The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois (Editor), Ian McDonald (Contributor), Jérôme Cigut (Contributor)

In the new millennium, what secrets lay beyond the far reaches of the universe? What mysteries belie the truths we once held to be self evident? The world of science fiction has long been a porthole into the realities of tomorrow, blurring the line between life and art. Now, in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection the very best SF authors explore ideas of a new world. This venerable collection brings together award winning authors and masters of the field such as Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Damien Broderick, Elizabeth Bear, Paul McAuley and John Barnes. And with an extensive recommended reading guide and a summation of the year in science fiction, this annual compilation has become the definitive must-read anthology for all science fiction fans and readers interested in breaking into the genre.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies, Fiction, Fantasy, Amazon, Science Fiction Fantasy

706 pages, ebook

First published July 7, 2015

About the author

Gardner Raymond Dozois was an American science fiction author and editor. He was editor of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine from 1984 to 2004. He won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, both as an editor and a writer of short fiction.
Wikipedia entry: Gardner Dozois

http://us.macmillan.com/author/gardne...

Reviews

[Andreas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every year, Mr Dozois pulls together a huge anthology of last year's best SF stories. I came to wait for July when it appears and at the same time fear it because it is really huge and takes a lot of time digging through it and reviewing it. I can't say if this year is stronger or weaker than other years, but I was missing a mind-blowing story in it. There were some really awesome ones, lots of good stories and only one that I didn't like, so the overall assessment is that I really liked the anthology.
Please note, that the links below leave GR and lead to detailed reviews at my book blog.

My favourite ★★★★★ stories were

Passage of Earth by Michael Swanwick • review
Slipping by Lauren Beukes • review
Shooting the Apocalypse by Paolo Bacigalupi • review

Weakest ☆ or ★ stories

Weather by Susan Palwick • review

Contents:

★★★1/2 • “The Fifth Dragon” • novelette by Ian McDonald • dominating families struggle for control on the Moon • review
★★★1/2 • “The Rider” • Near SF novelette by Jérôme Cigut • AIs use humans as tools on their struggle for supremacy • review
★★★ • “The Days of the War, as Red as Blood, as Dark as Bile” • Space Opera short story by Aliette de Bodard • set in Xuyan future history, a mindship connects to a girl • review
★★★★ • “The Burial of Sir John Mawe at Cassini” • alternate universe short story by Chaz Brenchley • Victorian British Empire on Old Mars • review
★★★★ • “The Regular” • Near Future SF novella by Ken Liu • Cyborg detective resolves prostitute murder • review
★★ • “The Woman from the Ocean” • short story by Karl Bunker • humanity isn't capable to differentiate between us and them anymore • review
★★★★1/2 • “Shooting the Apocalypse” • CliFi novelette by Paolo Bacigalupi • Arizona's state border is closed for Texan water refugees • review
★ • “Weather” • posthumanity short story by Susan Palwick • speaking to the cyber-dead • review
★★★ • “The Hand is Quicker” • Near SF novelette by Elizabeth Bear • perception control • review
★★★★ • “The Man Who Sold the Moon” • novella by Cory Doctorow • 3D printing iglos for the burning man • review
★★★ • “Vladimir Chong Chooses to Die” • Central Station short story by Lavie Tidhar • drowning in memories, Vladimir wants to commit suicide • review
★★★★ • “Beside the Damned River” • short story by D. J. Cockburn • European bounty hunter strands in Thai community • review
★★ • “The Colonel” • novelette by Peter Watts • bridge between Blindsight and Echopraxia • review
★★★★ • “Entanglement” • novella by Vandana Singh • optimistic CliFi featuring ordinary people around the world • review
★★★1/2 • “White Curtain” • shortstory by Pavel Amnuel • theory vs. practice of changing the futures • review
★★★★1/2 • “Slipping” • Near SF sports short story by Lauren Beukes • review
★★★★★ • “Passage of Earth” • first encounter short story by Michael Swanwick • dissecting and digesting intelligent alien worms • review
★★★ • “Amicae Aeternum” • near future SF short story by Ellen Klages • review
★★★★ • “In Babelsberg” • short story by Alastair Reynolds • referencing Fritz Lang's movie "Metropolis" • review
★★★ • “Sadness” by Timons Esaias • absurd posthumanity • review
★★★★ • “West to East” • short story by Jay Lake  • the author's last story • review
★★★★ • “Grand Jeté (The Great Leap)” • Rachel Swirsky • future golem incorporating the ego of a daughter • review
★★★1/2 • “Covenant” • Near SF short story by Elizabeth Bear • neurological serial killer turned to be prey • review
★★★1/2 • “Jubilee” • novelette by Karl Schroeder • hibernated Rome-Julia • review
★★★ •  “Los Piratas del Mar de Plastico (Pirates of the Plastic Ocean)” • short story by Paul Graham Raven • economy locusts in Spain • review
★★★ •  “Red Lights, and Rain” • short story by Gareth L. Powell • time travelling vampires in Amsterdam • review
★★★1/2 • “Coma Kings” • short story by Jessica Barber • gaming addiction • review
★★ • “The Prodigal Son” • novella set in the Arkwright series by Allen Steele • son needs to get faith for a privately financed starship program • review
★★★ •  “God Decay” • short story by Rich Larson • cyborg has medical problems • review
★★★ •  “Blood Wedding” • 2014 • novelette by Robert Reed • review
★★★★ • “THE LONG HAUL from the Annals of Transportation, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009” • alternative history short story by Ken Liu • review
★★★ •  “Shadow Flock” • near SF novelette by Greg Egan • heist thriller using drones • review
★★1/2 • “Thing and Sick” • novelette by Adam Roberts • Fermi's paradox mixed with Kant's conceptualism in cold Antarctica • review
★★★★ • “Communion” • short story by Mary Anne Mohanraj • cannibalistic funeral ritus of aliens • review
★★★ • “Someday” • SF short story by James Patrick Kelly • human reproduction on a colonial planet • review
★★★ • “Yesterday's Kin” • first contact SF novella by Nancy Kress • review

[Chris Gager · Rating 3 out of 5]

Picked this up at the local library's for sale shelf - SCORE!(I hope). Starting tonight. This one will keep me going for quite a while.

1 - The Fifth Dragon by Ian McDonald. Perfectly good story that made me a bit uncomfortable with its offhanded description of an Earth in crisis/collapse mode and of the development of the Moon as an alternative. Also: gay love in space ... something new.

2 - The Rider by Jerome Cigur. Well written mash-up of "Silently and Very Fast" and "Neuromancer."

3 - The Days of the War, As Red as Blood, As Dark As Bile by Aliete de Bodard. Mythic Child-Saviour comes to the rescue a la "Ender's Game." Also a strong nod to Ian M. Banks' Culture series. Derivative but fun.

4 - The Burial of Sir John Mawe at Cassini by Chaz Brenchley. An interesting throwback kind of Martian tale. We know NOW that Mars does not have a great "environment" for human settlement and details of the Martian in this story are invalid in light of that. But still ... well written and fun. Very pro-British ...

5 -The Regular by Ken Liu. I just saw this author's name in my friends spool of book reviews etc. for today. An exciting tale of detective work in a slightly advanced technical age. Coming up ... in ten(?) or so years. The ending reminds me of "Manhunter," the first movie adaptation of Thomas Harris' "Red Dragon." I only saw a bit of the remake, but by all accounts the original is far better. I've seen it on TV a couple of times - excellent! The Tooth Fairy(Francis Dollarhyde played by Tom Noonan) reminds of the baddie in this tale. There's also a hint of the ending of "Silence of the Lambs" - the movie - I have yet to actually read a Hannibal Lecter book.

6 - The Woman from the Ocean by Karl Bunker. An interesting take on genetic manipulation in service of a desperate purpose. Thought-provoking indeed.

7 - Shooting the Apocalypse by Paolo Bacigalupi. Another close-in tale set in a drying future Phoenix. I've entertained survivalist fantasies set in Arizona, so I like the setting - easy to visualize if you've spent time in the Phoenix area. Most apocalyptic stories are set in the aftermath of the disaster, but this one is set more in the early part of what future Global Warming might be bringing us. For a fact-based reference see "A Great Aridness."

