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Customer Review
- Reviewed in Canada on January 24, 2007There is no doubt about Mr. Dozois' eye for identifying the best short stories in the SF publishing world. Published in 2005, this anthology gathers his favorites among the stories that have appeared in his "Year's best" anthologies over a period of 20 years. Now if these stories are representative of the genre, and while there are too few to be statistically significant I suspect that they are representative, the most interesting point is how this collection relates to Mr. Dozois' most recent "Year's best" anthology published in 2006. While it is striking that many of the latter's stories dealt with end of the world scenarios, usually of an environmental nature, there are absolutely none related to this theme in this 20 year collection. It thus appears that the premise that the end of the world is making a strong comeback in the SF literature, after a hiatus in the post cold war world, just might be correct. After decades of literature where bleakness and catastrophe was at the core of the stories, this 20 year anthology is actually pretty innocent from this point of view, concentrating instead on the examination of some pretty original concepts. This innocence evident in the collection leads to quite a pleasant read, away from the stress that we now face every time that a new report comes out indicating that things are getting much worse far faster than we ever thought possible. So read it while you can, because if the last yearly anthology is any indication, the stories will be getting a lot darker very soon.
