The Years Best Science Fiction: 8th Annual Collection
by Gardner Dozois
Category: Fiction

This edition of The Year's Best Science Fiction collects twenty-five of the finest works of speculative fiction to see print in 1990, stories from the genre's every edge, and from its heart. Among the many marvels are tales from the field's most accomplished artists: Ursula K. Le Guin's "The Shobies' Story" returns to the Hainish worlds with a reality-defining story, while Joe Haldeman's "The Hemmingway Hoax" embarks from our world on a time-defying trip through other possibilities. Kate Wilhelm, Michael Moorcock, Robert Silverberg, and John Brunner demonstrate too with their stories why they remain among the most popular science fiction writers of all time. With the closing of a decade and cyberpunk virtually becoming reality, many of the leading writers of the eighties have begun to bring new insight and vision to their fiction: Bruce Sterling examines a classic clash of cultures in "We See Things Differently," and James Patrick Kelly's "Mr. Boy" presents a hard-edged story about the guts of growing up. Lewis Shiner's "White City" and Connie Willis's "Cibola" both seek peace--of sorts--amid spectacle, and works by Nancy Kress, Lucius Shepard and Robert Frazier, Pat Murphy, and John Kessel also dazzle and amaze. Among the many other stories in this volume are powerhouse piece by Terry Bisson, Molly Gloss, Ian McDonald, Charles Sheffield, Alexander Jablokov, and Dafydd ab Hugh, as well as towering new mindscapes from young talents such as Jonathan Lethem, Ian R. MacLeod, Greg Egan and Ted Chiang. A wonderful tour through possible, probable, and virtual realities, The Year's Best Science Fiction is an ideal assemblage of the year's short fiction. This volume is essential to anyone who reads sf. "A virtually indispensable series."--Kirkus Reviews