September 14, 2015
This first SF and fantasy volume of the venerable Best American annuals collects work published in 2014 by authors residing in the U.S. and Canada. Series editor John Joseph Adams and his team selected 80 stories (18 of which came from publications Adams edited) and anonymized them for Hill, who picked 20 to reprint; the rest received honorable mentions. The overall quality of the work is very high, with standouts including Nathan Ballingrud’s creepy-cute “Skullpocket,” about the fair a ghoul holds annually for his town’s children; Neil Gaiman’s “How the Marquis Got His Coat Back,” a charming return to his Neverwhere universe; and Karen Russell’s “The Bad Graft,” in which a woman picks up the spirit of a Joshua tree as a hitchhiker. T.C. Boyle’s “The Relive Box” is the lowest point, as its depiction of a man ensnared by a machine that can let him relive his best moments forever is the presentation of a scenario rather than a story, but Boyle’s technical skill holds the piece together. A certain similarity in tone creeps in after a while, but it’s fortunately broken up often enough for the book to keep the reader’s interest.
September 5, 2016
In this second book in the annual series, acclaimed series editor Adams and this year’s guest editor, Fowler, deliver a thoughtful array from a star-studded assemblage of writers. The 20 stories here were first published in American venues, but their subject matter travels far and wide in time, space, and human memory. Ghost stories “Meet Me in Iram” by Sofia Samatar and “Interesting Facts” by Adam Johnson explore the anguish of loss. Salman Rushdie’s “The Duniazát” and Rachel Swirsky’s “Tea Time” highlight fantastical lovers and obsession. Technology challenges humankind in “The Daydreamer by Proxy” by Dexter Palmer, Charlie Jane Anders’s provocative “Rat Catcher’s Yellow,” and the dystopian “Headshot” by Julian Mortimer Smith. Seth Dickinson’s “Three Bodies at Mitanni,” Ted Chiang’s “The Great Silence,” and “Planet Lion” by Catherynne M. Valente explore how people identify—or fail to detect—intelligence. Equally memorable are Will Kaufman’s old-fashioned “Things You Can Buy for a Penny” and the fungoid body snatching of “The Mushroom Queen” by Liz Ziemska. The anthology doesn’t strike gold with every entry, but it will leave readers with plenty to think about.
Starred review from October 15, 2016
The second in an annual series of intellectually demanding genre anthologies."Best" is, of course, an incredibly subjective term. This is clearly a very elite, highly curated set of stories; an obvious taste is at work. To select the stories for this volume, series editor John Joseph Adams chose 80 stories from hundreds. He then passed those 80 to guest editor Fowler (We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, 2013, etc.), who picked 10 science fiction and 10 fantasy stories. She made her choices without knowing who the authors were, but it's unsurprising that some very familiar names from the literary end of the genre spectrum (Kelly Link, Catherynne Valente, Ted Chiang, and even Salman Rushdie, among others) appear here. There are no rip-roaring space operas or epics of castles and dragons; instead, this fairly cerebral collection includes many stories in the style of fable or myth. The tales include a sentient mushroom collective who takes the place of an unhappy woman, a virtual world of forgotten and sentient dating profiles sadly caught within an endless party, a well-dwelling "wet gentleman" who grants wishes with a nasty twist, a secret history of the Stonewall riots, a man coming to terms with the artificial eyes that replaced his cancer-riddled ones, and a trio of space travelers charged with determining which post-Earth colonial societies should be allowed to exist. A set of primal, classic-seeming tales from our past, present, and future.
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