The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection
Gardner Dozois (Editor)
St. Martin’s, Jul 2008, $21.95
ISBN: 0312378602

This anthology consistently lives up to its billing as the best with the usual strong Introduction by editor Garner Dozois providing an overview of the year especially in short stories with the emphasis on magazine survivability. In the 25th edition, Mr. Dozois praises the Internet for the rapid growth of on-line magazines that showcase famous and unknown authors; especially those with no previous credentials. He also provides accolades to the big publishing firms for supporting anthologies and small presses who provide opportunities to new writers. Finally he gives credit to the Sci Fi channel as well. The stories as always are top rate coming from the vast sources now available. Incredulous as it seems Mr. Dozois improved the tome by finding remote tales and brings them to the attention of mainstream fans although most of the selected entries are by name authors. Especially poignant is “Last Contact by Stephen Baxter in which a mother and her astrophysicist daughter wait together for the Big Crunch to occur, “Finisterra” by David Moles with its warning to watch out for predators even living on an island in the sky, and “An Ocean is a Snowflake, Four Billion Miles away’ by John Barnes where earthlings terraform Mars. With a wide gamut of selections spanning the genre, Mr. Dozois does 2007 proud; a year that he insists will be remembered for its series of retrospect collections of great authors and the widening of sources beyond the print magazine.

Harriet Klausner