Rating: 
Summary: A great collection of stories.
Review: Although I did not enjoy every story, I respected them. Meaning the ones I did not like I am sure someone else would. The ones I liked best were "Think Like a Dinosaur", "The Lincoln Train", "Genesis", & "Feigenbaum's Number". Although I'd like to say the title character in "Looking for Kelly Dahl" is quite interesting & memorable. "Think Like a Dinosaur" is good for people who liked the idea in Tom Godwin "The Cold Equation's", but thought it was sappy. It also has interesting aliens. "The Lincoln Train" introduced me to Maureen F. McHugh (which is a mixed blessing), still it's a good Alternate History story vividly written. Poul Anderson has written some of my most & most hated novels. Still "Genesis" is an interesting far future tale. My favorite part is more alternate history involved. "Feigenbaum's number" introduced me to Nancy Kress (mostly a good thing) it mixes math & Platonism. These stories (especially the Kress) are more emotional then I am used to sf being. Still it is a fairly varied mixture that even contains some hard sf. My only complaint is that he could have chosen less confusing stories that were under ten pages. (or just not included stories that short since he obviously doesn't like them that short)
Rating:
Summary: Reliable Value
Review: Amazingly, David Marusek has stolen *another* collection; "The Wedding Album" alone is worth the price of admission here. (I think I have borrowed that phrase from Dozois!)_TYBSF_ is easily the most value for the SciFi buck you can get in any given year. Dozois' customary "Year in Review" summation serves double duty: entertainment and shopping guide. The story choice is always superb, and it would be hard to say enough about the sheer page volume -- the access to several worthy novellas in a single volume is nice. Actually, I think this is a slightly down year for the stories themselves. There are a lot of strong old-school pens included (legacy SciFi, I like to call it), but the stories by the Big Names tend to visit ground already trod upon; compare Egan's maddeningly distant and well-realized future (not completely removed, I think, from his novel, _Diaspora_) and you might see what I mean. And the Marusek! Oh, the Marusek! If you have made it to this review, you would likely be quite satisfied with the book. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A good overview of the year in science fiction
Review: As always, Gardner Dozois came through with a great overview of the year in science fiction. This year doesn't have any spectacular stand-out stories, but still, there is a lot of good reading here.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Annual SF Anthology gets better
Review: Each year I look forward to this volume, and it never disappoints. Granted, some years are better than others, but often that reflects the quality of the fiction that appeared in a particular year. I thought last year's volume (#17) was a real high, and I was afraid this volume couldn't be as good. I'm glad to say I enjoyed this volume just as much. For me, the stand-out story was "Oracle", by Greg Egan. It is a beaurifully researched and written story about a traveler from the future coming into the past and interceding in the life of Alan Turing. Turing's life moves in a somewhat different path than in our history, and leads him to have a public debate with C. S. Lewis on the possibility of machine intelligence. (Greg Egan does not use their actual names, but sticks close to their biographies, so the correlation is obvious). "The Juniper Tree" by John Kessel started out as a well-written re-exploration of what I thought were pretty well-trodden SF themes, then manages to throw in a moral twist that left me reeling. A great story. Great Wall of Mars by Alistair Reynolds is a pyrotechnic roller-coaster ride of a story. I mean literally. It contains two of the most memorable "rides" I can remember in science fiction. It's a slam-bang adventure that left me dazed. "Antibodies" by Charles Stross was a nice surprise. It felt like reading a classic 50's SF story, but brought up-to-date. He's one of my favorite discoveries of the last year, and you get another great story by him in the same volume. Other excllent stories include "Tendelo's Story" by Ian McDonald, "The Suspect Genome" by Peter F. Hamilton, "Radiant Green Star" by the amazing wordsmith Lucius Shepard, "Crux" by Albert Cowdrey, "The Real World" by Steven Utley, and "The Birthday of the World" by Ursula K. LeGuin. If you seriously enjoy speculative fiction, buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Bought it in the airport last week.
Review: Every customer review here is for the wrong book. They refer to _last_ year's Dozois collection. Somebody please fix this, so we can start with a clean slate. (I haven't read all the book yet, but it looks pretty good.) -- Joe Haldeman
Rating:
Summary: Ignore the reviews below --
Review: Every customer review here is for the wrong book. They refer to _last_ year's Dozois collection. Somebody please fix this, so we can start with a clean slate. (I haven't read all the book yet, but it looks pretty good.) -- Joe Haldeman
Rating: 
Summary: Here is a list of the stories you should read from this book
Review: First of all let me say that since this is a collection it is inevitable that some of it is going to be bad and some of it is going to be good, and there is bound to be a lot of mediocre. On the whole, however, I was a little disapointed at the overall quanilty in this volume. I have found that most of the stories I would have liked to read (Greg Bear, Orson Scott Card, Michael Flynn, Dan Simmons)ended up in the "Honorable Mentions," while some of the obvious losers were printed. On with the list: Here are the good stories: The Suspect Genome -- Peter Hamilton
Radiant Green Star -- Lucius Shepard
Great Wall of Mars -- Alastair Reynolds
Snowball in Hell -- Brian Stableford
Patient Zero -- Tananarive Due
The Thing About Benny -- M. Shayne Bell
Tendeleo's Story -- Ian McDonald Here are the really bad stories: The Birthday of the World -- LeGuin
Antibodies -- Charles Stross
A Colder War -- Charles Stross
The Juniper Tree -- John Kessel
Rating:
Summary: Here is a list of the stories you should read from this book
Review: First of all let me say that since this is a collection it is inevitable that some of it is going to be bad and some of it is going to be good, and there is bound to be a lot of mediocre. On the whole, however, I was a little disapointed at the overall quanilty in this volume. I have found that most of the stories I would have liked to read (Greg Bear, Orson Scott Card, Michael Flynn, Dan Simmons)ended up in the "Honorable Mentions," while some of the obvious losers were printed. On with the list: Here are the good stories: The Suspect Genome -- Peter Hamilton
Radiant Green Star -- Lucius Shepard
Great Wall of Mars -- Alastair Reynolds
Snowball in Hell -- Brian Stableford
Patient Zero -- Tananarive Due
The Thing About Benny -- M. Shayne Bell
Tendeleo's Story -- Ian McDonald Here are the really bad stories: The Birthday of the World -- LeGuin
Antibodies -- Charles Stross
A Colder War -- Charles Stross
The Juniper Tree -- John Kessel
Rating: 
Summary: Was it a bad year?
Review: I'm about halfway thru this and trying to decide whether or not to sell it to a used bookstore without finishing. I kept thinking, maybe it's me, maybe there's something wrong with my attention span that I lose interest in these stories half way thru. They all seem too long, unfocussed. What they really feel like is novels that have been brutally hacked down to the maximum allowable length for short stories. The quality puzzles me because I'm almost always happily surprised by the quality and variety of short sf I read in the zines. I haven't followed this anthology over the years, but this particular edition, imho, shows bad selection and worse editing.
Rating:
Summary: Was it a bad year?
Review: I'm about halfway thru this and trying to decide whether or not to sell it to a used bookstore without finishing. I kept thinking, maybe it's me, maybe there's something wrong with my attention span that I lose interest in these stories half way thru. They all seem too long, unfocussed. What they really feel like is novels that have been brutally hacked down to the maximum allowable length for short stories. The quality puzzles me because I'm almost always happily surprised by the quality and variety of short sf I read in the zines. I haven't followed this anthology over the years, but this particular edition, imho, shows bad selection and worse editing.
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