{"id":1717,"date":"2007-10-07T18:25:44","date_gmt":"2007-10-07T18:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1717"},"modified":"2007-10-07T18:25:44","modified_gmt":"2007-10-07T18:25:44","slug":"critic_at_large_28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1717","title":{"rendered":"Critic At Large: Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year&#8217;s Best Science Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve always had a special fondness for SF anthologies and I always make it a point to pick up the annual &#8220;Year&#8217;s Best&#8221; volume that is edited by the incomparable Gardner Dozois. In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Best-20-Years-Science-Fiction\/dp\/031233656X\/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1\/102-9166805-0596163?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1191799050&amp;sr=1-1\">Best of the Best<\/a>, Dozois assembles his picks for the best short stories from the past twenty years&#8217; worth of the annual collections. It includes stories from genre luminaries such as Robert Silverberg, Nancy Kress, and Gene Wolfe. Some of my favorites from the collection are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;The Pure Product&#8221; by John Kessel: A violent romp of a story that has few nice things to say about the moral fiber of our future descendants.&nbsp; <\/li>\n<li>&#8220;A Dry, Quiet War&#8221; by Tony Daniel: A pastiche of the western dime novel set in the far future and told with confident economy.&nbsp; <\/li>\n<li>&#8220;10<sup>16<\/sup> to 1&#8243; by James Patrick Kelly: Kelly crafts a nostalgic tale that is a more grown-up version of something that might have aired on The Twilight Zone. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you have any interest in the science fiction short story, this is a worthy addition to your collection. One might argue that Dozois excluded some classics (the omission of John Varley&#8217;s &#8220;Press Enter&#8221; is almost criminal), but anthologies such as this are inherently open to such criticism. I see that Dozois has released a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Best-Years-Science-Fiction-Novels\/dp\/0312363427\/ref=pd_sim_b_2\/102-9166805-0596163\">sequel of sorts<\/a> that collects longer novellas, which I&#8217;ll be sure to check out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve always had a special fondness for SF anthologies and I always make it a point to pick up the annual &#8220;Year&#8217;s Best&#8221; volume that is edited by the incomparable Gardner Dozois. In Best of the Best, Dozois assembles his picks for the best short stories from the past twenty years&#8217; worth of the annual <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1717' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-rH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}