Year's Best SF 6

by David G. Hartwell (Editor, Contributor), Paul McAuley (Contributor), David Brin (Contributor)

The Barnes & Noble Review

Science fiction as short fiction is perhaps my favorite form of the literary genre, and David G. Hartwell's Year's Best series is a collection -- full of humor, drama, style, and surprises -- that never disappoints. Here are just some of the high points in the Sixth Edition.

Contents

ix • Introduction (Year's Best SF 6) • essay by David G. Hartwell
1 • Reef • (2000) • novelette by Paul J. McAuley
35 • Reality Check • (2000) • shortstory by David Brin
39 • The Millennium Express • (2000) • shortstory by Robert Silverberg
61 • Patient Zero • (2000) • shortstory by Tananarive Due
81 • The Oort Crowd • (2000) • shortstory by Ken MacLeod
85 • The Thing About Benny • (2000) • shortstory by M. Shayne Bell
95 • The Last Supper • (2000) • shortstory by Brian Stableford
113 • Tuberculosis Bacteria Join UN • (2000) • shortstory by Joan Slonczewski
117 • Our Mortal Span • (2000) • shortstory by Howard Waldrop
130 • Different Kinds of Darkness • [Blit] • (2000) • shortstory by David Langford
143 • New Ice Age, or Just Cold Feet? • (2000) • shortfiction by Norman Spinrad
147 • The Devotee • (2000) • novelette by Stephen Dedman
189 • The Marriage of Sky & Sea • (2000) • shortstory by Chris Beckett
210 • In the Days of the Comet • (2000) • shortstory by John M. Ford
214 • The Birthday of the World • (2000) • novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
248 • Oracle • (2000) • novella by Greg Egan
303 • To Cuddle Amy • (2000) • shortstory by Nancy Kress
308 • Steppenpferd • (2000) • shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
322 • Sheena 5 • [Manifold] • (2000) • shortstory by Stephen Baxter
343 • The Fire Eggs • (2000) • shortstory by Darrell Schweitzer
358 • The New Horla • (2000) • shortstory by Robert Sheckley
372 • Madame Bovary, C'est Moi • (2000) • shortstory by Dan Simmons
377 • Grandma's Jumpman • (2000) • shortstory by Robert Reed
398 • Bordeaux Mixture • (2000) • shortfiction by Henry Gee [as by Charles Dexter Ward ]
402 • The Dryad's Wedding • (2000) • novelette by Robert Charles Wilson
427 • Built Upon the Sands of Time • (2000) • shortstory by Michael F. Flynn
445 • Seventy-Two Letters • (2000) • novella by Ted Chiang

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Short Story Collection, Collections

512 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

David Geddes Hartwell was an American editor of science fiction and fantasy. He worked for Signet (1971-1973), Berkley Putnam (1973-1978), Pocket (where he founded the Timescape imprint, 1978-1983, and created the Pocket Books Star Trek publishing line), and Tor (where he spearheaded Tor's Canadian publishing initiative, and was also influential in bringing many Australian writers to the US market, 1984-date), and has published numerous anthologies. He chaired the board of directors of the World Fantasy Convention and, with Gordon Van Gelder, was the administrator of the Philip K. Dick Award. He held a Ph.D. in comparative medieval literature.

He lived in Pleasantville, New York with his wife Kathryn Cramer and their two children.

Reviews

[Hank Hoeft · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started reading this back in December 2016, and I would read it in small chunks via the Kindle app on my smart phone when I'd be waiting in line somewhere or at other idle moments. Maybe I would have enjoyed the book more if I'd have read it in a more conventional manner. But I've noticed with Hartwell's series of "Year's Best SF" that the stories, at least for me, are wildly uneven. Some are very good, and others seem flat and pointless. And this sixth collection seems to have more "meh" stories than "Wow!" stories. Oh well. We'll see what Year's Best SF 7 holds.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this exclusively during my occasional baths, since it is a paperback format in my possession.

I had already ready SF 8 and liked it.

Reef 7* [i.e., 7 stars out of 10] 2000 novelette by Paul J. McAuley 34 pages
Artistocratic sluggards who had colonized an asteroid hired space serfs. These particular asteroid sluggards had paid a data miner to find what happened to a project in which an AI had accelerated evolution in another asteroid. Our heroine, heavily modified, led the team that was going to get big bonuses for making the sluggards into billionaires from this find. But then she was betrayed ...
This one held me in the bath far longer than was comfortable, as the increasing suspense, combining both action and mystery, pulled me along.
But the resolution was not satisfying, or even clear

Reality Check 8* - 2000 shortstory by David Brin 4 pages
this was published in Nature. The intro said they do this about 1/yr.
Finally, somebody grappled with my observation about omnipotence, it would be intolerable, and such a creature would have to take rests by limiting itself.
Well written for the purpose of being a 1 page story in Nature.

