Year's Best SF 2004.

kw: science fiction, collections, anthologies

I look for The Year's Best Science Fiction most years. The 2004 collection (the 22d) is edited by Garner Dozois. SciFi to me is about ideas. This collection has more ideas and less existential musing than I have seen in a long time. There's hope for SF! As John Campbell advised more than one struggling author, "Pose a problem, then fix it." Best formula ever devised.

The Stories, the Authors, and the Ideas:

Inappropriate Behavior by Pat Murphy. Autistic people can be gainfully employed in very goal-directed jobs...if you can find an appropriate supervisor. The placement of this story on some planet somewhere is irrelevant.

Start the Clock by Benjamin Rosenbaum. A virus has halted everyone's growth and aging; how will society respond? Decades later, a cure is found; how will the new society respond? One ugly, overly sexual scene could have been handled with more discretion, but I don't think subtlety is Rosenbaum's forté.

The Third Party by David Moles. When engaging in conflict over someone's fate, remember to count all the players.

The Voluntary State by Christopher Rowe. Just how much control of a populace is possible; and can that control be removed? Also, vehicles are as sentient as pets, things are grown rather than built.

Shiva in Shadow by Nancy Kress. How real is "dark matter" anyway? If you hit some, will you know? Plus an interesting take on "If I could do this over, could I do it better?"

The People of Sand and Slag by Paolo Bacigalupi. Human life once only humans remain...almost.

The Clapping Hands of God by Michael F. Flynn. How long does it take to get to know a person, or alien species, well enough to extend trust, or even sympathy?

Tourism by M. John Harrison. Post-apocalyptic dystopia has been done so much, another is boring. This one, in particular, begins in the middle, goes nowhere, and seems to be chapter one of a bad novel about bad people. Nearest thing to an idea: a professional fighter regularly spills his guts (unless he spills the other guy's), gets reconstructed overnight, at the tailor shop, to go lose again. Curious take on Tailor.

Scout's Honor by Terry Bisson. A better take than usual on Neandertal / Cro-magnon contact, with time travel thrown in...probably. The protagonist is, if not autistic, at least very, very self-absorbed.

Men are Trouble by James Patrick Kelly. Thirty years ago, aliens came and all males disappeared. Long enough for a new society to begin to arise, not long enough for the old to be forgotten.

Mother Aegypt by Kage Baker. Consummate con man meets ageless fortune teller. A new take on the Irresistible Force vs the Immovable Object.

Synthetic Serendipity by Vernor Vinge. I can't give this one away; it only looks like Cyberpunk... I wonder if we'll someday communicate with our external intelligence using shrugs and other gestures.

Skin Deep by Mary Rosenblum. What begins as a seeming paean to stem cell research has a turn that exposes its ethical ambiguity.

Delhi by Vandana Singh. A hindi-gothic fantasy of communication into the past and future.

The Tribes of Bela by Albert E. Cowdrey. 1) Can an ecosystem be built on a single genome? 2) Will the real alien please stand up?

Sitka by William Sanders. Alternative-history fantasy: Is "The Sea Wolf" autobiographical?

Leviathan Wept by Daniel Abraham. A possible future for Islamo-terrorism...network wars? [My own prediction: within 3-5 generations either everyone will be Muslim, or nobody will be, not one].

The Defenders by Colin P. Davies. A distant prequel, perhaps, to Saberhagen's Berserkers: if the perfect defender is allowed to evolve, whom (or what) will it defend?

Mayflower II by Stephen Baxter. You can't run away forever, and considering the implications, should you want to?

Riding the White Bull by Caitlin R. Kiernan. Yes, there's life on Europa, and boy, are we sorry!

Falling Star by Grendan DuBois. A little post-apocalyptic gem, based on someone writing a computer virus that does in the hardware.

The Dragons of Summer Gulch by Robert Reed. Alternative-history; dinosaurs on steroids.

The Ocean of the Blind by James L. Cambias. Studying an ocean planet, whose sentient residents live too deep for light to penetrate; and what happens when everyone gets what they've all (but one) wanted...

The Garden: A Hwarhath Science Fictional Romance by Eleanor Amason. Space wars and their effect on an alien species, told as fiction by one of the aliens—if that doesn't fry your brains, little could.

Footvote by Peter F. Hamilton. Put a gateway to a paradisical planet somewhere on Salisbury Plain, big enough for lorry after lorry, caravan after caravan to drive through. Who should go...and who actually will?

Sisyphus and the Stranger by Paul Di Filippo. Camus survives to middle age, France is the lone superpower...now what?!?

Ten Sigmas by Paul Melko. What if the many-worlds interpretation of quantum strangeness were correct, and there were someone who could know himself in all 'nearby' world lines? By the way, "ten sigmas" refers to something that occurs about 7.6 times in a trillion trillion attempts, such as flipping a coin 77 times and coming up heads every time.

Investments by Walter Jon Williams. Not all good decisions have good outcomes. Not even when the investment you own is a whole solar system.