The Entropy Pump

anthologized by Gardner Dozois

Gardner’s anthology had 17 good to great stories, 6 average stories and only 7 that were below average. Nearly the same quality to crap distribution like in Hartwell’s Best Of anthology this year. Gardner’s choices cover a much wider definition of SF than Hartwell’s, there’s stuff from the core of SF to the fringe and everything between. Since my taste runs more toward the core SF stuff, I liked the Hartwell anthology a bit more, but Gardner’s anthology had enough stories that weren’t in Hartwell’s anthology that I wouldn’t have wanted to miss, like Peter Watts’s and Derryl Murphy’s “Mayfly”, Ian McDonald’s “The Little Goddess” or Alastair Reynolds’s “Zima Blue”.

Ian McDonald - The Little Goddess (5/5)

The path of life of a young girl is chronicled, who is a goddess in her younger years, then loses everything and has to find another place for herself in a world that is struggling with new technologies. Excellent story.

Paolo Bacigalupi - The Calorie Man (2/5)

Bacigalupi’s stories have rubbed me the wrong way in past Best’s Anthologies, this one is no exception. His futures all seem to wallow in worlds in decay, where every achievement of the modern society seems to have been lost to made place for some widely implausible, totalitarian system. Not very entertaining to read either.

Alastair Reynolds - Beyond the Aquila Rift (3/5)

Oh man, what a disappointment. Til the final paragraph of the story this was one of the best stories, and then the author has to ruin the whole thing. It was one of these throw the book at the wall moments. A pilot and his crew got error routed in an alien transport system and strand far away from home.

Daryl Gregory - Second Person, Present Tense (5/5)

Another very impressive story, excellent writing, and the main idea is quite neat (a girl destroy her identity via a drug and when a second personality takes her place her parents have a hard time dealing with it). I wanted to say more about the story, but it’s hard to say something when everything seems perfect.

Jay Lake and Ruth Nestvold - The Canadian Who Came Almost All the Way Back from the Stars (3/5)

Another good story that suffers from a ho-hum, average ending. A Canadian whom all think a crackpot builds a stardrive and leaves Earth. Now the NSA wants his knowledge and waits for his return.

Michael Swanwick - Triceratops Summer (3/5)

It feels as if this is a lightweight, short variant of the final point of his novel “Bones of the Earth”. Since I was annoyed at his conclusion then, my reaction to this story is the same, a story that is made pointless by its own plot device.

Robert Reed - Camouflage (5/5)

Another excellent story that takes place on Reed’s Great Ship setting, a spaceship larger than most planets touring the galaxy. This time, a man on the run from the Master Captain of the Great Ship has to solve a murder. You get strange aliens, intrigue and a nice mystery.

Ken MacLeod - A Case of Consilience (4/5)

A good first contact story that nods its head to Blish’s famous novel, but stands easily on its own. The ages old tradition of the twist ending is utilized, but since it’s such a good twist and I hadn’t seen it coming, it was welcome.

Bruce Sterling - The Blemmye’s Strategem (4/5)

This reads much more like a historical piece than science fiction, taking place during the time of the crusades. The Silent Master, an obvious non-human entity, has a hidden plan and his two human disciples find out his hidden agenda nearly too late. I liked it.

William Sanders - Amba (4/5)

An absorbing story amidst the backdrop of a near future Earth that is in the clutches of the disastrous effects of global warming. The hero is a typical hard shell, compassionate core type, common in noire fiction, which may be one reason why I liked the story.

Mary Rosenblum - Search Engine (2/5)

Assuming that the erosion of privacy is a bad thing is IMHO the easy assumption, without giving much thought to how realistic this really is. A society where everyone can track everything about everyone is a society where it will be much harder than even today for politicians to plot an event such as is at the core of this story. A transparent society may indeed be the end of real privacy, but Rosenblum’s story never ask why this is a bad thing, it just assumes it is and uses a cheap scare tactic to convince the reader to think likewise.

Chris Beckett - Piccadillly Circus (3/5)

A badly realized mind-uploading future mixed with a bland story of those few humans who have remained in the flesh. The story meanders from here to there, but can’t decide what it actually wants to say, and ends nowhere.

David Gerrold - In the Quake Zone (5/5)

Wow, I never expected that Gerrold still had it. He’s written some excellent stuff years ago, but I thought he’d lost it along the way. This one is not only a great story, it’s also one that feels very fresh in a SFnal sense. It starts as a time travelling story somewhere in the recent past, but where it’s going from there is really unexpected, figuratively speaking.