8 - Weather by Susan Palwick - A good story about about a neat/depressing idea.

9 - The Hand Is Quicker by Elizabeth Bear - Mini-post apocalyptic tale reminiscent here and there of Gary Shteyngart's "Super Sad True Love Story."

10 - The Man Who Sold the Moon by Cory Doctorow. The first longish story in the collection, and only half of a good story. The ideas are all neat/techy and reminiscent of "The Martian"(this also a "close in" sci fi tale), but Mr. D. is a boring writer. WAY, WAY too many descriptive words. Leave the trite romantic drek out, Dude. Is Cory D. the son of E. L.? Issues ...

- Strandbeest - read about this neat Dutch do-hickey in the New Yorker a few years ago.

- Overalls DON'T have sleeves, dude.

- "33" in letter form(thirty-three) is NOT a palindrome. Not sure if numbers can be considered palindromes.

- Water from the Colorado River comes up again. Was an issue in "Shooting the Apocalypse."

11 - Victor Chong Chooses to Die by Lavie Tidhar. A fine, moving story. One of the best so far.

12 - Beside the Damned River by D. K. Cockburn. A pithy short short story. One thing ... so far I think most if not all of these stories are lacking in that classic sci-fi scope. The kind of plot and ideas that one associates with classic sci-fi of the mythic past. Stuff happening WAYYYY out there in space and time. Think "Dune" ... One story did make reference to the "up and out," a phrase I associate with the great Cordwainer Smith. So far this stuff has been more of "The Martian" variety. Not that there's anything wrong with that ...

13 - The Colonel by Peter Watts. THIS one has a bit more of that "out there" scope that I was just referring to. Set on Planet Earth, but well into a weird-looking and dystopic future. Reminds me of a fairly recent Sci Fi novel I read - The Prefect(Alastair Reynolds) - the author of that book has a story in this collection.

14 - Entanglement by Vandana Singh. A multi-plot long story. Yet another in this collection that focuses on the near future in general and climate change in general.

15 - White Curtain by Pavel Amnuel. Messing with the future ... here comes a cul-de-sac.

16 - Slipping by Lauren Beukes - No doubt inspire by the blade running, girlfriend-murdering Oscar Pistorius of South Africa.

17 - Passage of Earth by Michael Swanwick. As in "To Serve Man," the ultimate destiny of earthlings is to be "assimilated." Maybe not such a bad thing ...

18 - Amicae Aeternum by Ellen Klages. This story makes its point well, but I have a few problems with the overall logical set-up of the story. For instance, the two young friends hang together on the last day they'll ever see each other(they know this). Their conversation informs the reader of what the separation is all about, but one might think that the girls had talked about it already - plenty - as they've known about it for some time. The writing is cliched and (for me) uninteresting.

19 - In Babelsberg by Alastair Reynolds. I've read a novel(The Prefect) by this author and it was only OK as I recall. This story is pretty good, though. Reminds of "Silently and Very Fast" and that famous renegade murdering android short story from long ago(Fondly Fahrenheit by Alfred Bester).

20 - Sadness by Timons Esaias. Though the author deploys a few one-sentence paragraphs, a device I wish he and others would eschew, this is an excellent, though pretty depressing story, with a convincing and (again)depressing depiction of alien life. I loved the description of the aliens' reflexes being WAY too fast for a human ever to be able to physically touch one of them.

21 - West to East by Jay Lake. Another story rooted in the more "realistic" type of story that has become more common in modern science fiction as authors attempt to make stories, even "outer space" ones, conform to what science is learning. In this one some explorers are confronted with "survival" in a truly challenging environment. But ... there IS adapted native life there.

22 - Grand Jete'(The Great Leap) by Rachel Swirsky. And back again to the near future and another tale that suggests "Silently and Very Fast." As with a number of the stories here, there's very little uplift. No wonder straight fantasy is becoming more and more popular.

- "immigrated," not "emigrated" ...

23 - Covenant by Elizabeth Bear(second story in this collection). Pretty neat little story. Well executed.

24 - Jubilee by Karl Schroeder. A more traditional(as in far away in space and time) sci-fi entry, with two strong subtexts: romantic and a creative form of time travel.

25 - Los Piratas del Mar de Plasctico(Pirates of the Plastic Ocean by Paul Graham Raven. Another "close in" story set in a not-so-great near future. Think "Neuromancer" ... jazzy, tech-y, spiffy new lingo.

26- Red Lights, and Rain by Gareth L. Powell. Time travel pursuit, augmented "monster" humans do battle in rainy Amsterdam.

27 - Coma Kings by Jessica Barber. Takes "plugged" in to a whole new dimension. Reminds of "Ready Player One." The point as well as the details seemed a bit vague to me.

28 - The Prodigal Sun by Allen M. Steele. Once again into the near future of space travel. The bits that are reminiscent of "Contact" bring up the question of whether there would really exist such strident religious opposition to space "breeding/seeding." A well thought out combining of the possibilities of A.I. shepherded space travel and a generation strategy.

- shouldn't that big what-sis have been better protected on its trek from the airport to the space center?

- There's that perky and cliched one-sentence paragraph thingee again.

29 - God Decay by Rick Larson. Another tale that might have taken its inspiration from the sad story of the "Blade Runner" from South Africa. He's in prison now.

30 - Blood Wedding by Robert Reed. Back to the old style with this amusing tale of "augmentation" run amok. Reminds a bit of Philip Jose Farmer's "World of Tiers" series.

Now that I'm finished with "The Dying Earth"(awesome) I can get back to this good stuff.

31 - The Long Haul by Ken Liu(second story of his in here). Excellent what-might-have-been fantasy that kicks off right in the first sentence.

32 - Shadow Flock by Greg Egan - Scary things to come - like - tomorrow, folks.

33 - Thing and Sick by Adam Roberts - Good speculation stuff out of the DEEP! south. Reminds of some some Cordwainer Smith: Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons and The Game of Rat and Dragon.

34 - Communion by Mary Anne Mohanraj - Something different ...

35 - Someday by James Patrick Kelly - Another something different ...

Finally wrapped this one up a few nights ago. All-in-all an enjoyable experience. At the end of the book the author provides a list of the "also-rans'' = hundreds of them. I had read exactly nine of the authors listed. I'm definitely behind the times, sc-fi-wise. Oh well, one con't read everything!

35 - Yesterday's Kin by Nancy Kress. A pretty good first contact tale with several interesting twists, including the final one, which I ought to have seen coming. This was the longest by far of all the stories; a short novel, really.

- Connections to "The Andromeda Strain," "Contact," "The Stand," "Childhood's End," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"

- Noah's fate seemed sort-of obvious early on. Why else would he be in the story? I just now realized what his brother's fate was. Gotta pay more attention!

[Linus Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm going to do this the only sensible way: Story by story, with a short synopsis for each.

1. "The fifth dragon"--9.8/10. A very interesting futuristic, non-binary love story set in a very interesting world. Truly good.

2. "The rider"--7/10. Nothing terrible special, but a sort of interesting look into a future where AIs fight among themselves

3. "The days of the war, as red as blood, as dark as bile"-- 5/10. This one didn't catch me at all. It has a great title, but nothing beyond that.

4. "The burial of sir john mawe at cassini"--7/10. An interesting look at a victorian mars populated by some very interesting creatures. But unfortunately too much strange, too little backstory.

5. "The regular"--9/10. Cyberpunk detective story with great characters. yes please.

6. "The woman from the ocean"--7.5/10. Not bad at all, and interesting look at good intentions gone awry, but not great.

7. "Shooting the apocalypse"--8.7/10. A great look at a future we may not be too far from, with battles in the american west over water rights.

8. "weather"--5/10. Strange, and not good.

