personal silence (i.e., not talking) to try to end an endless world war of some type. On the Olympic peninsula he runs into a young pre-teen who dreams a little precognitively. Really liked this one.

Invaders, John Kessel

So if you’ve read this blog for the last few months or some of my comments on other folks blogs, you’ve read me saying that I think the meaning of a story isn’t really up to the author. By that I meant that once released, the author gives up exclusive control over the interpretation. If he/she later says something about that book, I feel that readers may at that point decide for themselves whether to accept the additional input or not. Sometimes authors have changes of heart. Sometimes they were just chicken-shit when they wrote their book and didn’t want to say something. After a story has been released, the owner is the reader. The author only owns it until it’s released. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. One way though for an author to have a lasting say is to do what John Kessel did in this story, and that I’ve never seen done elsewhere. He inserted little mini-essay like pieces on his literary intentions about Invaders into the text of the story itself. He broke the 4th wall, so to speak. Anyway, I kind of like it. And I really like that the aliens are just here for our cocaine.

The Cairene Purse, Michael Moorcock

Long and slow story about an engineer who travels to Egypt looking for his sister, who he has reason to believe has run into some trouble. It’s a degraded earth by the time of the story. And locals think the sister is into witchcraft or in league with aliens. I just didn’t care about the character. And the drawn out storytelling really put me off.

The Coon Rolled Down and Ruptured His Larinks, A Squeezed Novel by Mr. Skunk, Dafydd ab Hugh

Sometimes I think speculative fiction appears on a grand scale too much. Nation against nation, species against species, fighting for the survival of all that is known to man or alien. Dafydd ab Hugh’s story is small scale. After a genetic accident elevates animals, three of them set off on a quest to bring Progrets and Democrazy to one of man’s redoubts. Kind of hard to get in to the story, but it had a spark that I don’t often see in S.F.

Tower of Babylon, Ted Chiang

Another small scale fantasy story. Ted Chiang imagines the tower of Babel fable from the perspective of a miner digging through the vault of heaven after the tower’s been built to reach that high. I believe this won the Nebula, and for good reason.

The Death Artist, Alexander Jablokov

I only read seven or eight pages of this and moved on. One of those stories that jumps around and changes settings and doesn’t really tell you what’s going on. I don’t like being in a maze of mirrors.

The First Since Ancient Persia, John Brunner

Scientists conduct experiments on unsuspecting local population. New person stumbles on it all. Trouble follows. Not original. Not awful, but I felt like I could have missed this one and not really missed anything.

Inertia, Nancy Kress

Previous story was about biological manipulation. So’s this one, with a much more interesting idea behind it. Some sort of disease strikes humanity, disfiguring the infected with rope-like blemishes. It’s communicable, though it doesn’t seem to have any other apparent effects. Nevertheless, no one wants to catch it so those who have it are banished to internment camps, which become permanent. There’s a little of the Inside/Outside type of theme common to internment camp stories, but there’s also a lot more levels to this than there is in many short stories.

Learning to Be Me, Greg Egan

Damn fine story. The only story I’ve ever seen that tackles head on one of the implications of uploading oneself into a computer. What happens to the old copy? There’s a bit of David Marusek’s Wedding Album in this, as well as one I can’t remember the title of, where transporting one’s self across the universe instantaneously resulted in a very bad side effect of two copies of one’s self. The story fuses it all together in a fairly horrifying way. It’s also pretty clever too.

Cibola, Connie Willis

Didn’t like this one. A descendant of El Turco, a Native American guide for Coronado who led the Spanish explorer on a wild goose chase for Cibola, leads a Denver newspaper reporter on a wild goose chase for Cibola. Connie Willis led me on a wild goose chase for Cibola.

Walking the Moons, Jonathan Lethem

Virtual reality is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Rainmaker Cometh, Ian McDonald

I didn’t get this and I didn’t finish it.

Hot Sky, Robert Silverberg

Really liked this story about a future after global warming. Small scale story of a boat capturing an iceberg in the Pacific to tow it to San Francisco which like all cities in the story needs fresh water. The plot is fairly conventional. Another boat is in distress, forcing the captain to choose between helping the other boat and bringing fresh water to a city. I liked it because Silverberg put a lot of effort into the details of the story, which all fit together well.

White City, Lewis Shiner

I usually like Shiner stories (the couple that I’ve read). But this one was pretty emotionless. Although the story is supposedly about an emotionless man, I just don’t think that worked.