Liz Williams - La Malcontenta (2/5)

In an unspecified future a matriarchy has mostly rid itself of men. A girl is imprisoned by her own kind for having been in short contact with one of the remaining men-artifacts, but when a celebration is held she gets to leave her prison for a short time. Overall a very thin story, both on content, plot and setting. Not very good.

Stephen Baxter - The Children of Time (2/5)

After an apocalypse has washed away our present civilization, it’s back to the stone age. Told in a sequence of vignettes that sketch the lifes of some children living millions of years apart, complemented with some information of how humanity survives and adapts. Very generic stuff, neither is there an interesting plot, nor a very interesting setting.

Vonda N. McIntyre - Little Faces (4/5)

Far future story where women and sentient space ships live in a kind of symbiotic relationship. It’s a nice, little story, but most of the attraction of the story comes from the strange setting, not the plot.

Gene Wolfe - Comber (2/5)

I don’t like most stuff by Wolfe, this is no exception, a nonsensical setting that I have a hard time seeing as anything even remotely SFnal. It’s mostly weird stuff thrown together, it doesn’t make sense, and I didn’t enjoy reading it.

Harry Turtledove - Audubon in Atlantis (5/5)

I’m not a big fan of alternate history, mostly because I don’t see most AH as SF, and much of it seems written by the number. This one is an exception, an excellent story about growing old and dealing with the fact that your time and age has come to an end.

Hannu Rajaniemi - Deus Ex Homine (5/5)

An impressive story about people who get infected with an AI-plague that remakes them into powerful posthuman entities with whom humanity is at war. I really liked this story, both the writing and the idea content were very high, but lately I get a little annoyed with all those writers whose only idea of a transhuman/posthuman future is almost inevitable pessimistic (all those pessimistic writers are somehow connected to England, maybe it’s something in the water there).

Stephen Popkes - The Great Caruso (5/5)

Popkes has a style that just gives you hope, makes you feel good for the future, even when he writes about a person who’s about to get killed by little machines in her body. He transforms human warmth into words, which is a rare skill even among writers.

Neal Asher - Softly Spoke the Gabbleduck (4/5)

An entertaining action adventure involving a hunting party on an alien world. The mystery of the gabbleduck sadly turned out to be a mere plot device for advancing the story, not something more interesting.

Alastair Reynolds - Zima Blue (5/5)

There are stories where the final revelations about a mystery can’t stand up to the expectations that have been built in the begin, fortunately this wasn’t one of those. The reason why a post-human artist became obsessed with the color zima blue is quite mind-boggling, and the parts that deal with memories are quite interesting too. Excellent story.

David Moles - Planet of the Amazon Women (2/5)

What looks like an intriguing concept at first is revealed as nothing as mere fantasy upon further reading. The whole thing of causal anomaly is just a cover, the author never intends to explain just how this impossible timeline where only female life exists has developed, or how this so-called anomaly came into existence on a world in our timeline. In the end the story stops without solving anything, and I wondered what the point was. Meh.

Dominic Green - The Clockwork Atom Bomb (5/5)

A weapon inspector in Congo finds something that could literally tear the Earth apart, but local powers use it as a waste dump. The main character is nicely done, you feel as if his job makes him dance on the edge between sanity and insanity every day, which has made him rather cynical, which is refreshing to read after too much PC characterization. Excellent story.

Chris Roberson - Gold Mountain (4/5)

Alternate history that shows China as a superpower instead of America. Some stuff of the setting is odd, on one hand they can build skyhooks, on the other hand this world looks more backward than ours (but I try not to think too much about stuff like this). The main story is about guilt, nicely done but nothing outstanding.

Gwyneth Jones - The Fulcrum (2/5)

Another annoying story. A plot device that is never really explained and could easily have been transformed by magic (the given explanation is pure technobubble bullshit) drives a predictable story.

Peter Watts and Derryl Murphy - Mayfly (5/5)

One of the highlights in this anthology, a very short, yet poignant tale that shows that sometimes the best intentions can still have horrible side-effect. Or at least for the parents of a child whose mind is simulated inside of a computer and then plugged into her real body, and who seems to have the need to harm herself. I thought the ending was really well done, both liberating and distressing, something you don’t expect to feel at the same time for the same action.

Elizabeth Bear - Two Dreams on Trains (3/5)

An average story that left not much of an impression either way. There’s nothing really bad or annoying about it, but the story is so thin and short that I had a hard time to care about any of the characters or their actions.

Joe Haldeman - Angel of Light (3/5)

A story that is well written and has its moments, but overall feels a bit marginal. Man sells old pulp magazines to get a christmas gift for his kids, with the twist that in this future a religion that meshes Christianity and Islam exists.

