Monday, December 15, 2014
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2014 Review
Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2014
Rich Horton
Diamond Book Distributors
Pub Date: Jun 10 2014
4/5 Stars
So I always have some trouble with anthologies; I should probably be used to reviewing them by now. But I haven’t gotten there quite yet. But here we go…
There are plenty of cool stories in this collection but here are my favorites, in no particular order:
A Stranger from a Foreign Ship, Tom Purdom
Effigy Nights, Yoon Ha Lee
Rosary and Goldenstar, Geoff Ryman
The Bee Her Heart, The Hive Her Belly. Benjanun Sriduangkaew
Dragonslayer of Merebarton, K.J.Parker
Loss, with Chalk Diagrams. E.Lily Yu
They Shall Salt the Earth with Seeds of Glass, Alaya Dawn Johnson
A Window or a Small Box, Jedediah Berry
Live Arcade, Erik Amundsen
Found, Alex Dally MacFarlane
A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel, Ken Liu
It’s the End of the World as We Know It, and We Feel Fine, Harry Turtledove
The Dead Sea-Bottom Scrolls, Howard Waldrop
Out in the Dark, Linda Nagata
On the Origin of Song, Naim Kabir
Town’s End, Yukimi Ogawa
The Discovered Country, Ian R. MacLeod
What I found so exciting and interesting about most of these stories is that they are so original, different from most of what is out there right now. I also found the fact that the best stories are written by authors who have only written short stories or at least are only famous for writing short stories. Some of the stories are seeming, at least to me, a tipping off point for any number of novels. I’m kind of amazed that NONE of the authors that had my most favorite stories had never written in the longer form. But perhaps that’s why these stories were so well crafted and interesting. I would certainly recommend that anyone with a descent amount time, picks up these short story collection.