THE YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION

The redoubtable Dozois’s annual labor of love: 27 substantial tales drawn from 1999’s output, along with Dozois’s own summation and a list of honorable mentions. Australia’s new superstar of hard SF, Greg Egan, offers a remarkable far future where death, long banished, has been forgotten—almost. Sage Walker brings out fresh nuances in the multigeneration starship theme. In M. John Harrison’s yarn of climbing and VR-addiction, the human dimension is necessarily more important than the VR. In Michael Swanwick’s contribution, a time-traveling dinosaur keeper takes orders from an older version of himself. Paul J. McAuley accidentally creates a micro–black hole that consumes the Moon. Robert Silverberg chips in another of his fine alternate-world yarns set in a Roman Empire that never fell. Kage Baker’s ubiquitous Company, a.k.a. Dr. Zeus, continues to manipulate its operatives for its own obscure, selfish ends. Alastair Reynolds’s mind-boggling yarn of vengeance, brainwashing, and deception spans thousands of years, bulges with ideas, and screams to be expanded into a novel. With further yarns from James Patrick Kelly, Robert Reed, Eleanor Arnason, Stephen Baxter, Frederik Pohl, Ben Bova, Charles Sheffield, Walter Jon Williams, Kim Stanley Robinson, Tanith Lee, Hal Clement, Geoff Ryman, Mick Resnick, and still others, there’s bulk, variety, and quality to spare.

Nonpareil. Long may Dozois retain his energy and enthusiasm.