The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2015

Jonathan Hamilton #4 - A Better Way to Die

by Rich Horton (Editor)

This seventh volume of the year's best science fiction and fantasy features over thirty stories by some of the genre's greatest authors, including Elizabeth Bear, Paul Cornell, Cory Doctorow, James Patrick Kelly, Yoon Ha Lee, Kelly Link, Ken Liu, Sandra MacDonald, K.J. Parker, Robert Reed, Peter Watts, and many others. Selecting the best fiction from Asimov's, Clarkesworld, F&SF, Lightspeed, Subterranean, and other top venues, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy is your guide to magical realms and worlds beyond tomorrow.

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

576 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 2, 2015

Reviews

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls · Rating 2 out of 5]

A better title might have been "Some of the Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, Plus a Whole Bunch of Other Stories That Aren't Very Good." Probably too long for typesetting.

Stories (and my ratings on a scale of 1-5) include:

- "Schools of Clay" by Derek Kunsken - 3/5
- "The Scrivener" by Eleanor Arnason - 4/5
- "Invisible Planets" by Hannu Rajaniemi -1/5
- "Heaven Thunders the Truth" by K.J. Parker - 4/5
- "Selfie" by Sandra McDonald - 4/5
- "The Manor of Lost Time" by Richard Parks - 4/5
- "How to Get Back to the Forest" by Sofia Samatar - 2/5
- "Wine" by Yoon Ha Lee - 2/5
- "Every Hill Ends With Sky" by Robert Reed - 3/5
- "The Endless Sink" by Damien Ober - 3/5
- "The Long Haul, From the Annals of Transportation, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009" by Ken Liu - 2/5
- "A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i" by Alaya Dawn Johnson - 2/5
- "Ghost Story" by John Grant - 3/5
- "Break! Break! Break!" by Charlie Jane Anders - 2/5
- "Skull and Hyssop" by Kathleen Jennings - 1/5
- "Someday" by James Patrick Kelly - 2/5
- "Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology" by Theodora Goss - 3/5
- "Drones Don't Kill People" by Annalee Newitz - 4/5
- "I Can See Right Through You" by Kelly Link - 2/5
- "Petard: A Tale of Just Deserts" by Cory Doctorow - 5/5
- "The Wild and Hungry Times" by Patricia Russo - 2/5
- "Trademark Bugs: A Legal History" by Adam Roberts - 2/5
- "A Better Way to Die" by Paul Cornell - 1/5
- "The Instructive Tale of the Archeologist and His Wife" by Alexander Jablokov - 3/5
- "Fift & Shria" by Benjamin Rosenbaum - 1/5
- "The Magician and Laplace's Demon" by Tom Crosshill - 4/5
- "The Hand is Quicker" by Elizabeth Bear - 3/5
- "Sleeper" by Jo Walton - 4/5
- "Grand Jete (The Great Leap)" by Rachel Swirsky - 3/5
- "Pernicious Romance" by Robert Reed - 3/5
- "Witch, Beast, Saint: An Erotic Fairy Tale" by C.S.E. Cooney - 2/5
- "Collateral" by Peter Watts - 4/5
- "Aberration" by Genevieve Valentine - 2/5
- "Sadness" by Timons Esaias - 1/5

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

TOC: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?5...
I've read a fair number of these stories previously. Some are available as online copies; I'll note and link these if I'm aware of them. 11/26/20 note: resuming reading, as I finally remembered to check it out of the library again.

The review to read is by Jaffa Kintigh, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Note that he links a detailed review of (I think) each story. Of the ones we've both read, I pretty much agree with his ratings, so I'll be able to spend less time reviewing this oldish collection, and more time enjoying it. Win-win!

It's a good anthology. I recommend it. Here are my favorite stories, mostly SF:

• Schools of Clay • (2014) • novelette by Derek Künsken. Included in the Kindle free sample, which is where I read it. Unusual story of class-warfare within a VERY alien race. Nicely done, though a bit heavy-handed. Strong 4 stars. Lois Tilton reviewed it at Locus, https://locusmag.com/2013/12/lois-til..., and listed it as a Year's Best. 4 stars for me.
• The Scrivener (2013), short story by Eleanor Arnason. Online at https://subterraneanpress.com/magazin.... Previously read. Read https://jaffalogue.wordpress.com/2015... if you want the details. 4 stars by memory, and if you're an Arnason fan, you won't want to miss it.

• Pernicious Romance (2014), short story by Robert Reed. Just read Jaffa's, https://jaffalogue.wordpress.com/2015...
4 stars from me.
• Witch, Beast, Saint: an Erotic Fairy Tale (2014), short story by C. S. E. Cooney. About just what it says, with startlingly explicit sex. Online at http://strangehorizons.com/fiction/wi... 4 stars, if you like that sort of thing. New to me writer. More at https://csecooney.com/publications/

Editor Rich Horton and I are long-time online acquaintances. We were colleagues at SF Site. We have similar tastes, so I'm gradually catching up on his SF/F anthologies. Good books, good editor, nice guy.