9. "the hand is quicker"--9/10. A look at how the rise of true virtual reality may widen the societal divide between rich and poor even more

10. "The man who sold the moon"--10/10. A true gem, with great characters, interesting tech, a shoutout to the builder culture that's on the rise, as well as burning man...great all around. I cried at the end

11. "Vladimir Chong chooses to die" -- 5/10. nothing really special, and hard to follow

12. "Beside the damned river"-- 6/10. Not bad, just forgettable

13. "The colonel"--7.3/10. Impressively written in a good universe but doesn't seem to have much of a point to it.

14. "Entanglement"--9.5/10. In a world where everybody is pulling together to maintain modern living standards in the face of extreme weather events, this story shows us a couple view points in an engagingly written style.

15. "White curtain"--9/10. Originally written in Russian, and just as depressingly nihilistic as you would expect a story about being able to choose among the multiverse to be. In a good way.

16. "Slipping"--8/10. Enhanced biotics in sports!

17. "Passage of earth"--9/10. psychological horror (with a protagonist who is a pathologist!) looking at some very VERY alien intelligences.

18. "Amicae Aeternum"--6/10. Meh. I see what the author was trying to with the whole "generation-ship leaving everything behind", but it's just not great.

19. "In babelsberg"--8.5/10. Interesting to see a story written from the point of view of an all-too-human AI

20. "Sadness"--6/10. Interesting, but too little backstory"

21. "West to east"--9.2/10. A doomed expedition tries everything possible to survive, and decides to go all-out to get one last message off....

22. "Grand Jete"-- 9.4/10. A great examination of what it means to be "me". If you put a dying girl's consciousness into a machine body, is the new girl the same as the old, or something else entirely?

23. Covenant--8/10. A serial killer who has had all the fight programmed out of him (and become a her)...finds herself on the other end of the stick, as it were.

24. "Jubilee"--6/10. I really tried to like it more, and I could see a full-fledged novel coming out of the setting, but it doesn't work as a short story/novella.

25. "Los piratas del mar de plastico"-- 8/10. Not quite sci-fi, but a good story.

26. "Red lights, and rain"--9/10. Time-traveling agents that explains the origins of vampires. What's not to love?!

27. "coma kings"-- 8/10. Video games can drive people apart, but they can also bring them together, especially when the game is fully interactive...

28. "The prodigal son"--8.5/10. A privately funded starship has some logistical and cultural issues to overcome before it launches

29. "God decay"--8/10. A love story that reveals the price behind being better than everybody else.

30. "Blood wedding"--9.5/10. Opposing factions with very different ideas about technology and stubborn, inflexible, patriarchs come together for a wedding....but not one that goes well.

31. "The long haul, from the annals of transportation, the pacific monthly, may 2009"--9/10. A world where zeppelins stayed aloft and replaced 18-wheelers for transport of goods. Excellent characters and a true joy to read.

32. "Shadow flock"--7/10. drones in crime, and loss of privacy as drones get smaller and smaller....

33. "Thing and sick"--5/10. An attempt at psychology horror and the Fermi paradox, but it flubs its chance.

34. "Communion"--8/10. Cross-species cultural communication crosses sacrosanct lines, but leads to better understanding.

35. "Someday"--7.3/10. courtship in a very alien, but very human, way.

36. "yesterday's kin-- 10/10. Divergent evolution, "aliens" and humanity interacting in the face of a mortal threat to both...

[V. · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an interesting side note, the female to male-ratio is 12:24. Which is not good, but better than expected ...

The Fifth Dragon, Ian McDonald
I really wish this one did manage to develop the right atmosphere ...

The Rider, Jérôme Cigut
The worldbuilding is so no coherent. Also: no way I care for this characters.

The Days of the War, as Red as Blood, as Dark as Bile, Aliette de Bodard
I like the idea behind it, but once again, this could as well be fantasy - especially with the mysterious connection between the child and the ship. Is this the new thing now? Space opera setting that could as well be fantasy? I don't mind, I just need to know to avoid it since it's not what I am searching for in my science fiction.

The Burial of Sir John Mawe at Cassini, Chaz Brenchley
Nope. Once again: what's the point? What does this story want to tell me? (I know, it's me - I want my stories to have a point, whether it is an emotion or social critique or an idea. Something that makes me remember the story. Think of Greg Egan's "The Cutie" and how it still haunts me ...)

The Regular, Ken Liu
A very solid detective story.

The Woman from the Ocean, Karl Bunker
The idea of how humanity changed is kind of neat, but the story is incredibly boring.

Shooting the Apocalypse, Paolo Bacigalupi
Very atmospheric. Does make me want to pick up more by Bacigalupi.

Weather, Susan Palwick
Another very atmospheric one if in a different way. I love stories which are so much about the emotional impact. So "translation" is not the newest idea in science fiction, but this particular angle on it? This angle makes a perfect little story.

The Hand Is Quicker, Elizabeth Bear
Another neat one - until the very end, when it becomes really good. Because the ending is not what it seems to be growing towards - and that makes it even more of a punch into the guts.

The Man Who Sold the Moon, Cory Doctorow
Reviewed as individual book The Man Who Sold The Moon:
I cried - and yeah, you may say it was a cheap trick to invoke cancer, but no, it was not. Instead it was real. And this is what this whole story does: it feels real. The characters are real, the technology is real (and there is quite a bit of it), the world feels real, the narrator's voice feels real. This is one of the best science fiction stories I've read in the recent years and one of the reason why I keep reading the Year's Best Science Fiction series (this one I read as part of The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection - but it's also available online for free): because they are gems like this that make "I will only read two pages before falling asleep" into two hours of intense reading and intense feeling. [And no, I haven't been to burning man - but I know people who have. And I know what really good conferences feel like.]
In short: this was the story that made the whole collection worth reading.

Vladimir Chong Chooses To Die, Lavie Tidhar
Given the topic, I really want some emotional impact. But: nope. Neither is the world building interesting (yeah, it takes place in some future Israel which is perhaps not the usual place for a sf story, but that is not going to save it or make it any more interesting, not even to me who loves stories taking place there).

Beside the Damned River, D.J. Cockburn
Neat, atmospheric. But not something I will remember for long. (Actually read this one a few month ago and had to skim through the end to remember what it was about.)

The Colonel, Peter Watts
Nope. The whole "lost child" thing is just ugh. The same with the cat. Symbolism overload much?

Entanglement, Vandana Singh
I like the idea (and it is great to see what Singh is making out of her study-sabbatical not only science and teaching, but also writing wise), but the writing itself is a bit too much on the clinical side and the individual "stories" have too much of an "everything is connected in a fateful way"-vibe to them. Which is a pity, because the idea is great (and novel - I don't think I've ever encountered something like the bracelets!) and the science sound.

White Curtain, Pavel Amnuel
A Russian SF author I did not know. Huh. And one I will need to hunt down more by.
The story is a bit old school, but given the age of the author and the culture understandably so. And it is very atmospheric - I could feel some old Moscow university, sometimes in the 60-ies or 70-ies. Add to it a certain breathlessness that fits the subject - yeah, it works. The translation is, as far as I can tell seeing the English text only, also good. It keeps the certain Russian flavor but still reads properly English. Well done, very well done.
[eda: and now I peeked into several reviews and they remark at the unnatural cadence of the dialogue. Well duh, that's what happens when people don't speak English. Other rules of conversation, no polite "how are you?". A translation is a translation not a transfer of the story from one world into another. At least it should not be.]

Slipping, Lauren Beukes
So ... Yeah. Wow. Fuck. That was the second absolute highlight of the collection (after Doctorow's novella). Wow.

Passage of Earth, Michael Swanwick
So this is the first story of Swanwick's that I liked. More than that: really liked. First the approach, the use of the autopsy protocol is a very clever one. It does not feel like an information dump at all. The interpretation for how the worms may think is just perfectly delivered, an organic part of the story, and at the same time make it clear that these things are truly alien in every imaginable way. And then things turn and the ending is the perfect science fiction horror, pure and chilling and memorable.