Love and Sex Among the Invertebrates, Pat Murphy

In a nominally post-apocalypse story, one of the last (dying) people alive is a robotics person. She creates a couple of robots to live on after her, with pseudo-sexual organs. It’s less prurient than the description makes it seem. Kind of on the weird side really. I didn’t get in to it, but I thought it was an interesting story nonetheless.

The Hemingway Hoax, Joe Haldeman

Huh. I must be missing something big here. I really liked this story up until the ending, and then I just got lost. Someday perhaps I’ll re-read it and I’ll get the ending and like it. The story has that sort of feel to it. Like pasta. Better after re-heating.

Title: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Eighth Annual Collection
Editor: Gardner Dozois
Cover creator: Michael Whelan (artist)
Series: The Year’s Best Science Fiction; 8
Imprint / publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Format: Paperback
Length: xxxii, 624 p.
Publication date: 1991
ISBN-10: 0-312-06009-2

I generally like stories that let me become one of the characters. I like to, if not identify with, at least feel like I understand his or her motivations at a personal level. But space opera is often written on a grand scale, with clashes of nations, cultures, and even galaxies. It’s got to be a challenge to combine the two, and I often don’t like the results. Nevertheless, one of my other favorite components of science fiction is the sensawunda, and space opera often has that in spades. If an author can get personal and include that innate coolness, then it’s a pretty damn good story.

Space opera is a subgenre of speculative fiction or science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing powerful (and sometimes quite fanciful) technologies and abilities. Perhaps the most significant trait of space opera is that settings, characters, battles, powers, and themes tend to be very large-scale.

Definition of space opera comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.

The new space opera as used in this anthology refers to the revival of space opera in the 1980s and 1990s. Frankly, I never realized it had died out, but apparently it did during the 1970s. Supposedly better than the pulpy space opera of yesteryear, a lot of it is overlong and obtuse, or just incomprehensible to me. Much like some fantasy is. However, this is a collection of short stories, so none of them should be overlong at least.

I should count the number of authors in Gardner Dozois anthologies which he terms as Big Names. He seems to declare quite a few new Big Names every year.

Saving Tiamaat, Gwyneth Jones

In the wake of a devastating war that kills nearly all of both species, the Ki and the An refugees are housed in a park-like station. There they negotiate over the end of their war, with members of a galactic federation watching over. Jean-Luc Picard struggles with the prime directive when he learns that the And eat the Ki. Okay, it isn’t Picard. And I probably have who eats who confused. That’s the main thrust of the story and I thought it was kind of boring. The technological aspects just confused me.

Verthandi’s Ring, Ian McDonald

McDonald is one of the S.F. writers who likes to write about the singularity, the point where technology becomes so advanced that everything afterward is pretty much magic. At least that’s the way I understand it. This story, on the other hand, contained nothing I understood. I think it’s a post-Singularity universe, and that’s why everything was so weird. I had to skip all but the first few pages cause I hate being lost.

Hatch, Robert Reed

Reed has a series of stories set on a giant Jupiter sized space ship. In this one there’s a giant alien that fought the ship and lost and now is attached to the surface. A city of humans and aliens also resides on the surface, stuck there after the war with all the ways inside blocked up defensively with hyperfiber. Periodically, creatures hatch from the surface of the dead giant alien, and people harvest them for raw materials. One such hatch turns out not to be creatures but instead a giant ship that escapes. What portent does this have for the Jupiter-ship? I didn’t care though. I didn’t care for the characters. Never got to know them. And I had nothing invested in the world either. No history with it.

Winning Peace, Paul J. McAuley

This one I liked a lot. Sold into slavery after his Alliance lost a war to the Collective, Carver White’s owner Mr. Kanza wants to use him to retrieve a ancient artifact from a dangerous location near a sun. To get White to cooperate, Kanza reveals he owns White’s brother as well. Only unbeknownst to Kanza, White knows his brother was killed in action. Can he use that small leg up to get his freedom?

Glory, Greg Egan

I also enjoyed this story of archaeologists making first contact with an alien world. It starts off with a great hard S.F. sequence which explains how the scientists encode themselves into data and shoot a very very small amount of matter light-years across the universe to reach the planet in the first place. Then it’s how they make contact with two of the dominant nations on the planet, both of whom are mistrustful of the other. Doing all this for a bit of mathematics seems extreme, as my first thought is why couldn’t these people figure out all the needed math themselves. But you need some sort of pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to make it all work, and this is really as good as any.

Maelstrom, Kage Baker

I really wouldn’t term this story space opera. I think of opera as something grandiose, and this story is not. It’s smaller and more personal. I liked it though. Basically a human on Mars decides to put his wealth to use starting up a theater so miners and other assorted salt of the earth folk can enjoy the arts. The first production is a version of Edgar Allen Poe’s A Descent into the Maelström.

