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Loading... The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 6by Neil Clarke
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. One of the best (hehe) "Best of" anthos I've read, I'll be thinking about a lot of these stories for a loooong time I only jumped aboard with volume 4, but I've quickly become a devoted fan of Neil Clarke's The Best Science Fiction of the Year anthology series. I think Clarke provides a good sampling of what the genre is up to, and his tastes broadly align with my own. Clarke edits Clarkesworld Magazine, and I find that I often particularly like stories that have been "double selected" by him: when a Clarkesworld story turns up in Best SF of the Year, it's almost always excellent. (Plus, there's no fantasy in it!) This collects the best fiction of 2020, but due to pandemic knock-on effects, ended up coming out in 2021. (Similarly, the 2021 volume will see release in 2023, but my understanding is they hope to catch up this year by doing two volumes.) Like volume 5, I read this slowly. I often find that if I read a number of stories from an anthology in quick succession, they blur together and don't leave much of an impression: I think I end up approaching the start of a new story like the start of a new chapter in a novel, and not slowing down to acclimate myself to the new narrative. So I rotated this volume's thirty-plus stories between my other reading, averaging two or three stories per month. I started it in January 2022, and I finished up the last story almost exactly a year later in January 2023! I found this a strong volume on the whole, slightly stronger than I remember volume 5 being. You can't write up a whole volume like this story by story, so I'll talk about four stories I really enjoyed in a lot of detail, then go over some others I liked, then finally discuss some weak ones. (I will link to ones freely available on the Internet)
On the whole, this is a strong volume, and shows that short sf is in good health. As always I would rate much of what I read here above the Hugo finalists for the relevant year (e.g., had "An Important Failure" been on the novelette ballot for 2021, I would have ranked it above everything except "Helicopter Story"). I look forward to volume 7, and to eventually going back and reading volume 1-3. no reviews | add a review
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From Hugo Award-Winning Editor Neil Clarke, the Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year Collected in a Single Hardcover Volume Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more--a task that can be accomplished by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to present the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, a yearly anthology compiled by Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning editor Neil Clarke, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers. The best science fiction scrutinizes our culture and politics, examines the limits of the human condition, and zooms across galaxies at faster-than-light speeds, moving from the very near future to the far-flung worlds of tomorrow in the space of a single sentence. Clarke, publisher and editor-in-chief of the acclaimed and award-winning magazine Clarkesworld, has selected the short science fiction (and only science fiction) best representing the previous year's writing, showcasing the talent, variety, and awesome "sensawunda" that the genre has to offer. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.087620806Literature English (North America) American fiction By type Genre fiction Adventure fiction Speculative fiction Science fiction Collections 21st centuryRatingAverage:
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