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85th out of 211 books
—
95 voters
The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction
by
Gardner R. Dozois ,
William Gibson , John Kessel , Eileen Gunn , Mike Resnick , Terry Bisson , Robert Silverberg , Connie Willis
,
more…
For years, The Year's Best Science Fiction has been the most widely read short science fiction anthology of its kind. Now, after twenty-one annual collections, comes the ultimate in science fiction anthologies, The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction, in which legendary editor Gardner Dozois selects the very best short stories for this landmark co...more
Paperback, 655 pages
Published
February 1st 2005
by St. Martin's Griffin
(first published January 2005)
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"History of Death" is a long story, but well worth the read, and is easily one of the most interesting pieces of fiction I have ever read. I highly recommend others to read this story. The story details Mortimer Gray's journey of writing about death, and the fascination people have with it, once people become essentially immortal. The story's author works on a number of volumes in the History, which takes 174 years to complete. Battling several close calls with death himself, Mortimer Gray is an...more
I always take short stories to the beach with me to read on vacation. They seem to suit the amount of time one typically has before someone needs more lotion applied or is hungry or needs to walk back to the house or it gets too hot to sit and you need to cool off. And "best of" collections of short stories are a great way to keep up with really good authors. The series of short story science fiction anthologies edited by Gardner Dozois are carried by our local library and make excellent vacatio...more
A good wide-ranging collection, obviously lots to choose from over two decades. Lots of different styles represented, although interestingly only one in the cyberpunk genre (William Gibson, "The Winter Market"), I'd have thought there would be more. Standouts for me were:Mortimer Gray's History of Death" by Brian Stableford and "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang share a post-modern literary motif that intrigued me; "The Lincoln Train" by Maureen F. McHugh is a great alternate history of post-Civ...more
This is a collection of 36 stories ranging from 1981 to 2002 and purporting to represent the best shorts in science fiction in those years. A blurb on the back by GRR Martin says that "if a science fiction fan from 1984 chanced to stumble into a time warp and pop up in the here and now, and wanted to know what had been happening in his favorite genre in the last twenty years, all you'd need to do was hand him a copy of Gardner Dozois's Best of the Best." In a way, I'm that fan. I read a lot of s...more
Nov 27, 2011
Tamahome
is currently reading it
Greg Bear's Blood Music was a great short story.
The font in this book is tiny!
UPDATE: bought for kindle ipad app. I use the 2nd to biggest font. :)
Pretty crappy ebook scan. Extra hyphens and small 'L' instead of '!'.
Connie Willis - Even the Queen: What if women had no periods in the future? Cute.
Gene Wolfe - A Cabin On The Coast: Um, there's pirates, or maybe they're aliens? I don't get it.
Lucius Shepard - Salvador - Ok war story. Not sure it's sf.
Nancy Kress - Trinity - Fabulous novella about s...more
The font in this book is tiny!
UPDATE: bought for kindle ipad app. I use the 2nd to biggest font. :)
Pretty crappy ebook scan. Extra hyphens and small 'L' instead of '!'.
Connie Willis - Even the Queen: What if women had no periods in the future? Cute.
Gene Wolfe - A Cabin On The Coast: Um, there's pirates, or maybe they're aliens? I don't get it.
Lucius Shepard - Salvador - Ok war story. Not sure it's sf.
Nancy Kress - Trinity - Fabulous novella about s...more
This collection indeed compiles some of the best novellas that had been anthologised by Mr Dozois in the previous years as 'Annual Collections'. In terms of subject, style, structure etc. etc., these stories cover the entire gamut. My only regret is that some a few thrillers of more of pieces written by Connie Willis would have made the collection a little more entertaining. Nevertheless, recommended.
Excellent and massive anthology! I haven't finished it yet, but it's already worth it.
Herein are greats of scifi in both authors and stories.
Some of these stories will resonate with you. Some will be to your taste: a concept, a turn of phrase.
Consistently, these stories will leave you thoughtful.
Herein are greats of scifi in both authors and stories.
Some of these stories will resonate with you. Some will be to your taste: a concept, a turn of phrase.
Consistently, these stories will leave you thoughtful.