Blessed by an Angel, Peter F. Hamilton

I’ve read a few of Peter Hamilton’s novels, and while I think they are good, they are a bit too grandiose. I don’t mind the grandiosity too much except that it makes the novels so very long. Short story length works pretty well for him too though. It’s a story of rooting out a spy told both from the perspective of the agency that intercepts him, as well as the unknowing targets of the spy.

Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359?, Ken MacLeod

After getting caught with his pants off, our protagonist must head to a former colony world that has dropped contact in order to pay off his fines. Very bleah to me. Just couldn’t care about this guy, nor about the world he checks out.

The Valley of the Gardens, Tony Daniel

I’ve liked a couple of Tony Daniel’s stories, but this one was a little bit on the weird side and I just didn’t get into it. Inter-galactic war with what turns out to be an extra-universe enemy. An end to the war that confused me as to why it worked. An aftermath that includes teleporting rocks and a telescope that saves the hero of the war. Why a telescope? I don’t get it.

Dividing the Sustain, James Patrick Kelly

This story presents a colony ship of consensualists in which Been is undercover. Consensualists believe in only doing things on which a group consensus has been reached. Been is maneuvering his way out of his small group and in with the captain’s ex-wife (the crew are not colonists). Only Been really has any depth, and you get a sense of his personality, though some of the things he does don’t make sense. But the whole milieu is just cool. Kelly includes quite a few components in a short space: life-extensions, genetic modifications, interesting social movements, and more.

Minla’s Flowers, Alastair Reynolds

The only Alastair Reynolds I’ve read before was Galactic North, which I just couldn’t get into. This, however, I really liked. Starfarer Merlin runs into some difficulties and becomes semi-stranded on a long-lost colony planet to make repairs. The inhabitants have reverted to just past industrial revolution type of technology. Merlin also discovers that their sun is about to be destroyed, so he warns them they have about 70 years left. They need to unite the planet and get off it before it’s too late. Merlin stays to help, periodically going into suspended animation in his ship. Hard to really identify with any of the characters, but they do have a lot of depth. A good warning that if you are going to pick sides, it’s best to check out both of them.

Splinters of Glass, Mary Rosenblum

A very well-done story about an outlaw hiding out in ice-caves under the surface of Europa. An old flame tracks him down and leads an assassin to him.

Remembrance, Stephen Baxter

Well-written, but this did not move me at all. Aliens conquer Earth. Humans overthrow aliens. Military commander has to decide what to do with a small number of aliens found hiding decades later. Old man who remembers the history of the war tells the story so commander can decide. Ta-da! I think this exemplifies the problem I noted in my first paragraph of this review. It’s hard to make a grandiose landscape into something personal. This one didn’t manage that.

The Emperor and the Maula, Robert Silverberg

Wow. I hated this story! Human travels to emperor’s home world and tells him stories of how his species conquered Earth. First, boring. Second, predictable.

The Worm Turns, Gregory Benford

Characters: bland, boring. Snarky artificial intelligence. Sexually voracious female ship captain. Hard science fiction: confusing. Something about a worm hole. Some sort of intelligent group mind on the other side that doesn’t like visitors. Don’t forget standard creditor makes an offer debtor can’t refuse cause debtor needs to pay off debt.

Send Them Flowers, Walter Jon Williams

Another story I really liked. A take on the whole multiple universes thing that gets about the right amount of detail in the science speculation. Sometimes hard S.F. writers spend way too much ink trying to hash out every little detail. This happens quite a bit with time travel stories, and sometimes with theories of multiple universes. The heart of the story is a philanderer and his accomplice, the trouble they get in to, and how they get out of it.

Art of War, Nancy Kress

Art historian catalogs human artwork stolen by aliens at war with humanity. They were stealing it to learn something practical about us that they could use in war. Sub-plot about the historian’s relationship with his perfectionist authoritarian mother and now the commanding general in the war was just… I dunno, it felt pretty unoriginal. Also, what the aliens were trying to learn results in a trick ending which cheapens it. Once you know what it is, there is no reason to read the story a second time. A reveal should make you want to read the story a second time.

