Rich Horton. The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2009.
A late arrival on my doorstep, and it’s taken much longer to finish the review than I had hoped. Note to self : faster dude, faster!
Reviewing short SF since 2000
A late arrival on my doorstep, and it’s taken much longer to finish the review than I had hoped. Note to self : faster dude, faster!
A big book, with a huge amount of top quality SF.
A collection of excellent stories.
There’s a cannibalistic half-leopardess pirate, lots of swashbuckling, cthulhian monsters in the deep, and a sense of it being but one adventure in the life of its protagonists, and clearly a closer link to space opera than you might think, me hearties.
Six-pager in which the mystery of the Punctuality Drive is revealed to a potential Empress, who realises that she may however have a more hands-on role to play in the maintenance of the Drive.
Nancy Etchemendy. Nimitseahpah. A tale of strange doings in the desert a century ago (cue
From A to Z, in the Sarsaparilla Alphabet. Harlan Ellison. A feature novella, acquired some
Stories by : Alastair Reynolds, Aliette de Bodard, Charles Coleman Finlay, Daryl Gregory, Dominic Green, Elizabeth Bear, Garth Nix, Geoff Ryman, Gord Sellar, Greg Egan, Gwyneth Jones, Hannu Rajaniemi, Ian McDonald, James Alan Garner, James. L. Cambias, Jay Lake, Karl Schroeder, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mary Robinette Kowal, Mary Rosenblum, Maureen F. McHugh, Michael Swanwick, Nancy Kress, Paolo Bacigalupi, Paul McAuley, Robert Reed, Stephen Baxter, Ted Kosmatka
The stories are almost without exception an excellent introduction to the genre, covering a wide spread and with something for most readers. If your kids are past the Harry Potter stage, then give them this hefty volume to help them take a step (or rather, a giant leap) in the right direction.