Astonishingly, none of the twenty-six stories in Hartwell & Cramer's Year’s Best SF 12 overlap with those in the equivalent Strahan volume. This indicates a healthy diversity within the field.
“Nano Comes to Clifford Falls,” is a typical Nancy Kress story in which nanotech machines are set up in a small American town with disastrous results for society. Kress writes finely-honed prose, draws believable characters, plots rigorously, and makes it look easy -- making her desperately undervalued.
In Terry Bisson’s “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” a pulp-magazine reading hobo is transported forward to the 22nd century, but his own beliefs – coloured by his reading – doom him. It’s ostensibly about how the future of the 1930s failed to materialize, but more about how cynical the modern readership is compared to that of Golden Age SF.
“When SysAdmin’s Ruled the Earth” is Cory Doctorow’s contribution to The Apocalypse is Now debate, a fine and powerful piece of geekery wish-fulfilment leavened with wry humour, self-mockery, and sadness.
Heather Lindsley’s “Just Do It!” is an excellent Galaxy-esque satire on advertising, and compares favourably with “Damascus” by Daryl Gregory -- a bio-terrorism story about a female cult -- but while an examination of free will, and what drives people’s choices, Lindsley’s tone is much lighter and less preachy.
Mary Rosenblum’s “Home Movies,” about an empath who rents her body like a surrogate mother before uploading her memories via nanotech is thought-provoking, but marred by a too-obvious mystery, obvious to everyone but the protagonist.
“The Women of Our Occupation,” is a subtle, powerful story about a race of super-women who occupy an unnamed country and the effect of their presence on the relationship between the local women and their men.
“Speak, Geek,” by Eileen Gunn is the best of the flash-fictions reprinted from Nature; an augmented dog working in a lab finds underhand practices, and has his loyalty tested. A lesser writer would have taken ten words for each Gunn has used, and it’s even better than Ian R. MacLeod’s “Taking Care of Myself,” which though good as it is, warrants a longer story than the space it’s allowed.
Liz William’s “The Age of Ice,” is set in the same far-future Mars as her outstanding “La Malcontenta,” in last year’s Dozois Year’s Best, in which a terra-formed Mars is populated predominantly by a matriarchal society with men only barely on the fringes. It’s strange and literally wonderful.
Carol Emshwiller says in the introduction to her “Quill” – a variation on ‘The Lost World’ – “I don’t usually write such a science fiction-y story.” It’s a shame that she doesn’t more often. Paul J. McAuley contributes another ‘Quiet War’ story with ‘Dead Men Walking,’ when a simulacra masquerading as human on one of Uranus’ moons has to find a killer, Michael Swanwick takes the reader to Venus for a dark revisiting of Asimov’s ‘Robot’ stories, although this time it is the humans who are engaged in a run-around in ‘Tin Marsh,’ while Stephen Baxter’s ‘The Lowland Expedition’ is a dark inversion of the idea that buildings may provide sanctuary.
“Dawn, and Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth,” by Michael F. Flynn is the longest story in the book, and the best. A ferry disaster in Seattle harbour is recounted by the many relatives of the passengers, witnesses, and other locals. What caused the disaster is clear, but the unending bereavement of those left behind perhaps mirrors what the relatives of real-life disaster victims suffer, and is still atypical of magazine SF.
Overall, it’s a fine volume, and any reader who could only afford one volume should choose this Year’s Best.