Amicae Aeternum, Ellen Klages
WTF was that? How did it make it into the collection? Preaching, with a language and dialogue (is it even dialogue? who talks like this? especially which 11 year olds?) more suited a dime-novel, info-dumpy (oh sure, Anna needs to ask all the questions about the ship now, in the last moment - she never asked anything before but made the medal with a Latin inscription?), contrived like whoa. Ugh.
The biggest problem perhaps is that the story is clearly written for young readers - which does not have to be bad, except when the author does not trust the young reader and presents them with a regorged text (because how would the reader understand the super important message that the author has otherwise?).
That said - I can imagine the idea being a gem in someone else's hand. But this one is not even a boulder more like a ball of slime.

In Babelsberg, Alastair Reynolds
Very neat. I definitely need to read more by Reynolds (this is not the first short story of his I liked a lot).

Sadness, Timons Esaias
That one was kind of okay-ish. But in comparison to Michael Swanwick's story that addresses some very similar questions, it just looses.

West to East, Jay Lake
Really good. And extra bittersweet (or rather sweetsad but there is no word like that) given the real life background of the story ...

Grand Jeté (The Great Leap), Rachel Swirsky
If a story contains a sentence like "Judaism taught that survival was more important than dogma", I can be nothing but smitten - this one hits so close to home.
(I know the word "golem" is mentioned in the story, but this is not a golem story, not given what the golem legend is and what story is told here.)

Covenent, Elizabeth Bear
I like the idea, but I don't feel the story and don't feel our pov character. Which is a pity, there may have been an interesting story there.

Jubilee, Karl Schroeder
I dunno, I don't buy the "living next to each other" of the different approaches to living/time. That said, it's well written and I do like the idea of what the society means.

Los Pirates del Mar de Plastico (Pirates of the Plastic Ocean), Paul Graham Raven
That one should have been a novella not a short story. As a short story, there is too much crammed it and it gets all preachy in the end.

Red Light, and Rain, Gareth L. Powell
Not even the fact that it takes plays in Amsterdam saves this one - and this has a lot to say given how much I love Amsterdam.

Coma Kings, Jessica Barber
I'm not sure I will remember the story in a few years - but while I read it, it did pack a punch. Perhaps not the most innovative idea but well written and touching.

The Prodigal Son, Allen M. Steele
I haven't read something that would scream "sleazy mail fantasy" so badly in a while. Iiiiieks. Like seriously, keep your distance to this one. Is Matt interested in Chandi in any other reason but that she is pretty? Is her cultural background or her degree or her interests of any interest to him? And of course she falls in bed with him after he punches someone and of course his former girlfriends were evil because they would have hated this. I can't even begin describing how disgusting this all is especially when the packaging clearly screams "but I am trying to be inclusive!".

God Decay, Rich Larson
Lauren Beukes story is so, so, so much better. (But its interesting to see a take on a similar issues. I guess it's also no wonder that two writers with ties to the African continent were the ones to write them.)

Blood Wedding, Robert Reed
Absolutely over the top pulp that strangely works? I guess in big part because of the ending.

The Long Haul From the ANNALS OF TRANSPORTATION, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009, Ken Liu
A well-thought out world and a quiet rumination on companionship and perhaps love. It does remind me of those wonderful Russian short stories dressed in a science fiction dress.

Shadow Flock, Greg Egan
Forgettable even though this is a Greg Egan story (but I would not be able to tell, it definitely lacks his hallmark intelligence and pungency).

Thing and Sick, Adam Roberts
Somewhat weird, but good weird. (Minus the fact that this is not how South/North Pole missions work - that required quiet a suspense of disbelief from my side.) It's a neat idea that I would have absolutely loved when I was younger.

Communion, Mary Anne Mohanraj
What a wonderful little gems of a story.

Someday, James Patrick Kelly
Meh.

Yesterday’s Kin, Nancy Kress
Somewhat too long and too constructed.

[Cathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a really interesting summary statement: "One interesting thing about this year's short fiction is that it was easy to see SF's new consensus future solidifying in dozens of short stories from different anthologies and magazines: a linked-in, hooked-up continuous surveillance society, profoundly shaped by social media and the Internet, set in a world radically altered by climate change (but one where it hasn't gone to civilization-destroying lengths), featuring autonomous drones, bioengineering, cybernetic implants, cyborgs of one degree or another of extremeness, wearable computers, the manipulation of emotions and memory (sometimes by external means), AIs, renewable energy, in which 3_D printing is being used to produce almost everything. Sometimes it features space travel, in which case near Earth space and the nearest reaches of the solar system are busy with human traffic and habitation, sometimes it doesn't. Not that different, really from the cyperpunk future of the eighties, except for the increased emphasis on radical climate change and 3-D printing." p xxiv

For an excellent review of the book and individual reviews of each story, check out John DeNardo's review on SF Signal.

As for the stories, this was the best he could find? Overall I was quite disappointed, much more than in previous years. We're never going to totally agree, but I hope to be thrilled a bunch of times and at least see where he's coming from more often. He listed seven pages of honorable mention stories in the back, more than three hundred stories, I can't believe there weren't some better choices.

Ian McDonald - Eh. It was fine, I'd have thought it was OK if I'd read it in a magazine or anthology, but not noteworthy. All the sci-fi elements were good but what was so exciting about it? I don't get it.

Jérôme Cigut - It was a clever and well-written story about a bit of a ne'er-do-well and his AI partner. It was complete in and of itself but if he wanted to do more in this world I'd be interested to see what else he tried to do with it, he could do more from the point of view of these two or other AIs from David's line (Taharas), the new competitors from the original factory (Hotodas) or now the progeny as well.

Aliette de Bodard - One of de Bodard's stories set in her Xuya universe, the story takes place right after On a Red Station, Drifting chronologically. This caused me to finally read all of the Xuya stories I could, and I recommend them. There's a wonderful timeline on her site that helps put them all in order, if you're interested. It was a sad little story. It made a bitter kind of sense that a mad old mindship and a distraught young child could be what it took to put an end to the long years of fighting. A very short story but high impact, especially having just read so much in this universe. As usual, the food, sights, sounds, scents, everything was extremely vivid. If you didn't know what a mindship was it might not have much impact though.

Chaz Brenchley - Dozois called it retro-SF, an alternate world Victorian-era British Empire and a strong, bitter and melancholy story. Why did he pick so many sad, melancholy, downer stories? It was definitely bitter and a downer, and dull. It had that weird distanced tone too many short stories get, lots of telling, though it should have been a cool, exciting story about people living on Mars.

Ken Liu - An implant that regulates body chemistry to allow a person control over emotions, it's mandatory for law enforcement officers to minimize the effects of emotions on life-or-death decisions and to eliminate prejudice and irrationality. Think that would work? A timely question, even more so now (mid-2015) than when it was written. A good story, but he rarely stumbles. It was quite different from anything I've read from him before, more...vital? There was a lot of subtlety in the characterization.

Karl Bunker - Another melancholy story? Does it have to be sad to be good in Gardner's world? It was fine. Had an original idea for how to solve war through genetic tampering. An OK very short story.

Paolo Bacigalupi - Dozois said this one was grim too, but I didn't find the story to be grim exactly, through the future he painted was pretty rough in that corner of the world. We build large parts of our country in places where there aren't large amounts of water, never imagining a day when there would be millions of people needing that basic resource. I thought it was a vivid and realistic projection of a possible future. The characters and setting felt alive, well done for such s short story. Lucy Monroe, one of the main characters, is also one of the main characters in The Water Knife.

Susan Palwick - I got the point, try not to have regrets with the people you have while you have them, because even if you get a second chance it can't bring back the time you missed. It was a decent little story, but another one that didn't blow me away.

Elizabeth Bear - The beginning was confusing, he was totally distraught because he'd lost the woman he loved, then later he said it was just easier not to look her up offline than to find out she'd dumped him. Then he just blinked, paused and said, "So anyway--" when he found out she died. What a dick. But it reflected a lot about how we do and might use social media, how we get lost in it and how it disconnects us from reality. The use of skins to cover everything from appearances to flavors shaped everything in this world for people who could afford it and shaped the finances in this world as well. It was a good and much too truthful story of what could happen in the future, how people don't like to live with the truth, how many will want to disappear into various forms of fantasy and will suffer for it in small and large ways.