Muse of Fire, Dan Simmons

If I had to guess something about Dan Simmons from his writing, I’d guess he really loves classic literature. Hyperion is an ode to past writers. Muse of Fire is all about Shakespeare. Out of all the stories in this anthology, this one sucked me in the most. Long enslaved by alien Archons, humans are reduced to worker slaves, with some itinerant actors traveling the galaxy. The troupe in this story performs Shakespeare. The Archons are but the lowest levels of rulers. Three levels above them exist. For reasons explained toward the end, the company must perform for each level of ruler, up to the god Abraxas. It is a test. At each level the fate of humanity rests on them performing Shakespeare. I’m not even a lover of Shakespeare, but between the sense of awe that Simmons manages to impart into the ever more spectacular worlds and the minutiae of actors’ egos, I loved this.

Five or six of these stories really got me, so I’d have to say this is a successful anthology from my reader’s perspective.

And after reading the whole thing, I am kinda getting tired of Dozois’ introductions. They sound all the same.

Person X made their first sale in 197X, and became a regular contributor to magazines X, Y and Z. Their first novel was X, which was followed by Y and Z, of which M and N were nominated for the Hugo/Nebula. Author Q now lives in San Chicagiana with their wife and three dogs. In the story that follows, protagonist X really learns what it means to dance to the sound of a different drummer!

I haven’t read any of the other Best of S.F. anthologies that have proliferated in recent years. Are they copying the same introduction format from Dozois? Someone remind me to look next time I am at the bookstore. He selects generally good stories though, and I assume in this case he and Strahan had a hand in editing the stories themselves, since these are all original publications.

Title: The new space opera
Editors: Gardner Dozois, Jonathan Strahan
Cover artist: Stephan Martiniere
Imprint / publisher: EOS / HarperCollins
Format: Paperback
Length: 515 p.
Publication date: July 007
ISBN-10: 0-06-084675-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-084675-6
LC classification: PS648.S3 N47 2007

This edition of the Year’s Best S.F. seems very heavy with first-contact/gee-wow-there’s-life-where-we-least-expected-it stories. In the list below, I don’t reveal all of them, as in some cases it’s integral to not know about the life ahead of time. But still, be ready for almost any story in this collection to have that as a story element.

Oceanic, Greg Egan (1999 Hugo for best novella)

Greg Egan’s own description is:

The people of Covenant believe they are the descendants of immaterial “Angels” who were brought to the planet by the daughter of God to “repent their theft of immortality” and live and die as flesh once more.

Martin is a Freelander, raised on the ocean, and a personal experience as a child convinces him of the truth of this account. But when he becomes a biologist and begins to study the native life of Covenant, his work leads to revelations about the true history of the planet, and the nature of his own beliefs.

There wasn’t anything especially new or groundbreaking about the story. It’s a pretty typical attempt to explain how religious belief could spring up, and pretty typically sides on the side of rationality. It’s a well-crafted story though and works as such, even if the deeper exploration of religion is boring.

Approaching Perimelasma, Geoffrey A. Landis

I liked this story about a trip into and out of the event horizon of a black hole. The story requires the assumption that we’ve solved a bunch of problems with physics, but I suppose it’s plausible given the assumption. I don’t generally enjoy straight hard S.F. but this one I did for some reason.

Craphound, Cory Doctorow

This story is one of the reasons why I love S.F. so much. People think it’s all about aliens and space ships and laser guns and whatnot, and in reality it can be a way to explore people’s sense of home and of their childhood. It’s also on of the frustrating things about S.F. to me. This story spends all it’s time exploring someone’s attempt to possess part of their childhood, and throws the S.F. twist in at the end, and that twist really doesn’t add anything substantive to the story.

Jedella Ghost, Tanith Lee

Jedella Ghost is one of those stories that sits on the edge of fantasy and science fiction. A young woman appears in town and appears to know nothing about death. Where did she come from and why does the dying of things confuse her? Is it because she is already dead? A ghost?

Taklamakan, Bruce Sterling (1999 Hugo award for best novellette)

In the future, a couple of well-equipped freelance spies are commissioned by N.A.F.T.A. to check out a Taklamakan desert base which might have starships. But the death of their spook contact leaves them on their own. Enticed by the allure of the big score, they go on without him, unsure of what they will find.

The Island Of The Immortals, Ursula K. Le Guin

A tourist hears about an island that has immortal people in residence. Determined to see them for himself, he finds that one can become immortal by the bite of the flies on the island, but that everyone on the island keeps themselves covered in mosquito netting to avoid becoming immortal. Because not dying can be as much of a curse as a blessing.