[Jockum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vissa bra, vissa mindre bra och en del hoppades över.
De tre bästa novellerna var:
"The Long Haul From the ANNALS OF TRANSPORTATION"
"Skull and Hyssop"
"Drones don't kill people"

[Elle VanGilder · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve always loved these ‘Best Sci-fi & Fantasy of 20XX’ books (any anthology books that highlight the bad bitches coming out of a genre are instant sellers for me) and this was no exception! As with most anthologies, it was a bit of a mixed bag. A lot of these stories, as sci fi and fantasy often do, start out with a lot of wrinkles that are then smoothed out and explained. The unfamiliar is made familiar via repetition or the author having mercy on us and using some recognizable metaphors. Unfortunately, a good many of them were never fully smoothed out (or maybe I’m just dumb) and I was left trying to parse out something that was integral to the story but given no true backing. I know that these are short stories, so I don’t expect them to lay out every minutia of world-building, but some of it was just unsatisfying!

As I step away from this book and think back on what was most memorable I would definitely suggest checking out: Schools of Clay, Selfie, The Endless Sink, Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology, Trademark Bugs: A Legal History, and Grand Jeté.

- “Schools of Clay” by Derek Künsken - RIP Karl Marx, you would have loved weird sci-fi class consciousness with alien-bug-guys… 4/5!!
- “The Scrivener” by Eleanor Arnason - I won’t lie, the fairy tale writing enamored me after a bit. Shout out Orna for abandoning society and joining a lesbian spirit commune in the woods, you’re an inspiration. Truly a short story about the birth of the novel and the love of the non-epic story. 4/5!
- “Invisible Planets” by Hannu Rajaniemi - As much as I liked the planets invented and the short yarns built around them, I was just unsatisfied with this story as a whole. 2/5
- “Heaven Thunders the Truth” by K.J. Parker - This was super fast-moving and engaging. Even if some of the nitty-gritty of the world was lost on me (slow of head) that didn’t take away from how funky-fresh it was. 4/5
- “Selfie” by Sandra McDonald - oh wow…oh gosh…oh fuck…everyone’s gotta read this right now. 5/5
- “The Manor of Lost Time” by Richard Parks - Another banger, short-and-sweet enough to pack a punch without bogging you down with too much info. Bad thing is I really enjoyed it and wish it was longer, bogged down by information and all! 4/5
- “How to Get Back to the Forest” by Sofia Samatar - Interesting and reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale (or other dystopias, but as the conceit is directly related to sex and gender I can’t deny The classic), I finished and still expected more? IDK! 3/5
- “Wine” by Yoon Ha Lee - A compelling concept (fountain of youth, Card-esque child soldiers, queerness) but it rang a little hollow to me which sucks because I usually love Lee’s work! 2.5/5
- “Every Hill Ends with Sky” by Robert Reed - Non-carbon based super-god lifeforms could perhaps save me from the apocalypse. In the delicate balance of Weird Science and Apocalypse, I felt like I wasn’t getting enough of either. 2.5/5
- “The Endless Sink” by Damien Ober - Almost a dream-like content to it (in the fact that I’m pretty sure everyone has dreamed of flying and sinking into an abyss) which made it fun to read, but it didn’t do much more than that. Enjoyed it, though! 3/5
- “The Long Haul, From the ANNALS OF TRANSPORTATION, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009” by Ken Liu - I love Ken Liu, but I also hate zeppelin fantasy (no idea why, it’s just not my thing) so this was a major conflict of interest. 2.5/5
- “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai’i” by Alaya Dawn Johnson - I fucked heavy with this. Vampires and colonialism and a foggy-headed narrator. 4/5
- “Ghost Story” by John Grant - Funky and brain-itchy. It was a good read! 2/5
- “Break! Break! Break!” by Charlie Jane Anders - A really fun and quick-witted piece of prose, aided by the state of arrested development the characters are written in, but no real science fiction or fantasy to speak of! 1/5 :(