Cory Doctrow - It was one of the best stories in Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future. 3-D printers gone wild, Burning Man, friendship, aging maybe not so gracefully, a very complete novella.

Lavie Tidhar - Who wants to live forever? Not me, not without my mind, or not in pain or suffering. A good story about family too.

D.J. Cockburn - Winner of the James White Award, a very good very short story, also about water management. China damned up a river and Thailand is suffering in many ways, including the fellow in the story who used to be a professor, but now is a peasant in a village with shoes made out of "tyres." Simple and impactful.

Peter Watts - Yay, some traditional SF, not the grim environmental or apocalyptic stuff everyone else is writing, or Dozois is choosing. Sure, human civilization is still threatened, but it's by aliens! Except it wasn't aliens at all, it was networked human minds as hive minds. And it wasn't even about them, it was about the Colonel who was dealing with them, sort of. And then it sucked because it wasn't a complete story, it was one of those things where you're left at the end with something that's really just the beginning of a story and it just ends and it really sucks. I feel like I wasted my time, it wan't cool and I take back my "Yay" though as part of a novel maybe it could have been cool.

Vandana Singh - She's one of my new favorite authors. This is her climate change story from Hieroglyph, it was one of the highlights of the book. (Dozois loved the book, I thought it only had about five good stories.) It has a lot of heart and a lovely world-wide perspective, complex and simple at the same time, very unique.

Pavel Amnuel - A Russian author (and astrophysicist) who published the story in Kiev in 2007, it was translated in 2014 and published in F&SF Magazine. A good story about what people will do for love. I'd be quite interested to read more stories about this multiverse situation if they were available here.

Lauren Beukes - This is another of these stories about what we're going to do with technology and what the world is coming to as an inevitable result of human nature. What about the good stuff? Cures and progress don't make good stories, it's all apocalypse and gloom all the time.

Michael Swanwick - Finally one that was really about aliens! I didn't adore it but it was OK. It was really more about people and relationships, of course, most short stories are at heart, but it wasn't about us causing the apocalypse, so I was happy. And I liked it better than whatever the last thing was that I read by him, probably in one of the Rogues books edited by Martin and Dozois.

Ellen Klages - It reminded me of Wakula Springs (which I didn't love, mostly because it wasn't speculative fiction despite coming to my attention because it was nominated for many F/SF awards) because it really vividly portrayed the characters and the location, she does bring her worlds to life very well. And I liked this tale about what a girl's parents' decision to join a generation ship, apparently one of or the first in 2065, meant to this eleven year-old girl, and her best friend as well. It's a very clear and simple story that also speaks volumes on many levels. I suspect it will end up being one of my favorite in the book, even though it isn't quite one that I'd have thought I'd gravitate toward. It isn't fun. The ways that it's touching isn't with that twist in the heart that lingers and makes me think. But there was a lot there that spoke to me in a soft but insistent way.

Alastair Reynolds - It was fine, very old-fashioned/retro but not depressing. Growing pains for what independent robots might mean.

Timons Esaias - I had doubts about it all the way up until the very end. I've read a lot of novels and stories about being occupied by brutal or uncaring aliens, I couldn't see what this offered that was special. But the last bit brought it home to some degree.

Jay Lake - It was mostly good because it was his last or one of his last to be published, poignant. Do what you can to survive, and then do what you can to live the moments you have, really live.

Rachel Swirsky - I suppose a story that leaves me in tears must have done something right. I suspect I would have sobbed even if I didn't hate that disease so much. I was upset when it said how she broke her leg, I knew what it was, and just seeing the word later in the story brought tears to my eyes, it's too personal to me. I enjoyed the Jewish family dynamics as well as the storytelling. It was a terribly poignant story, really beautiful. It also took a developing technology and projected what people might do with it, for better or worse, and it can be argued that this use could go very much either way. It's a smart story speculative-fiction-wise that also said a lot about history and culture, family , even politics. Swirsky did a whole lot with not all that much space, very impressive. I'm glad I read it, even if it was hard on a personal level.

Elizabeth Bear - This was in Hieroglyph too. I wasn't sure about it, though it was nominated for some awards. As someone who suffers from mental illness, the idea of curing various manifestations of it seems tempting, but not if it so completely changes a person so that he or she feels like an entirely different person afterward. This story seemed much more ominous than positive, with a lot of typical governmental coercive elements. A very short story.

Karl Schroeder - Lockstep, his book in the same universe, is already on my to-read list. I'm curious about his choice to write about young adults - is he good at it? Does it add to the story? The premise of the novel seems odd, they sound like they have a lot of power for young people. The story was just OK, I'm not sure why it got into the book except on the power of his name and because the books are coming out. But it was really nice to read a not depressing story, about the power of love. I just totally did not understand the point of the lockstep thing. I get why people would want to be out of step with time while on a long space voyage, but why would they want to do a Brigadoon thing on a planet? Some people are awake for one day every 360 months, others every 372 months, for what purpose? It isn't to avoid the evils of the world? Didn't get it.

Paul Graham Raven - This felt more like a lecture than a story. I didn't enjoy it, I didn't hate it.

Garath L. Powell - Ack-Ack Macaque has been on my To-Read list since it was nominated for the BFSA in 2013. But I don't know what about this story I was supposed to enjoy. War sucks. Be careful of the monsters you turn your soldiers into because they can't go back even if they want to? And the trainers are just as big of monsters? Why is that fun to read? Another depressing and sucky story. And this one Dozois said would be an adventure or something, false advertising. Guns and shooting don't make it an adventure. Sucky.

Jessica Barber - It was sad, but it wasn't sucky. It wasn't totally original, I've read other stories about people plugging in and not wanting to come out, but it's obviously going to become more and more of an issue with better technology and virtual reality, and it makes sense that authors are exploring it from different angles and perspectives. It was a good little story about families and growing up as well. And it was a new author to me and a pretty new author on the scene as well, so I liked that too.

Allen M. Steele - Why did the voice in this story seem more active and vital than the voice in Chaz Brenchley's Mars story? I liked it, but the idea that AIs would fertilize sperm and embryos and then nannybots would raise them as way to settle distant worlds is nuts. His point that closed systems won't work for having enough supplies or fuel for getting to distant worlds made sense with current technology but I can't see anyone going for that plan as an alternative. A few protesters was way too mild a reaction. Nannybots raising the babies with not one human example ever in sight? Why do we need to go to Mars that badly? There was no disaster scenario in this story, I didn't buy it just for research, I found it really horrifying, in fact, to be so casual about the idea. I'm a liberal so that isn't a political issue, it was just a really odd premise.

Rich Larson - The intro says extreme augmentation that effectively turns people into cyborgs is likely to turn up in the field sports first. Huh? Maybe some weird underground leagues, online betting, third world countries or something. I think it'll start with cosmetics, gaming and computing functionality and military. The story was fine, still not outstanding.

Robert Reed - It was fine, it ended a bit better than I expected. It was more entertaining than important, but at least it was good for a change of pace. And it had the cyborg/augmentation theme that the last story had from different angles.

Ken Liu - He totally convinced me that we've missed the somewhat literal boat on zeppelins. His numbers comparing them to other shipping methods, both timing and fuel costs, made it seem completely obvious that we should all get together and invest in this now before the fuel crisis gets any worse. We might have missed this alternate history timeline but maybe there's an opportunity for the future here. Either way, it was a good story, well researched and with strong characters.

Greg Egan - A story that wasn't entirely depressing! The message actually was, drones can be used for all sorts of criminal enterprises, miniature ones even more so, and here's one really nasty example. But the story was entertaining to read, not all dark and glum and slow and dry. It felt like a traditional sci-fi story.

Adam Roberts - It kind of felt more fantasy than science fiction, even though they were SETI scientists. Whatever they found feels more urban fantasy than alien. It was alright.

