THE YEAR'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION

Another bumper crop of 28 new tales, varying in length from novella down to a handful of pages, drawn from sf's 1991 magazines and anthologies. The standouts: Nancy Kress's assured tale of genetic enhancements that do away with the need to sleep; a splendid far-future yarn from Walter Jon Williams wherein a humanity united under Buddhism faces the challenge of warlike aliens; an eerie fusion of physics and Indian religions from Gregory Benford; memory theft and a bleak near-future from Brian W. Aldiss; an equally bleak 20th-century retrospective from Kim Stanley Robinson; another of Mike Resnick's sprightly future-Africa variations, and of Connie Willis's tales of the London Blitz. Also on the agenda: computer personalities, alternate histories, corporate dirty tricks, feral children, time travel, knowledge of the future, supermen, genetic warfare, homelessness, revenge, photographs, shipwreck on the moon, future sex, alien hurricanes, death, robots, art, generational conflicts, and WW II. Well up to par in terms of quality, quantity, and scope: the essential guide to science fiction's shorter-format activities.