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Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic 1 volume highlight of the last decade in hard SF
Review: A monumental anthology waith many of the best stories published in the last ten years, including many novellas not easily included in smaller anthologies.
Some particular favorites: "Reasons to be Cheerful" by Greg Egan. A young boy finds himself a little too happy with his life. He has a tumor in his brain that has the side effect of making him happy, even when faced with the news of his approaching death. He undergoes a radical new surgery, but afterward, can he ever be happy again?"Into the Miranda Rift" by G. David Nordley. An exciting new variation on "Journey to the Center of the Earth," except here to journey is through the middle of Uranus' moon.
"Great Wall of Mars" by Alistair Reynolds. A pyrotechnic, breathtaking tour-de-force space opera from one of the most exiting new SF talents.
"Fast Times at Fairmont High" by Vernor Vinge envisions a near future where the junior high science projects of techno-savvy young students can have global repercussions.
"Understand" by Ted Chiang shows how deadly it can be to become smater than everyone else.
"Griffin's Egg" by Michael Swanwick is a captivating depiction of a future lunar society.
"Think Like a Dinosaur" by James Patrick Kelly is both a re-examination of the issues in Tom Godwin's classic "The Cold Equations," and a thoughtful examination into the implications of dealing with alien intelligences who have alien mores and priorities.
"Marrow" by Robert Reed. Humans living and traveling on a gargantuan alien-constructed starship populated by millions of beings invesigate a mystery deep in the center of their own ship, finding there a world stranger than any outside of the ship.
All the storoes in this book range from very good to excellent. There isn't a stinker in the bunch. A worthy addition to any science fiction bookshelf.
Rating:
Summary: good way to learn more about SF
Review: Biographical information about the authors and their works is included before all of the stories. This information is a little more detailed than in Dozois' The Year's Best Science Fiction and gave me a little more of an idea about the personalties of the authors. I found this particularly helpful in regard to my future reading goals as I like to pick an author and read several stories or novels by that person. I read a library copy of the book but am tempted to buy it to keep as way to remember the names of the authors included and their works. There is also some discussion of trends, such as libertarian SF, which whetted my curiousity. On a radio program recently, I heard a current non-SF author say, "I read to learn about life." I am always surprised how much I learn about life in the worlds of SF.
Rating:
Summary: Undiscovered Country
Review: This anthology includes some of the most insightful speculations I have ever encountered. Do you wonder where we are headed as a species? Do your ponderings of the future keep you awake at night, imagining what is possible? When you read the paper or watch TV, can you keep from wondering "what does it all mean" for this ever-the-more complicated and confounded global civilization? Then this book is for you. Fantasies and nightmares abound in this collection of short-stories; the common theme of science and technology as a cultural catalyst binds these very different contexts and characters in an extremely readable anthology. No bird-people, no tap-dancing robots...no motherbrains, and only a few laser-beams. This stuff is far-out without all of the bells and whistles. It approaches the question of what lies ahead from the perspective of a human being living in the late twentieth/early twenty-first century--eye-witness to the marvels and horrors of the modern and postmodern age. This is the stuff that makes you simultaneously hopeful and terrified of what lies ahead for Homo sapiens.
Rating: 
Summary: A Sad SF Renaissance
Review: Throughout my read, my head kept shaking with disappointment. If the "renaissance" of hard SF relies on stories a full decade, even two decades, old, then the genre's future is feebly fixated on its past. Not to say that some of the stories here aren't wonderful ... emphasis on "some." But dredging dead decades to claim a rebirth of hard SF fails to deliver on the title's promise. This is more nostalgia than renewal, and you should read a library-borrowed copy if you want to reminisce about great writers past/passing. But don't drop any real money expecting a glimpse into Sci-Fi's future.
Rating:
Summary: A Sad SF Renaissance
Review: Throughout my read, my head kept shaking with disappointment. If the "renaissance" of hard SF relies on stories a full decade, even two decades, old, then the genre's future is feebly fixated on its past. Not to say that some of the stories here aren't wonderful ... emphasis on "some." But dredging dead decades to claim a rebirth of hard SF fails to deliver on the title's promise. This is more nostalgia than renewal, and you should read a library-borrowed copy if you want to reminisce about great writers past/passing. But don't drop any real money expecting a glimpse into Sci-Fi's future.
Rating:
Summary: A Sad SF Renaissance
Review: Throughout my read, my head kept shaking with disappointment. If the "renaissance" of hard SF relies on stories a full decade, even two decades, old, then the genre's future is feebly fixated on its past. Not to say that some of the stories here aren't wonderful ... emphasis on "some." But dredging dead decades to claim a rebirth of hard SF fails to deliver on the title's promise. This is more nostalgia than renewal, and you should read a library-borrowed copy if you want to reminisce about great writers past/passing. But don't drop any real money expecting a glimpse into Sci-Fi's future.
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