The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year, Volume Nine

by Jonathan Strahan (Editor), K.J. Parker (Contributor), Paolo Bacigalupi (Contributor)

Science fiction and fantasy has never been more diverse or vibrant, and 2014 has provided a bountiful crop of extraordinary stories. These stories are about the future, worlds beyond our own, the realms of our imaginations and dreams but, more importantly, they are the stories of ourselves. Featuring best-selling writers and emerging talents, here are some of the most exciting genre writers working today.

Multi-award winning editor Jonathan Strahan once again brings you the best stories from the past year. Within you will find twenty-eight amazing tales from authors across the globe, displaying why science fiction and fantasy are genres increasingly relevant to our turbulent world.

CONTENT
“Tough Times All Over”, Joe Abercrombie
“The Scrivener”, Eleanor Arnason
“Moriabe’s Children”, Paolo Bacigalupi
“Covenant”, Elizabeth Bear
“Slipping”, Lauren Beukes
“Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind)”, Holly Black
“Shadow Flock”, Greg Egan
“The Truth About Owls”, Amal El-Mohtar
“Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology”, Theodora Goss
“Cold Wind”, Nicola Griffith
“Someday”, James Patrick Kelly
“Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No.8)”, Caitlin R Kiernan
“Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They are Terrifying”, Alice Sola Kim
“Amicae Aeternum”, Ellen Klages
“Calligo Lane”, Ellen Klages
“The Lady and the Fox”, Kelly Link
“The Long Haul From the ANNALS OF TRANSPORTATION”, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009”, Ken Liu
“The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family”, Usman T Mailk
“Four Days of Christmas”, Tim Maughan
“The Fifth Dragon”, Ian McDonald
“Shay Corsham Worsted”, Garth Nix
“I Met a Man Who Wasn’t There”, K. J. Parker
“Kheldyu”, Karl Schroeder
“Tawny Petticoats”, Michael Swanwick
“Grand Jeté (The Great Leap)”, Rachel Swirsky
“The Insects of Love”, Genevieve Valentine
“Collateral”, Peter Watts
“The Devil in America”, Kai Ashante Wilson

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

507 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2014

Reviews

[Althea Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was better than that Dinosaur prose-poem. Sorry.

Sci-fi takes on the golem story and automatons harking back to Coppélia are far from uncommon in the genre, but this story puts a fresh spin on both. I wavered over thinking that the whole dying-child aspect was a little much - but I think it worked.

A Jewish father has already lost his wife; and now his daughter is dying of cancer. Distraught, he acquires restricted, experimental technology to create a duplicate of his daughter - a duplicate right down to her memories and brain function. Understandably, the daughter does not embrace her father's 'gift' with the enthusiasm he hoped.

The way the story progresses effectively explores themes of love, grief, and identity.

Merged review:

Strahan's 'best-of' anthologies are, in my opinion, the best of their type in the genre, and have been for a while now. The stories here range from good to excellent, and give a great overview of the range of material that has been published in the past year, featuring both new and long-established authors.

Introduction, Jonathan Strahan
A very timely-feeling, if somewhat brief introduction.

*****Slipping, Lauren Beukes
Last year, Beukes' 'Broken Monsters' impressed me... and this story continues to impress. The technology here is beyond today's capabilities - but the behavior of the humans here is all too believable; the situation not just credible but likely.
With most countries banning 'enhanced' sports, the +Games has found a home in Pakistan, where bionic athletes compete not solely for an audience, but for corporate and military observers. The hope? For the surgeon to showcase their wares, resulting in a payoff.
Why would anyone opt for these extreme and experimental surgical procedures? And what is the human cost? Beukes answers these questions with this horrific and emotionally wracking portrait of one young South African competitor.

*****Moriabe's Children, Paolo Bacigalupi
Previously read in 'Monstrous Affections,' re-read because it's more than worth a second read.
A dark and tragic fairytale of an evil stepfather, set on the shores and kraken-infested seas of a northern clime... This is a bit of a departure in style from Bacigalupi's previous work - but I love it just as much if not more, than anything else I've read by him. Powerful, timeless, and relevant.

****The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family, Usman T. Malik
This is an excellent, powerful story... but I'm not sure I'd call it science-fiction. Yes, there's a bizarre element, and a 'scientific' framework - but both feel largely symbolic.
The story is dedicated to the victims of a terrorist attack in Pakistan, and effectively discusses terrorism and the hopeless circle of hate and revenge that leads to such violence.

****The Lady and the Fox, Kelly Link
Kelly Link's version of a heartwarming Christmas story.
It's a classic-feeling tale of Faerie, but Link's contemporary and sometimes bizarrely-random details give the story a strange immediacy and verisimilitude. Tam Lin meets The Snow Queen, at the mansion of a wealthy celebrity family.

****Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind), Holly Black
Previously read in the 'Monstrous Affections' anthology.
'A young girl stows away on her uncle's spaceship. But with his latest smuggling commission, he bites off more than he can chew... Space pirates and violent aliens come together in a cute but also exciting tale that's also about growing up, learning to shake off others' preconceptions, and choosing ones own path in life.'

****The Long Haul from the Annals of Transportation, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009, Ken Liu
This alternate-history piece gives us a timeline where, due to trade tariffs, great airships become a popular way to transport cargo.
Written in the style of a magazine piece (imagine the 'Atlantic Monthly'), a journalist catches a ride with a husband-wife team who sail their own privately-owned cargo airship.
Although the technical and historical details are fascinating, the piece ends up becoming more about the practice of arranged mail-order brides, and the dynamics of such a relationship.

****Tough Times All Over, Joe Abercrombie
A hilarious and non-stop 'Thieves' World-style' fantasy that plays out like a relay race. A really violent, backstabbing, dangerous relay race. It plays with all kinds of fantasy tropes, tongue firmly in cheek - but also showcases Abercrombie's talent for economically drawing vivid and compelling characters who quickly come to life in the reader's imagination.

***The Insects of Love, Genevieve Valentine
An entomologist seeks her missing sister, who disappeared in the midst of a top-secret government mission. There seems to be some kind of time-slippage happening... or possibly alternate realities.
This is beautifully written, and I loved how it was developing... but it ended abruptly, and felt unsatisfying.

****Cold Wind, Nicola Griffith
Previously read on tor.com
'When I'm promised 'urban fantasy,' now THIS is what I want to be served!!
An unnamed observer enters a women's bar on a holiday evening. Conviviality is all around her, but she is watching and waiting... for who? or what? Gradually, small clues are dropped that this isn't going to be your usual bar pick-up or one-night-stand.
Rather, it's a tale of predators and prey...
Beautiful, vivid writing, as can always be expected from Nicola Griffith.'

***Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No.8), Caitlin R Kiernan
Incest twins on a psychopathic, serial-killing road trip.
If you liked 'Natural Born Killers,' you'll probably like this.

***Shadow Flock, Greg Egan
A drone-technology expert is blackmailed into using her skills to help a group of criminals pull off a financial heist. Felt much more like the opening of a novel than a short story.

****I Met a Man Who Wasn't There, K. J. Parker
I really have to get around to reading K.J. Parker's novels; I've loved every single short story from this author that I've read. For that matter, I should probably check out Tom Holt's work too, although from the blurbs it wouldn't seem to be nearly as suited to my tastes...
This one though... right up my alley.
A dark but wryly ironic tale... The curtain opens on an individual who is agreeing to pay a man a large sum to teach certain magical skills - including the ability to walk through walls and kill a man by looking at him. He's not at all sure that magic actually exists, however.

****Grand Jeté (The Great Leap), Rachel Swirsky
Well, this sure was better than that Dinosaur prose-poem. Sorry.
Sci-fi takes on the golem story and automatons harking back to Coppélia are far from uncommon in the genre, but this story puts a fresh spin on both. I wavered over thinking that the whole dying-child aspect was a little much - but I think it worked.
A Jewish father has already lost his wife; and now his daughter is dying of cancer. Distraught, he acquires restricted, experimental technology to create a duplicate of his daughter - a duplicate right down to her memories and brain function. Understandably, the daughter does not embrace her father's 'gift' with the enthusiasm he hoped.
The way the story progresses effectively explores themes of love, grief, and identity.

****Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They are Terrifying, Alice Sola Kim
Previously read in 'Monstrous Affections.'
'Hmm. No, the 'daughters' aren't what's terrifying here; at least not at first. A tight-knit group of girls, all Korean-American adoptees, decide to dabble in dark magic. At first, their late-night ritual doesn't seem to have any effect - but eventually, the fallout from that one night will tear them apart, in more ways than one. A scary story that works on more than one level, with complex insights into the feelings of adopted children - and teenage girls in general. Very, very good.'

****Shay Corsham Worsted, Garth Nix
Previously read in 'Fearful Symmetries.'
'Garth Nix is always excellent; and this tale is no exception. A retired secret service agent has been watching a certain house for thirty years. But when the threat that's been feared for all these decades erupts, the weapon has been forgotten, and bureaucracy gets in the way.'

**** Kheldyu, Karl Schroeder
There's a very James Bond-movie feel to this one. Gennady Malianov, arms inspector, has agreed to do a job for a wealthy scion that doesn't seem to involve arms at all. A carbon-sequestration plant needs to be started up, but the remote area is infected with a hazardous fungus.
The entertaining story plays out with plenty of action.

***** Caligo Lane, Ellen Klages
"The secret of ori-kami is that a single sheet of paper can be folded in a nearly infinite variety of patterns, each resulting in a different transformation of the available space. Given any two points, it is possible to fold a line that connects them."
Franny, a woman of San Francisco, does magic using 'ori-kami.' Nice, but mood overshadows plot in this piece.
(Updating from 3 to 5 stars, May 2016)
Upon re-reading, I'm giving it 5 stars. I'm not sure why I didn't fully appreciate it last time. Yes, the mood and the setting is of primary importance in this piece, but this time, it just worked for me perfectly. I felt myself transported to this wizard's foggy, beautiful San Francisco home, and found her quest heartbreakingly sad.

***The Devil in America, Kai Ashante Wilson
This piece effectively conjures the horrific evils of American slavery - horrors which even old African magic cannot mitigate, in this tale of a family up against the overwhelming odds of racism.
However, I felt that the fractured and meta-fictional elements of the story detracted from its power.

***Tawny Petticoats, Michael Swanwick
A humorous heist tale set in an alternate, paranormal New Orleans. A couple of con artists hire the third they need for their plan. The third is enthusiastically eager for the chance to pull off the 'black money scam' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_mo...). But of course, not everything goes quite as expected.

****The Fifth Dragon, Ian McDonald
A beautiful take on the 'terraforming' theme. Two women are pioneers in the colonization of the moon. Each has their personal reasons to have left Earth, and each deals with the rigors of lunar survival in her own way. Although frequently apart, they become best friends. But, due to the low gravity, moon life comes with built-in restrictions: after a certain amount of time, a person cannot physically survive the return to Earth gravity. A decision to stay is irreversible. How will each woman choose?

*** The Truth About Owls, Amal El-Mohtar
Beautifully written, and exquisitely captures the complex feelings of a young immigrant from an unstable region. However, I disagreed with the final implication that there is something intrinsically 'healthier' in being interested in your 'own' heritage and folklore - I strongly feel that all of human heritage belongs to everyone equally.

***Four Days of Christmas, Tim Maughan
An odd little piece, inspired by a visit to the Chinese factory city from whence all our Christmas decorations come. We follow a specific future Christmas tchotchke on its journeys around the world, from factory floor to garbage dump.

****Covenant, Elizabeth Bear
One of the most original takes on the serial killer theme that I've seen. In the future, technology has come up with new ways to 'cure' psychopathy [methods that put those described in 'A Clockwork Orange' in the dust.] Here we meet one such rehabilitated criminal.

****Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology, Theodora Goss
Well, this takes worldbuilding to a whole new level - literally. A small group of academics engage in a thought experiment; imagining a modern Cimmeria (it's not made clear whether this is a kingdom descended from ancient Crimea, the homeland of Howard's Conan, or Italo Calvino's country - it could be all, or something different.) When what they've imagined comes into being, of course they have to go study it in person.
I always love Goss' stories, and this is no exception. Recommended for fans of China Miéville's 'The City & the City.'

****Collateral, Peter Watts
A re-read. Previously read in 'Upgraded'; I liked it enough to read it again. 'Fans of 'Ender's Game' may very well like this one. A soldier with enhanced reaction times, wired in to her weapons systems, must face the ethical questions brought up when innocents are killed. Caught between the media, the military, her own training and her sense of right and wrong, things play out in an unexpected - but utterly logical - fashion.'

****The Scrivener, Eleanor Arnason
I'm so happy to see Eleanor Arnason in the spotlight and getting some long-deferred attention. This is a hilariously subversive fairytale. A father has three daughters; his dream is for one of them to become the successful author that he never was. Unfortunately, their dreams and talents lie elsewhere. A famous critic suggests that the girls go on a quest to find the Baba-Yaga-esque witch in the woods to consult with her - but what each young woman finds on her journey is not precisely what their father hoped.

*** Someday, James Patrick Kelly
Aims to be a commentary of cultural anthropology, but ends up like it's pushing boundaries just for the sake of pushing boundaries, rather than in service to the story.
A young woman named Daya, inhabitant of a small village, has come to an important day in her life - the day when she picks the fathers of her child.

*** Amicae Aeternum, Ellen Klages
Hmm, it's a little unfair for one author to get two stories in a best-of anthology!
This is a nice closer, though. It has a bit of a golden-age feel... maybe Ray Bradbury meets Heinlein... but the protagonist here is a bit of an anti-Heinlein-protagonist, in every way.
However, it's still got both the nostalgia of Bradbury and the bold ventures of Heinlein.
My one thing was, I didn't understand the girl's resignation to her fate. Her 'list' of things she's going to miss out on, after leaving earth with her parents on a generation ship, convinced me that she truly didn't want to go. So... why not run away with the best friend? That was what I expected; and what I would've done, if I were her... [though, I'm not - at her age, I would've been raring to go! Only as an adult do I identify more with her regrets.]

Many thanks to Rebellion/Solaris and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this highly-recommended volume. As always, my opinions are solely my own.

[Carly · Rating 5 out of 5]

~4.5

I always look forward to Strahan's "Year's Best" anthologies because he tends to gather a lot of very unique stories that stretch the traditional boundaries of fantasy and scifi. Several of the authors have appeared in every Strahan anthology I've ever read, while others are new voices. Overall, it makes for a unique, riveting collection, and one of the best yet.

As always, K.J. Parker's contribution was amongst my favourites. In "I Met a Man Who Wasn't There" takes place in a world where magic is illegal, supposedly nonexistent, and basically gives you "the power to do anything, anything at all, so long as you don't want to do it." The dialogue is sharp, witty, and hilarious:

"In order to learn from me," he said, "there's something you need to do. Most people won't do it. A great many people simply can't. Unfortunate, but there it is."
"I see," I said. "Do what, exactly?"
His face was blank, open and totally sincere. "You need to pay me one hundred and seventy-five thalers," he said.

And while the whole story is comedic, it still manages moments of insight:

"Because that's what people do, whenever some powerful new thing comes along. If we'd all been born in darkness and someone invented the Sun, the first we'd know about it was when someone used it to burn his way into the First Consolidated Bank."

"Collateral" by Peter Watts was for me, the most memorable story in the collection. A near-future bombshell, it tells the story of a cyborg whose battle software goes haywire. Since the software works off human instincts before they can even reach conscious thought, where is the guilt or blame in actions taken with "preconscious intent"? The story explores how our emotions play into our definition of morality, and how in some ways our humanity dictates our definition of morality. I still can't get the ending out of my mind.

"Do you know what morality is, really?" Becker looked coolly into the other woman's eyes. "It's letting two stranger's kids die so you can save one of your own. It's thinking it makes some kind of difference if you look into someone's eyes when you kill them."