The Millennium Express 5* 2000 shortstory by Robert Silverberg 22 pages
Set in post-scarcity, post severe global-warming world; one volunteer cop travels the world to stop Einstein, Picasso, Hemingway and Cleversmith (ahead of our time) from destroying all the cultural treasures.
Disappointing ending.

Patient Zero 7* 2000 shortstory by Tananarive Due 20 pages
Tah-nah-nah-REEVE Doo co-wrote a book with Dave Barry, works at Miami Herald with him, played in his band, and is married to SF great Steven Barnes!
AND this one is a compelling pageturner as we try to figure out what is going on from the eyes of a confined child, a carrier of a devastating plague. Sweet and scary but I was disappointed by the ending.

The Oort Crowd 7* 2000 shortstory by Ken MacLeod 4 pages
Very short. The notion is that organic structures evolved as giant brains in the asteroids and Oort Cloud (hence the pun, Oort Crowd).
They communicate and even move (with controlled outgassing), but the punch line was wondering if there is a mind under the surface of Earth too.

The Thing About Benny 7* 2000 shortstory by M. Shayne Bell 10 pages
Wow, I forgot what this was by 2 hours later the same day. But I googled it, and it came back fast.
Many plants are extinct, in the wild, and our narrator is the assistant for a sort of idiot savant that can find their survivors in office buildings. He found one that clears out arteries and made everybody filthy rich, so everybody he approaches gasps and hopes.
The Savant loves Abba, written when the world was lush with life, and he figures it is soaked into the music. He wants to save plant species but also memorialize Abba.
I guess that’s an utter spoiler, but was he going for suspense?? He said he was surprised that a story about extinctions came out funny. Did it? Did it really?

The Last Supper 8* 2000 shortstory by Brian Stableford 18 pages
Wryly written account of a smitten but knowing man taking his beautiful but vain and bad tempered girlfriend out to propose at a restaurant serving genetically modified food.
My favourite line was “A friend told me that’s just what a domineering bitch would say to a man lost in puppy love.”
It had no ‘how’ about science, but it had plausibility about how society reacts to science and how far science might get used.

Tuberculosis Bacteria Join UN 8* 2000 shortstory by Joan Slonczewski 4 pages
This was one of those very short things that run in Science once per year. Written in the form of a news article, and kind of funny/sophisticated about rivalries among the newly intelligent types of germ colonies, and various historic resentments and counter-accusations between humans and germs about genocidal attempts.

Our Mortal Span 6* 2000 shortstory by Howard Waldrop 13 pages
A three-headed robot in the offbeat "Our Mortal Span" runs into trouble in a theme park called Story Book Land when he takes fairy tales too seriously

Different Kinds of Darkness [Blit] 8* 2000 13 pages
Short story by weapons physicist.
Kids find picture painful to look at, compete for endurance, in world where there are two kinds of blackness, one impenetrable. Kids do experiments on that kind, get weird results.

New Ice Age, or Just Cold Feet? 6* 2000 shortfiction by Norman Spinrad 4 pages
a future zero g climate conference comes to blows about whether the global refrigeration project is going too far. It had been put into place after catastrophic global warming.
It ends with a bad joke: What do climatologists, climate engineers, nymphomaniacs, and the Earth have in common? Easier to heat up than to cool down.
Not really a story.

The Devotee 8* - 2000 novelette by Stephen Dedman 42 pages
Quite good, kind of a PI noir, pursuing missing girl amputee. Her athletic coach may have been a ‘devotee’, i.e., somebody sexually aroused by an amputation.
The athletic coach has a very rich Dad who bought off the parents.
Lots of interesting confrontation, plausible futuristic tech throwaway comments.
And I was quite interested in the mystery.
His cabby tells him it’s tough to get your head wired because then you lose interest in your other addictions, and the same criminals sell both. Interesting, insightful, though maybe not sound economics. in that case, criminals without an interest in drugs would try to get into the market.
Set is Australia, though action moves to Cuba.
Nice twist, nice action, good resolution.
But then he throws in a denouement scene and really fails to stick the landing.