- “Skull and Hyssop” by Kathleen Jennings - In the whole of sci-fi/fantasy, my least favorite thing is sky pirates slash sky fantasy stuff. And what is this story all about? Sky pirates. So! Cheesy writing aside, this was never going to be for me. 1/5
- “Someday” by James Patrick Kelly - Having sex for anthropological reasons, okay girl! Wasn’t a huge fan of this one, but would have to ruminate more on why that’s so. 2/5
- “Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology” by Theodora Goss - I had so much fun reading this, such an interesting idea and executed in such an engaging way. I love imaginary anthropology of a fake nation. Wish we learned a bit more on HOW Cimmeria came to be Real, but c’est la vie. 4/5!!
- “Drones Don’t Kill People” by Annalee Newitz - Drones self-actualize and become anti-war. This was a really fun divergence from the usual ‘sentient AI takes over world evilly’ stuff. When we train AI on human models are they more likely to be pro- or anti-war? Do drones have an id that cultivates anti-war sentiment? 3/5!
- “I Can See Right Through You” by Kelly Link - I really enjoyed Link’s narration and it felt like there was a story that I could fw simmering just under the surface, but it flopped. I usually love a story where nothing happens, but this was nothing happens (derogatory). 2/5
- “Petard: A Tale of Just Deserts” by Cory Doctorow - Super engaging narrative style with lots of tech-bro speak that made me (a humanities-bro) very confused. Need Gail to read this and explain the nitty gritty to me, thank you! 3/5
- “The Wild and Hungry Times” by Patricia Russo - You know those history papers you read where the author gets a little sassy? That was this. I enjoyed the story as a whole and thought the presentation as a historical research paper (or what have you) was sooo silly (positive)! - 3/5
- “Trademark Bugs: A Legal History” by Adam Roberts - Big pharma makes designer bugs and also the only cure to them; this story was so amazing I’m actually floored. I loved the presentation, loved the content, loved the frankness. 5/5
- “A Better Way to Die” by Paul Cornell - Okay alternative British history with dimension travel! You did not ensnare me. 1/5!
- “The Instructive Tale of the Archeologist and His Wife” by Alexander Jablokov - Once again, an enjoyable story, now in an alternative future. I enjoy the speculation and the open ending. The question posed at the top of the story is ultimately unanswerable and the narrative maintained that. 3/5
- “Fift and Shria” by Benjamin Rosenbaum - Fun space biology (love a Weird Life, it’s been wired in me since the early days) but not much happened in it. I believe this is a story that’s expanded on in Rosenbaum’s new(-ish) book which leans more heavily on the gender-fuckery so! May have to check that out. 2/5
- “The Magician and Laplace’s Demon” by Tom Crosshill - The free will question finds grounds outside of theology (but also not really, because this narrator is definitely godly, although one with a creator) and I go WHOA!! I enjoyed this immensely :). 4/5
- “The Hand is Quicker” by Elizabeth Bear - Very unsatisfying nothing ending, but the conceit of the story is interesting enough to give it a pass. I would love to read something longer in this setting. 3/5
- “Sleeper” by Jo Walton - Sometimes you’ve gotta remake history for the good of the masses or whatever. Sort of kind of a story about the power of organizing. 3/5
- “Grand Jeté (The Great Leap)” by Rachel Swirsky - Ye-owch! Another sad story about doubles and the questions of identity or WHATEVER! Very melancholy, very Jewish, low sci-fi slay. 4/5
- “Pernicious Romance” by Robert Reed - This was sweet in a weird DMT trip way. I enjoyed it, though, so what else really matters. 3/5
- “Witch, Beast, Saint: An Erotic Fairy Tale” by C.S.E. Cooney - A story for all the monster fuckers in your life. 2.5/5
- “Collateral” by Peter Watts - Rumination on morality and ethics by the most ethical cyborg in the world. I fw this. 3/5
- “Aberration” by Genevieve Valentine - Very very pretty but ultimately felt like nothing was being said. Loved the prose; got lost in the swirl of it; content evaded me. Maybe I’m dumb? 2/5
- “Sadness” by Timons Esaias - Can’t quite place my finger on why this rubbed my brain in an unsatisfying way, but trust that it was a let down of a last story. 2/5