James Patrick Kelly - Burn (3/5)

Well written, interesting setup, but the ending felt kinda weak, mostly because the story couldn’t decide which side it to take or whether to make a stand at all, thus making the point of the story fuzzy.

Rating: 4/5

anthologized by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer

The Hartwell/Cramer Year’s Best has 18 good to great stories, 7 averages ones and only 6 that are below average. Which, from my experience with anthologies is an excellent quality to crap ratio. If you like, what I personally call core SF: spaceships, robots, aliens, first contact, AIs, then this will be an excellent anthology for you, if you are more bend toward so called literary stories with few SF elements then there are only few stories to your liking. Including so many flash fiction pieces from Nature was an interesting choice, but while some of them were excellent, some of them weren’t, and it felt that they (Hartwell/Cramer) took just a whole batch without caring for the quality. Still, in the end a decision I liked and hope to see again next year.

David Langford - New Hope for the Dead (4/5)

A flash fiction piece that reads as if Langford has taken most of the interesting concepts from the first half of Egan’s novel “Permutation City” and satirized them (Egan gets a nod in the story itself). Not very deep, but it short and fun.

Hannu Rajaniemi - Deus Ex Homine (5/5)

An impressive story about people who get infected with an AI-plague that remakes them into powerful posthuman entities with whom humanity is at war. I really liked this story, both the writing and the idea content were very high, but lately I get a little annoyed with all those writers whose only idea of a transhuman/posthuman future is almost inevitable pessimistic (all those pessimistic writers are somehow connected to England, maybe it’s something in the water there).

Gardner R. Dozois - When the Great Days Came (3/5)

If you ask me about a great story from the perspective of a rat, I think you won’t find one better or more authentic than this. On the other hand if you’re asking me whether this is a good SF story (or whether it has a great plot), I have to say nay. The whole SF angle feels tacked on at the end of the story and the whole plot is about a rat running around.

Daryl Gregory - Second Person, Present Tense (5/5)

Another very impressive story, excellent writing, and the main idea is quite neat (a girl destroy her identity via a drug and when a second personality takes her place her parents have a hard time dealing with it). I wanted to say more about the story, but it’s hard to say something when everything seems perfect.

Justine Robinson - Dreadnought (1/5)

I hate vignettes, no beginning, no end, just something out of the middle that doesn’t make much sense on its own. If I want incomprehensible writing I can easily rip out one or two pages from a book and read them.

Ken MacLeod - A Case of Consilience (4/5)

A good first contact story that nods its head to Blish’s famous novel, but stands easily on its own. The ages old tradition of the twist ending is utilized, but since it’s such a good twist and I hadn’t seen it coming, it was welcome.

Tobias S. Buckell - Toy Planes (3/5)

A story about a Caribbean space program that uses second hand stuff to put its astronaut into orbit. Enjoyable for what it is, but there’s nothing that makes it stand out in any way.

Neal Asher - Mason’s Rats (3/5)

Unlike in Gardner’s rat story I liked the plot and the concept behind the story, but the writing didn’t do much for me.

Vonda N. McIntyre - A Modest Proposal (2/5)

I wonder what the point of writing this was. Sure, it’s not a very desirable future, but since it’s completely unbelievable it feels like a cheap shot, a straw man argument.

Rudy Rucker - Guadalupe and Hieronymus Bosch (2/5)

This feels like it’s written by a ten years old with ADD. The style is shrill and soon began to grate on my nerves. Worst of all, if you take all the surface weirdness away, what remains is a very ordinary story about saving the world from a strange creature.

Peter F. Hamilton - The Forever Kitten (4/5)

While Hamilton is more known for his big, fat novels, the stuff I enjoyed most by him in the past is his short work. This is a very short, yet very poignant tale that shows that the protective instinct of parents can lead to very disturbing decisions.

Matthew Jarpe - City of Reason (4/5)

A fast paced, inventive action adventure story in solar space whose setting seemed to channel Sterling’s Schismatrix. What I liked most was how it evoked the feeling of distance even inside the solar system, of how lonely a ship is out there.

Bruce Stirling - Ivory Tower (5/5)

This short piece shows that Sterling hasn’t lost his touch for inventive and poignant stories. Former internet geeks become self-taught physicists and build a modern commune. Whether this is SF or just a real life story that hasn’t happened yet is debatable, but it’s excellent nonetheless.

Lauren McLaughlin - Sheila (5/5)

Another very impressive story by someone I’ve haven’t heard about yet. The setting is the near future where AIs have been made possibly by memetic design, but memetic evolution allows the AIs to become as diverse as humans are, and like us their goals and ways are manifold.

