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Twenty stories, of which few overlap with the anthology's competitors, including gems from Geoff Ryman, Charles Stross, Gene Wolfe and Joe Haldeman.
David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer’s Year's Best SF 9 opens with Octavia Butler’s ”Amnesty”, where a small band of humans attempt to build bridges between the aliens who have occupied Earth, and the remnants of humanity, struggling to come to terms with what has happened. Despite the worthy themes, the story is curiously uninvolving, and ends with more of a whimper than a bang. “Birth Days,” by Geoff Ryman is a story whose title is it's very meaning, about a possible future for homosexuality, and the story of a man's life reflected in four separate days, each of them his birthday, each one ten years after the previous vignette. This piece could not have been written as a mainstream story, and reminds the veteran reader of SF why they should keep reading it. Both this and the next story, Tony Ballantyne's “The Waters of Meribah,” are reprints from the Pringle incarnation of Interzone, but are radically different stories. The Ballantyne -which is described by Hartwell as “a radical hard SF story-” is a strange but enjoyable far-future story of life within an almost collapsed universe, and the fate which awaits the protagonist when he is fitted with an alien body by installments. “Ej-es,” by Nancy Kress is a typical piece of work by this stylish author, the story of a rescue mission to a long lost, plague ravaged colony. Few writers depict emotional conflict and inner turmoil quite so well as Kress does. Joe Haldeman's 'Four Short Novels' are variations on a theme, and are text-book exercises in how to take an idea, and stretch it to an extreme. Recommended. “Rogue Farm” by Charles Stross is a wildly inventive story (as recent readers have come to expect of Stross), about farming life in mid to late 21st century Britain, and will resonate with anyone who has watched the news in Britain in the second half of 2004, or who lives in, or on the edge of the countryside. The ending funny, and moving, and resonates long after the story has ended. One of the very best stories of the year. Angelica’s Gorodischer’s “The Violet's Embryos” is the strangest story in the collection, an hallucinatory examination of reality, sexuality, and the danger of confusing fantasy and reality. Perspective and point of view shift abruptly, creating a dizzying whirl of images. It will polarise readers, and may turn off a lot of genre purists. Michael Swanwick's 'Coyote at the End of History' has many superficial resemblances to the Haldeman story, but without the other story's rigorous extrapolation, preferring anthropological allegory instead. Not one of Swanwick’s best. John Varley's “In Dying Suns and Fading Moons” was an excellent variant on several familiar SF themes, as a lepidopterist attempts to help the US Army understand an alien invasion. Unfortunately Hartwell’s story notes, normally so excellent, completely undermine any drama by telegraphing the story ending. Read them after finishing the story, if you must. The next story is Gene Wolfe's 'Castaway'. Wolfe is always interesting to read, and this short, densely written piece is no exception. A lone survivor is rescued from an isolated planet, and his memories of his stay, comrades and the mysterious woman who appeared from time to time, are in stark contrast to the monochrome sterility of the rescue ship. Recommended. “The Hydrogen Wall” is a hard sf story by Gregory Benford, which comes as a refreshing change after all the mysticism and allegory. Benford looks a millenia into the future, to the potential extermination of life in the solar system, and dealing with alien intelligences, something few in sf do better than Benford. An excellent story. 'The Albertine Notes' by Rick Moody brings the collection to an end. This is a dense, tightly packed novella that plays with time and reality. Twenty stories, few of which overlap with the anthology's competitors. A delight
The copyright of the article Year's Best SF # 9 in Sci-Fi/Fantasy Fiction is owned by Colin Harvey. Permission to republish Year's Best SF # 9 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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