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A review by sjstuart
Year's Best SF 9 by David G. Hartwell, Kathryn Cramer
4.0
This is a good anthology of 2003 sci-fi stories, with several stories that are bound to make an impression.
My favorites were [a:Gregory Benford|22645|Gregory Benford|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1224059011p2/22645.jpg]'s "The Hydrogen Wall", [a:John Varley|27341|John Varley|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1346593830p2/27341.jpg]'s "In Fading Suns and Dying Moons" and especially [a:Ricard de la Casa|4949783|Ricard de la Casa|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg]'s and [a:Pedro Jorge Romero|32701|Pedro Jorge Romero|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg]'s "The Day We Went Through the Transition", which features a nice twist on the usual time-travel tale.
Several were enjoyable, but didn't feature endings as satisfying as they could have been. (Yes, I know that ambiguity and unresolved tension are a mark of sophisticated writing, and this makes me an unsophisticated reader. But, old-fashioned as it may be, I prefer a decisive ending, if not a good twist, in short-format sci-fi stories.) Others were very well written, but suffered a bit as short stories because they weren't entirely self-contained, relying on plotlines and characters from some larger universe of the author's ("The Madwoman of Shuttlefield" and "A Night on the Barbary Coast").
The few I didn't enjoy wandered a little too far towards "weird" for me. "The Waters of Meribah" and "The Violet's Embryo" featured worlds where people, their bodies, and their surroundings keep changing in bizarre ways that are a little too arbitrary for my taste. (Not violating the laws of physics, perhaps, just counting on those laws having been drastically rewritten at some point.) "The Albertine Notes" is of the same variety, but is written so lyrically that I could enjoy it merely at the level of the wordsmithing for most of the way through.
Even for the stories that didn't quite work, or didn't resonate with me, I can see exactly why they were chosen for this compilation. All were standouts in some way, whether it was their literary style, expressive imagery, thought-provoking ideas, or tight plotting.
You'll probably like an entirely different subset of these stories, of course. But they're all good enough that anyone who enjoys sci-fi is bound to find several that they enjoy.
My favorites were [a:Gregory Benford|22645|Gregory Benford|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1224059011p2/22645.jpg]'s "The Hydrogen Wall", [a:John Varley|27341|John Varley|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1346593830p2/27341.jpg]'s "In Fading Suns and Dying Moons" and especially [a:Ricard de la Casa|4949783|Ricard de la Casa|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg]'s and [a:Pedro Jorge Romero|32701|Pedro Jorge Romero|http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg]'s "The Day We Went Through the Transition", which features a nice twist on the usual time-travel tale.
Several were enjoyable, but didn't feature endings as satisfying as they could have been. (Yes, I know that ambiguity and unresolved tension are a mark of sophisticated writing, and this makes me an unsophisticated reader. But, old-fashioned as it may be, I prefer a decisive ending, if not a good twist, in short-format sci-fi stories.) Others were very well written, but suffered a bit as short stories because they weren't entirely self-contained, relying on plotlines and characters from some larger universe of the author's ("The Madwoman of Shuttlefield" and "A Night on the Barbary Coast").
The few I didn't enjoy wandered a little too far towards "weird" for me. "The Waters of Meribah" and "The Violet's Embryo" featured worlds where people, their bodies, and their surroundings keep changing in bizarre ways that are a little too arbitrary for my taste. (Not violating the laws of physics, perhaps, just counting on those laws having been drastically rewritten at some point.) "The Albertine Notes" is of the same variety, but is written so lyrically that I could enjoy it merely at the level of the wordsmithing for most of the way through.
Even for the stories that didn't quite work, or didn't resonate with me, I can see exactly why they were chosen for this compilation. All were standouts in some way, whether it was their literary style, expressive imagery, thought-provoking ideas, or tight plotting.
You'll probably like an entirely different subset of these stories, of course. But they're all good enough that anyone who enjoys sci-fi is bound to find several that they enjoy.