Sea Change, With Monsters, Paul J. McAuley

Indira Dzurisin is a monster hunter on Europa. The colony wars with Earth, and loses decisively. Among other things, Earth released genetically engineered monsters into Europa’s anaerobic ocean under the ice, which keep its residents from using the ocean to their benefit. Years later and back under the subjugation of Earth, some of the monsters still live there, like undetonated mines. One of the monsters is threatening a virulently male-only monastery, and Indira (a woman) is sent to cleanse their farm of the monster as a joke on them. Nice mix of story, setting, and prognostication.

Divided By Infinity, Robert Charles Wilson

I didn’t like Wilson’s story particularly much. The premise is that some bookseller has a theory that people can’t die. The second they die, many alternate incarnations of their soul appear in other universes. But since you can’t communicated with them, and can’t know about them, there isn’t much point. The protagonist is resurrected in part 2 by aliens from his D.N.A. Maybe I’m just dumb but I didn’t get the connection between this and the first part.

US, Howard Waldrop

This is Run Lola Run as an S.F. short story. What would Charles Lindbergh Jr.’s life look like under a few different scenarios? One, he follows his father into flying. Two, he takes advantage of his fame in Hollywood. Three, he retreats to fish in western Washington. Oddly enough, at the time of publication, Howard Waldrop retreated to western Washington to fish. I can’t fault his taste in regions.

The Days Of Solomon Gursky, Ian McDonald

Eh. Solomon Gursky invents/discovers the methods for reincarnating as an employee of a conglomerate. Since he doesn’t quite agree with the conglomerate’s politics/ethics/whatever, they ice him. Thus begins a life of reincarnation and fighting the man. As the first person to be able to be reincarnated, he eventually becomes the man millions of years in the future, when humans are more than humans. Let me repeat, Eh.

The Cuckoo’s Boys, Robert Reed

Phillip Stevens is a genius geneticist and biotech company owner. He makes a billion dollars before he’s 26. But he goes a bit mad, and let’s loose a virus/bacteria that replaces the D.N.A. in human female’s eggs with his D.N.A. Thus a fair number of them give birth to kids not having their own genes, but those of Phillip Stevens instead. The P.S. kids are smarter than your average bear, and are treated very differently, owing partly to their genius, but also owing partly to how they were conceived. Houston Cross is a mentor (tutor) who works with middle school students. This is the story of the year he mentors his first three P.S. kids, and the ways he challenges them to be better than they are. Plus, there’s even a twist ending that I didn’t see coming. Though even without the twist the story would have been interesting.

The Halfway House At The Heart Of Darkness, William Browning Spencer

An addiction counselor who helps people addicted to virtual reality gets caught in a virtual reality where he helps addicts detox from virtual reality addiction. It’s not really as circular as it sounds, and it’s not another Matrix-like what is real? story. But it’s really only average at best. Weird thing is, this appears to be the last published story by Browning, though there is a collection of his short stories that was published in 2006. None of those stories appeared to be new though. Weird that he dropped out after this story.

The Very Pulse Of The Machine, Michael Swanwick (1999 Hugo award for best short story)

First contact story. Martha Kivelson is exploring Io when a freak accident kills her partner and strands her miles from the lander. With no backup and no radio she has to get back to the lander on her own, with barely enough oxygen to do so under the best of circumstances. And then she begins hearing a voice in her communications system…

Story Of Your Life, Ted Chiang (1999 Nebula award for best novellette)

This is a story for the linguistics geeks. It’s the story of the people who are trying to get the language down after first contact. Only the languages are very different. I’d love to see the universal translators on Star Trek handle these languages. Much more complicated than a Tolkien language.

Voivodoi, Liz Williams (blog)

Teresa’s brother Roman is the victim of a genetic illness from experiments gone wrong. He takes on the appearance of the vodyanoi. His family wants to commit him to a sanatorium, both for his good and for their reputation.

Saddlepoint: Roughneck, Stephen Baxter

How much volatile elements (e.g., carbon) are buried in the Earth’s mantle? The surface of Earth is covered in them. But the surface of the moon is not. After Earth’s surface freezes over, the people living on the moon get by with very little water, etc. Enough to survive, but not to grow. Where can they get these elements? Two options are crashing comets onto the surface of the moon and digging into the core of the moon. Because the moon is much smaller and cooler than Earth, it should be much easier to dig a deep core mine.

This Side Of Independence, Rob Chilson

Years in the future, mankind has spread throughout the solar system and basically lives on various habitats orbiting the sun. We cannibalize all the various planets to construct them. But now we need more material and all that is left is Earth, which is cooling off because all the habitats block the sunlight. Much like various people refused to move off Denny Hill leaving houses standing on very tall columns, some people refuse to leave Earth. But now it’s been 300 years since the last folks left and we run into one last bunch, in Independence Missouri. Discovered by the crew digging up Kansas, we gotta figure out what to do with the remaining people.