Mary Anne Mohanraj - A nice little story about try to accept each other even when we don't necessarily understand. I liked it, and it wasn't depressing even though it was about funeral rites, and an upcoming war, so go figure. It was a nice, sort of a more traditional science fiction story, how are aliens and humans going to get along, how are humans going to deal with DNA manipulation, good themes to grapple with. This was the only new-to-me author in the book where I immediately went and downloaded a bunch of her stories to read when I completed the book. Of course most of the authors in the book are very well known to me already.

James Patrick Kelly - Bah. I didn't feel like there was any payoff to the "big twist" at the end of the short story. I didn't know this universe of these people so it didn't have any relevance or context for me, I didn't know how shocked I was supposed to be or if I was supposed to be worried for the character or excited or what, it was just that it went one way instead of one of the other two ways it could have gone, whatever. And it took away from what seemed to be building up in the rest of the story. She still seemed to be a strong, independent woman who made her own choices, but the end was a let down for sure. And the author didn't do a good enough job of establishing what the role of the Earth scientists was and what the colony of former Earth people was, why that mattered. I didn't think the story worked for what he was apparently trying to accomplish, even if much of the body of it felt charming and like it was going somewhere.

Nancy Kress - Yesterday's Kin - And I've run out of space, so "here's a link to my review of this story, which was by far the most engaging and interesting in the book.

[Josée Lepire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oui, ça m’a pris 5 mois lire ce livre, mais davantage parce je fus malade. Il m’est difficile de faire une critique convenable, mais voici les neufs nouvelles qui m’ont marquée, parmi les 36 dans le recueil.

Amicale Aeternum, d’Ellen Klages
The Rider, de Jérôme Cigut
Shooting the Apocalypse, de Paolo Bacigalupi
Slipping, de Lauren Beukes
Grand Jeté, de Rachel Swirsky
Coma Kingston, de Jessica Barber
The Prodigal Son, d’Allen M. Steele
Communion, de Mary Anne Mohanraj
Thing and Sick, d’Adam Roberts

[Reet · Rating 3 out of 5]

5 🌟 for these stories:
Passage of Earth by Michael Swanwick
Vladimir Chong Chooses to Die by Lavie Tidhar
Shooting the Apocalypse by Paulo Bacigalupi
Gran Jeté by Rachel Swirsky
Covenant by Elizabeth Bear
Shadow Flock by Greg Egan
Thing and Sick by Adam Roberts
Yesterday's Kin by Nancy Kress

[David Critchfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

As usual, this is a fantastic book. I buy this collection each year. 654 pages of goodness. This one includes the Nebula Award winning novella YESTERDAY'S KIN by Nancy Kress.

[Carol McCarthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full of excellent stories.

[Johan Haneveld · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short stories were what made me fall in love with SF as a genre and made me want to write as well. I think the genre fits the form here very well, as SF is a genre of ideas and a short story will also be about an idea (an idea for a story, a fitting end resulting from the idea), delivering a gut punch, a new thought, a bit of inspiration. They belong together. (The detective genre works well too in short story format, see Arthur Conan Doyle, as does horror as a genre). And I love having my brain fried with new idea after another. Fantasy, I find, does not work that well in short story format, as it is more dependent on world building, character development, coming of age stories et cetera. It's not as much about being clever, having an idea, a twist in the tale, but more about empathizing with the main characters, and working towards an ending of their tales that fits with the trouble they have gone through, their personal growth, and the relationships they have forged within this self contained world. So I find fantasy short stories often lacking in what I love in the fantasy genre. I want to delve in a three volume series if I read fantasy, I want to have my mind blown if I read SF. Not that I don't read SF novels or series, but I love to once in a while pick up a story collection, and prefer writing short stories in the genre myself as well. This one I chose for being quite recent (it has the best stories from 2014, at tleast according to the editor), and for containing a lot of stories! Lots of short stories, some novellas. The novella's sometimes began to suffer from the 'long story problem', as I didn't think the idea underlying the story was good enough to sustain a novella even. Oh, and there seems to be a trend of not finishing stories with a grand finale, a gut punch of an ending, but writing SF stories that are observational, fizzling out as it were. Those few stories were not my favorites. There were a couple of far future stories, a couple of first contact stories and a couple of stories set on other worlds, but except for 'West to East' they were not that scientifically interestiing, more of a metaphorical nature I thought. Hard SF has moved on to being near future, and taking place in our solar system, doing away with unscientific concepts of faster than light travel, time travel, or unlimited energy. So there were a lot of stories about body modification, about surveillance, and about climate change. I found several stories about 3D printing, new economies, sharing, the maker mindset, the 'third industrial revolution'. I really liked the novella 'The man who sold the moon', in this regard. Last year I read William Rifkins book 'The Zero Marginal Cost Society', and a couple of stories here mirrored the themes he wrote about, and the possibilities in 3D-printing, renewable energy, smart networks. As these stories will have been written before Rifkins book came out, the stories were probably based on independent observations by the authors. And this makes me more optimistic about the course our society is taking - making me hopeful that people will come together, overcome barriers, and make better societies, better cultures, a better world. I appreciated these stories a lot. So, in short, a nice overview of the genre, with a lot of great authors incluced. I look forward to reading part 29 of this series!

[Turk Finnery · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a massive collection of 36 short stories that were originally published elsewhere in 2014. I appreciate how Gardner Dozois slogged through so much bad sci-fi to find the best short stories every year but, unfortunately, most of it is terrible. I can only imagine how bad the ones are that didn’t make it. I’ll preface the rest of this by saying that it is really, really difficult to comment on short stories without spoiling anything, but I’ll try.

The biggest problem with these collections is that they’re just too big. Yeah, it’s a great value for the price, there are just not enough quality stories here and the ratio of good to bad ones is truly abysmal. Almost all of the “longer” short stories in here are absolutely atrocious, with the exception of “Yesterday’s Kin” by Nancy Kress, which was just OK. My biggest problem with that one is that too much of it was centered around dumb family drama. I really disliked that aspect of and I felt like it keeps interrupting the flow of the story. It’s not terrible, but she has written much better stories, both in these collections and elsewhere, so I expected more.

Going back to the beginning (after Dozois’ extremely meticulous introduction and recap of the year), the first story in this anthology, “The Fifth Dragon” by Ian McDonald, is apparently the prequel to a full series of books. Well, this was a really poor introduction so I won’t be reading any of those. Sorry Ian, you had your chance.

The very next story, “The Rider” by Jérôme Cigut, is much better, but I would have actually liked to see it go on a bit longer. The ending was unsatisfying, as is often the case with short stories, but this one seemed like it should have been the introduction to a series of novels. I liked the main characters and I was amused by their attempts to understand each other. It kind of reminded me of the movie Upgrade, and I would like to read more stories like this about human agents with AI partners.

“The Regular'' by Ken Liu is also not bad. In this possible future, all police officers have their brains hooked up to a Regulator, a device that evens out people’s emotions and enables them to perform better under stress. It serves as a good allegory for anti-depressants, drugs, alcohol, or whatever else people depend on to change the chemicals in their brain now. This might sound like a good alternative, but it’s unnerving to see what happens when someone becomes completely reliant on it.

Liu’s other story in this compilation, “The Long Haul, from The Annals of Transportation, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009” (yeah, that’s the title) is even better, but it has a completely different tone. It’s about a husband and wife team who deliver freight around the world in their zeppelin, taking place in an alternate timeline where the Hindenburg never crashed and airships are preferred over planes. This was pretty cute and I enjoyed it a lot. It’s definitely out-of-place with the rest of this stuff, but it served as a welcome break from the tired setting of “climate change dystopia” that kept coming up in this volume. Dozois noticed this trend too, but it didn’t stop him from including a dozen such stories.

“The Hand Is Quicker” by Elizabeth Bear is pretty good, detailing a very disturbing future where reality is “skinned” by those who can afford it. I have read other sci-fi that is very similar, but this story really shows how much it would suck to get disconnected from that and dropped down to “real” reality with all the normal plebs. It’s definitely a rude awakening for the main character and you can’t help but feel kind of bad for them. I highly recommend this one. Her other story in this collection, “Covenant,” is similar in tone, but not nearly as good.

