The Year's Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection

The critically acclaimed anthology series The Year's Best Science Fiction publishes its astounding 19th volume in 2002. Weighing in at well over 600 pages, this comprehensive volume contains 26 of the best SF stories of 2001 and a knowledgeable, thorough introduction/summation by the editor, 12-time Hugo Award winner Gardner Dozois. The contributors range from veteran greats like Nancy Kress and Michael Swanwick to cult gods like Howard Waldrop and Michael Blumlein to impressive newcomers like Andy Duncan and Charles Stross.

A brief review cannot discuss all the stories, but can only suggest the range of subgenres within. These include the hard SF of Alastair Reynolds's extrasolar murder mystery "Glacial"; the soft SF of Maureen F. McHugh's wise "Interview: On Any Given Day"; the testosterone-drenched adventure SF of Paul Di Filippo's "Neutrino Drag"; the doomed lesbian love in a future so distant it seems like fantasy in Ian R. MacLeod's "Isabel of the Fall"; alternate history about Philip K. Dick and Richard Nixon in Paul McAuley's "The Two Dicks"; the triple-timeline Trojan fantasy of Howard Waldrop and Leigh Kennedy's excellent collaboration, "One-Horse Town"; the scathing satire of Carolyn Ives Gilman's "The Real Thing"; and the high-density postcyberpunk of "Lobsters," in which new author Charles Stross blends bleeding-edge infotech and venture-capital bizbuzz to create the standout SF story of 2001. --Cynthia Ward