The Marriage of Sky & Sea - 2000 shortstory by Chris Beckett 21 pages
This galaxy-famous writer goes to some long abandoned colony world, then publishes his book upon the moment of his return, goes to a bunch of parties and savours the fame, till he bores and repeats.
His ‘egg’ [iphone] composes according to the themes and facts he directs. It also advises him like a mother.
This time he accidentally proposes marriage but she is ravishing. He is all taken up with making the themes of the book and of his encounter sync up.
I wasn’t super keen on the ending but found it interesting and novel.

In the Days of the Comet 8* - 2000 short story by John M. Ford 4 pages
the concept was that humans have learned to manipulate prions, and view them as an interstellar message medium, so went out to search comets in the Oort Cloud for messages to us.
But in this search a human was infected, and as he died, he claimed to see them, Martians, he declared, and described them.
The crew included Neumanns, obviously artificial beings. It quoted Neumann’s observation that a machine can do any task, once the task is adequately described.
I forgot it, skimmed it again, liked it again!

The Birthday of the World - 8* 2000 novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin 34 pages
Protagonist is girl princess. Her parents are ‘god’ and she is fated to marry her baby brother to become the new god. Her older brother is fated to lead the military. She has kind feelings for her commoner nurse and for the ‘sacred’ woman that her father raped in a war.
Every year, her parents get stoned and have visions which the priests interpret.
One year, her parents and the priests all had the same vision of doom. Her father gets sick and dies and her older brother kidnaps her.
Soon there are competing claims to godhood, and the people are not happy choosing what to believe. Our God Girl won’t stoop to persuasion or even using names because claims are either true or they are not.
Unexpectedly, space travellers arrive, and God decides to turn over godhood to them even though they were all men, and it was inconceivable that god would not have a female aspect for creation.
We see the results of that, while God girl retains a god-like perspective on it.
Certainly well told, with a different take on what it means to be god.
Definitely worth the ink.

Oracle 6* 2000 novella by Greg Egan 55 pages
Story is about using a lightly disguised Alan Turing against a lightly disguised C.S. Lewis, for a morality play about rationalism v. religion. In addition to the lady from the future there is a big tv debate where Turing likes the clever philosophical attack. Anyway, then there was a sort of unfair thing where Turing heroically offers to save Lewis' wife but fanatical Lewis won’t let go of his hate.
There was a sort of citation footnote by the author assuring us that it is very solid speculation built on real things.
Pfah.

To Cuddle Amy 6* 2000 shortstory by Nancy Kress 5 pages
Very short little story about man placating his over excitable wife who is fighting with their teen age daughter. But they have 3 more versions of her frozen so, uh, . . . it examines whether being able to control our reproduction more completely will cheapen our respect for life.

Steppenpferd 5* 2000 shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss 14 pages
a Norwegian priest keeps his faith even after alien creatures take his whole church and island to another galaxy as a sort of zoological exhibit.
Even though he knows it was created by creatures he regards as evil, and even though they are acting out the roles of his fellow monks, he still sees God’s hand in everything.
Fucking Aldiss. I have no idea what he is trying to say or even what subject he is addressing.
The writing itself was clear enough, but what he meant was opaque.

Sheena 5 [Manifold] 7* 2000 21 pages by Stephen Baxter
Great concept, enjoyed the story. Found it hard to parse it to get started and occasionally bogged down. I was tired, so maybe that was it.
But Baxter is too much about the concept, too expository.
He zoomed in on the feelings of a gene-engineered squid, intended for use guiding an asteroid back to Earth for mining, on the words of some sort of government inspector/politician woman, then on various other squids as needed.
Apparently 2030 is when ecological doom strikes humanity, at least to the point of constant warring.
Would it be worth it if humanity’s only point were to bootstrap a different intelligent species into space?

The Fire Eggs 6* 2000 shortstory by Darrell Schweitzer 15 pages
Read as if my 8 year old son had written it like an adult. What would happen if large lava lamp like eggs appeared all over the world and did nothing for 35 years?
The protagonist prof visits his dying aunt. His uncle is like the Carl Sagan of his time, ultra-rationalist, but now the aunt is talking to their eggs, losing her dignity in the uncle’s eyes.
I guess it’s plausible how the world would react, but so what? I think this must be how my wife feels about most SF. What a waste of time and talent!

The New Horla - 7* 2000 shortstory by Robert Sheckley 14 pages
Protagonist tries to ski in to his friend’s chalet, gets badly injured, then thinks he is dealing with a tiny alien. Issues of remorse.