Alice Sola Kim's "Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying" was another absolute favourite, a laugh-out-loud, no-holds-barred portrayal of growing up as a Korean adopted teenage girl. But these teenage girls decide to do a little magic to see if they can contact their mothers. It's hilarious and creepy and bittersweet and incisive all at once:

"This is one problem with having another set of parents. A dotted outline of parents. For every time your parents forget to pick you up from soccer practice, there is the other set that would have picked you up."

The author is definitely now on my to-read list.
 
"Tawny Petticoats" by Michael Swanwick was another favourite from an author new to me. It's just pure, straightforward fun, a heist with a twist that takes place in an imaginative alternate New Orleans where manual labour is done by the zombies. It's both comedic and suspenseful, with a delightfully tongue-in-cheek irony that was almost Oscar Wildean (Wildesque? Wildeish?) in flavour:

"Corruption is a necessary and time-honored concomitant of any functioning government, and one we support wholeheartedly."

The tone of the stories alternates wildly. "The Long Haul" by Ken Liu takes place in an alternate reality where the Hindenberg never exploded and zepplins sail the sea air. Weaving together themes of culture clash and loneliness, marriage and language, it is as soothing and thoughtful and airy loneliness and space and marriage, culture clash, building language, as soothing and remote as a zepplin ride in the sky. "Shadow Flock" by Greg Egan is equally acute, yet with a tense, dark mood: it's a heist story in a near-future world where monitoring is ubiquitous and inescapable.

"If they can see everywhere, and reach anywhere, how are you going to protect us?"

I always say that anthologies have something for everyone, and this also means that not every story will work perfectly for each person. Even so--and most unusually for me-- there were no stories in the collection that I actively disliked. Every story in the collection is unique, and the sheer variety of the collection kept me engaged. Although perhaps rather too many of the writers were familiar to me, I found several new authors for whom I'll definitely be on the lookout. Overall, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable collection, and a great antidote for anyone suffering from Hugo woes. If you’re looking for a way to find some new authors to read, this may be the collection for you.
 
~~I received an advanced reader copy of this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Rebellion: Solaris, in exchange for my honest review. Thank you!~~
 
This book is over six hundred pages, so my full review is even longer than usual. The rest is over at BookLikes.

[Yzabel Ginsberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

(I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.)

4.5 stars. Usually, collections of short stories are hard for me to rate, as they always contain the good, the bad and the ugly, so to speak. This time, I can say this was a different experience. There's no story in here I didn't like at all: at worst, I was slightly indifferent, and only to a few of them. This anthology's definitely worth the read (unless you don't like horror stories being mixed with SF/F, which is a point of view I can understand).

My favourites:

* Moriabe's Children: in which a parallel is drawn between deep-sea monsters and all-too-human monsters dwelling on the shore.

* Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler: Even though the world developed here isn't particularly original, I found this story pretty entertaining and fun to read.

* Tough Times All Over: A romp in a city full of thieves, smugglers, mercenaries and various other shady types, all running after a mysterious parcel that keep eluding them and passing to yet the next person in the chain.

* Cold Wind: Predators and preys from long ago, in a modern city that has forgotten who they once were.

* Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No.8): Psychopaths on a road trip, and the way they perceive their journey and the people they meet. Not the easiest story to get into at first, due to its writing style, yet this style then contributed to keeping me me enthralled all the way.

* I Met a Man Who Wasn't There: In which con-artists and magic collide, told from a somewhat jaded yet mischievous point of view.

* Grand Jeté (The Great Leap): A widower about to lose his daughter too decides to invest into forbidden technology to create what could amount to a golem. However, his own child isn't dead yet... and accepting the one who's going to "replace" her isn't so easy.

* Shay Corsham Worsted: A retired secret services agent tries to prevent an old weapon from becoming a problem... but the secret's been so well-kept that nobody seems to know what it was about anymore.

* Tawny Petticoats: Another story of con-artists in a fantasy world, where nothing goes as planned and everybody's trying to outwit the other parties. Fairly enjoyable.

* The Fifth Dragon: A story of love, friendship, choices and loss, as the moon's being colonised and gravity-related physical issues start getting in the way.

* Four Days of Christmas: Very short but to the point. The story of Santa toys, from their manufacturing to how they get rediscovered much later, their harshness-denouncing journey made creepier due to these being "jolly" toys.

* Covenant: A good twist on the theme of serial killers, repentance and irony of fate.

* Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology: A group of academics expand on the theme of "what if Cimmeria was real, and how it would have evolved in our contemporary world." A story where imagination becomes real, giving birth to a whole nation completely escaping its creators.

* The Scrivener: This story meshes fairy tales with subverted themes of writing and literary criticism.

* Amicae Aeternum: A girl has to leave, and wishes to spend her last night with her best friend, saying goodbye to all the things she'll never see or have again. Both very nostalgic and full of hope for the future.

In-between:

* The Long Haul from the Annals of Transportation, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009: Marriage dynamics in an alternate world where the Hindenburg disaster never happened, and where airship became a norm in contemporary times.

* The Insects of Love: Mysterious and hinting at memory/time slippage. I would've liked it to be a little clearer on this latter part, though.

* Shadow Flock: A heist story, enjoyable but a little wanting in terms of a conclusion.

* Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying: Adopted teenagers girl gather and perform black magic in their quest for identity. The apparently ineffective spell gives them what they want... at first.

* Kheldyu: Action, stealthy infiltrators, interesting techological evolutions, and an "ecological" plot.

* Calligo Lane: Fascinating space-bending magic based on origami. However, the plot wasn't really defined.

* The Truth About Owls: A tale about a young girl exiled from her country, having to adapt to a new life but also unable to fully embrace her own roots.

* Collateral: (Already read in Upgraded) In which an enhanced soldier has to face the consequences of her choices and training, and come to conclusions after sifting through what's right and what's wrong.

The ones I liked the least:

* The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family: Interesting, especially for the theme it wields, but it wasn't rooted enough in sci-fi or fantastical elements for me. (Not a bad story.)

* The Devil in America: The mix of slavery and ancient magic could've been interesting, but it was so disjointed that it made it hard to follow.

* Someday: I kept thinking "why not" when it came to this society's depiction of mating and having children, but in the end I couldn't decide what was actually the point.

Conclusion: A recommended read. A few of the stories lacked a properly defined plot and punchline, but this is something that was much more pronounced in other anthologies than this one.

NB. When I write "punchline", I don't mean "the most original one in the world"... just an ending. Leaving things too open-ended in short stories always seems weird to me.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good collection. As usual, I mostly preferred the SF stories to the fantasies, but Strahan has a good eye, and I only hated one story, "The Devil in America." Of the stories I liked a lot, I'd already seen 8 of those 11 -- but I can hardly fault Strahan for picking those! The remaining 16 were at least OK.

Partial reread, Aug. 2020
The standout story for me this time was Ken Liu's "The Long Haul from the Annals of Transportation, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009". I liked this one even better on reread: it's good old-fashioned optimistic SF. Giant cargo zeppelins! Liu makes it all sound pretty plausible, and he always writes well. His model was a John McPhee article, duly acknowledged, and one that I recall with pleasure. Highly recommended, and here it is: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/liu_1...

Unfortunately, I was in a foul mood while rereading, and I picked the book up too soon. I would hit the fast-forward every time I'd hit excessive killing, dystopias, terrorists, etc. etc. I wasn't at all in the mood for any of those, so I'm not going to comment further on the rejects, some of which were OK the first time. Oh, well.

The detailed review to read is Althea Ann's, which you will find here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Most popular for good reason!

[Andreas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I outsourced short story reviews to my bookblog because GR doesn't handle shorter works well enough.


Merged review:

If you are curious reading a complete review of all contained stories in this anthology, go to my Blog, or simply follow the links below.

Summary: Strahan sets out for diversity, mixing different sub-genres. But he doesn't exactly reach this target: Many of the SF stories are near future, many of the authors seem to have a kind of subscription for appearance in his annual anthology. He could have chosen different authors from all over the world stretching the known comfort zone a bit.

On a personal note, I didn't like the inclusion of horror stories at all - I don't like them or even hate them. It would be fair at least to mark the story's genre such that I could simply skip them.

