4 newly filled up entries in Hartwell & Cramer (Ed)'s "Year's Best SF 14" (2009)

Main post.

1. Ted Kosmatka's "N-Words" (B); podcast (including downloadable MP3), alternate link for MP3; John Joseph Adams' Seeds of Change (2008); What if a few Neanderthal kids were left stranded in our world?
   
   This is an old trope, with many stories. Best known I'm aware of are Isaac Asimov's "The Ugly Little Boy" & L Sprague de Camp's "The Gnarly Man".
2. Sue Burke's "Spiders" (B); Asimov's, March 2008: A man takes a walk through a forest with his 5 year old son, pointing out jungle life to him.
   
   Its only claim to being science fiction is because the author says story is set on an unnamed world that is not earth. I consider it non-genre, but a decent read.
3. Robert Reed's "The House Left Empty"; Asimov's, April/May 2008: (B): Description of a post-disaster world where communities are tiny & self sufficient, no one travels beyond their little local community area that one can walk around, & where strangers are generally suspect.
   
   Title comes from regret of one of the characters near end: Instead of being in "an asteroid or comet with us safe in the middle, starting a ten thousand year voyage to whichever sun we want our descendants to see first", their universe has shrunk to these tiny neighborhoods.
4. Neil Gaiman's "Orange" (C); read online (no download); video of author reading the story; Jonathan Strahan's The Starry Rift: Tales of New Tomorrows (2008); fantasy: Jemima Ramsey, 17, is describing how her sister Nerys, 15, turned into "a giant orange glow & was controlling our minds" as a result of using some sort of body lotion! And that then aliens came & took her away!
   
   Unusual presentation - a series of answers to a questionnaire, but without questions.