The Year's Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection - Softcover

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9780312288792: The Year's Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312288794 ISBN 13: 9780312288792

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2002

The twenty-first century has so far proven to be exciting and wondrous and filled with challenges we had never dreamed. New possibilities previously unimagined appear almost daily . . . and science fiction stories continue to explore those possibilities with delightful results:

Collected in this anthology are such compelling stories as:

"On K2 with Kanakaredes" by Dan Simmons. A relentlessly paced and absorbing tale set in the near future about three mountain climbers who must scale the face of K2 with some very odd company.

"The Human Front" by Ken MacLeod. In this compassionate coming-of-age tale the details of life are just a bit off from things as we know them-and nothing is as it appears to be.

"Glacial" by Alastair Reynolds. A fascinating discovery on a distant planet leads to mass death and a wrenching mystery as spellbinding as anything in recent short fiction.

The twenty-six stories in this collection imaginatively takes us far across the universe, into the very core of our beings, to the realm of the gods, and the moment just after now. Included here are the works of masters of the form and of bright new talents, including:

Eleanor Arnason
Chris Beckett
Michael Blumlein
Michael Cassutt
Brenda W. Clough
Paul Di Filippo
Andy Duncan
Carolyn Ives Gilman
Jim Grimsley
Simon Ings
James Patrick Kelly
Leigh Kennedy
Nancy Kress
Ian R. MacLeod
Ken MacLeod
Paul J. McAuley
Maureen F. McHugh
Robert Reed
Alastair Reynolds
Geoff Ryman
William Sanders
Dan Simmons
Allen M. Steele
Charles Stross
Michael Swanwick
Howard Waldrop

Supplementing the stories are the editor's insightful summation of the year's events and a lengthy list of honorable mentions, making this book a valuable resource in addition to serving as the single best place in the universe to find stories that stir the imagination and the heart.

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Review:

The critically acclaimed anthology series The Year's Best Science Fiction publishes its astounding 19th volume in 2002. Weighing in at well over 600 pages, this comprehensive volume contains 26 of the best SF stories of 2001 and a knowledgeable, thorough introduction/summation by the editor, 12-time Hugo Award winner Gardner Dozois. The contributors range from veteran greats like Nancy Kress and Michael Swanwick to cult gods like Howard Waldrop and Michael Blumlein to impressive newcomers like Andy Duncan and Charles Stross.

A brief review cannot discuss all the stories, but can only suggest the range of subgenres within. These include the hard SF of Alastair Reynolds's extrasolar murder mystery "Glacial"; the soft SF of Maureen F. McHugh's wise "Interview: On Any Given Day"; the testosterone-drenched adventure SF of Paul Di Filippo's "Neutrino Drag"; the doomed lesbian love in a future so distant it seems like fantasy in Ian R. MacLeod's "Isabel of the Fall"; alternate history about Philip K. Dick and Richard Nixon in Paul McAuley's "The Two Dicks"; the triple-timeline Trojan fantasy of Howard Waldrop and Leigh Kennedy's excellent collaboration, "One-Horse Town"; the scathing satire of Carolyn Ives Gilman's "The Real Thing"; and the high-density postcyberpunk of "Lobsters," in which new author Charles Stross blends bleeding-edge infotech and venture-capital bizbuzz to create the standout SF story of 2001. --Cynthia Ward

About the Author:

Gardner Dozois has been working in the science fiction field for more than thirty years. Since 1985, he has been the editor of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, during which time he has received the Hugo Award for Best Editor twelve times. He lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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