The Year's Best Science Fiction, Nineteenth Annual Collection

Starred review from May 4, 1998
There's little doubt that Dozois (Dying for It) is to the 1980s and 1990s what John W. Campbell Jr., was to the 1940s and 1950s--the finest editor in the world of short SF. Asimov's, which he edits, routinely earns half or more of the short-fiction nominations for the Hugo and Nebula awards each year, and his anthologies are equally strong. This collection features nine clearly deserving stories from Asimov's, plus 19 other excellent pieces from the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Analog, Science Fiction Age, Interzone and a variety of original anthologies and less well-known magazines. The stories range widely in type, from the highly literate work of John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly to the hard SF of G. David Nordley and Geoffrey A. Landis; from the alternate history of William Sanders and Howard Waldrop to the upscale space opera of Walter Jon Williams and Robert Reed. Among the best-known writers represented are Robert Silverberg, Nancy Kress and Gregory Benford. Of particular interest is the large number of non-American writers. Brits Paul J. McAuley, Stephen Baxter, Peter F. Hamilton, Gwyneth Jones, Ian McDonald and Brian Stableford, along with the hot Australian writer Greg Egan (represented by two stories), contribute nearly half the volume. Also included are Dozois's usual summation of the year in SF and his valuable list of honorable mentions. This anthology represents contemporary SF at its very best. (June) FYI: Dozois is a nine-time winner of the Hugo Award for best editor.

Starred review from July 3, 1995
Dozois's Year's Best, like any successful representative of a large constituency, sometimes suffers from blandness and inconsistency. As usual, it's oversized--23 stories, nearly 600 pages--and includes a variety of types of SF as well as near-horror, fantasy and humor. Five of the stories are final nominees for Nebulas, and two new ``Hainish'' stories by Ursula LeGuin were nominated for Tiptree Awards; ``The Matter of Segrri'' won. No story here is less than competent and professional; but, with a few exceptions, there is a voiceless sameness in the writing, practically a house style, that over so many pages grows tedious. (Nearly half the stories, by page count, come from the Dozois-edited Asimov's Science Fiction.) A number are flawed (``hard'' SF stories about ``aliens'' that think just like humans) or unremarkable, but these are outweighed by many fine pieces and by standouts such as LeGuin's ``Forgiveness Day,'' perhaps the best story in the book; Eliot Fintushel's ``New Wave''-like ``Ylem''; William Sanders's ``Going After Old Man Alabama'' and Terry Bisson's ``The Hole in the Hole,'' both of which are winning and funny; Katherine Kerr's chilling ``Asylum''; and Michael Bishop's grand and humane ``Cri de Coeur.'' Dozois's intelligently and ably put-together anthology does its stated job as well as any one book or editor could. Even with competition, it would still be the best of the Best.

April 30, 1989
Gathering some 600 pages of short fiction, Dozois's best-of-the-year collection has become a landmark of the genre, due as much to the editor's eclectic taste as to the unrivaled amount of space at his disposal. Although this year's selections tend to be intelligent and well written, there is a general lack of dramatic impact--seen at an extreme in Bruce Sterling's ``Our Neural Chernobyl,'' about the bioengineering equivalent of computer hackers, a fascinating synopsis that never develops into a story. The pick of the volume introduces us to vividly imagined other worlds, for instance, what it is like to live on and inside a magically paralyzed mile-long dragon in Lucius Shepard's ``The Scalehunter's Beautiful Daughter.'' Kim Stanley Robinson persuasively limns a boy's everyday life in a near-future Boston that is half overrun by a ``Glacier.'' In ``The Man Who Loved the Vampire Lady,'' Brian Stableford returns to the epic alternate history of his novel The Empire of Fear , wherein medieval Europe is ruled by an aristocracy of predatory creatures. Also among the 28 tales are works by Robert Silverberg, Connie Willis, Pat Cadigan and George Alec Effinger.