Unborn Again, Chris Lawson

This is a fun story of revenge. Basic plot is this: people in China come down with rare disease, disease is traced to a U.S. lab, investigator shows up to interview former head of lab, who promptly gives him a prepared written confession. As he reads it, he discovers why she did it.

Grist, Tony Daniel

Kind of surprised it took this many stories into the anthology, but I only read a couple pages of this novella before skipping on to the next story. Something about priests chatting, and the introduction by Dozois talked about how there are superpowerful beings. The conversation between the priests just seemed too obscure for me. I don’t like have to guess what the hell is going on. Some amount of mystery is fine. Trying to confuse me is another story though.

La Cenerentola, Gwyneth Jones

This one kind of went over my head. Thea Lalande and her wife Suze Bonner are spending time in Europe looking for a place for a summer home. They run into a woman who appears to have two twin children cloned from herself (in the perfect Paris Hilton mode) and one ugly stepchild. Except the perfect mother and twins fade away at times. Supposedly a retelling or a twist on Cinderella, I still didn’t get it, other than the pretty sisters ugly step-sister thing.

Down In The Dark, William Barton

Living on Titan with a few other technicians and scientists, Hoxha Maxwell helps maintain all the equipment. They’re stranded when an asteroid hits earth, obliterating all human life on the surface after an attempt to blow apart the rock with nuclear missiles only causes multiple fragments to crash across the globe. His wife dead and with only a remote chance of returning to the moon with the few hundred other people in space, there’s not a lot of point to living. And a few commit suicide. Maxwell, zombie-like, plods on. Enter Christie Meitner, who discovers something in the frozen landscape but won’t tell Maxwell what it is. While not exactly curious, he does have to maintain her equipment for his own sanity.

Free In Asveroth, Jim Grimsley

I loved this story! I think it’s mostly the atmosphere. On some planet, sentient creatures are enslaved by two-legged aliens that seem much like humans (it’s never said that they are). The indigenous life is rounded up and put in pens. Three escape, years after enslavement, and lead the subjugators on a merry chase across the countryside. See, they like to run, and leap. Huge distances in each jump. Story is told from the point of view of the non-humans.

The Dancing Floor, Cherry Wilder (Cherry Barbara Grimm)

Aliens visit various human places when few people are watching. Each time they build a platform of some sort, then perform a complicated dance on it, with only a few people around to witness it. Then they leave. Three such artifacts have been found prior to the story, which follows someone investigating the fourth.

The Summer Isles, Ian R. MacLeod (1999 World Fantasy award for best novella)

An alternate history story, posing the question What would happen if the Germans won World War I? Instead of the Germans paying crushing reparations under the Treaty of Versailles, it’s the British, and that prompts the loss of Empire. Resentment builds up, and a former soldier named John Arthur quickly rises to power and then dissolves Parliament and rules by decree. Soon the Jews, the homosexuals, gypsies, and other minorities are sent away to camps. In other words, Germany and Great Britain switch places in the lead-up to World War II. This would all be a boring story if that’s all though. Take a history of Germany and England and switch over the names. Luckily there is more. The story is told from the perspective of Geoffrey Brook, a former lover of the closet homosexual John Arthur, who has even more in his past. Brook has his own resentments toward Arthur, some personal, and some political. Can one megalomaniacal man like John Arthur really steer a country wrong, or does he merely lead where the people already are headed?

Title: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Sixteenth Annual Collection
Editor: Gardner Dozois
Imprint / publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin / St. Martin’s Press
Format: Paperback
Publication date: 1999
Length: lix, 609 p.
ISBN-10: 0-312-20445-0

Sorry for the extended time between books. Again, this blog isn’t abandoned. Sometimes it just takes me longer to read my books. Such as this one, which is 697 pages long, not counting Dozois’ year in review summary of 1995 at the beginning. Now, on to the stories:

A Woman’s Liberation, Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula Le Guin returns to her Ekumen universe for a story of slaves on the planet Werel. The story meanders through Radosse Rakam’s life as her master dies, and his son frees his slaves. However, other nearby landowners don’t take too kindly to this and simply round up the former slaves and re-enslave them. After a daring escape, they become freedmen in the city, where the abolitionist groups meet and debate their future plans. The government cracks down, and again our heroine escapes to a former colony, freed from it’s slaveowners for a few years. Only there, she finds that she is just as enslaved by the men as she was on Werel. Frankly, this story just fell flat for me. The characters are pretty flat, and the feminist lesson being taught isn’t subtle, nor does it really provide a new take on freedom, for women or anyone. It’s just a pretty blunt re-hash of stuff you can read in other places and in other forms, but much less engaging.

