A review by gatspender
The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 28 by Gardner Dozois

4.0

Another year, another solid selection of contemporary SF. Top picks would be "The Fifth Dragon" by Ian McDonald (hard SF glimpse of an emerging multinational lunar society), "The Man Who Sold The Moon" by Cory Doctorow (an emotional near future tale about idealistic dropouts developing a world-changing invention almost by accident) and "Entanglement" by Vandana Singh (loosely interconnected stories about people around the world taking small actions to fight climate change - unusually optimistic as such stories go). "Jubilee" by Karl Schroeder seems genuinely original (a long-distance romance between two teenagers has a deep impact on a planet's society, to which they both remain comically oblivious). The only real stinker is Allen M Steele's "The Prodigal Son", in which a profoundly unlikeable character does well for himself thanks to his family connections and the inexplicable attentions of an attractive woman, despite the efforts of some horrible religious protesters (cos religious people hate science, right?).

One grumble here, and it applies to all of these anthologies: this book is riddled with spelling errors. A decent copy editor is needed. In one of the stories (I forget which, possibly "The Colonel" by Peter Watts) I had to reread part of it because i'm pretty sure one of the characters' names kept changing!