On the other hand, “The Man Who Sold the Moon” by Cory Doctrow is terrible and overly long. I didn’t even want to even mention this one because the premise is so stupid and it’s written in the most irritating style possible, but after I read it I saw a news story about how they’re 3-D printing a whole neighborhood in Texas, so I guess he was on to something. There are some references to great works in here by Heinlein and Asimov but they didn’t make me like this any more, it’s just the author showing off how smart he is and, if anything, it just highlights how much worse science fiction is now compared to back then. This one goes on forever and it’s unbearable. I hope I never see the word “yurt” ever again.

“Entanglement” by Vandana Singh and “The Prodigal Son” by Allen M. Steele were also way too long and they both feel like they’re written at a lower reading level than anything else in here. Stuff like this makes these collections a real chore to finish. What absolute crap. I can’t decide which of these was the worst, but they’re both bad.

On a more positive note, “Passage of Earth” by Michael Swanwick is undoubtedly the best thing in this collection. This starts off as a story of an alien autopsy but abruptly takes a turn into some really intense and unusual territory. I did not see this coming and I thought it was absolutely brilliant and totally original. Your mileage may vary, but I thought this was leaps and bounds over anything else in here. He’s written good stories in other volumes of this series, too.

Another pretty weird one was “In Babelsberg” by Alastair Reynolds, but of course I mean weird in a good way. His ideas about what talk shows might be like in the future are very bizarre, but why not? Reality might end up being even strange than this. I really liked the ending of this one, and I can definitely see AI acting like this when they’re programmed with certain corporate interests in mind.

I might not have commented on “West to East” by Jay Lake, but this turned out to be the last story he wrote. Knowing that, you definitely will read it in a different light. It’s about a doomed spaceship crew that knows they cannot be saved, but they’re still determined to make sure their story gets told. It’s a perfect metaphor, and reading it is quite sobering. Jay Lake had been featured in these volumes before and will definitely be missed. (Garner Dozois has also passed away since this collection was published, a huge loss to the genre.)

Another depressing one was “Grand Jeté (The Great Leap)” by Rachel Swirsky. This one is about a father creating a robotic replacement for his dying daughter, which sounds like an interesting idea, but I found it to be cruel and quite sad. He creates it while his daughter is still alive, which is pretty messed up. His real daughter’s feelings don’t seem to be taken into consideration and none of this is written from her perspective. There’s a lot of references to Jewish culture that I found really interesting and mysterious, though some of it is hard to follow since I’m not familiar with the vocabulary. This one is a serious downer, but it’s pretty well-written.

The last story in here I wanted to highlight is “Thing and Sick” by Adam Roberts, which is my second favorite. This is a really interesting answer to the Fermi paradox that goes into some pretty unsettling and maybe even Lovecraftian directions. What really sets it apart is the heavy focus on philosophy. You’ve probably never thought of aliens quite like this. This was really enjoyable and I loved the Antarctic outpost setting; it really adds to the tension and sense of dread. You can probably tell by the stories I liked that I’m a huge fan of sci-fi horror.

Overall, though, this collection was really weak! I guess that’s just the state of science fiction writing these days. I bought a bunch of these anthologies at once because they’re such a good deal, and every now and then you do come across some really great stories, but this is the last one I had left to read and I don’t plan to read any others from the 2010s. Rest in peace, Gardner, you really deserved better stories to put in here.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Go-to review is by Andreas, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
And another story-by-story review at Amazon. Highly opinionated, lively comments:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...

As always, reading the annual Dozois Year's Best is a great way to keep up with short SF. That said, there weren't too many standouts stories (for me) in the 2015 collection, and a few that didn't work for me.. Overall, it's a 3.4/5 star anthology. How's that for fake precision?

Standout stories, for me:
“The Rider” • novelette by Jérôme Cigut. Hardboiled crime and pocket AIs. Good new writer. 4/5 stars

“The Man Who Sold the Moon” • novella by Cory Doctorow. Printing dust igloos at Burning Man. 2.8/5 stars, overlong, far from his best.

“Passage of Earth” • short story by Michael Swanwick. Weird alien worms, a coroner, his ex-wife and an alien starship. Strange story, memorable but not a favorite Swanwick. 3.5 stars.

“THE LONG HAUL from the Annals of Transportation, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009” • alternative history short story by Ken Liu. A Cargo zeppelin, its pilot and and his mail-order bride. My favorite Liu story so far. He credits John McPhee's great "Uncommon Carriers" for inspiration. 4.5/5 stars.

“Someday” • SF short story by James Patrick Kelly. Peculiar courtship customs and divergent biology on a lost colony (cribbed from Dozois). 4/5 stars

“Yesterday’s Kin” • novella by Nancy Kress. First Contact that doesn't go well. 3.5/5 stars.

"The regular" by Ken Liu. A PI investigates the murder of a call-girl. Memorable and well-written but grim. Not reread, not really for me. 2.5/5

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like usual, I read this in bits and pieces during the last too many months. What I like about these short story collections is that it doesn't matter if I leave it be for a month while reading something else: I will not forget where I was as long as I finish whatever story I was in the middle of.

The problem, however, is that in almost 5 months I have mostly forgotten what the first few stories were all about. I remember the ones I liked especially or that were unique in some way (like Passage of Earth, which was interesting but not necessarily quite as good as it could've been).

Based on what I remember about this on my own and based on what vague recollections I gathered from the names of the stories, this had a few really good stories and quite a few average ones. At least there wasn't any really bad ones as far as I can remember, and the very last story (Yesterday's Kin) really made an impression.

I again remember why I keep reading these: not only do they often include several very good stories, they also tell me a lot about what authors to follow and who writes stuff I do not enjoy all that much. Such an easy (and relatively cheap) way to keep my to-read list way too full...

[Mark W. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately my least favorite of these anthologies I've yet read. That's probably biased by my personal feelings toward near-future sci-fi, but I swear if I have to read one more cautionary tale about late stage capitalism or global warming. I read sci-fi for the unique glimpses it offers into the question of what it means to be human, often through narrative tools such as the non-human or the near-human. I found this type of narrative sadly lacking from the Thirty-Second Annual Collection.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know. Some good. Some less so. A LOT of typos.

[Timons Esaias · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a horrible track record for reading anthologies in which I appear, so yes, it only took me nine years and the death of the editor to get around to this one. The good news is that these collections age well, so nothing is degraded by the wait.

Let me briefly list the eleven stories (we'll just ignore mine in this review) that rated an exclamation mark in the Contents from me:

"The Rider" Jérôme Cigut (but it's loaded with blinks and POV facial descriptions)
"The Woman from the Ocean" Karl Bunker
"Shooting the Apocalypse" Paulo Bacigalupi
"Weather" Susan Palwick
"Vladimir Chong Chooses to Die" Lavie Tidhar
"Amicae Aeternum" Ellen Klages
"Grand Jeté (The Great Leap)" Rachel Swirsky
"Jubilee" Karl Schroeder (Ha!! This is a writers' inside joke, as well as a story.)
"Blood Wedding" Robert Reed (for some reason there are a number of text errors)
"Communion" Mary Anne Mohanraj
"Yesterday's Kin" Nancy Kress (This is a very complex tale, lots of moving parts and crosscurrents, and would be a good one to study.)

I wrote "Yikes!" next to Jay Lake's "West to East" story, it being a bit of a thriller.

The one story that collapsed on me was the Cory Doctorow, because it had too many "Moon muddle" errors. I tend to like the idea behind a Doctorow story, and find myself disappointed by the execution. And here we went again. Your odometer may not match mine.

A highly recommended volume. And by the way, if you find yourself teaching a course on science fiction, one of these Year's Best anthologies would make for a relatively inexpensive textbook choice. Dozois went to some trouble to include stories that would appeal to a variety of tastes, rather than keeping them all to one aesthetic.