Starship Day, Ian R. MacLeod

This little story is about a starship that has set out from Earth to a nearby star to look for life or a habitable planet. The day for when the starship will re-establish communications with Earth has been calculated, and everyone on Earth is eagerly awaiting Starship Day to find out if humans have made first contact. Still, not everyone is all that thrilled. One man even commits suicide. The reason is because of a little twist that is revealed at the end. Normally, I wouldn’t be too circumspect with spoilers for an 11 year old book, but if you do pick this up, this is a decent story and it’s better if you get to go into the twist blind at least once. (Thanks to Steve for the link to the story online.)

A Place with Shade, Robert Reed

I didn’t really get this story. A father hires a terraformer to teach his daughter how to terraform a cave system on his private planet. There’s some sort of fight going on between him and his daughter, who is an adult. Either she’s crazy, or he is. Anyway, the terraformer doesn’t realize all this, and gets caught in the middle. And then she’s attacking him with their terraformed cave, and I got lost.

Luminous, Greg Egan

Like Border Guards in a previously reviewed Year’s Best S.F., this is sort of a hard-S.F. story. The premise is that mathematics behaves somewhat like matter and energy. Until some sort of matter exercises a mathematical theorem, that theorem obeys Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. You don’t know what the truth of the theorem is. Keep in mind that proving some theorem implies that all related theorems are proven, so only the most esoteric mathematics can be unexercised. So, the protagonists look for undetermined mathematics and find them. Meanwhile, corporate raiders are trying to get their math so they can subvert randomness somehow. And as they explore the math, someone else is fighting them through other math somewhere.

The Promise of God, Michael F. Flynn

This seemed more like a fantasy story to me, with a nanny watching over a charge who possesses magic powers and eventually becoming his wife.

Death in the Promised Land, Pat Cadigan

In this imagined Earth, people spend more time in post-apocalyptic World-of-Warcraft style virtual realms, the most popular of which is one of New York City. These virtual realities are full on virtual reality. The story revolves around an aimless youth who is killed both in reality and in the simulation at the same time, and the police detective (a non-user of virtual reality) trying to determine who performed the murder. A few interesting bits, but overall not particularly exciting.

For White Hill, Joe Haldeman

Nice little story about earth in the future after/during a war with an alien race. The aliens poisoned Earth and made it uninhabitable. Afterward, humans find a counter and some begin to trickle back. An art contest is commissioned to celebrate Earth, and people from all over colonized worlds travel there to participate. Only while there the aliens poison the sun, causing it to age and begin it’s trajectory toward being a red giant on an accelerated pace. Everyone who can get off Earth does, but the artists are left behind. Some commit suicide. Others try to incorporate the impending demise of Earth into their art. And others simply try to go on with what they did planned before.

Some Like It Cold, John Kessel

A particularly short and not very novel story, but one that grabbed me nonetheless. Time travel has been invented and the entertainment industry makes huge use of it to bring back celebrities to start in new movies. Only sometimes they don’t always work out exactly like they should. But no matter, there are infinite moments in which someone can be stolen out of the past, so if the person doesn’t work out taken from one particular moment, they can be taken from another. Each grab creates a new universe, so nothing changes the timestream and there are lots of time traveling former celebrities around now. Including a shoe-shining Albert Einstein, who was presumably grabbed too young and doesn’t develop into a genius.

The Death of Captain Future, Allen Steele

Nice bit of a space western, populated with an interplanetary sailor stuck on a ship with a crazy captain who purchased his commission and thinks he’s Captain Future. A chance encounter with a plague ridden give Captain Future his chance at the glory he always wanted to fight off space pirates.

The Lincoln Train, Maureen F. McHugh

A short alternate history set during the civil war. What if John Wilkes Booth injured Lincoln so severely that he was incapacitated. Dire consequences follow, with Southerners rounded up and sent off to various camps. The popular rumor blames this all on Seward.

We Were Out of Our Minds with Joy, David Marusek

So far, my favorite story in this collection, and like the story Wedding Album shows a very interesting and novel future. Extended life, extreme integration with computers through nano-machines, living holographically, and a war with biological agents. Thereafter, militia computers known as slugs constantly sample human DNA for infection by rogue agents. Those not liquidated on the spot are seared, with their bodies altered so that any biological remnants of themselves self-destruct in small fiery poofs. Including things like semen and eyebrows. Which makes for interesting sex, though these people are avoided generally. The story is about Sam (a semi-famous artist/designer) and Eleanor (a powerful politician) who fall in love, move in together, and receive permission to have a child (in a very interesting fashion, of course). Marusek melds the hard and soft S.F. very well, making a very readable and intriguing story.

