Year's Best SF 15
by David G. Hartwell, Kathryn Cramer | Science Fiction & Fantasy |
ISBN: 9780061721755 Global Overview for this book
ISBN: 9780061721755 Global Overview for this book
Registered by 
GoryDetails
of Nashua, New Hampshire USA on 3/11/2020
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
GoryDetails of Nashua, New Hampshire USA on 3/11/2020 This Book is Currently in the Wild!
2 journalers for this copy...
I got this softcover at a local Savers thrift shop. It's a collection of SF stories from 2009. I enjoyed nearly all of them; among my favorites:
"Exegesis" by Nancy Kress is a short-short dealing with the change in language over long periods of time - all centered on a famous quote from "Gone With The Wind"!
"Erosion" by Ian Creasey has a man on the brink of a voyage into space taking time to walk the cliffside - where he has a conversation with the virtual avatar of a woman who died long ago. There's a rather delightful (if sometimes eerie) mix of technology, nature, and cemetery/memorial-garden, all of which conspires to convince the protagonist of his own choices.
"Collision" by Gwyneth Jones takes experimental space travel and mixes in genetic patterns - and gender identity - for a story that's both galaxy-encompassing and personal.
"The Calculus Plague" by Marissa K. Lingen is a short-short about an experiment in contagious learning that (surprise!) gets out of hand.
"The Highway Code" by Brian Stableford is about a sentient heavy-duty truck, one of a self-driving fleet that operates by strict rules. When the truck is faced with a dire situation in which the rules don't cover everything, he has to choose an action that will cost human lives but might save more.
"The Last Apostle" by Michael Cassutt is about the last surviving astronaut of the twelve who walked on the moon. [There seem to be some fictionalizations in the list, though with homage to the real ones.] As he recalls the ones who've gone before, he also recalls an incident on his own mission, one that he and his fellows agreed to keep secret. But now he's decided it's time to go and see if his memory has failed him or not, and he undertakes one more moon-walk...
"Another Life" by Charles Oberndorf is a mind-screw tale of a space soldier who's been rebooted after dying, and is now recuperating on a space port - where he really doesn't want to go back to the front. He hooks up with a transsexual prostitute who's quite generous to him at first, though as he continues to avoid any attempt to seek work she nudges him into taking on chores and, eventually, to doing some hooking himself. Such is his state of dissociation and ennui that despite not liking this he goes through it anyway, all the while fretting over the woman he left behind. But in this reality, where people who die can be regenerated with only some memory loss (depending on the lag between backups), and where the new bodies can be of any gender or description, who's to say he hasn't already met her again - or whether she'd remember him if they did meet? And that's not all; the truth is even trickier than the plot so far...
"The Consciousness Problem" by Mary Robinette Kowal starts out with a woman fretting over the time her husband spends at work - with a clone of himself, something she finds disturbing. And then the clone seems to be paying more attention to her than her husband, leading to a pleasantly-surprising resolution that I probably should have seen coming. [A much nicer ending than many clones-in-love stories!]
"Tempest 43" by Stephen Baxter is a tale of shipwreck and AI - all based (surprise!) on Shakespeare's play, with some nicely-done mappings of the characters in the play to those in the story.
"Bespoke" by Genevieve Valentine is an intriguing look at tailored clothing for time-travelers in a distant future - with the rather sad kicker that the growing number of wealthy time travelers has caused more and more extinctions in the current day, as somebody always seems to step on a butterfly. [Ironically, at this point butterflies are almost the only non-human things alive...]
"Attitude Adjustment" by Eric James Stone: this one's a fun solve-the-problem story in which an excursion craft runs into a problem that will cause it to collide with the moon's surface if the crew can't figure out a workaround. I enjoyed seeing the passengers and crew come together here.
"Exegesis" by Nancy Kress is a short-short dealing with the change in language over long periods of time - all centered on a famous quote from "Gone With The Wind"!
"Erosion" by Ian Creasey has a man on the brink of a voyage into space taking time to walk the cliffside - where he has a conversation with the virtual avatar of a woman who died long ago. There's a rather delightful (if sometimes eerie) mix of technology, nature, and cemetery/memorial-garden, all of which conspires to convince the protagonist of his own choices.
