The Year's Best Science Fiction #20 / Gardner Dozois

The Year's Best Science Fiction: twentieth annual collection

category: science fiction, editor:

Gardner Dozois

book 20 of The Year's Best Science Fiction
original copyright 2002

read in February 2012

Agamedes' opinion: 3 out of 10: so bad it's embarrassing

I grew up on science fiction. For years I read only science fiction. (Okay, and various myths and legends.)

Then I drifted to fantasy. Read less and less science fiction.

A collection of "the year's best science fiction" seemed like a good book to refresh my enjoyment of SF.

Wrong.

The first story was sort of interesting. A girl growing up in a strange -- to us -- culture. All seems to be sweetness and light, except that it's not. But that is not the point of this overlong story. Girl grows up to be a space pilot. No surprise, hardly worth wondering if this is the point of the story. Through the magic of unexplained time travel, girl's friend seems to have killed girl's pilot mentor, who seems to be the girl as an old woman. So what? A pointless story complexity. The story is sort of interesting, but overlong and ultimately pointless.

Another story -- a novella -- begins with the protagonist attending a night-club. The main act is a man who talks to his penis. Or perhaps it's a woman who pretends to talk to her penis; we never see the penis. Whatever, I gave up reading before the end of the act.

One story followed an interesting idea: humans can't reach the universe so they go small... Shrink themselves, adapt in various ways, live in microscopic "universes", all within a very small physical area. It's possible that the three or four sets of characters all live as bodily bacteria on one man... That's just my best guess. It seems a reasonable explanation of the role of the "narrator" who dances naked and jerks off between the mini-chapters of the story.

Then there's the story of the woman who herds sheep. She sees a flying saucer and its dog-like occupant. Most of the story tells us about the techniques of sheep-herding... Boring and pointless. The woman sees the space dog a few times, briefly. When the space dog crashes its saucer -- for no apparent reason -- the woman comforts it as it lies, dying. "Good doggie," she says, as she pats its head. Nice, but so what?!

I know that there is at least one good story in the book... but it is lost amongst the dross. So what has gone wrong? The clue is in the introduction to each story.

Each introduction mentions previous stories by this author. "So-and-so has had a story in The Year's Best numbers 2 through 7, 9, 11 and 13 through 19..." Get the picture? Dozois (the editor) likes certain authors. He has not changed his opinions in the last twenty years. He keeps on selecting stories from the same, select group of his favourite authors...

And if you don't like Dozois' favourite authors, this book is not for you.

I don't like Dozois' favourite authors. I think this book is rubbish.

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btw: I originally rated this book as "4: bad but could be read". Then I changed my mind.

Nearly every story -- as far into the book as I could bear to read -- is overlong and boring. Some are also stupid. I could not finish this book. I did not want to finish this book.

And some of the stories are embarrassing: So bad -- when categorised as "science fiction" -- so bad that they give science fiction a bad name.

..o0o..

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PissWeakly: the Index