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Rating: 
Summary: Worth Looking For!
Review: Not quite as good as the First Collection, but just as hard to find.1. "Salvador" by Lucius Shepard. Tense, poignant story of a young soldier struggling to survive a nerve-racking guerilla war in a lush, surreal jungle. Beautifully written with a brilliant ending that is subtle, shocking, and sad. Shepard kicked off the Fourth Annual with the formidable "R & R", also about troubled soldiers in a future Central American war, but this effort is stronger. A+
2. "Promises to Keep" by Jack McDevitt. Standard space opera fare about a crippled space ship limping home from Jupiter's moons. C
3. "Bloodchild" by Octavia E. Butler. Not for the squeamish. Wormlike aliens love humans, not for their minds, but for their bodies, in a most unusual way. Great realism lies at the heart of this strange tale: the interspecies relationships have all the depth, tension and complexity of human ones. A+
4. "Blued Moon" by Connie Willis. Same problem here as in her First Annual contribution, "The Sidon in the Mirror": tricked-up linguistics in the dialog detracts from an otherwise passable story. This one takes a lighthearted look at the unexpected side effects of improper hazardous waste disposal. C
5. "A Message to the King of Brobdingnag" by Richard Cowper. Crop researcher looking to cure world hunger fails spectacularly. Tautly written, laced with irony. A
6. "The Affair" by Robert Silverberg. Man and woman with rich psychic powers connect for a long-distance mental yet highly sensual affair. Thought-provoking examination of where the boundaries lie-or don't lie-between physical and spiritual love. A
7. "Press Enter []" by John Varley. Set around 1984, this spooky speculation on computer networks makes for an interesting read in 2003...Two Southern California misfits fall in love as they uncover lethal secrets lurking in the burgeoning Internet. However-fuzzy plot undermines sharp characters. B
8. "New Rose Hotel" by William Gibson. The day of reckoning draws near for a twenty-first century gangster holed up in the New Rose Hotel. Bleak and shadowy, it's a film noir in print: the protagonist's eleventh-hour confession reads like Fred MacMurray's clipped narrative in "Double Indemnity". B
9. "The Map" by Gene Wolfe. Not a big fantasy fan, so NR.
10. "Interlocking Pieces" by Molly Gloss. Brief but emotionally powerful examination of medical transplanting ratcheted up a notch, featuring a pair of tragic, touchingly human patients. A
11. "Trojan Horse" by Michael Swanick. The world's first total personality transplant causes massive confusion for the recipient...and the reader. D
12. "Bad Medicine" by Jack M. Dann. Man in the spiritual wilderness seeks truth by participating in a violent Indian exorcism ceremony. C
13. "At the Embassy Club" by Elizabeth A. Lynn. Romantic fairytale set on an alien planet with a complex, highly ritualistic Oriental-like culture. C
14. "Pursuit of Excellence" by Rena Yount. Twenty-first century married couple struggle with the harsh socio-economic realities of bioengineering their progeny. Their uncomfortably realistic tale of woe is perhaps more relevant today than when it was written. A-
15. "The Kindly Isle" by Frederik Pohl. A widower haunted by his past gradually finds happiness on a business trip to a tropical island. But wait! Everybody around here is happy--and he thinks he knows why. Complex, appealing characters and plot: a refreshing change from the gloomy, cynical or outright cataclysmic perspectives so prevalent in short sci-fi. A
16. "Rock On" by Pat Cadigan. Set in the near future, a barely comprehensible, abrasively written, but mercifully short story about a psycho-invasive rock and roll creative process...or something. D
17. "Sunken Gardens" by Bruce Sterling. Sterling's vivid imagination and descriptive brilliance carry this Mechanist/Shaper story about a high stakes terraforming contest among posthuman sects. B+
18. "Trinity" by Nancy Kress. Loathsome entomologist manipulates sister and clone brother in attempt to keep them from participating in an experiment to scientifically verify the existence of God. Kress roasts atheists and believers with equal gusto, leaving us with an indigestible hash of hopeless negativity. D-
19. "The Trouble with the Cotton People" by Ursula K. LeGuin. In just a few pages, LeGuin paints an extraordinarily vivid picture of a future barter based world, as seen through the eyes of a young, plain spoken traveler. B
20. "Twilight Time" by Lewis Shiner. A man from a politically oppressive near future time travels back to a defining moment of his youth and encounters things expected and unexpected. Suspenseful, nostalgic, well crafted, with evocative characters and an impressive catalog of 1950's Americana. A+
21. "Black Coral" by Lucius Shepard. A nasty American on a decaying Caribbean island gets his during a heavy-duty bender of drinks, drugs, and voodoo. A lush, dizzying kaleidoscope of terror. B
22. "Friend" by James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel. Twisted love triangle onboard an interstellar passenger ship. B
23. "Foreign Skins" by Tanith Lee. Young British boy in Colonial India becomes a man (quite literally) in a supernatural trial by fire when a mysterious woman secrets him away to her world of shape changing, reptilian demigods. B
24. "Company in the Wings" by R. A. Lafferty. Psst: imaginary characters populate alternate realities. C
25. "A Cabin on the Coast" by Gene Wolfe. Man on holiday with his girlfriend walks (swims, actually) into a magical illusion, and through it discovers the terrible reality beneath. Sharply written, fantastically finished. A+
26. "The Lucky Strike" by Kim Stanley Robinson. Robinson seems to favor stories about men slowly being squeezed in a vise of hostile circumstances. In this one, the bombardier in an alternate reality sweats out his bombing run to Hiroshima. Taut, action-packed, vivid and realistic in both description and characterization. A+
Rating:
Summary: Dozois knows the current sf short fiction scene.