Madame Bovary, C'est Moi 5* 2000 shortstory by Dan Simmons 5 pages
short and expository about widespread adoption of quantum teleportation to other planes of the multiverse. The twist is that the human brain turns out to be a quantum device which creates these other planes, if sufficiently vivid and profound. So Flaubert creates two, but to the chagrin of American academics, Alice Walker doesn’t create any.
In short, it’s a bit of an excuse to impose his faves and trash some of his competitors.
Not much of a story, what with not really having a protagonist.
Simmons wrote Hyperion, which got a Hugo, and a bunch of horror fiction. I read Hyperion and it was trying way too hard to be clever, and like this, forgetting to be a story.

Grandma's Jumpman - 2000 shortstory by Robert Reed 21 pages
I liked it as soon as I started with lots of tropes I love in SF, with hints of war and history and misunderstood aliens among us.

The Dryad's Wedding - 7* 2000 novelette by Robert Charles Wilson 25 pages
Wilson is a Canadian author and I was thinking he wrote that book about the teen girl who befriended an emergent AI. I had liked it but scorned it a bit. Not this guy, he won a Hugo for Spin.
A genetically modified woman on another planet was about to be married. She had originally been from Earth, but after arriving on this planet, had nearly died heroically, and had had to have her brain regrown, so she had no memory from before that. But her lover from before that was her current fiancé.
Now she fears she is going insane, hearing voices, seeing the local insect-like life do weird stuff, recalling things she couldn’t.
It gets pretty weird, about the nature of minds and types of entanglement and sort of a God facsimile, but is told skilfully and concretely.

Built Upon the Sands of Time 8* - 2000 shortstory by Michael F. Flynn 18 pages
Introduction says he is in STEM but spends extra time on characterization.
This story takes place in Irish pub with suitable Irish jokes and sayings and dialect.
A morose guy eventually tells his story, which is kind of Twilight Zone plausible-ish, involving chronons going backward in time, changing things, then the change propagating forward. At some point, both original memories and new memories exist together. Also, he distinguishes between holographic storage of memories (where each recording contains the whole) and associative access to memories.
There’s a final reveal to produce the effect of the story.
I thought it was quite good.

Bordeaux Mixture - 2000 shortfiction by Henry Gee [as by Charles Dexter Ward ] 4 pages
Weird little story about how a guy gave cheap bordeaux wine to his genetically modified plants because they liked it. For real.

Seventy-Two Letters - 7* 2000 novella by Ted Chiang 67 pages
What a weird novella. Kind of a steam punk thing, except based on the idea that an old theory for reproduction was true, i.e., that everything was created at the beginning, and then things just enlarge and develop as needed, so all the infinite future selves are all packed into the semen, just stepped down in size for each generation.
Also applies what was maybe an old yiddish notion that names carry power and are a reflection of the ‘true’ name of something. So they do experiments to find the true name of abilities, then imprint that name on objects or substances to imbue the ability. Sort of like programming. Sort of like golems.
And then they find something scary!
To my surprise, it resolved with some violence, fairly compelling and suspenseful.

[Roddy Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Contents

The Reef – Paul J McAuley (Skylife Ed Benford/Zebrowski 2000)
Reality Check – David Brin (Nature, Vol 404 2000)
The Millennium Express – Robert Silverberg (Playboy, Jan 2000)
Patient Zero – Tananarive Due (F & SF 2000)
The Oort Crowd – Ken MacLeod (Nature, Vol 406 2000)
The Thing About Benny – M Shayne Bell (Vanishing Acts, Tor 2000 Ed Ellen Datlow)
The Last Supper – Brian Stableford (Science Fiction Age, Mar 2000)
Tuberculosis Bacteria Join UN – Joan Slonczewski (Nature, Vol 405 2000)
Our Mortal Span – Howard Waldrop (Black Heart, Ivory Bones, Avon Books/Eos, Ed Ellen Datlow and Terri Wilding)
Different Kinds of Darkness – David Langford (F & SF, Jan 2000)
New Ice Age, or Just Cold Feet? – Norman Spinrad (Nature, Vol 405 2000)
The Devotee – Stephen Dedman (Eidolon #29/30 2000)
The Marriage of Sky & Sea – Chris Beckett (Interzone Mar 2000)
In The Days of the Comet – John M Ford (Nature, Vol 405 2000)
The Birthday of the World – Ursula K LeGuin (F& SF, Jun 2000)
Oracle – Greg Egan (F& SF, Jul 2000)
To Cuddle Amy – Nancy Kress (Asimov’s, Aug 2000)
Steppenpferd – Brian W Aldiss (F&SF, Feb 2000)
Sheena 5 – Stephen Baxter (Analog, May 2000)
The Fire Eggs – Darrell Schweitzer (Interzone, Mar 2000)
The New Horla – Robert Sheckley (F&SF July 2000)
Madame Bovary, C’est Moi – Dan Simmons (Nature, Vol 407 2000)
Grandma’s Jumpman – Robert Reed (Century, Spring 2000)
Bordeaux Mixture – Charles Dexter Ward (Nature, Vol 404 2000)
The Dryad’s Wedding – Robert Charles Wilson (Star Colonies, 2000)
Built Upon The Sands of Time – Michael Flynn (Analog July/Aug 2000)
Seventy-Two Letters – Ted Chiang (Vanishing Acts, Tor 2000 Ed Ellen Datlow)

