The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Eight. (ed Jonathan Strahan, Solaris Books)
Now published by Solaris books, with lots of big names from a wide variety of sources.
Will McIntosh. Dancing with Death in the Land of Nod. (The End is Nigh)
A quite vivid and memorable setting to open (and close) the story – a drive-in movie theater, and heart-breaking but affirming ending.
Ted White. The Uncertain Past. (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Mar/Apr 2014)
Nothing particularly fresh to glean from a story that covers some very well-trodden ground.
John DeCles. Apprentice. (Fantasy & Science Fiction Mar/Apr 2014)
Young Dafyd the Difficult is apprenticed to a wizard, and there is magicke, gryphons and gems.
Aliette de Bodard. The Dust Queen. (Reach for Infinity)
Set in the Xuya sequence, young Quynh Ha finds herself given a task by the Dust Queen – a living legend whose Martian dust dances she has long admired.
Lavie Tidhar. Murder in the Cathedral. (Asimovs June 2014)
Steam/lizard punk from Tidhar, who gives himself the opportunity to poke gentle fun at SF writers and SF fandom.
Greg Egan. Break My Fall. (Reach for Infinity)
Egan opens the hard SF anthology with a story that illustrates the good and less good aspects of hard SF.
Nancy Kress. Sidewalk at 12:10pm. (Asimovs June 2014)
A short story looking at the potential to do things differently.
James Van Pelt. The Turkey Raptor. (Asimovs June 2014)
Some nice writing, but the story ends up like a (not very good) teen movie from the 1980s.
Sylvain Jouty. The Finges Clearing. (Asimovs June 2014)
A short piece in which Jouty, through the translation by Edward Gauvin, looks at a clearing in a forest at Finges – a clearing evidently untouched by the hand (or the foot) of man, since time immemorial.
The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014 (ed Rich Horton, Prime Books)
Almost three dozen stories, gleaned from sources far and wide, to keep you quiet for a long time!
Nebula Awards Showcase 2014 (ed Kij Johnson, Pyr 2014)
The three short SFF winners, two runners-up, a Gene Wolfe story, and two stories masquerading as poetry.
Annie Bellet. Goodnight Moon. (The End is Nigh)
A short and fairly straightforward story, with, as the title suggests, the moon facing an apocalyptic event.
Daniel Marcus. Albion upon the Rock. (Fantasy & Science Fiction Mar/Apr 2014)
A story that upon reading it, sticks in the memory as being longer than it actually was.
Hugh Howey. In the Air. (The End is Nigh)
If you co-edit an anthology, you’ve got to make sure your story stands up alongside the rest, and fortunately Howey does so.
David Erik Nelson. There was No Sound of Thunder. (Asimovs June 2014)
A light-hearted time travelling story.
Ian Creasey. Ormonde and Chase. (Asimovs June 2014)
A plant story that has a germ of an idea, but the plant was rushed out of the greenhouse a bit too early, without enough hardening off.
Ben H. Winters. BRING HER TO ME. (The End is Nigh)
The BRING HER TO ME word of the Lord is BRING HER TO ME insistent, albeit capitalized…..
Albert E. Cowdrey. Byzantine History 101. (Fantasy & Science Fiction Mar/Apr 2014)
Further adventures of Professor Threefoot, whose ‘lengthy ruminations’ in the previous story did not engage me.
Sarah Pinsker. A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide. (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Mar/Apr 2014)
An unsettling story full of yearning for what you can’t have.
Jamie Ford. This Unkempt World is Falling to Pieces. (The End is Nigh)
A fractionally lighter tone in this story in the apocalypse anthology, with an end-of-the-world party in a swanky hotel is in full swing
Tananarive Due. Removal Order. (The End is Nigh)
A close up, personal take on the apocalypse, with the setting a suburban housing estate where a teenage girl is looking after her terminally ill grandmother.
Neil Williamson. The Posset Pot. (Interzone #252 May-Jun 2014)
A bleak, virtually deserted Glasgow, with but one chink of light.