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: 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: Why was this called science fiction?
Review: I'm sorry, but most of the stories in here had little or any connection to science fiction. Some were good, but should have been included in anthologies of other areas of fiction. Most were just long stories.
Rating:
Summary: WATCH FOR DEFECTIVE PRINTING!
Review: PAGES MISSING -- AROUND PAGE 510 TO 560
Wonderful boook, as usual -- I like this anthology series. But my first copy has a binding error! I can't read two stories.
Also, Dozois tends to include items that I personally would consider as fantasy rather than sci-fi. But there's plenty of "hard science" to go around. The final story "Son Observe the Time" was particularly riveting to me.
Rating:
Summary: New Writers to Watch
Review: The only trouble with a year's best anthology is that it invariably includes some stories you don't like-and leaves out some you thought were great. Such are the vagaries of taste. That said, Gardner Dozois's seventeenth annual collection of the Years Best Science Fiction offers plenty of worthy things to read. Many of the stories feature highly imaginative settings-Robert Reed's "Winemaster" comes to mind at once, as does Kage Baker's "Son Observe the Time." And there are compelling stories from well-known writers: James Patrick Kelly uses childhood and cold war fears while Michael Swanwick integrates dinosaur fantasies with human frailty. But perhaps one of the most important thing this anthology does is introduce readers to newer and less well-known writers. Chris Lawson's "Written in Blood" impressed me when I first read it in Asimov's-such a quirky turn on what we know of DNA. "The Dragon of Pripyat" by Karl Schroeder gives us hint of a future just around the corner. And Richard Wadholm's "Green Tea" shows what a sure hand can do when combining a vivid imagination with very old concepts of love and revenge. His world includes wondrous elements chemistry hasn't yet found; his people cut commodities deals in the Bright Matter Exchange and live in worlds along the French Violet. But the part of the story that breaks my heart every time is when the narrator wonders what his friend Frances saw in him: "A man of honesty beneath the lies, compassion beneath the avarice? You will find this most amusing-because I could not bear to let her down, I would have been that man." Read this collection. Be overwhelmed by the great stories in it, and argue with your friends about the ones you think don't qualify. And mark the new writers: you're going to want to read more from them.
Rating:
Summary: Standout edition of a standout series
Review: This is the fifteenth edition I've read, and it's one of the strongest. As always, Dozois includes a wide range of styles and themes, from the lyrical to the hardest of hard science. So...while there's always something for everybody, you can't expect to enjoy every story. My favorites: Good:
"Going After Bobo"--Heartwrenching, poetic character study, but the plot is pretty thin.
"Crux"--Dark detective story/social commentary set in a brutal post-holocaust future dominated by the Orient. Quite violent, with a fast paced and tighty knit plot.
"The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O"--Time travel with two amazing characters. Provocative, in-your-face prose.
"Radiant Green Star"--Another violent future world dominated by the Orient. This time it's a traditional mystery combined with a poetic coming-of-age story.
"Great Wall of Mars"--A cult of humans with networked implants battle unnetworked humans for survival. Lots of action, great speculation on the potential of the human mind.
"A Colder War"--Alternate Cold War history with aliens causing major problems for both sides. Confusing plot, but highly realistic narrative keeps it interesting anyway. Great:
"The Suspect Genome"--Future world whodunit, set in an England where police work has been somewhat privatized. Brilliant plot construction and writing keep you engaged all the way.
"On the Orion Line"--Man versus powerful and inscrutable aliens deep in space, far in the future. Well developed characters, fast paced and straightforward plot.
"Obsidian Harvest"--Another future world detective story set in England. What makes this one extraordinary is the premise, where the Aztecs dominate the world--human sacrifices, feathered capes, lots of tequila. Add hard-boiled prose in the tradition of Dashiell Hammett (his "Red Harvest" is great) and you have something unforgettable.
"Patient Zero"--Nightmarish account of a dreadful near-future. Great plot, great characters, and makes some strong statements in only fifteen pages.
