The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 6

by Jonathan Strahan (Editor)

Overview

The science fiction and fantasy fields continue to evolve, setting new marks with each passing year. For the sixth year in a row, master anthologist Jonathan Strahan has collected stories to captivate, entertain, and showcase the very best the genre has to offer. Critically acclaimed, and with a reputation for including award-winning speculative fiction, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year is the only major “best of” anthology to collect both fantasy and science fiction under one cover.
Jonathan Strahan has edited more than thirty anthologies and collections, including The Locus Awards (with Charles N. Brown), The New Space Opera (with Gardner Dozois), and Swords and Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781597803465
Publisher:	Night Shade Books
Publication date:	03/01/2012
Series:	Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Series , #6
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	500
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Jonathan Strahan has edited more than twenty anthologies and collections, including The Locus Awards (with Charles N. Brown), The New Space Opera (with Gardner Dozois), and The Starry Rift. He has won the Ditmar, William J. Atheling Jr., and Peter McNamara awards for his work as an anthologist and reviewer, and was nominated for a Hugo Award for his editorial work. Strahan is currently the reviews editor for Locus.

Editorial Reviews

Strahan’s sixth annual genre-spanning anthology lacks the clarity (or perhaps narrowness) of purpose of a series focusing solely on fantasy or SF, but the 31 selections demonstrate a knowledge of and affection for the fantastic that rival editors would be hard-pressed to match. Strahan draws from sources across the anglosphere, and the stories are written by authors diverse in origin, gender, and age; venerable giants of the field like Peter S. Beagle and Bruce Sterling are accompanied by youthful newcomers like Hannu Rajaniemi and Princeton senior E. Lily Yu. Casting his net wide allows Strahan to harvest noteworthy fiction that more narrow-minded editors might have overlooked, including Libba Bray’s “The Last Ride of the Glory Girls,” a fascinating tale of an unwilling double agent, and Yu’s “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees,” a fable of occupation and transformation. Short-fiction fans with broad tastes will enjoy this far-ranging anthology. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

A whopping 31 eclectic stories in speculative mode, expertly selected from 2011's large and diverse output. Hard to determine standouts from such a spiffy bunch, but here goes. Ken Liu offers a delicate, limpid and thoroughly heartbreaking magic-realist tale of a Chinese girl purchased and brought to America as a bride. In Neil Gaiman's capable hands, an elderly Sherlock Holmes, not altogether unaccountably, takes up beekeeping in China. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, E. Lily Yu's smart, predatory wasps draw intricate, exact maps and enslave anarchist bees. Paul McAuley writes tellingly of alien artifacts creating havoc along a Norfolk coast drowned by global warming. Cory Doctorow's humorous "The Brave Little Toaster" consciously takes on, and trounces, Thomas M. Disch's famous fantasy-parable. Ian McDonald pens a saga of terraforming Mars, whose gritty realism conceals a surprise but all-too-plausible ending. Jeffrey Ford steps up with a trademark, squirm-inducing yarn of a saint's grisly relic. From Kij Johnson comes an engagingly peopled, beautifully realized tale of an engineer bridging a most peculiar and dangerous river. A seeming fantasy that turns into a weird future information war deserved to be, and hopefully will become, much longer (yes, Michael Swanwick, that's a hint). Humans watch in helpless astonishment as aliens attack Venus--and, even stranger, Venusians fight back, as Stephen Baxter describes. Robert Shearman presents an art gallery whose vast paintings do vastly more than just illustrate an entire year of history. Hardly less impressive: A girl's grandiose fantasies of an alternate Mars turn out to be the real thing (Dylan Horrocks); a microscopic black hole (Caitlin R. Kiernan); alien parasites (An Owomoyela); a musicologist's revenge (K.J. Parker); Libba Bray's train-robbing girl gang; unspeakable biological experiments (Nnedi Okorafor); Ellen Klages offers "Goodnight Moons" as if written by Robert A. Heinlein. Also includes worthy contributions from Karen Joy Fowler, Catherynne M. Valente, Geoff Ryman, Hannu Rajaniemi, Peter Watts, Nalo Hopkinson, Kelly Link, M. Rickert, Maureen F. McHugh, Peter S. Beagle, Robert Reed, Bruce Sterling and Margo Lanagan. Especially valuable for readers who enjoy short stories but have neither the time nor the inclination to seek them out.

Kirkus Reviews