[Steve Portigal · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up from a Little Free Library in June, and finally finished it today. I hadn't heard of this series before, although I've read tons of the collections edited by Gardner Dozois (RIP), so I had a basic idea what I'd get out of this. At first I was highly critical as I moved through the first few stories, thinking this was more wide-ranging in publication, story style, author, and thus sadly quality, but I kind of got over myself after that and sure not every story was worth finishing, and some were pretty disappointing by the time they finished, but overall, yes! There were some FANTASTIC stories included, and I'll partly credit the recency effect (it's near the end of the book) but wow to Grand Jeté (The Great Leap) by Rachel Swirsky.

[Jaffa Kintigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This anthology promises the best in new stories and delivers on that promise more than not. I missed having a unifying theme to the stories that really explored a topic like my other experiences with Prime Books anthologies, but I've also never had so many 4- and 5-star ratings in one anthology before (17 of the 34 stories).

The strength of this collection is in the speculative fiction inclusions. All 7 tales I've rated with 5-stars take a look at the near future. Four question the nature of reality: Rajaniemi, Grant, Goss, and Reed. Four question the nature of self: McDonald, Swirsky, Grant, and Goss. The seventh, by Roberts, provides a scathing assessment of the politics of the legal, pharmaceutical, and medical industries.

I've taken the time to review and rate each story in the anthology:
Goss, Theodora--"Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology"--5 stars
Grant, John--"Ghost Story"--5 stars
McDonald, Sandra--"Selfie"--5 stars
Rajaniemi, Hannu--"Invisible Planets"--5 stars
Reed, Robert--"Pernicious Romance"--5 stars
Roberts, Adam--"Trademark Bugs: A Legal History"--5 stars
Swirsky, Rachel--"Grand Jete (The Great Leap)"--5 stars
Arnason, Eleanor--"The Scrivener"--4 stars
Bear, Elizabeth--"The Hand is Quicker--"--4 stars
Jennings, Kathleen--"Skull and Hyssop"--4 stars
Johnson, Alaya Dawn--"A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i"--4 stars
Kelly, James Patrick--"Someday"--4 stars
Kunsken, Derek--"Schools of Clay"--4 stars
Ober, Damien--"The Endless Sink"--4 stars
Parker, K. J.--"Heaven Thunders the Truth"--4 stars
Parks, Richard--"The Manor of Lost Time--4 stars
Walton, Jo--"Sleeper"--4 stars

Also included:
Cooney, C. S. E.--"Witch, Beast, Saint: An Erotic Fairy Tale"--3 stars
Doctorow, Cory--"Petard: A Tale of Just Deserts"--3 stars
Esaias, Timons--"Sadness"--3 stars
Jablokov, Alexander--"The Instructive Tale of the Archaeologist and His Wife"--3 stars
Lee, Yoon Ha--"Wine"--3 stars
Newitz, Annalee--"Drones Don't Kill People"--3 stars
Rosenbaum, Benjamin--"Fift & Shria"--3 stars
Russo, Patricia--"The Wild and Hungry Times"--3 stars
Watts, Peter--"Collateral"--3 stars
Anders, Charlie Jane--"Break! Break! Break!"--2 stars
Cornell, Paul--"A Better Way To Die"--2 stars
Crosshill, Tom--"The Magician and Laplace's Demon"--2 stars
Link, Kelly--"I Can See Right Through You"--2 stars
Liu, Ken--"The Long Haul: From the Annuls of Transportation, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009"--2 stars
Reed, Robert--"Every Hill Ends With Sky"--2 stars
Samatar, Sofia--"How to Get Back to the Forest"--2 stars
Valentine, Genevieve--"Aberration"--1 star

I received my copy of the anthology directly from Prime Books. This collection is highly recommended. Previously, I've reviewed three other Prime Books anthologies:
After the End: Recent Apocalypses --4 stars
Extreme Zombies --4 stars
Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep --4 stars

[Ebenmaessiger · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Schools of Clay," by Derek Künsken: 9.5
- Taste is fickle, yes, although I tend to trust Rich Horton most when it comes to these sorts of things, tending explicitly, as he does, towards an sf in which a work’s literary qualities are placed on a footing equal to its purely sfnal qualities. Or, more importantly, he approaches the matter with a first-principles recognition that these qualities are at least not the same (save that recalcitrant, if understandable, love he seems to harbor for Gene Wolfe). That distinction, between (put crudely) prose/style/psychologicalacuity and sensa/estrangement/worldbuilding is therefore not necessarily one to be collapsed, but one to be mediated—one to be proportioned. Long preamble short, he hits the mark here. A straightforward tale of allegorical social sf, in which neither element – the game of ‘let’s slot these markers of class/society into their real world analogues’ and the enjoyment of seeing this truly foreign world so confidently fleshed out – overwhelms, but instead complements the other. We’re thrown into the deep end immediately and we’re made to swim. When our strokes catch, though, the story finds a propulsion that other sfnal tales of a similar thematic ilk would have trouble reaching (and the broader question [whence the great materialist sf?], we’ll table). The class element is done well here, with interesting nuggets of nuance thrown in -- lest the crie de couer become too heavy handed -- such as the unresolved tension between reform and revolution (an evergreen topic), the ‘traitor to his class’ element with our protagonist (bespeaking the difficulty of the endeavor in the first place), and the broader feeling that the system can’t but replicate itself anew even on their now idyllic enclave, given the broader constraints of their closed environment [the Maw and the shaghal]. Good stuff.

[Kayt O'Bibliophile · Rating 3 out of 5]

Positives
Short story collections can be hit or miss and thus hard to judge. This is a great, big tome--you're almost certain to find things you like with so, SO many to choose from. The review of the year at the beginning by the editor is fun to read. There's a good mix of sci-fi and fantasy.

Negatives
A not-insignificant number of these stories also appeared in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, and I want to be clear that by itself is not a negative--that other collection is much smaller, and who would begrudge an author the honor of being printed in multiple "best of" anthologies?

But.

Compared to that other, smaller book, I didn't find as many stories that stood out to me as "wow, I really liked this," despite it containing more stories. There weren't a ton Idisliked, but there were few that I would point to and say "I would like to reread this" or "I want more stories like this/set in this world." I read it, short stories are great for picking up and putting down, and then I'll be done and not think about most of them again.

