A review by tombomp
The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction by Ian McDonald, Greg Egan, Greg Bear, Lucius Shepard, Geoff Ryman, William Sanders, Nancy Kress, Connie Willis, Ursula K. Le Guin, Charles Stross, Bruce Sterling, Eileen Gunn, Brian Stableford, Michael Swanwick, William Gibson, Tony Daniel, David Marusek, Robert Reed, Ted Chiang, Howard Waldrop, Mike Resnick, Paul McAuley, Gene Wolfe, Molly Gloss, Stephen Baxter, Pat Cadigan, Robert Silverberg, Gardner Dozois, Terry Bisson, Joe Haldeman, John Crowley, James Patrick Kelly, Steven Utley, John Kessel, Maureen F. McHugh, Walter Jon Williams, Ian R. MacLeod

3.5

Overall it's too variable in quality - with minimal standouts - for me to give it a better star rating but I'm glad I read it as a survey at least. Some thoughts written halfway through and then more written after finishing below.

Only halfway through, and I'll probably finish, but surprised how few have excited/touched me and how much I've been disappointed overall. It's not that many of the stories are *bad* exactly - there's just a constant feeling that they don't actually have much interesting to say, or they're clumsily told. Before reading this I've mostly been familiar with either very recent sci-fi short stories and Golden Age stuff, particularly Asimov and Dick. I'm not sure exactly what's different to make these not hit. 

Favourites so far:
- Bears Discover Fire by Terry Bisson. This is widely considered a classic and understandably IMO. The sci-fi element is pretty underplayed - just bears sitting around fires and "newberrys" formed in highway medians. It's hard to pin down what made this work for me - it's a story of family, loss, moving on and accepting new things where somehow everything falls into place and the image of bears around fires just feels perfect.
- Roadside Rescue by Pat Cadigan. An encounter with an alien visiting Earth and what sort of thing they might want

The alien gets off sexually by being shouted at in genuine anger

There's a good sense of discomfort and a slight feeling of violation - the whole thing feels grimy and unpleasant despite being hinged on such a strange, seemingly innocent sci-fi idea. Short and doesn't outstay its welcome

There's a few which are basically based on a daft joke: Even the Queen around

what happens when the menstrual cycle is "solved" and teenagers rebelling to bring it back

and Stable Strategies for Middle Management which is what if animal metaphors for competition in jobs were real

and you could literally become a mantis and tear your boss's head off - and NOBODY has asked that before

The second one was worthy of a chuckle at least.

Quite a few just feel frustratingly lame, like there wasn't really a point, or the point was written really badly. In None So Blind, Joe Haldeman asks "wouldn't it be messed up if we all

had to remove our eyes to get smarter??

" like yeah man I guess it would be. Mortimer Gray's History of Death is novella-length and talks about how people understand death in a near immortal society, yet despite following one person it never really gets into real feeling and despite featuring a history book never really shows enough of the society to be interesting. Just feels too long for what's there. Flying Saucer Rock n Roll is a celebration of kids making doo-wop that ends

with a random alien abduction

- it feels it doesn't hit any points very well and ends with a "huh?". A Cabin on the Coast has a familiar plot about the fae but the characters aren't given enough definition to make it special (or it's hidden deeper than I understand). Snow by John Crowley hits an interesting emotional question - what memories are important? what remains of those who are gone? - but there's a frustrating ending where a key speech felt almost garbled to me. 

A couple were just frustrating. The Pure Product is a tale of random violence and scams that's somehow connected to time travel, but not in a way that's talked about in any way. So there's nothing really interesting there at all. Kirinyaga became the opening story of a book going into more detail, but on its own it feels deeply frustrating because it brings up questions it won't address but are impossible to ignore. It's a story about trying to go back to pre-colonial traditions, even if they seem brutal, but they're in some sort of utopian habitat run by outside "Maintenance" to their specifications. So the ending, where

Maintenance say they're bringing the society to a universal court of human justice over them killing babies arbitrarily and the narrator decides to form a warrior society among the children, feels stupid as hell. They're basically in a zoo but pretending they're not. Their "traditional" society is dependent on outsiders running a different society to do all the things they won't. What could possibly be the result of a war except the destruction of their society?

This is the only interesting question in the story, but there's no engagement with it.

The Lincoln Train by Maureen McHugh is about a Southern woman in alt history post US civil war being forcibly deported by train to somewhere in the west along with a bunch of other slaveowning families. Then

she gets rescued by a couple of people doing an Underground Railroad type thing because there's some group of people who are anti slavery but don't support forced displacement

I found this a pretty repugnant story. There's a lot of real world connotations to the images shown and it feels offensive to attach them to slaveowners to evoke sympathy. In real life, the Southern aristocracy being allowed to continue as is caused unbelievable amounts of misery for a century or more. Writing an alt history where "what if they experienced bad things... but it was bad!" is tone deaf. Worse than that, there's nothing actually interesting here. There's no level of thought put into the alt history, or the real history referenced. It just felt gross to me.