Rating:
Summary: A Stellar anthology of fabulous fiction
Review: This latest edition of Gardner Dozois' long-running Year's Best SF anthology series is worth every penny. I enjoyed nearly every story in the volume and found it to be, on the whole, much stronger than previous year's editions. Highlights of the volume include 'The Birthday of the World' by Ursula Le Guin; in which a race of 'gods' struggle for power, 'Crux' by Albert Cowdrey; a time travel adventure that has more similarities to the old pulp stories than most recent SF, 'Radiant Green Star' by Lucius Shepard; a fabulous story about an orphan's search for his father while he performs in a circus in Vietnam, 'Great Wall of Mars' by Alastair Reynolds; the story of a renegade colony on Mars and attempts to eradicate it, 'On the Orion Line' by Stephen Baxter; a story of war in space that I found to be one of Baxter's most literate and readable stories, 'A Colder War' by Charles Stross; a brilliant meld of Cthulu fiction and Cold War politics, and my favorite story in the volume 'Tendeleo's Story' by Ian McDonald; the story of a young girl in Africa who grows up amid invasion by alien spores. Like all anthologies, not all stories will please all readers. I found 'Milo and Sylvie' by Eliot Fintushel to be WAY overlong, boring, and without a coherent plot. 'Snowball in Hell' by Brian Stableford bogged down with too much gengineering talk...too many big words, not enough plot extrapolation. This truly is a collection of the Best SF of the year. There are only a handful of stories that didn't make the book that may have been deserving (stories by Jeffrey Ford, Kage Baker, Charles Sheffield, & Robert Reed spring immediately to mind). By and large the stories in this book are extremely well-written with fascinating plots. Consider 'Oracle' by Greg Egan, a story with thinly veiled characterizations of C.S. Lewis and Alan Turing...this is a story that science fiction is all about. With the exception of the two stories I mentioned earlier, there isn't a sub-par story in this collection. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Many Diamonds in the Ruff
Review: Was 1999 the greatest year ever for short SF? Definately not. That's exactly why reading through Volume 17 of Gardner Dozier's "The Year's Best Science Fiction" is worth the investment. I wish I had the time to buy and read the great SF magazines like Asimov's and Interzone. But I don't; so I let the editor and his associates do it for me. When I read books in this series, I start by skipping to the editor's comments at the beginning of each story. Gardner's degree of narrative excitement generally helps the reader quickly decide which stories to enjoy first. Also, the reader will find many authors in each volume that should list among their favorites in the genre. Highlights from Volume 17 include: 1. "The Wedding Album", by David Marusek. Highly original and creative. This story seems just on the verge of possibility as our 21st Century technology rapidly advances. Use a daytimer? Remember, kids today don't know what a daytimer is. Maybe their Palm will tell them what it did back in the old days. 2. "10 (to the 16th Power)", by James Patrick Kelly. Haunting. Really. Read it. 3. "People Came From Earth", by Stephen Baxter. Have enjoyed many previous Baxter pieces in the "Year's Best" series. This story is very short, very well done, and very sad. 4. "Hatching the Phoenix", by Frederick Pohl. Give me all the Heechee you can. Please. Especially stuff this good. 5. "A Martian Romance", by Kim Stanley Robinson. Essential for fans of the already classic Mars series. 6. "Son Observe the Time", by Kage Baker. Best written story in the entire Company series. Worth the price of the book in itself. Everything else is gravy. All these gems, plus: Ben Bova, Hal Clement, Greg Egan, Tanith Lee, Robert Silverberg, and many other fine modern writers. Short works are the foundation of SF. Books like the Dozier edited "Year's Best" series help remind fans that most creative and fun ideas don't necessarily require 300 or more pages to provide major enjoyment. Previous volumes have rated higher, but this year's effort contains many good stories fans want to read. I would most accurately rate this book at 3.80 stars, rounded up to 4.00.
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