Stories that Stood Out
Selfie by Sandra McDonald
In order to spend time with her mom on the moon and unable to get out of a promised trip to the past with her dad, a teen rents a "selfie" body that runs a copy of her personality and memories, which will then be assimilated back to the original body.

How to Get Back to the Forest by Sofia Samatar
Sci-fi, somewhat dystopian. Why do all kids go to camp? Why are their memories apparently wiped so they can't remember their families? Is there a war? It's not comfortable--though it's not super disturbing--and it's short, but it tells you a lot about the world of the story.

The Endless Sink by Damien Ober
A world where people live on floating rocks/hunks of land, existing in an apparently-endless void of swirling air. People may leave their rocks and float up or down, but each rock has its own rules and understanding of how the world works. An interesting premise, and one that I'd happily read more stories set in.

A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i by Alaya Dawn Johnson
Fantasy. A world where apparently a war was fought against vampires--and the vampires won. A pretty complete picture develops. Intriguing, interesting, and I wanted more. This second time reading it, I'm still intrigued, but I have a lot more questions about how the world is set up.

Fift & Shria by Benjamin Rosenbaum
Alien kids experience a camping trip, discuss the fallout of one's parents' breaking of social norms/the law, and also discuss other things because all these characters have multiple bodies. This was...interesting, yet confusing. It gave me the impression that this was an existing fictional world--the way things were described made me think this was a short story better enjoyed by people who know this existing world.

I checked and I'm right--he has a novel set in the same world, though it was originally published in 2018 (several years after this story) in German, and only in 2021 in English. Still, I'll be checking that out.

Pernicious Romance by Robert Reed
A bomb explodes at a packed sporting event, but its most notable effects aren't physical; rather, most victims are knocked unconscious for lengths of time, and every single one experience another life for days or years and beautiful, complete love. The story takes the form of a report or paper, with multiple case studies.


Other Stories in this Collection
Schools of Clay by Derek Künsken
Class struggle in what I interpreted as insectoid android-like bodies.

The Scrivener by Eleanor Arnason
A traditional-sounding fairy tales on the "three children do a thing" premise, with the three daughters of a scrivener being sent on a quest to become the author their father never could, and what happens when they go out into the world.

Invisible Planets by Hannu Rajaniemi
Descriptions of invisible planets and the strange people and cultures they contain.

Heaven Thunders the Truth by K.J. Parker
A wizard--which here means someone possessed by and directing a snake spirit to gather information, investigate things, etc.--is called to uncover the truth that people may not have realized they don't actually want.

The Manor of Lost Time by Richard Parks
An entity summoned by a spellcaster tells them the story of a famous enchantress and how they met.

Wine by Yoon Ha Lee
A secretive planet faces attack by a formidable foe and makes a a shady deal with an ally to save them--but at what cost? A courtesan investigates.

Every Hill Ends with Sky by Robert Reed
A scientist discovers alien life forms; in the future, her daughter tries to survive a post-apocalyptic landscape. Took me a bit to understand.

The Long Haul: From the Annals of Transportation, "The Pacific Monthly," May 2009 by Ken Liu
An alternate history where the Hindenburg never combusted, and zeppelins are common long-haul freight transports due to a tax on the carbon footprint of transportation for imported goods. And also, at the same time, an examination of toxic masculinity, as one half of a husband-and-wife team seems to like his wife, but married her because she seemed submissive, and assumes a lot about her thoughts and wishes, while she makes a huge amount of effort at understanding his cultural context.

Ghost Story by John Grant
A disconcerting story about a married man, and the woman who claims he's not.

Break! Break! Break! by Charlie Jane Anders
Kids who make viral home videos, contemplating their ability to use that skill for military protest videos.

Skull and Hyssop by Kathleen Jennings
A skyship captain deals with a stowaway and an arrogant guest, both hiding secrets. Interesting fantasy world, and I would've liked more.

Someday by James Patrick Kelly
A future, another planet, where some of the few remaining human communities who still procreate via sex, a young woman decides on the three men who will father her first child. Curious, and you can't be sure whether the things described are distorted understandings of sexual reproduction in a world where that's fading, or whether they actually can.

Cimmeria: From the "Journal of Imaginary Anthropology" by Theodora Goss
A group of American grad students may or may not have invented an entire nation, and they go to visit it.

Drones Don't Kill People by Annalee Newitz
Sentient drones develop opinions.

I Can See Right Trough You by Kelly Link
An actor best known for playing an attractive vampire in his youth, visits an old friend-slash-lover, some minorly spooky stuff happens, but nothing particularly interesting.

Petard: A Tale of Just Deserts by Cory Doctorow
College knowitall, talented geek influencer, realizes he's not smarter than every adult. Like other Doctorow stories I've read, it's uncomfortable in its...not necessarily realism of scenario, but realism in how people think and the overreach of corporations.

