While one could argue that such and such a seminal story is omitted, or the absence of novel-length work misrepresents the...
Two decades’ worth of The Year’s Best Science Fiction.
The title is no idle boast. Anyone who follows SF and fantasy knows the names here, from ’60s veterans (Robert Silverberg, Ursula K. Le Guin) to today’s hottest names (Charles Stross, Ted Chiang). Among the Hugo and Nebula winners are Greg Bear’s “Blood Music,” Terry Bisson's “Bears Discover Fire,” Chiang's “Story of Your Life,” Joe Haldeman’s “None So Blind,” Connie Willis’s “Even the Queen,” Mike Resnick’s “Kirinyaga.” Even more of the stories were finalists for one or more of the genre’s awards. The volume is also a mini-history of short SF from the cyberpunk/humanist wars of the mid-’80s to the alternate history boom of the ’90s and the eclectic approaches of the youngest generation. Not surprisingly, Dozois was the original editor for nearly half the selections: his tenure at Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine shaped an era as clearly as John W. Campbell shaped the 1940s from the helm of Astounding magazine. But this is no self-promotional anthology; there are exciting tales from Omni, Fantasy and Science Fiction, and from original compendiums such as Starlight and Legends—a few were even originally published electronically. The tone ranges from ominous (Bear) to playful (Bisson), and the subjects are an epitome of the hot scientific topics of recent years, from genetic engineering to nanotechnology to fractal geometry and theories of dinosaur evolution. Dozois’s knowledgeable introductions put the pieces in perspective for readers new to the genre.
While one could argue that such and such a seminal story is omitted, or the absence of novel-length work misrepresents the character of the era, any attempt to assess recent short SF and fantasy will have to begin with this well-edited and essential anthology.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2005
ISBN: 0-312-33655-1
Page Count: 672
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005
It's being called a novel, but it is more a hybrid: short-stories/essays/confessions about the Vietnam War—the subject that O'Brien reasonably comes back to with every book. Some of these stories/memoirs are very good in their starkness and factualness: the title piece, about what a foot soldier actually has on him (weights included) at any given time, lends a palpability that makes the emotional freight (fear, horror, guilt) correspond superbly. Maybe the most moving piece here is "On The Rainy River," about a draftee's ambivalence about going, and how he decided to go: "I would go to war—I would kill and maybe die—because I was embarrassed not to." But so much else is so structurally coy that real effects are muted and disadvantaged: O'Brien is writing a book more about earnestness than about war, and the peekaboos of this isn't really me but of course it truly is serve no true purpose. They make this an annoyingly arty book, hiding more than not behind Hemingwayesque time-signatures and puerile repetitions about war (and memory and everything else, for that matter) being hell and heaven both. A disappointment.
Pub Date: March 28, 1990
ISBN: 0618706410
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990
SEEN & HEARD
IN THE NEWS
SEEN & HEARD
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.
Seven stories, including a couple of prizewinners, from an exuberantly talented young Thai-American writer.
In the poignant title story, a young man accompanies his mother to Kok Lukmak, the last in the chain of Andaman Islands—where the two can behave like “farangs,” or foreigners, for once. It’s his last summer before college, her last before losing her eyesight. As he adjusts to his unsentimental mother’s acceptance of her fate, they make tentative steps toward the future. “Farangs,” included in Best New American Voices 2005 (p. 711), is about a flirtation between a Thai teenager who keeps a pet pig named Clint Eastwood and an American girl who wanders around in a bikini. His mother, who runs a motel after having been deserted by the boy’s American father, warns him about “bonking” one of the guests. “Draft Day” concerns a relieved but guilty young man whose father has bribed him out of the draft, and in “Don’t Let Me Die in This Place,” a bitter grandfather has moved from the States to Bangkok to live with his son, his Thai daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. The grandfather’s grudging adjustment to the move and to his loss of autonomy (from a stroke) is accelerated by a visit to a carnival, where he urges the whole family into a game of bumper cars. The longest story, “Cockfighter,” is an astonishing coming-of-ager about feisty Ladda, 15, who watches as her father, once the best cockfighter in town, loses his status, money, and dignity to Little Jui, 16, a meth addict whose father is the local crime boss. Even Ladda is in danger, as Little Jui’s bodyguards try to abduct her. Her mother tells Ladda a family secret about her father’s failure of courage in fighting Big Jui to save his own sister’s honor. By the time Little Jui has had her father beaten and his ear cut off, Ladda has begun to realize how she must fend for herself.
A newcomer to watch: fresh, funny, and tough.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-8021-1788-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2004
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