Annual collections have evolved like dinosaurs from the slim volumes of the 60s and 70s into the paperback versions of Tyrannosaurs, vying for attention with their garish colour schemes (Sadly, the text for the cover of this issue completely obscures the artwork, looks like it’s been thrown together hurriedly in a copy of Adobe Illustrator and doesn’t do the volume itself any justice at all).
This series, ably edited by David G Hartwell, goes head to head with the Gardner Dozois series and a whole subspecies of other annual compilations which somehow survive to re-emerge next year, so good luck to them.
This volume purports to be the best SF of 2000. I say purports to be since the publishing history is a little strange, giving a first paperback publication date of June 2000, when some of the stories included were not published until July/August 2000. Looking at the publication dates of the stories included we notice that, yes, it seems that possibly all of the work included comes from a time before August 2000, which is unfortunate if your excellent SF story was published in, say, November 2000.
Odd.
However, it is nevertheless an excellent collection and Hartwell, whatever publishing constraints he is bound by, has to be congratulated on selecting not only brilliant pieces of work, but those which complement and enhance each other. McLeod and Slonczewski, for instance, both deal with the theme of intelligent bacteria, and there are other examples of synchronicity throughout the collection.


The Reef – Paul J McAuley

One of my favourites in this collection, which tells of an expedition to find the result of a lost experiment in genetically engineered zero-gravity organisms.

Reality Check – David Brin

This is the first of several examples of the short pieces that were published in Nature throughout 2000 to celebrate the Millennium. David Brin takes a very Dickian turn with this piece which suggests that there is embedded code within the text which can wake certain people up to face a truer reality.

The Millenium Express – Robert Silverberg

On the eve of the Third Millenium, an investigator is tracking four men: Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway and Vjong Cleversmith. His aim is to find out why they are planning to blow up (or implode, since the matter is still under discussion) The Louvre, and to stop them. But can he, and more importantly, should he?

Patient Zero – Tananarive Due

A good, if a little schmaltzy, tale of a young boy who was one of the first to contract a lethal virus, and one of the only people to survive. He is kept within an isolation unit and we see the world through his eyes, via the doctors and helpers who come into contact with him, as the virus destroys society.
Well-written, and from an unusual perspective.

The Oort Crowd – Ken MacLeod

This is a prequel of sorts to MacLeod’s ‘Dark Light’ books, and is one of two tales here dealing with the concept of intelligent bacteria.

The Thing About Benny – M Shayne Bell

An unusual tale, set in the aftermath of climate change, or at least an ecological disaster, where a savante of sorts – who is also an obsessive Abba Fan - hunts through office blocks in search of rare plants which unwitting workers may have been keeping in a plant pot. His aim is to discover a new species and name it after Agnetha.
Very original and readable.

The Last Supper – Brian Stableford

A celebration of genetically-modified food in this gloriously politically incorrect story set in the restaurant of a renowned chef whose dishes are all genetically modified, and some ingredients are not what one might call strictly legal.
Elegant, satirical and memorable

Tuberculosis Bacteria Join UN – Joan Slonczewski

Another millennium tale from ‘Nature’, this time told as a news report in which a civilisation of bacteria join the UN.

Our Mortal Span – Howard Waldrop

I have a problem with Waldrop. As a writer he is good, descriptive, poetic, emotive, and pushes all the right buttons, but there is always something I don’t quite get.
This a tale set in a near future Fairy Tale Theme Park where a mechanised troll goes on the rampage, accusing the other characters of not being true to the original scripts, or so it seemed to me. It might be a little more complicated than that.

Different Kinds of Darkness – David Langford

This is what I would term a ‘real’ SF story, the sort of thing one used to get in SF monthly. It’s full of meat and character and fascinating concepts, such as pictures designed to drive the viewer insane and schools where the pupils have their perceptions altered.

