Saturday, May 24, 2008

David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (Ed)'s "Year's Best SF 13" (2008) (Volume 13 of annual anthology series): Annotated table of contents & review

I've been tracking Hartwell's "Year's Best SF" since Vol 1. I'd been postponing this post in spite of having seen the ToC soon after Cramer posted it in early February 2008, hoping to read a few stories before actually doing my post.

Well, I've only read a quarter of the stories yet (none really exciting among them). But experience with Dozois' this year's BoY anthology suggests I tend to look for stories after posting ToCs - just out of curiosity!! So may be this post will get somewhat more filled in coming days.

For read stories, my rating is in brackets. Download link is provided where I'm aware a story is available online. Stories collected here were published first in the year 2007.

Table of contents (25 stories, best first, unread last).

  1. [ff] Gregory Benford's "Reasons not to Publish" (B); download (corrupt HTML layout, needs cleaning); Nature, December 2007; science fiction: A man discovers the physical nature of God, & is very frightened by implications of discovery.
  2. [ss] Karen Joy Fowler's "Always" (B); download; Asimov's, April/May 2007; non-genre: Description of life in a quasi-religious commune. Protagonist comes across as a loser, but otherwise a readable story - occasionally humorous. Winner of Nebula Award 2007.
  3. [novella] Gene Wolfe's "Memorare" (B); download; F&SF, April 2007; science fiction: Kind-of please-everyone novella about raiders of human tombs in space, & their makers who don't want the tombs of their dear ones raided. Hugo Awards 2008 & Nebula Awards 2007 nominee.
  4. [ss] Ken MacLeod's "Who's Afraid of Wolf 359?" (B); download; Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan (Eds)' "The New Space Opera", HarperCollins/Eos; space opera: A man on the run becomes a king maker. Hugo Awards 2008 nominee.
  5. Tim Pratt's "Artifice and Intelligence" (B); download; Strange Horizons, 6 Aug 2007; science fiction: A bored AI creates a game partner - a villain AI!
  6. [ff] Peter Watts' "Repeating the Past" (C); download; Nature, 29 November 2007; science fiction: A man edits the brain of his adolescent grandson to make him fearful & reverent towards ancestors!
  7. Marc Laidlaw's "An Evening's Honest Peril" (C); download; Flurb #3 (Spring-Summer 2007); fantasy: Senseless babble about swards-and-magic killing adventure in a Tomb teeming with magical creatures ready to be murdered!
  8. Johanna Sinisalo's "Baby Doll"; read online: Not read.
  9. Tony Ballantyne's "Aristotle OS"; read online; Lou Anders (Ed)'s "Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge" (2007): Not read.
  10. John Kessel's "The Last American"; John Kessel's "The Baum Plan for Financial Independence & Other Stories" (collection); download collection: Not read.
  11. Kage Baker's "Plotters and Shooters"; Lou Anders (Ed)'s "Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge" (2007): Not read.
  12. Stephen Baxter's "No More Stories"; Lou Anders (Ed)'s "Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge" (2007): Not read.
  13. Robyn Hitchcock's "They Came From the Future"; Lou Anders (Ed)'s "Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge" (2007): Not read.
  14. Gwyneth Jones' "The Tomb Wife"; F&SF, August 2007: Not read.
  15. Nancy Kress' "End Game"; download MP3; Asimov's, April/May 2007: Not read.
  16. Greg Egan's "Induction"; Farah Mendlesohn & Graham Sleight (Ed)'s "Foundation 100", Summer 2007: Not read.
  17. Bernhard Ribbeck's "A Blue and Cloudless Sky": Not read.
  18. William Shunn's "Objective Impermeability in a Closed System"; download audiobook; Originally published in the chapbook "An Alternate History of the 21st Century", Spilt Milk Press, Summer 2007; Not read.
  19. Terry Bisson's "Pirates of the Somali Coast"; Subterranean #7: Not read.
  20. Ian McDonald's "Sanjeev and Robotwallah"; Lou Anders (Ed)'s "Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge" (2007): Not read.
  21. Tony Ballantyne's "Third Person"; George Mann (Ed)'s "The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction" (2007): Not read.
  22. Kathleen Ann Goonan's "The Bridge"; Asimov's, August 2007: Not read.
  23. John Hemry's "As You Know, Bob"; Analog, April 2007: Not read.
  24. Bruce Sterling's "The Lustration"; Jonathan Strahan (Ed)'s "Eclipse One" (Oct 2007): Not read.
  25. James Van Pelt's "How Music Begins"; Asimov's, September 2007: Not read.
Legend: ss = short story; ff = flash fiction.

First published: Due late May 2008 (released).
See also: Entire anthology series.

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