[Amy] Recently, we resolved to read more short fiction. To that end, we picked up a large pile of, among other things, these Year's Best anthologies. I'm slightly dubious about the wisdom of this, in retrospect - this volume contained a couple of stories I thoroughly enjoyed (I particularly liked "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth", likewise "Quill"), several I liked but which made me uneasy (which I grant is one of the potential roles of good SF, so I shan't hold that against them), some I actively disliked, and some I don't remember now so can't have thought much of them one way or another.

The overarching sense I got from the selections, though, was one of doom, of despair. As I almost never read genre magazines and other primary sources for short fiction, I don't actually know if this captures the sense of that which was available in 2006, but if so, that must surely say something about the zeitgeist. Kind of depressing, really. I mean, I love a good post-apocalypse, y'all know that, but this was just one disaster after another, with very few exceptions. With almost no alterations, this could have been a theme anthology titled The End of the World as We May Yet Know It (and Only Some of Us Feel Fine).

And most of it didn't fit my post-apocalyptica tastes anyway, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. All in all, worth reading, but perhaps should be taken in small doses, leavened with light-hearted YA or something.
[ http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/ze... ]

An excellent anthology found here, with a story average of 3.90, and nothing that I didn't like at all, which is very nifty.

The editors also give a short intro/overview of the year in SF short stories, and point out they could have filled several volumes, especially with novellas. If you are talking about 4 star plus stories in a given year for a particular person, sounds reasonable to me.

Also each story intro has a little more interest than some other styles of doing this, so all in all, a great job.

If you ignore the always interesting Dozois novella-summaries in his Year's Best, on fiction alone this is the best Year's Best of the year, with the highest story average of the four (Dozois, Hartwell/Cramer, Horton, Strahan).

Year's Best SF 12 : Nano Comes to Clifford Falls - Nancy Kress
Year's Best SF 12 : Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? - Terry Bisson
Year's Best SF 12 : When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth - Cory Doctorow
Year's Best SF 12 : Just Do It - Heather Lindsley
Year's Best SF 12 : Counterfactual - Gardner R. Dozois
Year's Best SF 12 : Moon Does Run - Edd Vick
Year's Best SF 12 : Home Movies - Mary Rosenblum
Year's Best SF 12 : Chu and the Nants - Rudy Rucker
Year's Best SF 12 : Silence in Florence - Ian Creasey
Year's Best SF 12 : The Women of Our Occupation - Kameron Hurley
Year's Best SF 12 : This is the Ice Age - Claude Lalumiere
Year's Best SF 12 : Speak, Geek - Eileen Gunn
Year's Best SF 12 : Expedition, with Recipes - Joe Haldeman
Year's Best SF 12 : The Age of Ice - Liz Williams
Year's Best SF 12 : Dawn, and Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth - Michael Flynn
Year's Best SF 12 : Applied Mathematical Theology - Gregory Benford
Year's Best SF 12 : Quill - Carol Emshwiller
Year's Best SF 12 : Tiger, Burning - Alastair Reynolds
Year's Best SF 12 : Dead Men Walking - Paul J. McAuley
Year's Best SF 12 : Damascus - Daryl Gregory
Year's Best SF 12 : Tin Marsh - Michael Swanwick
Year's Best SF 12 : Taking Good Care of Myself - Ian R. MacLeod
Year's Best SF 12 : The Lowland Expedition - Stephen Baxter
Year's Best SF 12 : Heisenberg Elementary - Wil McCarthy
Year's Best SF 12 : Rwanda - Robert Reed
Year's Best SF 12 : Preemption - Charlie Rosenkrantz

Nano technology is available to all, so people that don't want to work in crappy jobs, like, say, sanitation, or underpaid jobs like teaching and the police don't have to.

3.5 out of 5

If the future is nice, stay.

4 out of 5

Biowar makes geekfu and gruntwork a necessary combination afterwards.

5 out of 5

Behaviour modification commercialisation.

4 out of 5

Twenty year civil guerilla war coverage.

4.5 out of 5

Memory recording transfer rejection.

4.5 out of 5

Singularity reversal upload boy.

4 out of 5

Pisspot poor alien discovery speech recovery.

3.5 out of 5

Big bad brutal bitches.

3 out of 5

Quantum Cross creep.

3.5 out of 5

Smart mutt choice.

4 out of 5

Surviving undesirable cuisine.

3.5 out of 5

Incarceration escape avatar library retrieval liberation deal.

4 out of 5

Ferry removal machine.

3 out of 5

Microwaving god.

4 out of 5

Dino alien discovery.

3.5 out of 5

Brane circle future message creator inspiration warning investigation.

4.5 out of 5

Clone assassin uncovered confrontation.

4 out of 5

Jesus, that's a hell of an idea to spread around.

3.5 out of 5

"Naughty girl. Papa spank!" I wish! Wahhh!

4 out of 5

Disposing of yourself.

3.5 out of 5

Gutsy building time.

3.5 out of 5

Time Patrol lesson.

4 out of 5

Takeover migration rejection massacres.

4 out of 5

Alien canine annihilation education evolution protection.

4 out of 5


http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/11/years-best-sf-12-david-g-hartwell-and.html
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The quality of the stories in the 12th edition of Hartwell and Cramer's YEAR'S BEST SF is below par, but there were still some good selections this year. My favorites included Nancy Kress's "Nano Comes to Clifford Falls," Gardner Dozois's alternate history story "Counterfactual," Joe Haldeman's stinger "Expedition, with Recipes," Paul McAuley's far-future thriller "Dead Men Walking," and Robert Reed's unusual alien-invasion scenario "Rwanda." Cory Doctorow's "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth" is a competently-executed disaster story, sure to appeal to his fans, while Edd Vick's "Moon Does Run" is one of the few good-quality SF stories set in the Caribbean. ( )