Review: The second of the massive sf annuals Bluejay/St. Martin's put out was issued in 1985, and covers 1984. Dozois meant this series to be definitive, and he does offer a great deal in it. First there's his summation for the year, with comments about the publishing industry, a report on the magazines, briefs on the year's novels, collections and anthologies, films, awards and obits. Then we have 26 stories from magazines and original anthologies. The appendix lists five pages of other stories that Dozois thought notable. Dozois prefers longer stories, so getting through a volume of his is a long haul. He sometimes chooses stories that later win awards, the best of which here is John Varley's "Press Enter," a terrifying story about computers that becomes more prophetic each year. Octavia E. Butler's "Bloodchild" also won awards, but it disturbed me (I like other stories by her). One superb story here is Richard Cowper's "A Message to the King of Brobdingnag," which takes a routine scientific experiment gone wildly wrong to its logical conclusion. Other stories I liked in this edition include: Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Lucky Strike," an alternate history of a bomber pilot who refuses to release nuclear weapons over WWII Japan; Gene Wolfe's "The Map," a touching fable set in the earth's far, declining future; and Rena Yount's "Pursuit of Excellence," about how far an obsessed mother will go to make sure that her unborn child has superior genes. Most of the other stories are worth reading, and no doubt each reader will prefer different stories. I sometimes like shortlisted (or nonlisted) stories to the ones he anthologizes. It's a shame this book is out of print, but dealers or search services can produce a copy of this book. All of Dozois's annual anthologies are worth having.
Rating:
Summary: Dozois knows the current sf short fiction scene.
Review: The second of the massive sf annuals Bluejay/St. Martin's put out was issued in 1985, and covers 1984. Dozois meant this series to be definitive, and he does offer a great deal in it. First there's his summation for the year, with comments about the publishing industry, a report on the magazines, briefs on the year's novels, collections and anthologies, films, awards and obits. Then we have 26 stories from magazines and original anthologies. The appendix lists five pages of other stories that Dozois thought notable. Dozois prefers longer stories, so getting through a volume of his is a long haul. He sometimes chooses stories that later win awards, the best of which here is John Varley's "Press Enter," a terrifying story about computers that becomes more prophetic each year. Octavia E. Butler's "Bloodchild" also won awards, but it disturbed me (I like other stories by her). One superb story here is Richard Cowper's "A Message to the King of Brobdingnag," which takes a routine scientific experiment gone wildly wrong to its logical conclusion. Other stories I liked in this edition include: Kim Stanley Robinson's "The Lucky Strike," an alternate history of a bomber pilot who refuses to release nuclear weapons over WWII Japan; Gene Wolfe's "The Map," a touching fable set in the earth's far, declining future; and Rena Yount's "Pursuit of Excellence," about how far an obsessed mother will go to make sure that her unborn child has superior genes. Most of the other stories are worth reading, and no doubt each reader will prefer different stories. I sometimes like shortlisted (or nonlisted) stories to the ones he anthologizes. It's a shame this book is out of print, but dealers or search services can produce a copy of this book. All of Dozois's annual anthologies are worth having.
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