Authors
The authors collected in the 2008 edition (St Martin's Press) include tale spinners old and new, including Stephen Baxter, Gregory Benford, Michael Swanwick, Pat Cadigan, Bruce Sterling, Gwyneth Jones and Kage Baker.
Stories
Ian Macdonald's epic storytelling is on grand display in Verthandi's Ring, and will be a joy to read for fans of hard sf and those who enjoy interesting concepts within their fiction. Pat Cadigan, affectionately refereed to as the "mother of cyberpunk" continues her exploration of technology and the human mind in Nothing Personal, and intricate character study of a cop hammered by a midlife crisis.
There is a veritable cornucopia of themes and settings within the thirty-two stories collected here. Robotic wars, bio-science, psychologically damaged aliens, alternate histories where creationism rules, the end of the universe, time travel and the celebration of life all blend intriguingly and originally to deliver a collection of short speculative fiction no sf fan should miss out on.
Summation
Aside from the fiction, both fiction readers and scholars of the genre will enjoy the editor's summation of sf in the year 2007. Dozois writes about the previous year's sf contributions in film, publishing (books and magazines) and ends his introduction with the usual list of contributors in the field to have passed away in 2007—an always sobering end to the introduction that somehow serves to make the dedicated reader enjoy what is to follow even more.
The argument of whether there is still a market for short fiction bubbles up within the publishing and writing communities every so often, and never seems to go away completely. It's clear, however, that while editors such as Dozois and others in the field of genre short fiction continue to select and put together quality anthologies such as Year's Best readers will undoubtedly keep reading them. Especially in a field such as sf, the short story does what a novel cannot—a quick burst, an idea put forth that lingers long in the mind of the reader well after the story is finished. These stories do just that. That is the point of well-written science fiction—to make us think beyond.
For more reviews by Lynne Jamneck, go here
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