Having said that, there is something in it for everyone, and there are a couple of very good stories. Considering the overall quality of the selected stories, 2014 doesn't seem to have been one of the best years for SF&F.

My favourite ★★★★★ stories were

Moriabe's Children by Paolo Bacigalupi
Collateral by Peter Watts

☆ or ★ (mostly because they are horror stories) for me were

Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No.8) by Caitlín R. Kiernan
Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They are Terrifying by Alice Sola Kim
Shay Corsham Worsted by Garth Nix

 

Contents:

★★★★1/2 •  “Slipping” • near future SF short story by Lauren Beukes • prosthecis sports • review
★★★★★ • “Moriabe's Children” • weird short story by Paolo Bacigalupi • monsters in sea and shore • review
★★★★ • “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family” • weird SF short story by Usman T. Malik • clash of modernism, terrorism, and religion in Pakistan • review
★★★ • “The Lady and the Fox” • magical realism short story by Kelly Link • review
★★★ • “Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind)” • SF space opery novelette by Holly Black • review
★★★★ • “THE LONG HAUL from the Annals of Transportation, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009” • alternative history short story by Ken Liu • review
★★★★ •  “Tough Times All Over” • fantasy novelette by Joe Abercrombie • hot-potatoed package • review
★★★ • “The Insects of Love” • weird novelette by Genevieve Valentine • review 
★★★★ •  “Cold Wind” • dark fantasy short story by Nicola Griffith • predator and prey in cold Seattle • review
★ •  “Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No.8)” • horror story by Caitlín R. Kiernan • I can't stand horror stories; if this is your genre, this might be a very good one, literary writing style, good tension arc. But completely misplaced in a "Best of SF and Fantasy".
★★★ •  “Shadow Flock” • near SF novelette by Greg Egan • heist thriller using drones • review
★★★ •  “I Met a Man Who Wasn’t There” • fantasy short story by K. J. Parker • trickster learns magic • review
★★★★ • “Grand Jeté (The Great Leap)” • Rachel Swirsky • future golem incorporating the ego of a daughter • review
☆ •  “Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They are Terrifying” • horror story by Alice Sola Kim • again a horror story which I dislike. This one I couldn't connect and I simply skipped pages. Not worth reading for people like me.
☆ • “Shay Corsham Worsted” • horror story by Garth Nix  • horror story.
★★★ •  “Kheldyu” • near SF novelette by Karl Schroeder • solar updraft tower in far Siberia • review
★★ •  “Caligo Lane” • historical fantasy short story by Ellen Klages • magic origami mapfolder in San Francisco during WWII using fog to produce portals; didn't work for me.
★★ •  “The Devil in America” • magical realism novelette by Kai Ashante Wilson • Civil War African magic turns bad • review
★★★★ • “Tawny Petticoats” • fantasy short story by Michael Swanwick  • Darger and Surplus in zombied New Orleans • review
★★★1/2 • “The Fifth Dragon” • SF short story by Ian McDonald • love story between moon workers • review
★★1/2 • “The Truth About Owls” • fantasy short story by Amal El-Mohtar • Libanese immigrant relates to Scottish Owl Center • review
★★ •  “Four Days of Christmas” • SF short story by Tim Maughan • four vignettes describing the lifecycle of a Christmas toy
★★★1/2 • “Covenant” • Near SF short story by Elizabeth Bear • neurological serial killer turned to be prey • review
★★★★ • “Cimmeria: From The Journal of Imaginary Anthropology” • fantasy short story by Theodora Goss • invented Cimmeria comes into existence • review
★★★★★ • “Collateral” • near future SF by Peter Watts • cyborg near future SF • review
★★ • “The Scrivener” • allegorial fairy tale by Eleanor Arnason • allegorial and a bit boring fairy tale about three daugthers Imagination, Ornamentation, and Plot who shall be authors. 
★★★ • “Someday” • SF short story by James Patrick Kelly • human reproduction on a colonial planet • review
★★★ • “Amicae Aeternum” • near future SF short story by Ellen Klages • a charming story of a girl who will embark a generation space ship with her parents on the next day. She gathered a list of last things to do, most importantly remembering her friend for the generations to come.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jakub and Mara, father and daughter, struggle with the grief of loosing their wife and mother, while Mara herself is dying of cancer. But Jakub has an idea and creates a robot that looks exactly like Mara, infusing Mara's memory and personality into the robot. That way, when Mara dies, he'll still have family.

Told in three parts--Mara, Jakub, then Ruth (the Mara-robot)--Grand Jete is a novella about grief, family, and Jewish heritage. Lovely.

[Leiah Cooper · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title, “The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year” stands to reason. These are some of the best stories in both genres. For me, anthologies are the BEST. They give me not only the chance to enjoy works by familiar and well loved authors, but also to meet new authors whom I may come to love.

From magical realism to the just plain weird, this collection of stories is quite good.

The reason for the three stars? I would love to see more depth to Strahan’s stable. Many of these authors seem to show up every year. Also, why is there so much Horror?? This is supposed to be about SciFi and Fantasy – the horror stories seem much more fitting for a horror anthology.

Overall, the stories are good – but the overabundance of horror turned me off.

I received this book from the publisher in return for a realistic review. All thoughts are my own.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

*copy from Netgalley in exchange for a review*

I have to be honest – if you’re going to read one sci-fi/fantasy anthology this year, this one would be a really good choice. In the first place, because it collects a lot of wonderfully diverse material. There’s the acidic action and wry cynicism of Abercrombie’s fantasy here, in "Tough Times All Over". There’s a more whimsically fantastical feel, laced with a degree of tragedy, a focus on character, on growth, in Amal El-Mohtar’s "The Truth About Owls". There’s space opera sci-fi mixed up with a coming of age tale, humour mixed with horror in Holly Black’s "Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind)", and there’s a kind of relentless courage and a broader moral question looped into the more contemporary sci-fi of Elizabeth Bear’s "Covenant". Given the sheer number of stories in this collection, I’d say that there’s something for almost everyone.

The same is true of the approaches taken across the anthology toward those topics. There are some excellent character pieces, an author diving in to explore their protagonist, what makes them tick, what drives them. The tone across these is wildly different (K.J. Parker’s dryly cynical accidental wizard wouldn’t merge well with the bare-faced grotesqueries surrounding Caitlin Kiernan’s serial killers, for example) , but I don’t think there was a bad one in the bunch. There’s more plot-driven pieces as well, keeping the reader turning pages to see what happens – Garth Nix, for example, produces a wonderful take on this with is cryptic Shay Corsham Worsted, which begins and ends in enigma, leaving the reader wanting to know what happened before the start, and after the end of the story.

To be fair, some of the stories worked a little better for me than others; some of the pieces seemed to tie fantasy up with magical realism, and it was at once eminently readable and entirely baffling. There were moments when what an author was trying to achieve was clear, but the prose wasn’t quite navigating where it needed to go. That said, I can’t think of a single story in this rather mammoth collection that was actively bad – just a few that didn’t work as well for me as I’d hoped. On the other hand, that may be due to the aforementioned diversity – there’s a lot of content here, something in the area of 600 pages of narrative; maybe those that didn’t quite click with me would be someone else’s story of the year.

In any event, the collection presents a great many stories across a wide breadth of areas within the genre. And all of them are well written, and many of them are enjoyable (a few seem to have been written purposely to not be enjoyable, per se, and they succeed admirably). There’s some works here by well known authors, some more niche that I’d heard of, and a few interesting new discoveries – and all are worth your attention; the relatively short lengths of their stories belie their quality and their impact on the reader. At any rate, all of this collection may not be for you, but there’s probably quite a few pieces that will be – I had a few favourites, but the quality was uniformly good.