The Wild and Hungry Times by Patricia Russo
Framed as a commentary on an old, documented tale. How much should be taken as-is, and how much should be viewed as fable?

Trademark Bugs: A Legal History by Adam Roberts
In the future, pharmaceutical companies can copyright illnesses and sell their cures, and an eroding legal system lets them.

A Better Way to Die by Paul Cornell
In what appears to be ~19th century England, ish, except for the guns and science fiction, a man meets his younger, alternate self from another dimension, and is tasked by his superiors with something that should helped them score in a mostly-undescribed war. Honestly, this one spoke/wrote around a lot of things, which made it a bit hard to follow.

The Instructive Tale of the Archaeologist and His Wife by Alexander Jablokov
An archaeologist studies specific bits of future-history, but notices anomalies from our own time that lead to questioning what everyone knows about history.

The Magician and Laplace's Demon by Tom Crosshill
An AI grapples with the existence of magic unprovable by tech.

The Hand is Quicker-- by Elizabeth Bear
A capitalist-tech-hell future where people where technological "skins" to project both their best/ideal self and avoid seeing the dirtiness of the real world, that tech (along with any life services) is only available to taxpayers. One woman slips through the cracks.

I've read this before and it's not any less depressing the second time around.

Sleeper by Jo Walton
A journalist/biographer has built a sim of her subject. Some ethical questions ensue, particular whether "he" can be trusted if he's created from her data and biases.

Grant Jete (The Great Leap) by Rachel Switsky
A widower builds an android body for his dying daughter, bu when he activates it before her death, the girl--both of them--grapples with grief, resentment, and concept of self.

Witch, Beast, Saint: An Erotic Fairy Tale by C.S.E. Cooney
Smut

Collateral by Peter Watts
An augmented soldier, a cyborg, fires on a group of fisherman. In the wake of this civilian massacre are questions about her complicity and who can be responsible for decisions made without the human's consciousness.

Aberration by Genevieve Valentine
A manifestation of death--possibly a person once human, possibly not, but always unhappy and aimless--contemplates finding a way to keep from being forever thrown into new times and places.

Sadness by Timons Esaias
A human in an alien-run reserve with alien-dictated cultural amalgamations tells of a visit by an alien overlord.

[DJNana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Always tough to judge these sorts of collections. You know what you're getting yourself in for, though. If you like engaging your mind with new ideas, characters and worlds every 10 minutes or so, you'll get a great kick out of this.

I've rated the stories, in order of best to meh, so you can just read to cool ones (if that's your type of thing!):

5/5:
Schools of Clay (robot bee colony, workers rising up against the higher classes)
The Endless Sink (floating islands, colonies of people with different cultures living on them)
Break! Break! Break! (madcap first person story, this one's less about plot and more about amazing writing)
Skull and Hyssop (Firefly type of story, a strange cargo, secret government plans, stowaways)
The Magician and Laplace's Demon (fascinating story of a sentient AI chasing down a magician across space. Best ending, as well)

4/5:
Heaven Thunders the Truth (young magician who talks to dead people)
How to Get Back to the Forest (Ishiguro-lite, Never Let Me Go-ish)
The Long Haul (journalist's tale of time spent on a transatlantic blimp voyage)
Ghost Story (man gets a message from an old girlfriend, she tells him she's pregnant - multiverse story thing)
Fift & Shria (confusing story, where people are able to inhabit many bodies simultaneously, this setup is used to tell the story of standing up to bullies, and growing up)

- 3/5 - The Scrivener (a modern fairytale style story about 3 sisters)
- 3/5 - The Manor of Lost Time (a summoned demon tells her story)
- 3/5 - Cimmeria (a group of friends imagine a whole country & culture into existence)
- 3/5 - Petard (Interesting content, indulgent writing style, but just about pulls it off)
- 3/5 - Sleeper (a simulation of a man is created and talked to by the author of his biography)
- 3/5 - The Grand Leap (a Jewish man deals with his daughter's cancer by creating a robotic "golem" of her)
- 3/5 - Witch, Beast, Saint (well written, questionable content)
- 3/5 - Collateral (a cyborg has to redefine ethics & morals)
- 2/5 - Drones Don't Kill People (the drones become sentient)
- 2/5 - Invisible Planets
- 2/5 - Selfie (the usual story of a robot clone)
- 2/5 - Wine
- 2/5 - A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i (vampires rule the world, have brothels where they feed on humans)
- 2/5 - Someday (a girl chooses 3 fathers for her child)
- 2/5 - The Wild & Hungry Times (some sort of post-apocalyptic, fantasy story)
- 2/5 - A Better Way To Die (a man battles against a younger version of himself from an alternate timeline)
- 2/5 - The Instructive Tale of the Archaeologist and His Wife (in the future, there's a massive archaeological coverup, hiding our history and planting a fake history in the soil)
- 2/5 - The Hand is Quicker (dystopian future, where everything has a virtual "skin")
- 2/5 - Pernicious Romance (such a great title. A "love bomb" goes off at a stadium, causing everyone in the blast radius to fall asleep and have wet dreams, essentially)
- 1/5 - I Can See Right Through You (indulgent, poor writing, essentially a ghost story, about an aging actor)
- 1/5 - Every Hill Ends with Sky (poor, apocalypse writing)
- 1/5 - Trademark Bugs (written in the style of a legal document, just too boring to enjoy)
- 1/5 - Aberration (people document the past)
- 1/5 - Sadness (an alien race rules the earth)