New Ice Age, or Just Cold Feet? – Norman Spinrad

A short satirical tale from Spinrad in which a future Earth is struggling to reverse the effects of Global Cooling

The Devotee – Stephen Dedman

An interesting noir-esque tale featuring a hard-boiled private eye and covering issues such as amputee fetishes, porn and cloning. Despite what some people may find to be distasteful subject matter, this is an excellent tale, stylishly written and conveying a sense of verisimilitude to a complex near future society

The Marriage of Sky & Sea – Chris Beckett

A clever story which exploits our current obsession with media celebrities, one of whom is the hero – if that is the right word – of this short gem. He is an author, travelling the galaxy in a sentient ship, each time landing on a primitive world and writing about his experiences with the natives, despite the fact he is well aware of what the effect of his intrusion – along with his advanced technology – has on the cultures he visits.
On this occasion, however, he may have underestimated both the natives and his own feelings.

In The Days of the Comet – John M Ford

And yet another tale featuring the microcellular, or smaller, particles of the universe, in this case, infectious proteins or prions, which have been seeded in comets. Extraordinarily well-written for such a short piece.

The Birthday of the World – Ursula K LeGuin

Oracle – Greg Egan

Although not made that clear in the text, Egan here fictionalises a rivalry in the late Nineteen Forties between two characters based on Alan Turing and CS Lewis, and sets up a battle of essentially, science versus religion.
‘Turing’, trapped by the police into admitting a gay relationship, is blackmailed into working for an unscrupulous government scientist, but is rescued by a mysterious woman who turns out to be an AI, one of the descendants of his research.
Following a series of brilliant scientific developments on ‘Turing’s part, ‘Lewis’ believes ‘Turing’ to be in league with The Devil, and sets out to expose and discredit him.

To Cuddle Amy – Nancy Kress

Another tale that features children, which seems to be a popular subject in this volume, although this is a short and quite chilling tale, examining what morality we may eventually ascribe to producing children if it becomes a simple matter of ordering another one if the first one doesn’t work out.

Steppenpferd – Brian W Aldiss

In a strangely parallel story to Alistair Reynolds’ ‘Century Rain’ Aldiss takes us to a strange system where copies of the earth are trapped inside Dyson Spheres. On one of these worlds, in a pre-industrial Scandinavia, a priest is tormented between his faith and the reality he sees around him, doubting whether his fellow priests are real, or merely the transient bodies of the shape-changing asymmetrical aliens who have created these worlds.

Sheena 5 – Stephen Baxter

Baxter examines the ethics and possible consequences of genetic experimentation in this tale in which a tailored squid is sent out to the asteroids to set up a mining operation. The squid however, was pregnant and gives birth en-route to other equally intelligent offspring.
An alternate history of Sheena can also be found as part of Baxter’s 1999 novel, ‘Time – Manifold 1’ where the pregnant squid is diverted to Cruithne, Earth’s other ‘moon’ and the destiny of her children changed.

The Fire Eggs – Darrell Schweitzer

An odd and borderline surreal tale of luminescent eggs which appear all over the world, hovering slightly above the ground. Impervious to any form of force, and seemingly inert, they are eventually relegated to the status of inexplicable curiosities by most of the population. There are a few however, who claim that they can hear the eggs singing.

The New Horla – Robert Sheckley

A reworking of the classic tale ‘The Horla’ by Guy Du Massupaunt (?).
I’ve never really ‘got’ Sheckley, and this fairly recent piece of his didn’t help me to get him any further.

Madame Bovary, C’est Moi – Dan Simmons

It is discovered that works of literature generate their own universes in which, more often than not, the central figures do not realise that they are the central figures. This is probably the best of the ‘Nature’ stories, conveying a tremendous amount in its brief number of words.

Grandma’s Jumpman – Robert Reed

Reed as a writer is very much at home in America’s rural backwaters, and before he began his recent style of vast post-vanvogtian space opera with planet-sized ships and immortal post-humans, his work was more redolent of Clifford Simak, as here, where a young boy visiting his aunt’s farm discovers the true nature of her relationship with the alien farmhand.
As with much of Reed’s work, there is a bittersweet undertone to the piece, where idyllic surroundings are the background to a coming of age and a loss of innocence.

Bordeaux Mixture – Charles Dexter Ward

The subject of GM crops (and other foods) seems to have inspired many writers, here, Charles Dexter Ward foresees vegetation which emits pheromones to make one want to grow and eat it.

The Dryad’s Wedding – Robert Charles Wilson

On a colony world a woman has an accident and lies in a river with half her brain missing before she is found, When she is awoken after a regeneration procedure she finds the empathic flora and fauna around her trying to make contact, and has unaccountable memories of Brussels, which she has never visited.
Apparently a prequel to a Wilson novel, this is a deep and complex, highly detailed piece of work, rich with scientific ideas and the atmosphere of an alien planet.