"Collision" by Gwyneth Jones takes experimental space travel and mixes in genetic patterns - and gender identity - for a story that's both galaxy-encompassing and personal.
"The Calculus Plague" by Marissa K. Lingen is a short-short about an experiment in contagious learning that (surprise!) gets out of hand.
"The Highway Code" by Brian Stableford is about a sentient heavy-duty truck, one of a self-driving fleet that operates by strict rules. When the truck is faced with a dire situation in which the rules don't cover everything, he has to choose an action that will cost human lives but might save more.
"The Last Apostle" by Michael Cassutt is about the last surviving astronaut of the twelve who walked on the moon. [There seem to be some fictionalizations in the list, though with homage to the real ones.] As he recalls the ones who've gone before, he also recalls an incident on his own mission, one that he and his fellows agreed to keep secret. But now he's decided it's time to go and see if his memory has failed him or not, and he undertakes one more moon-walk...
"Another Life" by Charles Oberndorf is a mind-screw tale of a space soldier who's been rebooted after dying, and is now recuperating on a space port - where he really doesn't want to go back to the front. He hooks up with a transsexual prostitute who's quite generous to him at first, though as he continues to avoid any attempt to seek work she nudges him into taking on chores and, eventually, to doing some hooking himself. Such is his state of dissociation and ennui that despite not liking this he goes through it anyway, all the while fretting over the woman he left behind. But in this reality, where people who die can be regenerated with only some memory loss (depending on the lag between backups), and where the new bodies can be of any gender or description, who's to say he hasn't already met her again - or whether she'd remember him if they did meet? And that's not all; the truth is even trickier than the plot so far...
"The Consciousness Problem" by Mary Robinette Kowal starts out with a woman fretting over the time her husband spends at work - with a clone of himself, something she finds disturbing. And then the clone seems to be paying more attention to her than her husband, leading to a pleasantly-surprising resolution that I probably should have seen coming. [A much nicer ending than many clones-in-love stories!]
"Tempest 43" by Stephen Baxter is a tale of shipwreck and AI - all based (surprise!) on Shakespeare's play, with some nicely-done mappings of the characters in the play to those in the story.
"Bespoke" by Genevieve Valentine is an intriguing look at tailored clothing for time-travelers in a distant future - with the rather sad kicker that the growing number of wealthy time travelers has caused more and more extinctions in the current day, as somebody always seems to step on a butterfly. [Ironically, at this point butterflies are almost the only non-human things alive...]
"Attitude Adjustment" by Eric James Stone: this one's a fun solve-the-problem story in which an excursion craft runs into a problem that will cause it to collide with the moon's surface if the crew can't figure out a workaround. I enjoyed seeing the passengers and crew come together here.
I'm adding this book to the Otherworldly bookbox, which will be on its way to its next stop shortly. Hope it travels safely, and that people enjoy the selection!
*** Released for the 2021 Heads Shoulders Knees Toes challenge, for the embedded "ear" in the title. ***
*** Released for the 2021 Science Fiction challenge. ***
*** Released for the 2021 Heads Shoulders Knees Toes challenge, for the embedded "ear" in the title. ***
*** Released for the 2021 Science Fiction challenge. ***
Took out of the Otherworldly {Shrinking} Bookbox Round V!
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Read about 75%. I couldn't remember any of the stories I had read after reading them except one 'The Unstrung Zither' by Yoon Ha Lee. That one mostly stuck out because I enjoyed the author's full-length novel 'Ninefox Gambit'.
Journal Entry 5 by 
Spatial
at Little Free Library #26864 - The Peaks of Otter in Bedford, Virginia USA on Saturday, September 30, 2023
Spatial at Little Free Library #26864 - The Peaks of Otter in Bedford, Virginia USA on Saturday, September 30, 2023
Released 6 mos ago (9/30/2023 UTC) at Little Free Library #26864 - The Peaks of Otter in Bedford, Virginia USA
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
Released just as the fog was lifting from Abbott Lake.
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