[Lynnet · Rating 2 out of 5]

My thoughts on this can best be summarized in one word- "meh". None of the stories in this collection seemed to have anything new or unique to say, an impression which was reinforced by the presence of two stories, Sandra McDonald's Selfie and Rachel Swirsky's Grand Jete (the Great Leap) on the same, not particularly original topic, neither of which had much to add to the theme. Both are well written, good stories, and are singled out only because their similarity renders them symptomatic of the larger issue of this collection.

To Mr. Horton's credit, there are few bad stories in the collection. Most of the stories are solidly constructed and well written. They just don't seem to have anything to say.

[Caitlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

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Schools of Clay - hive revolution
The Scrivener - ‘s daughters
Heaven Thunders the Truth - snake magic
Selfie - (like Mara meets Flat Fia)
The Manor of Lost Time - like the imp in the jar **
How to Get Back to the Forest - endorphin chips at summer camp
Wine - and war (Gatherer's Garden)
The Endless Sink - asteroid aims
The Long Haul - flying feng shui
A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i - vampire islands
Skull and Hyssop - weatherfinder
Cimmeria - invented history
Drones Don’t Kill People - “revolution”
The Archaeologist and His Wife
Fift and Shria - multiple bodies on field trips
The Magician and Laplace's Demon - there can be only one
Grand Jete - see above Mara

--Invisible Planets - deep space planetary Frommer's
--Every Hill Ends with the Sky - Venusians like neutrinos
--Ghost Story - sliding doors vanishing
--Break! Break! Break! - stunt teens
--Someday - three fathers and a mom
--I Can See Right Through You - actor maybe vampire?
--Petard: A Tale of Just Desserts - MIT bandwidth
--The Wild and Hungry Times - recompense and clear skies
--Trademark Bugs: A Legal History - believable
--A Better Way to Die - many worlds recruitment
--The Hand is Quicker - black mirror losing your street cred
--Sleeper - museum of famous writers who may also have been spies
--Pernicious Romance - coma-inducing dating bomb
--Witch, Beast, Saint
--Collateral - augmented soldiers with augmented ethics
--Aberration
--Sadness

[Huub · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some boring, some mediocre and some good scifi and fantasy. Sentien spaceships, vampires & end of the world stories. Just what you expect from a collection like this. Excellent reading material during a holiday when you dont need to take the book home again.

[Ben Rand · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were a few stories in here that were quite good. But too many were not interesting.

[Mihkel Samarüütel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Derek Künsken “Schools of Clay” 3/10
K. J. Parker ”Heaven Thunders the Truth” 5/10
Sandra McDonald “Selfie” 4/10
Richard Parks “The Manor of Lost Time” 5/10
Sofia Samatar “How to Get Back to the Forest” 4/10
Yoon Ha Lee “Wine” 3/10
Robert Reed “Every Hill Ends with Sky” 5/10
Damien Ober “The Endless Sink” 4/10
Alaya Dawn Johnson “A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i” 4/10
John Grant “Ghost Story” 6/10
Charlie Jane Anders ”Break! Break! Break!” 5/10
Kathleen Jennings “Skull and Hyssop” 6/10
Annalee Newitz “Drones Don't Kill People” 4/10
Kelly Link “I Can See Right Through You” 5/10
Cory Doctorow “Petard: A Tale of Just Deserts” 4/10
Patricia Russo “The Wild And Hungry Times” 4/10
Paul Cornell “A Better Way to Die” 5/10
Alexander Jablokov “The Instructive Tale of the Archeologist and His Wife” 4/10
Benjamin Rosenbaum “Fift & Shria” 5/10
Tom Crosshill “The Magician and Laplace's Demon” 5/10
Elizabeth Bear “The Hand is Quicker” 5/10
Jo Walton “Sleeper” 5/10
Robert Reed “Pernicious Romance” 5/10
C. S. E. Cooney “Witch, Beast, Saint: an Erotic Fairy Tale” 6/10
Genevieve Valentine “Aberration” 2/10
Timons Esaias “Sadness” 5/10

Eleanor Arnason “The Scrivener” 7/10
Hannu Rajaniemi “Invisible Planets” 3/10
Ken Liu “THE LONG HAUL from the ANNALS OF TRANSPORTATION, The Pacific Monthly, May 2009” 6/10
James Patrick Kelly “Someday” 6/10
Theodora Goss “Cimmeria: From The Journal of Imaginary Anthropology” 7/10
Adam Roberts “Trademark Bugs: A Legal History” 6/10
Rachel Swirsky “Grand Jete (The Great Leap)” 4/10
Peter Watts “Collateral” 5/10

[Louis Lamoureux · Rating 2 out of 5]

An anthology, there are good stories and mediocre stories inside. Some were groundbreaking while others seemed derivative.