Built Upon The Sands of Time – Michael Flynn

A very literary and Irish piece set in a bar in which scientists and others discuss matters of scientific import over a Guinness or two, and in the course of things hear a tale of alternate worlds and altered history.

Seventy-Two Letters – Ted Chiang

This is a strange novella set in an alternate Victorian world where golems can be brought to life by placing a sequence of seventy-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet under their tongue.
Also, it is discovered, each individual male sperm, when examined, contains a complete foetus. How these two scientific discoveries relate to each other is at the core of this tale of weird science, murder, espionage and the very future of the human race.

[Eero · Rating 3 out of 5]

OK, so I bought a bunch of these Hartwell anthologies from the Kindle store years ago when they were 99 cents apiece. I did not get around to reading many of them at the time, but I thought I would try again since I now have and actual Kindle with the e-ink display and all. I soon figured out one of my problems back then: the book has no table of contents, and the stories are not separate chapters. It is just an undifferentiated mass of text. I have been accustomed to seeing how much time I need to finish the current story when reading a Kindle book, and actually finding the stories from the table of contents, but hey, at least there are page breaks between the stories.

I used to be more interested in these types of anthologies when I was new to science fiction, and it was in shorter supply. Now there are so many shiny things competing for my attention that a mere collection of genre stories whose common factors are the year of release and a nod from a specific editor seems less exciting. Some of these stories were either not to my taste or went over my head (I really did not get the point of the Brian Aldiss story with the monastery in an alien snowglobe thingy) or seemed a bit insubstantial, but others were more interesting, like the pieces from Greg Egan, Robert Charles Wilson, Stephen Dedman (a gumshoe story that is very retro these days, almost two decades after publication), Baxter, Sheckley, Kress, the anthropologically oriented LeGuin...

[Earl Truss · Rating 2 out of 5]

Most of the story in this collection were OK but ranging from terrible to good.

[Darla Ebert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some innovative ideas are included in a (precious) few stories but over-all sci fi just is not what it used to be. Sadly and sigh.

[Steve Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

In hindsight, you might expect that sci-fi written at the cusp of the millennium should be a little more far-looking than the standard fare; that authors would have been inspired to think on an even grander scale than usual. Or perhaps not. This collection of stories from the year 2000 is relatively indistinguishable from the sci-fi of neighboring years, proving perhaps that authors are exercising their futurological powers to their fullest in any given year. There are a few stories set as far as another thousand years in the future ("The Millennium Express") or in times or places so distant there is no discernible connection to the present ("The Marriage of Sky and Sea", "The Birthday of the World"). But no more than in a typical collection, and for each far-future story there are others set in the past ("Oracle" and "Seventy-Two Letters") or sometime indistinguishable from the present ("The New Horla", "Built Upon The Sands of Time").

One trend that is noteworthy in this collection is the prevalence of short-short stories, with more than half a dozen taken from Nature's "Futures" series. In this collection, these tend to be brief elaborations of a gimmicky concept (e.g. the present is a VR sim, or bacteria become sentient and join the UN, etc). This subgenre is anthologized much effectively in Futures from Nature.

As with any best-of anthology, a few stories left me confused or expecting more. ("Our Mortal Coil", "Steppenpferd") They're written well, but either have no point or else I missed its significance. Given that they were championed by an editor who plucked them from the sea of more mediocre stories, I suspect it must be the latter. I also didn't enjoy either of the alternate-history stories here ("Oracle" and "Seventy-Two Letters"). Ted Chiang's "Seventy-Two Letters", in particular, was very frustrating. The story is written superbly, set in a very believable Victorian-era society, and features ambitious and enticing subthemes about information theory, Platonic essentialism, thermodynamics and class warfare. But why would I want to read about these fascinating ideas all tangled up with animated clay golems and medieval claims that sperm contain fully formed homunculi?? This story, along with "The New Horla" stray far enough from the confines of sci-fit to leave me disappointed.

There were several standouts, of course, as would be expected from any best-of anthology. For me, the most noteworthy stories were: Tananarive Due's "Patient Zero", a poignant story about a boy living through a devastating plague; David Langford's tale of "Different Kinds of Darkness", in which a team of plucky young kids stumble across a way to fight back against futuristic psychoweapons; Ursula K. Le Guin's "Birthday of the World" which (like most of her best work) juxtaposes essentially human values with a completely alien society; Stephen Baxter's "Sheena 5" about sentient squid that rise above their human benefactors in more ways than one; Robert Reed's story about "Grandma's Jumpman", a very well written story about prejudice that I'm sure I will appreciate even more on additional reading; and Michael Flynn's "Built Upon The Sands of Time", an entertaining twist on how changes to the past affect the future.

