A very nice average of 3.83 for this volume, but a novella heavy book, so only 23 stories. Only a couple of average and one dodgy story to go along with the fine intro (some quotes below) and summary, gives this book top marks.

There are several standouts, topped by George Turner's brilliant 'Flowering Mandrake'.

On the book front, along with losses and musical chairs 'the new Tor, Orb and Forge lines...and Warner Aspect'.

"There were enormous amounts of crap published during 1994, with media tie-in books, sharcropper books, gaming-oriented books, next-volume-in-infinitely-expansible-fantasy-trilogy books, wet-dream mercenary space-war fantasies, Star Trek Books, Tek War books, and so on and so on, taking up ever-increasing amounts of room on bookstore shevles--and yet, in spite of all that, adult SF and fantasy novels of quality and intelligence continue dto be published. Electronic publishing remained for the most part a dream for the 21st CEntury--and yet, at the sam time, the firs tentativ estepts that might make it a pracical reality were being taken, here and there, one small incremental step at a time.
What you find in the box doesn't have to be a dead rotting cat."

Of course, to be fair, he should have mentioned that there are many bad to execrable original novels, or very medicore ordinary small press collections of stories by garden variety writers who barely have ten stories out. Many of these of course are going to be worse than your garden variety Star Trek book. He does go through anthologies and say which are no good.

Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : Forgiveness Day - Ursula K. Le Guin
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : The Remoras - Robert Reed
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : Nekropolis - Maureen F. McHugh
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : Margin of Error - Nancy Kress
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : Cilia-of-Gold - Stephen Baxter
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : Going After Old Man Alabama - William Sanders
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : Melodies of the Heart - Michael F. Flynn
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : The Hole in the Hole - Terry Bisson
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : Paris In June - Pat Cadigan
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : Flowering Mandrake - George Turner
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : None So Blind - Joe Haldeman
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : Cocoon - Greg Egan
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge - Mike Resnick
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : Dead Space for the Unexpected - Geoff Ryman
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : Cri de Coeur - Michael Bishop
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : The Sawing Boys - Howard Waldrop
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : The Matter of Seggri - Ursula K. Le Guin
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : Ylem - Eliot Fintushel
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : Asylum - Katharine Kerr
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : Red Elvis - Walter Jon Williams
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : California Dreamer - Mary Rosenblum
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : Split Light - Lisa Goldstein
Year's Best Science Fiction 12 : Les Fleurs du Mal - Brian Stableford

Ekumen embassy explosion entrapment unreast.

4 out of 5

Serious space ship sucker scam.

3.5 out of 5

AI constraints.

3.5 out of 5

Breeding philosophy nanotage.

4 out of 5

Mercurial alien life relationship.

4 out of 5

May? Marie? What's the diff?

3.5 out of 5

Slow age memory cure.

4 out of 5

Lunar halfway rover Volvo.

3.5 out of 5

Roborecorder pimping.

3.5 out of 5

Vegetable methuselah's Kal-Elesque odyssey, and brief Phoenix rising.

5 out of 5

Supergenius, you see. Not.

4 out of 5

A private policeman investigates a bombing of a biological research centre looking into natal protection of babies, when he stumbles across the fact of the company moving anyone not died in the wool hetero away from the project, and realises they are also experimenting with preventing non-hetero births by controlling maternal stress factors.

4.5 out of 5

Human pest hard to eradicate.

4 out of 5

Corporate performance pressure.

4 out of 5

Tau Ceti? Not Epsilon Eridani? Holy Crow!

4.5 out of 5

Music caper stop.

3 out of 5

Men's lib ratio.

4 out of 5

Time constant, nup.

3 out of 5

Red carded American neo-fascist critic.

4 out of 5

Jailhouse rock to the left, ghost bro.

4 out of 5

When feeling all Quakey, any mum will do.

3.5 out of 5

Just passed around.

2.5 out of 5

The Case of Rappacini's Daughter On the Island of Doctor Moreau.

4.5 out of 5

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