THE YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION 24, ed. GARDNER DOZOIS
St Martin’s Press trade paperback, 662pp, $26.95

Reviewed by John Howard

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Gardner Dozois’ selection of the previous year’s best science fiction has rightly become a fixture in the publishing and purchasing calendar. The appearance of the British edition is always a sign of autumn and the justification for yet another self-bought early Christmas present…

This selection covers 2006. Let’s look at some statistics. There are 28 stories, from a wide range of publications. But the printed science fiction magazine is no longer the main supplier of the content. Only 11 of the stories were first published in the magazines (the usual suspects). 2 were first published as separate chapbooks; 5 in original anthologies; 3 in author collections, and 7 stories were first published online. The number of sources is growing, despite the traditional sf magazines generally being in a slow and long-term decline (of readership, not quality).

Dozois provides his usual excellent and exhaustive overview of the year in sf. This serves as a reminder of the rest of the stuff that’s available and going on Out There beyond the laptop or bookshelf. We can know what we’re missing.

The names on the contents page show that new and up-and-coming writers can mix successfully with those who were until recently new and up-and-coming, and those who have been around for somewhat longer — in one case at least, for nearly forty years. In addition, there must be about 450 ‚Äúhonourable mentions‚Äù lurking in the closely-printed pages at the end. Neither bibliography nor anthology, I‚Äôve long failed to see the point of ‚Äúhonourable mentions‚Äù. In reprint anthologies there is no coming second‚Ķ

There is a wide range of setting, mood, narrative style, and so on. All now to be expected, and welcome. As I read my way steadily through the book (never of course the best way to read an anthology, but it can’t be helped) I found several themes repeating on me. There were several stories that were essentially about rites of passage, for example. Luckily this isn’t a problem. Space is room enough for them all. A little more seriously perhaps, there were several examples of the old “Bat Durston” pattern – when a standard earthbound situation (usually of the sort immortalised in the old pulps) has been transferred to somewhere else, with apparently little change but the names and the colour of the sky. But, again, there is space enough, and the wilds of the Solar System will certainly present much the same problems, opportunities, and abuses as the Wild West ever did in pulpland.

I don’t intend to go through the stories one by one, or listing them all. Out of the 28 there were probably only 4 that didn’t hold me after the first page, and which I therefore skipped and went on to the next.

Gardner Dozois’ The Year’s Best Science Fiction annual collections are no substitute for reading short stories as they appear, and in their original places of publication. But that gets to be a more expensive and time-consuming challenge each successive year. So books like this are always well-worth getting hold of.

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John Howard was born in London in 1961. He discovered sf and horror fiction as a child, and has been an avid reader, collector, and fan ever since. His short fiction, solo and in collaboration, has appeared in the anthologies Beneath the Ground and Strange Tales; as well as the collection Masques & Citadels (with Mark Valentine). John has reviewed genre books for a wide range of magazines and society journals for over twenty-five years. He has published many articles on various aspects of the science fiction and horror fields, especially on the work of classic authors such as Fritz Leiber, Arthur Machen, August Derleth, M R James, and the writers of the pulp era. John’s website can be found at www.waldeneast.com.

Tags: anthology • fiction • GardnerDozois • science • short • stories