All in all, this collection is just what you'd expect from a "Year's Best" sci-fi anthology: lots of solid stories, with a few that don't resonate, but more than enough gems to be worth the effort.

[Dan Clore · Rating 4 out of 5]

Especially recommend:

Robert Sheckley, "The New Horla"
Ted Chiang, "Seventy-Two Letters"

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1331230.html[return][return]This pulls together Hartwell's selection of the best stories of 2000. As you would expect, they are all good: the standouts for me are David Langford's 'Different Kinds of Darkness', from his series of BLIT stories, this one set in a boarding school for specially talented children; Greg Egan's 'Oracle', which has an alternate-universe take on the possible interactions between C.S. Lewis and Alan Turing; and Teg Chiang's 'Seventy-Two Letters', which combines steampunk and qabalah.[return][return]It is interesting to compare Hartwell's choices with those of the Hugo and Nebula voters that year. 'Different Kinds of Darkness' won the Hugo for Best Short Story (deservedly and decisively; the other nominees were all terrible). 'Oracle' and 'Seventy-Two Letters' were both on the Hugo shortlist for Best Novella, but were beaten by Jack Williamson's 'The Ultimate Earth', which is not as good a story as either but was obviously the last chance to give an award to the nonagenarian author (it won the Nebula too, I guess for the same reason). None of Hartwell's selections made it to the Nebula shortlist, or even the preliminary ballot, for either year of eligibility. Draw your own conclusions...

[Kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've had a subscription to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for over ten years now, and I'm ALWAYS ready to read more short story collections, because there's always the chance of finding a story that smacks you upside the head and says, "Quick, woman, find everything else that this author has written, now!" This collection...didn't have anything like that, but I'm still hopeful. Langford's "Different Kinds of Darkness" came close (it introduces a new kind of warfare that can be waged on sheets of notebook paper. VERY creepy, in places.) "Built on the Sands of Time" by Michael Flynn starts out slow, but has a neat little kick in the end. And "Patient Zero" by Tananarive Due actually appeared in F&SF and is a textbook example of the really cool hard-hitting stories you get in the magazine. On a good month. If you're lucky. Other than that, the stories in this collection were more along the lines of Stableford's "The Last Supper" which was based around a great idea with lots of neat details and which...didn't actually go anywhere.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

My personal favorites that I hope to reread some day:
"the Birthday of the World"/Ursula Le Guin
"Sheena 5"/Stephan Baxter
"Built Upon the Sands of Time"/Michael F. Flynn
"The New Horla"/Robert Sheckley
"The Fire Eggs"/Darrell Schweitzer
"Seventy-Two Letters"/Ted Chiang
"Grandma's Jumpman"/Robert Reed
"Patient Zero"/Tananarive Due
"The Marriage of Sky and Sea"/Chris Beckett
"Different Kinds of Darkness"/David Langford
"Oracle"/Greg Egan

[Crusader · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great collection of science fiction short stories. There are a few that were mediocre, but the rest more than made up for it. Some that stood out for me was 'Reef' by Paul J. McAueley; 'Sheena 5' by Stephen Baxter; 'Different Kinds of Darkness' by David Langford and 'Seventy-Two Letters' by Ted Chiang. A very enjoyable read.

[Rift Vegan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A few above average stories in this collection. Tananarive Due: "Patient Zero", Ursula K. Le Guin: "Birthday of the World", Nancy Kress: "To Cuddle Amy" (yikes!), Ted Chiang: "Seventy-Two Letters" (love his stories!), David Lanford: "Different Kinds of Darkness".

[Periklis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this volume of Year's Best SF for "Madame Bovary, C'est Moi", Dan Simmons' cipher for his Ilium/ Olympos duology.

[Bill Borre]

"The Thing About Benny" by M. Shayne Bell - Benny names a new species of plant after Agnetha, the singer of the pop group ABBA.

"The Oort Crowd" by Ken MacLeod - wc
"New Ice Age, or Just Cold Feet?" by Norman Spinrad - wc
"Bordeaux Mixture" by Charles Dexter Ward - wc

[bluetyson]

Year's Best SF 6 (Year's Best SF (Science Fiction)) by David G. Hartwell (2001)

[nanrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sheena 5 is the story that's stuck with me the longest, but I also really liked the Reef, and of course UKL's Birthday of the World