Paul McAuley - Rats of the System (5/5)

Some of McAuley’s stories I read in past Year’s Best anthologies had all the right elements I like in SF, yet they never really felt much more like workmanlike stuff, something that was okay but didn’t exactly made me care. RotS seems to be the exception, I liked it tremendously. In the shadows of almighty posthumans those who believe them gods and those who just want to learn about their technology try to outmaneuver each other.

Larissa Lai - I Love Liver: A Romance (4/5)

Another very short piece that is at the core about a product of a designer gone rogue. It’s a fun piece that is saved from falling apart by its shortness.

James Patrick Kelly - The Edge of Nowhere (4/5)

A very well written post-singularity story that remains a bit too vague on the nature of the cognisphere (a knowledge base of everything human) to argue its point about human creativity convincingly.

Ted Chiang - What’s Expected of Us (4/5)

Stories whose conclusion is that there’s no free will always make a bit uncomfortable, but I think that’s the effect Chaing was aiming for in his story. But until I have a Predictor in my hands, I remain unconvinced that this is anything more than a philosophical thought-experiment.

Michael Swanwick - Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play (5/5)

Very enjoyable story, an adventure in a far future Greece where someone is building a test run of gods that utilize pheromones. The dynamic between the two heroes Darger and Surplus reminds me a bit of Leiber’s famous fantasy duo, and I hope Swanwick writes enough stories with them to collect them in a book.

Stephen Baxter - Lakes of Light (5/5)

The third expansion age of his Xeelee future history is one of the bleakest fictional environments, rivaled only by the likes of Warhammer 40k or Barton’s “Dark Sky Legion”. Yet amidst this dark background Baxter can still write a story that evokes genuine sense of wonder and awe, and shows that there are still little pockets of humanity left. Excellent story.

Oliver Morton - The Albian Message (4/5)

A very short piece about an alien artifact in solar space whose cargo may be unexpected but not unwelcome. Made me wonder whether this idea had been done before in SF.

Bud Sparhawk - Bright Red Star (2/5)

A manipulative story that is constructed in such a way that the only solution in some situations is to kill innocents to save humanity. It doesn’t help that the innocent little girl in the story is a stock cardboard character. And the whole human heads idea is ludicrous, a throwback to the worst pulp excesses of early SF.

Alaya Dawn Johnson - Third Days Lights (3/5)

It begins as a fantasy story and then tries to become a SF story, but never actually achieves it, even if words like posthumans are thrown around. The premise of using universes as power sources doesn’t even make the slightest sense. There are also some bad memes that are prevalent in fantasy, people don’t want to live forever, people get reborn, stuff like that. My reaction might have been different if I read it in a fantasy anthology.

Greg Bear - Ram Shift Phase 2 (2/5)

A short piece that tried to be funny, but I can’t say I was amused, more annoyed. But since humor is always a mileage question, other might feel different.

Gregory Benford - On the Brane (3/5)

Brane cosmology is utilized to create an old-fashioned first contact story without venturing outside of the solar system. I liked it, at least until the final sentence, which read as if not uttered by the main character but like an uber-optimistic mission statement of the author. Sometimes you need to know when to stop.

R. Garcia y Robertson - Oxygen Rising (5/5)

An excellent story that shows the end results of a dispute over a world, embedded into a neat far future settings with many modified humans running around.

Adam Roberts - And Future King… (2/5)

A story where King Athur is remade as a robot and used to size control of Britain. Like the Vonda McIntyre story, it’s a satire, but sadly doesn’t work well, both pieces play it much too safe, they might have felt original and fresh decades ago, but today they have no bite, and don’t even work well as stories.

Alastair Reynolds - Beyond the Aquila Rift (3/5)

Oh man, what a disappointment. Til the final paragraph of the story this was one of the best stories, and then the author has to ruin the whole thing. It was one of these throw the book at the wall moments. A pilot and his crew got error routed in an alien transport system and strand far away from home.

Joe Haldeman - Angel of Light (3/5)

A story that is well written and has its moments, but overall feels a bit marginal. Man sells old pulp magazines to get a christmas gift for his kids, with the twist that in this future a religion that meshes Christianity and Islam exists.

Liz Williams - Ikiryoh (4/5)

A strange future full of gene engineered creatures from old legend, where one of them, a kappa, has to watch over an odd child from the present queen. While I’m not a big fan of far futures settings where the monarchy is back, this one was well written and had an interesting plot.

Cory Doctorow - I, Robot (5/5)

The final story of the anthology is an excellent choice, one that evokes both Asimov and Orwell, but has its own voice, all Doctorow. A future Orwellian state meshed with Asimov robots, that is under siege from the rest of the world that has progressed far more than is led on in the beginning.

Rating: 4/5