The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 4
Strahan's introduction calls 2008 a good but not exceptional year for short fiction, and in accurate reflection, all 29 stories collected here are good, but few are great. The standouts are memorable in a variety of ways: for sheer power of narrative voice, Pat Cadigan's Truth and Bone; for human connections to inscrutable aliens, Damien Broderick's This Wind Blowing, and This Tide; for humor amid life-and-death peril, Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear's Mongoose. Hard SF fans should seek out the imperiled far future Earth of Stephen Baxter's Formidable Caress, while a sense of wonder and menace permeates Peter Watts's The Island. A few stories don't feel as strong as they might have been, but there are no real wrong turns.(Apr.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.