Radio Waves, Michael Swanwick

After death, ghosts travel the Earth via metallic objects such as telephone wires and metal conduits. Two ghosts meet and resolve issues from their lives, while chased by a ghost killer.

Wang’s Carpets, Greg Egan

Another what is alive? type S.F. story. In the future, humans discover primitive life on another world, carpet-like sheets of fungal sea-life. While not sentient, the carpets encode mathematics, wherein humans determine that the mathematics itself shows signs of sentient life. Are they alive and what does it mean for humans who have long since encoded themselves inside virtual worlds and no longer live corporeal existence.

Casting at Pegasus, Mary Rosenblum

Nifty story about a girl who sneaks into an abandoned airport to create temporary light sculptures. She’s accompanied by a tagger and chased by the night watchman. Until tragedy strikes and they fall through a rotted floor, when she finds out the night watchman isn’t just faceless. The S.F. element here is pretty small, and frankly I think this would work better as a completely mainstream story, but it’s still modestly nice.

Looking for Kelly Dahl, Dan Simmons

A former teacher is transported through the past and future by a former student, Kelly Dahl. These worlds are devoid of all people except the two of them, and Kelly wants him to kill her to exorcise both their demons.

Think Like a Dinosaur, James Patrick Kelly

Humans meet another species. Other species has very advanced technology, including a method of transporting matter (including life) across light-years of distance. Like the transporters of Star Trek, humans are encoded, the information is transmitted and the people are reconstructed on the far side. But what do you do with the person who still remains on this side? It’s not like the matter is consumed, so now you have two of the same person!

Coming of Age in Karhide, Ursula K. Le Guin

This felt like filler to me. As in, I must explain every piece of Karhide. I wasn’t moved much by the story.

Genesis, Poul Anderson

I read like 5 pages of this and skipped on.

Feigenbaum Number, Nancy Kress

This story is about a guy who can see both real people and the ideal person they could be. It’s depressing and disorienting to him. And then he meets another person who can see the same ideal people.

Home, Geoff Ryman

Ryman has written a very twisted near-future story where life isn’t valued so much. Kind of a picture of social darwinism if it were taken up by the public as a defining philosophy and taken to it’s logical end. Ryman captures the fatal flaw of social darwinism, that unlike actual evolution, it isn’t the most adept or adaptable that are selected for necessarily. It could be the useless who survive, and the human race easily paints itself into a social darwinist corner.

There Are No Dead, Terry Bisson

I loved this story about three men who create a fantasy world for themselves in the woods in their youth. Over the years, the live their lives and continue to reunite for yearly camping trips. Yes, there is an S.F. element, but it’s not the fantasy world they create for themselves.

Recording Angel, Paul J. McAuley

This is the story of a human, who goes by Angel, who returns as part of a crew that explored other galaxies. It’s millions of years from when she left the Milky Way because of time dilation and humanity has become different. In fact, humanity’s descendants have been genetically programmed to render assistance to the Preservers (original humanity) should they re-appear.

Elvis Bearpaw’s Luck, William Sanders

If you go to William Sanders’ web site through the link above, you’ll figure out he’s kind of cantankerous. That shows in this story about Native Americans after wars have decimated black and white people, leaving Indians and their descendants populating North America. They cling to their traditions, but something has been lost a bit. Our narrator is a youth who squires his elderly blind cantankerous grandfather around. The setting is the upcoming Games which attract nearby tribes to participate, and there is a traditional truce during Game-time. A lot of the elements have been used before, but Sanders puts them together in an inventive way, and I laughed out loud (which I rarely do) at the commencement of the big Game. It fits so well with contemporary Indian reservations but is totally at odds with the stereotypical white views of Indians. You expect the noble Indians to have noble games, and this is definitely not that.

Mortimer Gray’s History of Death, Brian Stableford

Kind of an exploration of the theory that what makes us human is our fight against death, as seen through the eyes of a future historian of death. Others will probably find this to be more profound than I did.

Title: The year’s best science fiction: thirteenth annual collection
Editor: Gardner Dozois
Series: The year’s best science fiction ; 13
Imprint / publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Format: Hardcover
Length: lxiii, 704 p.
Publication date: 1996
ISBN-10: 0-312-14451-2