If you’re in the mood to sample something new, something interesting, something unique, you’ll probably find something to enjoy here. Strahan really has done an excellent job of gathering up some of the best short works of sci-fi and fantasy from the last year, and it’s absolutely worth giving it a read.
(I’ve put the table of contents – snagged from Tor - below; there are so many authors in here, it may help to know if one you particularly want to read is present, or if you’re looking for a particular story)

• “Tough Times All Over”—Joe Abercrombie
• “The Scrivener”—Eleanor Arnason
• “Moriabe’s Children”—Paolo Bacigalupi
• “Covenant”—Elizabeth Bear
• “Slipping”—Lauren Beukes
• “Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind)”—Holly Black
• “Shadow Flock”—Greg Egan
• “The Truth About Owls”—Amal El-Mohtar
• “Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology”—Theodora Goss
• “Cold Wind”—Nicola Griffith
• “Someday”—James Patrick Kelly
• “Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No.8)”—Caitlin R Kiernan
• “Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They are Terrifying”—Alice Sola Kim
• “Amicae Aeternum”—Ellen Klages
• “Calligo Lane”—Ellen Klages
• “The Lady and the Fox”—Kelly Link
• “The Long Haul From the ANNALS OF TRANSPORTATION”—The Pacific Monthly, May 2009”—Ken Liu
• “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family”—Usman T Malik
• “Four Days of Christmas”—Tim Maughan
• “The Fifth Dragon”—Ian McDonald
• “Shay Corsham Worsted”—Garth Nix
• “I Met a Man Who Wasn’t There”—K. J. Parker
• “Kheldyu”—Karl Schroeder
• “Tawny Petticoats”—Michael Swanwick
• “Grand Jeté (The Great Leap)”—Rachel Swirsky
• “The Insects of Love”—Genevieve Valentine
• “Collateral”—Peter Watts
• “The Devil in America”—Kai Ashante Wilson

[Shira Glassman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really deep story that I had to get my spouse's help to decode because it's Book Club material, the kind of thinky stuff that keeps peeling off in layers the more you talk about it. When sci-fi is happy or adventurous, I don't necessarily go looking for hidden meanings, but when it's tragic/melancholy/thinky like this one was, I know there's got to be more there than just the surface-level literal story (which in this case was about a father basically creating an android clone of his human daughter so that he won't lose her when she dies of adolescent cancer, and the friction between the two daughters.)

The one deep structure I got out of it was in one of the scenes after the human girl has passed away, I was suddenly reminded of the way that I feel changed, as a person, by the deaths in my immediate family. Maybe the new Shira typing this review is the clone because the old Shira ceased to be when people I loved left us. So are there really two Maras, or -- ? Because Mara's mother is dead, so it's possible to read it on that level.

My spouse's interpretation has far more logic to it, though. Mara was never allowed to light the Shabbat candles despite being the woman of the house in her mother's absence, because she wasn't old enough. She never gets to do that, because the clone gets to do it for "her" first time instead once the human Mara is dead. This scene moved me deeply but I assumed it was because Shabbat is a big deal to me. My spouse suggested that the point of the story is that the father, selfishly, did not allow the human Mara to complete her story--not letting her go, and not even letting her light the candles before she died. That he, narcissistically, wanted her story to go a certain way, controlling both girls' lives unjustly.

It's high quality but the missing star is because this is one of those stories where you really feel that to be a Jew is to suffer not only your own antisemitic microaggressions but also the pain of what your ancestors went through--in this case, the father was raised by his dysfunctionally-married Shoah-survivor grandparents, so his being fucked-up can be traced back directly to persecution. This is certainly something we deal with and the author dealt with it with skill; I just often prefer another direction. So it's more of a taste star than a quality star. If I was basing this on quality alone, sure, five stars.

[Miloš Petrik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part confusion, part bafflement, mostly just all right.

Featuring:

A Caitlin Kiernan story not about psychosis (only joking).

A Kelly Link story I actually understood the meaning of.

Dirigibles!

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

CONTENTS:
“Slipping”, by Lauren Beukes (Twelve Tomorrows: MIT Technology Review SF Annual 2014)
“Moriabe’s Children”, by Paolo Bacigalupi (Monstrous Affections)
“The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family”, by Usman T. Malik (Qualia Nous)
“The Lady and the Fox”, by Kelly Link (My True Love Gave to Me)
“Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind)”, by Holly Black (Monstrous Affections)
“The LONG HAUL, from the ANNALS OF TRANSPORTATION, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009”, by Ken Liu (Clarkesworld, Nov 2014)
“Tough Times All Over”, by Joe Abercrombie (Rogues)
“The Insects of Love”, by Genevieve Valentine (Tor.com, 28th May 2014)
“Cold Wind”, by Nicola Griffith (Tor.com, 16th Apr 2014)
“Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No. 8), by Caitlín R. Kiernan (Sirenia Digest #100, May 2014)
“Shadow Flock”, by Greg Egan (Coming Soon Enough)
“I Met a Man Who Wasn’t There”, by K.J. Parker (Subterranean Magazine, Winter 2014)
“Grand Jeté (The Great Leap)”, by Rachel Swirsky (Subterranean Magazine, Summer 2014)
“Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They are Terrifying”, by Alice Sola Kim (Tin House #61)
“Shay Corsham Worsted”, by Garth Nix (Fearful Symmetries)
“Kheldyu”, by Karl Schroeder (Reach for Infinity)
“Caligo Lane”, by Ellen Klages (Subterranean Magazine, Winter 2014)
“The Devil in America”, by Kai Ashanti Wilson (Tor.com 2nd Apr 2014)
“Tawny Petticoats”, by Michael Swanwick (Rogues)
“The Fifth Dragon”, by Ian McDonald (Reach for Infinity)
“The Truth About Owls”, by Amal El-Mohtar (Kaleidoscope)
“Four Days of Christmas”, by Tim Maughan (Terraform, Dec 2014)
“Covenant”, by Elizabeth Bear (Hieroglyph: Stories & Visions for a Better Future)
“Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology”, by Theodora Goss (Lightspeed, Jul 2014)
“Collateral”, by Peter Watts (Upgraded)
“The Scrivener”, by Eleanor Arnason (Subterranean Magazine, Winter 2014)
“Someday”, by James Patrick Kelly (Asimov’s Science Fiction, Apr/May 2014)
“Amicae Aeternum”, by Ellen Klages (Reach for Infinity)


Ninth in Strahan's series of yearly collections, this is the first one I've read and it's now a series I'll be striving to fit into the reading list for years to come. It tends to favor the longer length of novella over shorter works, a factor that I'd a priori consider a major strike against. I'm not a huge fan of novellas, but there are certainly cases where they work exceptionally well for my taste. Most of the ones in this anthology do just that. As I write the paragraphs that follow I realize that a lot of the stories also tend towards the darker side, particularly the fantasy. I tend to like that style/ambience in stories, but obviously some readers may shy away from it.

The six stories that volume 9 begins with are all superb, representative of the quality and variety to come. I had already enjoyed both Ken Liu's story and an earlier print (original?) of Holly Black's fun space adventure with a compelling pair of characters (one human and one alien) and the interesting themes of monstrosity and the discoveries during coming-of-age. Kelly Link's beautiful story is part urban fantasy and part fairy tale on family and friends set at Christmas. Similarly, Bacigalupi's story is a fantasy hailing from the same original themed collection, but this one (unlike Link's) is full of a darkness, a broken world, that I'd expect from him. Used to the SF stories I've normally seen from him though, this was a nice change done just as well. (I really need to read Monstrous Affections it seems). I'd already also read the latter story by Alice Sola Kim in Tin House that was reprint in Monstrous Affections too, and it is equally superb, though grounded in realism.

I have MITs Technology Review fiction issue on my shelf to read, and experiencing Beukes' story from it in Strahan's anthology makes me more eager to get to it. I'd only read Beukes' The Shining Girls prior (which I found over-rated, but okay). The hard sci fi from her in this story is superb, featuring competitive sports and artificial enhancements taken to the next level. The tech is interesting here, but the humanity and depth of her protagonist is even more astounding.