Fantastic selection of short stories (some novella length) distilled from 20 years worth of Dozois' "The Year's Best Science Fiction" collections. There are a few duds, but otherwise an embarrassment of riches, and Gene Wolfe's was the only one I had read before (and this time his story, 'A Cabin on the Coast', clicked with me as it hadn't before), so it was discovery after discovery for me. I was especially blown away by Nancy Kress's 'Trinity', Gibson's 'The Winter Market', John Kessel's 'The...more
Oct 21, 2007
Nicholas Whyte
added it
http://nhw.livejournal.com/414091.html[return][return]Meaty, meaty stuff. Dozois' annual collection of his choice of the best sf of the year is always the one I look forward to most, the other similar volumes just really keeping me going until the big one appears. Here he's picked three dozen or so of the best stories, all by different authors, from his first twenty volumes; I had previously read around half of them. (Three are joint Hugo/Nebula winners.) I'd originally planned to go through it...more
I've been nibbling at this for a long time now because, as the title says, it was Dozier's picks of the best of the best. I loved it, of course. It was like a master's class in short sci-fi and I found myself letting stories sit with me for long whiles before moving on to another. It was a gift from Kelsey a few years back and it sat on the shelf because I've always been more attracted to novels, shying away from short stories. I think this experience may change that for me. I especially loved B...more
"Wang's Carpets", for the sake of which I acquired the volume, is recommended to anyone who find sci-fi readable. (This double distillation is about right for me, speaking personally.) I'll probably use it to mix things up in Logic.
There are a number of gems to be found here. I skipped a bunch of them as well, when I was bored with them. A list of my favorites, so you can skip to the good stuff: "Trinity" by Nancy Kress, "Dinner in Audoghast" by Bruce Sterling, "Roadside Rescue" - Pat Cadigan, "The Pure Product" - John Kessel, "Kirinyaga" - Mike Resnick, "Bears Discover Fire" - Terry Bisson, "Mortimer Gray's History of Death" - Brian Stableford, "The Dead" - Michael Swanwick, "Recording Angel" - Ian McDonald, "Story of You...more
Certainly an interesting collection - I have never been thrilled with his selections - and I guess that refleced in not the highest opinion of this.
It is good. Sometimes I have concerns about these "best ever" series. I know I've read better, and I have to assume that there is better that I haven't read.
It is worth it even just for Greg Bear's "blood music" short story. There are other good stories worth reading too
The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New SF (Mammoth Book of) (Mammoth Book of) by Gardner Dozois (2008)
The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Best Short Science Fiction Novels by Gardner R. Dozois (2008)
I really thought this was a pretty brilliant collection.Lots of must-reads.
Truly Best of the Best. A must-have SF collection. Be ready for long reads, collection includes quite a few novellas/novellettes.
- Trinity by Nancy Kress 4*
- Trinity by Nancy Kress 4*
Maybe I just don't like science fiction anymore. Or maybe it's just the particular type of story chosen by this editor. But most of this stuff was just dire, I'd even go as far to say I'm surprised a lot of it is in print. Funnily enough, the cover art and the stories inside don't match up at all. The material seemed very short on imagination and 'wow' moments.
Among the tedium, the good stories were by Greg Bear, Gene Wolfe, William Gibson, Robert Silverberg, Brian Stableford, Ian McDonald, Jame...more
Among the tedium, the good stories were by Greg Bear, Gene Wolfe, William Gibson, Robert Silverberg, Brian Stableford, Ian McDonald, Jame...more
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Currently lent to KJ and Laura
I'm loving this so far. It has an amazing story called "Even the Queen" that all women should read.
Amazing haha.
I am beginning to think I am not a big of Science Fiction literature.
Bookmarking this especially to read Tiptree award winner, "Stories for Men" by John Kessel.
I read just five stories of this anthology. Two were good. One was average and two other boring. I wanted to read all the stories to have an overview of what had been done in science fiction during that period but I did not like it enough to continue reading more stories.
This book is, mostly, a flat out gorgeous read. "Blood Music" "Trinity" "Wang's Carpet" and "Story of Your Life" are some real stand outs, but also comedic gems like "Survival Strategies for Middle Management" and "Bears Discover Fire."
I only read about half of this anthology. The stories I did read though, unlike the 2nd book, were hit and miss. Some were pretty good, some were kind of boring.
Lot of fantasy type stories in here. Not enough action or adventure type sci-fi stories in here for me, but well written stories nonetheless.
Jul 06, 2008
Don
marked it as back-burner
Picked it up on the cheap and immediately opened it to the Howard Waldrop story. Like I needed to buy, let alone start, another antho ;).
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Gardner Raymond Dozois (born July 23, 1947) is an American science fiction author and editor. He was editor of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine from 1984 to 2004. He has won multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, both as an editor and a writer of short fiction.
Wikipedia entry: Gardner R. Dozois
http://us.macmillan.com/author/gardne...
More about Gardner R. Dozois...
Wikipedia entry: Gardner R. Dozois
http://us.macmillan.com/author/gardne...
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