And now for the Esaias enumerations:
• I found 8 grimaces in the volume. The previous edition had 9. The subsequent edition had 10, with another "hone in."
• On page 342 there's a "clamor" that should be a "clamber"
• On page 611 there's the stupid expression "honing in" which should be "homing in." Really folks, get your idioms in order.

[Anthony A · Rating 3 out of 5]

As always, the way I rate science fiction anthologies is by rating each story within the anthology and then taking the average. My overall (average) rating for this anthology is a 6.3/10.0. The stories which I enjoyed the most are:
- The Regular by Ken Liu (9)
- Passage of Earth by Michael Swanwick (9)
- In Babelsberg by Alastair Reynolds (9)
-Sadness by Timons Esaias (8)
- West to East by Jay Lake (8)
- Grand Jete by Rachel Swirsky (8)
- Red Lights, and Rain by Gareth L. Powell (8)
- Blood Wedding by Robert Reed (8) - My favorite short story author -
- Yesterday's Kin by Nancy Kress (8)

[Nate · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic year for short fiction. Highlights include:


Shooting the Apocalypse by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Hand is Quicker by Elizabeth Bear
Passage of Earth by Michael Swanwick
Amicae Aeternum by Ellen Klages
Jubilee by Karl Schroeder
The Prodigal Son by Allen M. Steele
Yesterday's Kin by Nancy Kress

[Howard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one of the best in the series. The included works seemed to all follow a common theme of stories which could actually occur in the current time, unlike previous editions which included works of far ranging settings and time frames.

[Don Wenzel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't read a best of SF collection in a very long time and Dozois is one of the best, as evidenced by how long he's been editing this collection. There were many great stories here and I found a few new authors whose work I am now reading because I discovered them in this collection.

[Mark Siegel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finally finished this book! Some of the best stories include those by Ken Liu, John Patrick Kelly, and Nancy Kress. As always, these anthologies present a good sampler of short fiction that explore both new and old themes in the genre.

[Jim LeMay · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my opinion, as always, Gardner does the best job of picking the best SF short stories of the year.

[Baily]

Placeholder for “God Decay” by Rich Larson

[Al Menaster · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some pretty good selections. Some not as good. Definitely worth readings.

[Streator Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent addition to this fine series!

[York · Rating 2 out of 5]

Favorites: 'The Burial of Sir John Mawe at Cassini', 'The Man Who Sold The Moon', 'Los Piratas del Mar de Plastico (Pirates of the Plastic Ocean)'.

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

For the best stories of 2014 Dozois has selected 36 works, primarily short stories, but several longer works and novellas. Dozois has been doing this a long time and his tastes in recent science fiction don't always jive with mine. I have not read a full collection for several years so it was an accomplishment for me to get this one done. As always Dozois finds a lot of stories from everywhere that I would certainly miss in my reading. I read very little new science fiction from 2014 and these stories thus were new to me.

With this many stories there are of course some that I think were weaker or that I really did not connect with. I don't think there is a single "lousy" story in here, but there were a few too many I disliked or found boring. Then there were a couple like Alastair Reynolds' story which was good until it wasn't and clearly he has no respect for Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics." What did impress me was the overall quality of most of the stories in this collection. What was missing for me were the "WOW" stories. Stories that sort of rock my world, or at least my perception of it. There are lots of good thought provoking stories in here, ones that get you looking at modern society and the world a little differently, and that is what generally is so good about science fiction through the years. But I was missing the wow factor.

With so many good to better stories in here I am only going to mention a few of my favorites. I thought Ken Liu's near future novella "The Regular," a noirish story of an unusual detective on the trail of a serial killer was above the average. There are a lot of good details in this crime story. Peter Watts short piece "The Colonel" feels like the opening chapter or two of a novel I would love to read. All sorts of stuff dropped in here that could be takeoff points. Michael Swanwick's "Passage of Earth" about big worms from outer space was strange and disturbing and creepy and although I can't say I "liked it" it will certainly be one that will stay with me. Ellen Klages short piece was a very touching one about an 11 year old girl on the morning the generation ship leaves earth and she goes out early before dawn to touch and remember all the little things.

I found Mary Anne Mohanraj's "Communion" quite original and touching and interesting. Nancy Kress's novella "Yesterday's Kin" closes out the collection and takes a relatively large chunk of the volume. Kress seems to do well with novella length stories and I liked this one a lot mixing family dynamics, politics, evolutionary genetics and first contact. Good stuff and a good way to end the "Year's Best." This was my favorite story in the book and I wish there had been more stories like this. 3 1/2 stars

[Florin Constantinescu · Rating 1 out of 5]

Was 2014 the worst year for short fiction?
If the great Dozois only managed to collect these modest to pathetic stories for his year's best, then yes, 2014 was a disaster year.
Between only one standout story (the Liu) and a large number of unreadables you can try your hand with a lot of forgettable, pointless stories, or you can skip ahead to next year.
Other 2014 retrospective anthologies proved more of the same.

[Spike Gomes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've bought this collection since 1999, and consider it a sort of annual "state of the field" in regards to science fiction. This one is a bit of mixed basket for me; it contained a couple of extremely powerful and evocative stories "Passage of Earth" and "Grand Jete" that are amongst the better stories I've read in the many collections, both for the novelty of the ideas and the literary execution.

It also included far more heavy-handed political stories than usual, including a couple that were basically the author soap-boxing about global warming with some shreds of plot tacked onto it. Not that it's not a worthy topic to explore, but at least try to keep the moralizing to a minimum, eh?

It also included 90 pages of Cory Doctorow expounding on his cockamamie economic and social ideas in between congratulating the thinly disguised Mary Sues that are he and his social cohorts for their all-around awesomeness and social progressiveness. Honestly, I consider the guy, along with John Scalzi, the cancer that is killing modern science fiction. Even if I didn't find his politics to be naive at best (and that's being very forgiving of me), his tone and style is just so one note and grating, that I'd still hate him on taste alone.

That *that* particular waste of wood pulp won the Sturgeon is pretty much evidence that the criticisms of the insularity and collusion of the science fiction authors and prize committees by others including the Sad Puppies, have some merit. Even putting aside politics, it's not a particularly innovative or well written story. It's a hackneyed mess of cardboard cutout characters and mass-market tropes written in the same gee-whiz gonzo-lite style he writes *everything* in.

I digress... despite this heavy criticism, I still think the bulk of the stories are still worth the price of the book and its necessity for the serious science fiction reader.

[Lance Schonberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Year’s best collections tend to be at least decent for a representative sample of the higher end of a genre in short fiction. As a reader and a writer both, I appreciate that sampling, though for two sets of reasons. Getting back to my enjoyment of short fiction, I’m hoping to do a few anthologies this year, in addition to the online reading I’ve been doing for the last few years.

Much is made in certain quarters of the editor’s leaning to the left, politically. Since my own leanings are that way a lot of the time, I should agree with every story he put in the book, right?

Not so much.

There are some great tales here, but there are some that just don’t work for me at all. And you know, I’m okay with that. Any collection, especially a "best of", is going to somehow reflect the tastes of the compiler. Since I’m not the one who compiled this volume, I should expect to find a wide variety of enjoyment in here, and I do.

Stand out tales:
• “The Days of the War, as Red as Blood, as Dark as Bile” by Aliette de Bodard (Short)
• “The Regular” by Ken Liu (Nebula Nominee for Best Novella)
• “The Colonel” by Peter Watts (Novelette)
• “Jubilee” by Karl Schroeder (Short)
• “Communion” by Mary Anne Mohanraj (Short)
• “Yesterday’s Kin” by Nancy Kress (Nebula Winner for Best Novella)

Overall rating: 3.0 stars. I arrive at this number by a weighted mathematical average of the ratings I kept for all of the stories, and then rounding just a little bit. A straight average, putting every story exactly equal, would produce a rating of 2.8 stars. I’m not sure whether I expected a bigger difference or not, but what it tells me is that the handful of longer stories I liked enough to give 3.5 or 4 stars more than balanced the shorter pieces I didn’t like. In fact, I think only two of the stories at novelette or novella length came in under three stars.