Among those opening six, Usman T. Malik is yet another that blew me away with its effective treatment of terrorism and violence from a large scale focused down to the personal human level. This one just won a Stoker Award, and understandably, it is perhaps more horror than SF - and I recognize Malik mostly from appearances in Nightmare Magazine. Malik has another really powerful story in the themed collection Truth or Dare, that I'm reviewing next up. If you haven't checked out his fiction yet, try either of these recent reprints. A latter story by Nix previously read in Fearful Symmetries also is truly horror in genre, though also a great story. I remember it vaguely from reading prior, but I think I enjoyed it this second time round even more.

The vague disbelief that I was so thoroughly enjoying these relatively long stories without growing restless or annoyed that I couldn't finish in a bus ride finally broke with the seventh story, Abercrombie's adventure from the Rogues collection. I have no idea if this is the case, but it felt as though I was supposed to already know these characters from somewhere, and I found it difficult to get into. Ultimately the story just kept going and I was long past caring. Swanwick's story later from the same collection had the same effect. Egan's also felt as though it was just a part of something larger, not a tale of its own.

Valentine and Griffith have a pair of stories that have a sort of ephemeral fantasies that have a beauty in the language but a strong tinge of darkness in their plots and ambience. Fitting in to this kind of story, Amal El-Mohtar's "The Truth About Owls" is one of my favorites from this anthology. She does an absolutely beautiful job relating the life of her protagonist with interludes about the biology/behavior of owls, with mythology, and with language. I read this one right before going to sleep one night and it made a fantastic bed time story.

Lastly, there were a few cases that surprised me, both negatively and positively. (Abercrombie was kind of one too given that I loved the only other thing of his I've read: Half a King.) First, the story by Wilson is on an important and relevant theme of racial issues, explored partially through a fantastic lens. I expected to adore it and be moved. Instead I found the structure and length to be an impediment. Second, Ellen Klages is represented with two stories here, I found this surprising, inexplicable. One would have sufficed and given room for something else. I didn't find either bad, but neither impressed me to understand why both were here. Third, I really enjoyed Schroeder's SF adventure. I haven't liked a lot of his stuff in the past in Analog, but this is probably because they were mostly serials. Here it felt just right, and his strength in telling a good story with hard SF elements and a bit of optimism fit perfectly amid the other types of stories in the collection.

Any serious fan of SF/Fantasy should find things of joy here, and readers who don't normally read the genre may find the novella lengths that mostly make this up to be perfect for dipping into some of the best authors in the fields. They vary from the simple entertainment to the literary, from the fantastic to the realistic. Although I'd read a decent number of those included in this before, almost all that I had (if not all) were ones that initially had really impressed me. (The only ones not already mentioned above are "Someday" from Asimov's and Theodora Goss' story, which is a fantastic achievement in making a compelling story out of something that reads like a nonfiction, a history.) I appreciated reading all these stories a second time, affirming to me that anthologies are useful even if you've read the fields somewhat well.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this from Solaris via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Annette · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked most of the stories!

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to go wrong with a Best of the Year anthology. No reader will like every story equally, but there are rarely any clunkers. Every story here is excellent in some way.

These were my favorites:

Kelly Link, "The Lady and the Fox." A Christmas story, a love story, a fairy story, a Bildungsroman. Beautiful, elegant, evocative, perfect prose, like everything Kelly Link writes.

Holly Black, "The Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind)." Terrible title, wonderful story. YA space opera. Adventure, danger, wonder, daring, with some nice twists along the way.

K.J. Parker, "I Met a Man Who Wasn't There." Witty tale of a charming crook, not quite as smart as he needs to be, and knows it. Light on its feet, clever, twisty, fast-moving. A delight.

Rachel Swirsky, "Grand Jete (The Great Leap)." Well-written, with unforgettable characters and ideas, but harrowing.

Garth Nix, "Shay Corsham Worsted." SF horror, beautifully done. High tension from start to finish. Dread inexorably builds to a powerful climax.

Michael Swanwick, "Tawny Petticoats." A caper story, three sharpers pulling off a scam and each trying to turn the tables on the other two. Set in a fantasy New Orleans with zombies and pirates. Fine diction, lots of fun.

Eleanor Arnason, "The Scrivener." A meta-story about fiction writing. Deceptively simple style, charming voice, a few twists, an amusing and fiercely honest finish.

[Wealhtheow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mara is eleven, the child of talented immigrants, and quickly dying of cancer. Her father, a gifted engineer, has gotten access to a military prototype android. He begs her to let him copy her brainwaves onto it, to give her a version of herself that will be healthy and immortal. Mara is horrified at the idea of being replaced, but eventually gives in, wanting to give her father one last gift.

The android version of Mara is identical in every thought and memory, but she avoids the "black hole" of death that Mara is being sucked into. Beautifully told, and I liked the tension between human!Mara and android!Mara. There are other cool sf concepts in here, like "attic space," a virtual reality where Mara learns and talks to friends. I wasn't entirely clear on why there was so much backstory about Mara's great-grandparents--I think to give the impression that family can be both a balm and a pain at once?

[Ria Bridges · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with any multi-author anthology, there are stories I enjoy more than others, stories where I feel the quality shines above the rest or where it just appeals to me more. I feel both that this should go without saying, and that I should mention it each time I review such a book, so that people don’t feel that I’m rating every single story 4/5 stars. Some are 5s, some are 3s. That’s the nature of the beast.

But I think it’s pretty safe for me to say that of all the SFF anthologies that I’ve read, this is the one I’ve enjoyed the most. In part because it seemed this collection really saw which way the winds were blowing and made a fantastic effort to include a huge amount of diversity in its writers and characters. That isn’t to say that there were no straight white males featured here. But there were a large number of stories with either authors or characters who were decidedly nonstraight, nonwhite, or nonmale. And it was wonderful to see, because with such a balance, you really start to get the feeling that fantasy and science fiction can and does encompass the vastness of human potential, and can be applied to and enjoyed by people who aren’t in the dominant social group in the West.

There were just so many amazing stories in here! Paolo Bacigalupi’s Moriabe’s Children is a creepy cautionary tale involving krakens and escaping from danger. I could read Kelly Link’s The Lady and the Fox half a dozen times over and love it every time. Holly Black’s Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind) was a wonderful exploration of expectations and surprise, and was really entertaining to watch the story unfold. Joe Abercrombie’s Tough Times All Over was fun, though the ending wasn’t that big a surprise once you got into the flow of the narrative. Greg Egan’s Shadow Flock was a technological thriller that I would really love to see expanded, because it was so tight and fast-paced and hinted at a lot going on in the background. Rachel Swirsky’s Grand Jete was a heartbreaking look at whether a transplanted personality is a whole new person or just a continuation of the original person, and at what point those two things differ. Kai Ashante Wilson’s The Devil in America was horrifying in more ways than one, with its take on racism and the price of magic. Michael Swanwick’s Tawny Petticoats was just hilarious, and gave me a few moments where I had to chuckle aloud while reading. And Theodora Goss’s Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology was insightful and full of thought-provoking content about creation and culture, as can be implied from the title.

And K J Parker’s I Met a Man Who Wasn’t There… My introduction to Parker’s work left me wondering what people saw in his writing, which was good but not so good that I figured it was worth the hype I’d seen it get. However, in his short stories, I’ve found some wonderful things, this most definitely being one of them (it was one of the major highlights of he anthology), and I think again that I really ought to give his novels another try, and that maybe I just started with one that really wasn’t as good as the others anyway.

Those are the best ones in the anthology, I think, and that’s well over half of them. The others were definitely good, too, but now and again there was just one that wasn’t to my taste, so my enjoy of them was an issue of personal preference rather than the quality of the content.

There’s straight-up science fiction, there’s urban fantasy, secondary-world fantasy, horror, just about everything a lover of speculative fiction could ask for in a Best Of anthology. It’s one to keep on the shelves, for sure, and one that I’ll likely revisit in the future so that I can dip my toes back into a dozen or more great stories and worlds. Strahan’s name tends to be associated with some of the best SFF anthologies, such as this one, so from the get-go you expect something that’s full of top-notch stories. He doesn’t fail to deliver on that promise. While I didn’t get introduced to as many new-to-me authors as I have in past anthologies, I have no doubt that I experienced some of the best of what genre fiction has to offer.

