Yeah the number of global warming scare stories in volume 23 was unbearable. (hopefully it will soon go the same way as telepathy, and fear of chemicals and nuclear radiation did.)

But the “Isn’t great I am gay” story wasn’t to bad.

Zima blue was also in that volume…one of the best stories i have read in some time…i might have pre judged Alastier Renalods…his talent is clearly in short form fiction.

So bravo for the yearly anthologies! (Ah, I used to love the Harrison and Aldiss Best SF:19__ series–odd and eclectic, they turned me onto Gene Wolf and Michael Bishop.)

I haven’t finished this years anthology yet, just recieved it from the SFBC, and I’ll probably savor it for awhile, reading a story or two every so often. But I loved the first two–I prefer my Doctorow in short bits, and found I, Rowboat amusingly recursive. And Wilson’s tale is wryly elegant–maybe it’s just me, but caught a whiff of Gene Wolf’s style in the questionable first person narrative.

Not many comments on Dozois’s summation so far, but of course, that’s the first thing most people would read . . . After reading so many in the series, this years preface is a bit too familiar, although he did throw in a couple of funny lines. And his annual plea to support magazines unfortunately may be falling on deaf ears–with collections this good, why wade through the bad stuff?

In closing, thanks for the individual story reviews John, they will undoubtedly aid in my appreciation–Dozois’s introductory notes on them are sometimes a bit too ambiguously coy . . .

RE: Frankly I’m going to stop reading short fiction again for a while – while there were some gems in here, I found most of them to be quite lacking.

That’s too bad as some short fiction stories put some novels to shame. Don’t let one book be the basis for that decision. In my opinion, you are unlikely to find a “best of the year” anthology that where every single story is a 5-star winner. Such books reflect the choices of one individual and the trick is to find an editor whose tastes coincide with your own. (I’m ignoring the weirdness that exists when compiling these anthologies, like license rights, space constraints, etc.) That said, my recollection of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume 1 (which was admittedly formed during my more impressionable and less critical days) was that it’s outstanding overall.

Time commitment is a factor as well, isn’t it? What if you want a jolt of sf but do not have the time for a novel? Oh wait — I forgot I’m talking to our own in-house Klausner!

Agreed — otherwise it would be an excerpt! However, I thought all of the stories here were self-contained. Sure, some of them could be used as episodes in a larger story – that’s actually a common stepping-stone practice with writers. (See Allen Steele’s Coyote stories, for example). But I thought each story in this collection had a setup and resolution.

In response to your concern over quality…this was to varying degrees of success. I mean, “Riding the Crocodile” is praised all over the place but it was just not my cup of tea.

In my opinion, a short work has to stand on its own a self-contained story. It can NOT just be a chapter from a novel, and it seems to me that’s what most of the authors here have done.

For example, while I enjoyed the writing and the style of Robert Charles Wilson’s novella Julian: A Christmas Story there simply isn’t much story here. The characters are well done, but this is obviously a slice of a larger work (even if this doesn’t end up being created, I felt the author was thinking that way.)

Like John I enjoyed Damascus (my personal favorite), Nightingale, Dead Men Walking, Kin, and Signal to Noise. But that was it – the rest I wish I hadn’t taken the time to read.