AFTER FINISHING:

Wang's Carpets by Greg Egan - I've read another full Egan book and just like that one it's very invested in one idea without really having anything else supporting it. It stands and falls on whether you find it an interesting conclusion worth waiting the whole book for.

The first life found outside of humans is "just" complex chemical that acts as a computer - but it's simulating complex life through its calculations

I think that's a cool idea, but I can't say it's communicated super well or justifies the whole novella length so in the end it felt like a bit of a whiff.

Coming of Age in Karhide by Le Guin - A fun story about coming of age in the world of Left Hand of Darkness. I don't think it was super deep or anything but she used the concept to tell a sweet story. I liked it.

The Dead - Alright idea about the uses of the dead for labour made mostly about male sexual hang ups. Waste of time.

Recording Angel - not bad exactly, but felt weirdly pointless. Not sure what the idea was here.

A Dry, Quiet War - basically a Western about a town threatened by villains and the old soldier who refuses to fight. The sci fi aspect is around some sort of time travel war, but it makes no sense despite a lot of attempted explanation. Maybe if you like Westerns it's ok.

The Undiscovered - A cute story about a Cherokee village taking in a lost

William Shakespeare

. It's fun but still feels a little like one of the other stories that are mainly based on a joke concept - they have been some of my favourites but I kept wanting a little more you know? Still one of the best in the collection.

Second Skin - sci-fi espionage/thriller type stuff except with minimal thrills or tension and a hard to understand conflict. Eh.

Story of your Life - I get the appeal of this story and thought it was pretty good BUT it feels like it's missing something. So there's parallel stories - contact with aliens and a mother thinking about the life of her child who predeceased her - and they're connected by a high sci fi concept but it just fell flat for me.

The whole story is based on "what if you could see the future" basically, with the aliens having a view of time where they see the goals of things and this way of thinking can be transmitted through learning their writing system. This then informs "if you saw your child would die before you in a certain way before you even conceived them, would you still do it" as an ending. Except there's just no way to make this an emotional beat. There's no way to actually convey how the aliens think. There's no way to convey the free will/determinism divide. It just doesn't make sense.

In the end they're 2 separate good stories that don't join together into the masterpiece other people see this as for me.

People Came From Earth - I'm not sure a key idea in this actually makes sense

people concentrating metal in their bodies in the belief they can eventually remake spaceships in future generations, even as the metals are killing them earlier and earlier

but the whole vision is great in conveying humanity slowly dying off, even as they cling desperately to the hope of something more. I didn't really understand the Da Vinci thread in it but overall it conveys a great feeling of quiet misery.

The Wedding Album - a novella about how society sees simulated humans over time, told from the perspective of a sim made to commemorate a wedding. It's fun, I liked the turns it took and the variety of ideas about sims. Not sure if it had a "point" exactly but that's fine.

10^16 to 1 - An ok story with a surprisingly strange message. You pick up early on that this is in the Cuban Missile Crisis, so a time traveller must be doing something around that. Surprisingly

the time traveller was trying to cause an American first strike against the USSR because it wouldn't wipe out the world at that point but would supposedly make people stop building up nukes, preventing a much worse apocalyptic war later. This seems to be a totally genuine "anti nuke" view of the author, as in the last paragraph they advocate the Green party, including a website link (!) which makes it really bizarre.

Daddy's World - I liked this one, another one about simulations. Really great emotionally about the misery of holding on to an image forever, the desperation to not engage with the real world. The cute imagery is well used to increase the disconnect. Was a big hit for me.

The Real World - a story about exploring the prehistoric past rammed into a story about Hollywood in an age of simulated actors that doesn't really do either justice at all. Kind of whiffed for me.

Have Not Have - another one which only felt vaguely sci fi connected. It appears to have been the first part of a novel where it would have made much more sense. The main technology conflict is actually "what happens when a remote village gets internet". It tells an interesting human story about a fashion designer/seamstress/beautician who acts as the village's connection to the wider fashion world and how her success depends on controlling access to information. I liked it enough I think.

Lobsters - oh man this story is so early 2000s it hurts. The main character gets slashdotted!!! Obviously you can't blame the author for not predicting the future but it's so invested in you thinking this character is Really Cool (and again with the weird male sexual anxieties) that it just feels embarrassing reading it now. There's a few interesting ideas, again around ethics of computer simulations, but the whole thing is wrapped up in to much stuff that doesn't seem funny or cool now that it's hard to enjoy.

Breathmoss - another novella that's got a similar theme to the Le Guin story, around growing up in a world with a different gender structure. I liked this but again I didn't feel it really explored much in a "sci fi" way, even though that was totally fine. It's just a somewhat touching story about growing up and moving away.

Lambing Season - about sympathy with an alien and the sense of acknowledgement that crosses species borders even without proper communication. Again the sci fi element is really small but there's something touching there.