(Book received in exchange for an honest review.)

[Joe Karpierz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've been reading more short fiction recently. I've often wanted to read more short fiction, but never seemed to find a way to get interested in doing it.
However, now that I've been travelling for work fairly frequently, I find anthologies and short story collections are easier to read, as I don't feel as if
I need to read a large chunk of a book to make any progress. I can read a story or two, and stop when it's convenient. I can stop at the end of a story as
the plane is about to land (Yes, I know, I can do the same thing at the end of a chapter, but what do you do when you're reading a book that has massively
long chapters?). Of course, the downside is that I can stop at the end of a story and not pick the book up for quite a while, which results in not finishing
a book for several months.

Once again, in an effort to just maybe get ahead of the Hugo short-list game, I decided to read the latest in the series of Jonathan Strahan's The Best Science
Fiction and Fantasy of the Year. This one is volume 9, covering stories that were published in 2014. As with any anthology, the stories are of varying
quality, but there are no bad stories here. Strahan, an editor who reads short fiction voraciously, is a veteran and accomplished compiler of anthologies, and once again he does not disappoint. The roster of authors present in this volume reads like a who's who of science fiction and fantasy short story writers, as you might expect. And the stories themselves are a reflection of those authors' abilities and reputation. I really don't know where to begin, so this
may ramble a bit.

Starting with the science fiction, as that is my first love, Peter Watts gives us "Collateral", a story of a military cyborg who feels deep remorse over
accidentally killing a group of innocent people she mistook as the enemy. The story becomes one of morality and ethics as, after Becker undergoes some
work to deal with the remorse that is crippling her, she makes a very interesting decision regarding a freelance journalist who is doing a piece on her. Elizabeth Bear's "Covenant" follows a convicted murderer is given a new identity in part by not only undergoing a gender transformation from male to
female, but having his brain functioning "corrected" to remove the bad stuff, while still remembering everything he did in the past. Bear then turns the tables on the character as she is put in the same position as many of her prior victims were. "Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind), by Kelly Link, is an amusing tale that gives us the story title's advice in the form of a story about a smuggling operation gone horribly wrong. "Amicae Aeternum", by Ellen Klages is a brief but heartwarming tale of a young girl who is about to embark upon a voyage in a generational starship and how she spends her last day on Earth. Rachel Swirsky's "Grande Jete (The Great Leap)" is a gut wrenching tale about a man who is building an android-like replacement for his daughter while she is still alive; it is an interesting study of the reactions of all three entities involved: the father, the daughter, and the replacement.

There is no shortage of terrific fantasy stories here. Nicola Griffith's "Cold Wind" follows a woman who has been tracking down another woman for years. It is a story that gives us a bit of a different meaning to the words predator and prey. "The Scrivener", by Eleanor Arnason, is an old fashioned fairy tale in a somewhat modern setting, involving a father, his three daughters who he wants to become writers, a critic, and a witch in a forest. It's a very nice read. Ellen Klages (yep, her second story of the anthology) gives us "Caligo Lane", about a mysterious street in San Francisco and the mystical woman who lives on it. "Tough Times All Over", by Joe Abercrombie, is a just plain fun story of the comings and goings of a mysterious object and all the folks who are interconnected because they all want it. It's light hearted and amusing, and well worth the read even if you can see where it's going, in spots, a mile away. Michael Swanwick's "Tawny Petticoats" may be steampunk, but it feels more like a fantasy (well, it does to me, anyway) about a scam that doesn't quite work out the way it was supposed to. Garth Nix delivers "Shay Corsham Worsted", a story about a demon-like monster (I suppose that's redundant) and his watcher, and what goes horribly wrong when the government just doesn't listen (Funny, some things never change). It's terrifying to think that while these particular set of circumstances could not happen in real life, the government screwing up something important that they themselves set up could actually happen today and really throw things into a big mess.

There are some other stories that don't quite fit into either of those categories, but are terrific nonetheless. The most disturbing is Caitlin R. Keirnan's "Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No. 8)", about a couple of travelling serial killers. Tim Maughan's "Four Days of Christmas" is both creepy and prophetic, as those darned Santa Claus toy dolls that look at you and automatically know your name just never seem to actually go away. Then there's "Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology", which presents an interesting premise: that a country and its history can be created simply by thinking about it. The deeper story, though, is the investigation and study of the ethics of getting too involved with the people of that that country.

In the interest of brevity, I've left out several stories, but I can list the authors whose stories I didn't discuss: Paolo Bacigalupi, Lauren Beukes, Ken Liu, Genevieve Valentine, Greg Egan, K J Parker, Karl schroeder, Ian McDonald, and James Patrick Kelly, all well known names in the field. There are folks here whom I honestly never heard of, but nonetheless provided some excellent work: Amal El-Mohtar, Kai Ashante Wilson, Alice Sola Kim, and Usman T. Malik.

I'm pretty sure an anthology like this isn't easy to put together. Strahan probably had to eliminate stories from this book due to size constraints or
contractual obligations. And yet, he came up with a wonderful book. There is, apparently, a wealth of good short science fiction and fantasy being published
every year, and this is one place a reader can go to find some of it. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is looking for a sample of 2014's good short fiction. Now I guess I need to go read Gardner Dozois' anthology and see what it has in store for me.

[Anthony A · Rating 2 out of 5]

This particular volume was not that good. Lots of average or below average stories brought the overall rating down. In fact, based on this collection, I will probably not be buying the 10th volume in the series. After adding up the ratings I gave for each individual story in this volume and dividing by the total number of stories (28), I came up with an overall rating of 5.27/10.0. I was not even able to highlight a single story as being exceptional. On to the next anthology! NOTE: This volume took me a while to read, as there was a vast discontinuity in my being able to read, in general, during the year 2016.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good read, well edited

This set of stories — droll, scary, thought-provoking — are what SF is for, in my view. To explore the essence of humanness. The stories range from fantasy through harder sci-fi, but all focus on the characters.

[Lbech · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good as usual

Lots of good stories here, but Elizabeth Bear's stands out as both creepy and well-conceived. Strahan continues to have excellent taste in selecting stories. Now on to volume ten. Can't get enough of these

[Philip Hollenback · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read at least half of these in other anthologies.

[Maylin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Only read a few but may pick up later

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review originally published in Looking For a Good Book. Rated 3.5 of 5

I really like "Best of" books. I adore the short story and I enjoy being introduced to new authors, or cozying up with a familiar name. And I've realized how important an editor's tastes are to a reader's enjoyment. Editor Jonathan Strahan has pulled together a really marvelous collection of short fantasy and science fiction. As usual, in a collection of this sort, it's very difficult to pick favorites, but as I look through the contents a few stick out in my mind.

The book starts with "Slipping" by Lauren Beukes and it's a wonderful beginning and sets the bar high for the rest of the stories. The story is an all-too-possible story of future sports and what lengths people might go to in order to be successful in sports.

I enjoyed Holly Black's "Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind)" as well as Joe Abercrombie's "Tough Times All Over."

"The Fifth Dragon" by Ian McDonald has a stronger science element to it than most stories that catch my interest, but the science here leads to some very human decisions. "Collateral" by Peter Watts was a powerful story reminiscent of Ender's Game.

I've always liked Eleanor Arnason's work and "The Scrivener" was no exception. This story of a man who hopes his daughters grow up to be the successful author that he wasn't has such an honest tone about it.

This leaves a lot of stories that I haven't mentioned, meaning that they really didn't stand out. However, this may be one of the few anthologies of this sort that don't have any stories that struck me as not worthy of being included.