Patricia Russo's story "The Wild and Hungry Times" was one of several in a "documentary" style. Like most stories in this book, the author constructed an imaginative world, only to saddle it with a mediocre plot.

"Trademark Bugs: A Legal History" by Adam Roberts starts off with the kind of legalese/business speak (including copious footnotes) that makes me seriously consider skipping it and threatened to put me to sleep while reading. IMO, fiction should not read like a deed or a divorce decree. With that said, the story was groundbreaking.

There were several typos and missing articles.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short stories are, by their nature, a mixed bag. That's part of why I love them. A good collection of short stories will cover a variety of topics and ideas, and sci-fi/fantasy stories make for great collections.

As usual, these stories say a lot more about when they were written than any vision of the future or the past. Several were intentionally technical and complicated, which probably will not hold up well over time.

This is an excellent collection of modern speculative fiction, and I liked most of the stories, loved several of them, and only disliked one or two. That's high praise in my mind.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

strong collection demonstrating that short-form science fiction is still alive and well. lots of favorites, only a few i didn't care for. definitely disliked the hacker wish fulfillment, even if it was intended to be ironic. and maybe a few too many metafictional exercises (legal proceedings don't work terribly well as fiction, the invisible cities pastiche was too obvious for me) but even those were largely successful. and i particularly enjoyed the opening story, which imagined marxist revolution among a species so alien it wasn't really possible to picture them clearly.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a solid collection of stories. There were maybe three that I didn't care for at all, and about half a dozen that I loved. I enjoyed most of the selection, and I thought there was certainly a nice mix of stories, from literary to straightforward prose, from stories that barely had any speculative element to hard sf. Recommended for those who enjoy a mix of short speculative fiction.

[Florin Constantinescu · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another attempt to make something good out of 'annus horribilis' 2014.
When Dozois' anthology contained mostly junk, I thought maybe Horton's contains something extra. Neah! With only three standouts (the Parks, the Reed, and the Goss) - and these being of the rather short 'short story' type, and 4 or 5 unreadable, unfinishable stories, this cannot receive more than one star.

[Laura Walton Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was't my favorite edition; last year's was much better. The overall aesthetic is somewhat odd...maybe "petty" and "callow" might be descriptors? There are a couple of standout stories, but as a whole, this one wasn't quite not a disappointment.

[Alle Bücher müssen gelesen werden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some nice storys, highlights: "Drohnes dont kill people", and the one from Doctorow and Watts. Almost no filler.

[Gary Pilkington · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice collection of stories. Some good, some not so good but overall it was enjoyable.

[Dr. Ann Coker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solid SF

Excellent and varied collection...showcases the talents of both new and veteran authors. I'd recommend this edition to any lover of good science fiction and fantasy.

[David R. Scott III · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some repeats

Otherwise mostly comprehensible, some classic authors, enough to occupy an afternoon. I really did like the one about the lifecycle using time.

[Joanna Chaplin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of good names in this one. Lots of thought provoking stories. See the updates I wrote.

[Ralyn Longs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best collection of short stories I've read to date, almost all of them high-quality works with fresh ideas.

[Mark Catalfano · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked "Heaven Thunders the Truth" by K. J. Parker and "Selfie" by Sandra McDonald

[˚⊱ Avi ⊰˚ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not much into sci-fi, but even the fantasy stories in here were hit or miss. Not the greatest or most cohesive collection of short stories, but I don't think it was the worst of quality either.

[James Swenson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the first story in this collection so uninteresting that I almost gave up on the whole book. I'm glad I didn't....

I really liked "Heaven Thunders the Truth," in which K.J. Parker gives a few scenes from the life of a mind-reading wizard with a snake in his head, and kindly states (again) the continual theme of his fiction: "[L]ove should be the best thing in the world, but because you lose the people you love, love is the worst thing...."

The last story, "Pernicious Romance" by Robert Reed, is the one that stayed with me the longest: a crowd at a football game, suddenly unconscious, awakes days later with memories of a second life, sometimes lasting for years.

[Cybercrone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some good stories here - and a few I wasn't so interested in, but that's true of any anthology that tries to give a good overview of a genre.

Best story, far and away, even though it was written like a legal paper, was Trademark Bugs. Scare the liver out of you, mainly because we are already on the slippery slope it describes.