This volume includes:

Introduction - Jonathan Strahan
"Slipping" - Lauren Beukes
"Moriabe's Children" - Paolo Bacigalupi
"The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family" - Usman T. Malik
"The Lady and the Fox" - Kelly Link
"Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The SUccessful Kind)" - Holly Black
"THE LONG HAUL from the ANNALS OF TRANSPORTATION, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009" - Ken Liu
"Tough Times All Over" - Joe Abercrombie
"The Insects of Love" - Genevieve Valentine
"Cold Wind" - Nicola Griffith
"Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballet No.8)" - Caitlin R. Kiernan
"Shadow Flock" - Greg Eagen
"I Met a Man Who Wasn't There" - K.J. Parker
"Grand Jeté (The Great Leap)" - Rachel Swirsky
"Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They are Terrifying" - Alice Sola Kim
"Shay Corsham Worsted" - Garth Nix
"Kheldyu" - Karl Schroeder
"Caligo Lane" - Ellen Klages
"The Devil in America" - Kai Ashante Wilson
"Tawny Petticoats" - Michael Swanwick
"The Fifth Dragon" - Ian McDonald
"The Truth About Owls" - Amal El-Mohtar
"Four Days of Christmas" - Tim Maughan
"Covenant" - Elizabeth Bear
"Cimmeria: From The Journal of Imaginary Anthropology" - Theodora Goss
"Collateral" - Peter Watts
"The Scrivener" - Eleanor Arnason
"Someday" - James Patrick Kelly
"Amicae Aeternum" - Ellen Klages

It's a strong collection and a great addition to the series. A book like this suggests that there is a lot of great short fiction being published lately. I am not likely to read all, or even much, of the published short works each year, so I really value a collection such as this.

Looking for a good book? The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Vol. 9 is a strong collection of genre fiction and a great way to sample some of the best writers in the sci-fi/fantasy field.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

[Lance Schonberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of those spots where I'm wishing for half ratings. Three and a half stars.

This is a story that I’m not entirely convinced needed to be told as a SF tale. It’s far more about a man losing his child to cancer, having already lost his wife, and the child as she learns to deal with the end of life.

The speculative element, that this is relatively near future and he’s able to make a copy of her mind to put in an android doll who looks exactly like her, and this will be the first time it’s been done, seems almost unnecessary. For more than half of the story, that doll is merely an item in the background somewhere, occasionally mentioned, while the daughter’s health declines or we learn more about the father’s childhood.

But the duplicate becomes a third character, a new child, and now it needs to be SF as the story shifts to be partly about how father and daughter adapt to the duplicate and partly how the duplicate adapts to not being the daughter. Third “act” is told from the duplicate’s perspective to help this along (the first two acts have the daughter and father as POV).

It’s well written, beautifully told, and crushing, but it seems more like a demonstration of finding meaning in suffering than a science fiction story. I wonder if it was somehow inspired by Viktor Frankl’s work. Something that further supports that thought in my mind, the father is the grandson of holocaust survivors, raised by his grandparents after his mother died and his father couldn’t take care of the four sons. His life seems to have been mostly about suffering, and now he's going to inflict some on himself.

[Mihkel Samarüütel · Rating 4 out of 5]

http://loterii.blogspot.com/2015/08/j...

Lauren Beukes “Slipping” 6/10
Paolo Bacigalupi “Moriabe's Children” 4/10
Usman T. Malik “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family” 4/10
Kelly Link “The Lady and the Fox” 6/10
Holly Black “Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind)” 6/10
Ken Liu “THE LONG HAUL from the ANNALS OF TRANSPORTATION, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009” 6/10
Joe Abercrombie “Tough Times All Over” 6/10
Genevieve Valentine “The Insects of Love” 4/10
Nicola Griffith “Cold Wind” 4/10
Caitlin R. Kiernan “Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No. 8)” 5/10
Greg Egan “Shadow Flock” 5/10
K.J. Parker “I Met a Man Who Wasn't There” 6/10
Rachel Swirsky “Grand Jete (The Great Leap)” 4/10
Alice Sola Kim “Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They are Terrifying” 5/10
Garth Nix “Shay Corsham Worsted” 7/10
Karl Schroeder “Kheldyu” 5/10
Ellen Klages “Caligo Lane” 4/10
Kai Ashante Wilson “The Devil in America” 4/10
Michael Swanwick “Tawny Petticoats” 5/10
Ian McDonald “The Fifth Dragon” 5/10
Amal El-Mohtar “The Truth About Owls” 4/10
Tim Maughan “Four Days of Christmas” 3/10
Elizabeth Bear “Covenant” 6/10
Theodora Goss “Cimmeria: From The Journal of Imaginary Anthropology” 7/10
Peter Watts “Collateral” 5/10
Eleanor Arnason “The Scrivener” 7/10
James Patrick Kelly “Someday” 6/10
Ellen Klages “Amicae Aeternum” 4/10

[Elaine Aldred · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many anthologies are thematised to give a sense of coherence throughout the book. It is certainly something that guides the uninitiated or those wanting to have a taste science fiction and fantasy, or read authors they’ve not heard of before. Johathan Strahan has not done this. For this reason each story needs to be carefully read and the book set aside to let it sink in before absorbing the next one. If there is any underlying theme it is the sense of experiencing different perceptions of the genres though the eyes of writers from very diverse cultures. There is also a great deal of cross-genre writing that at times means the narrative takes some hanging on to or drives the story in some novel and interesting direction. Probably the subtext of any quality science fiction and fantasy is social commentary, of which there is plenty. But this doesn’t mean they cannot also be great fun to read, or indeed humorous. Not all the stories work, but that may be because there is a novella in there trying to get out and the text as a consequence becomes too dense with concepts. However, there is no doubt this anthology has been carefully thought though. So for writers wanting to get to grips with what these genres have to offer in the way of where they can be taken in terms of narrative, then this is the book to read and keep for reference.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hadn't read any of the stories before, although I am familiar with some of the authors. The collection of stories in this anthology span science fiction, speculative fiction, and fantasy, written by a diverse cast of authors. But despite such variety, the stories are ordered so that they flow in view point and narrative style, each different enough so that they don't blend together, but not jarring in transition. Several of the stories did not personally suit me or were written in a style I did not particularly enjoy, but overall I found most of them different and delightful.

My two favorite stories in this collection are “Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind)”, by Holly Black, and “The LONG HAUL, from the ANNALS OF TRANSPORTATION, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009”, by Ken Liu.

I believe that these stories are a very strong representation of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and would recommend this anthology to anyone who enjoys this genre. I am going to make a point to read the previous volumes!

Disclaimer: I receieved an Advanced Reading Copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gefühlt war der Vorgänger-Band etwas stärker, für meinen höchst subjektiven persönlichen Geschmack war zu viel Fantasy-Gedöns dabei. Mein Favoriten in absteigender Reihenfolge, ich habe mich mit mir selbst auf sieben Geschichten geeinigt:

1. Grand Jeté (The Great Leap), Rachel Swirsky
2. The Long Haul from the Annals of Transportation, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009, Ken Liu
3. Collateral, Peter Watts
4. The Fifth Dragon, Ian McDonald
5. The Truth About Owls, Amal El-Mohtar
6. Slipping, Lauren Beukes
7. Ten Rules for Being an Intergalactic Smuggler (The Successful Kind), Holly Black

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An anthology of excellent science fiction and fantasy. It has a story of interest for everyone. I enjoyed reading the stories by the authors I knew. I was also delighted to find some new authors for my authors to read list! I enjoyed all of the stories. I loved reading the variety of stories that were in this anthology. I think you will too!

Disclaimer: I received an arc of this book free from the author/publisher from Netgalley. I was not obliged to write a favorable review, or even any review at all. The opinions expressed are strictly my own.

[Desiree · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great collection from a diverse set of authors. All of the stories are worth reading, but my personal favorites were:

"THE LONG HAUL from the ANNALS OF TRANSPORTATION, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009" by Ken Liu, which is as sublime as any of his short work, and is a very human tale about freight dirigible life.

"The Lady and the Fox" by Kelly Link, a very sweet tale of friendship and love.

"The Truth About Owls" by Amal El-Mohtar, which has a very satisfying amount of owls and self-discovery.

[Falbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The witch told Plot that she did her best with curing potions. "Most people are worth saving." When she made a love potion, it would work, but only so far as creating a mild interest. "The lover must do most of the work himself or herself, " the witch said. "I will not force anyone into love." She felt differently about indifference potions. These always worked. "No one should be troubled by an unwanted lover."
- Eleanor Arnason, 'The Scrivener'