Year's Best SF 8

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1374706.html

This is Hartwell's selection of the best stories of 2002: of his 23 choices, I think I count precisely one which made it to the Nebula shortlist, and two which were Hugo nominees (one of which, Michael Swanwick's 'Slow Life', won). That year's double winner was Neil Gaiman's Coraline, which I guess is excluded from Hartwell's collection as fantasy rather than science fiction.

I liked very much almost all of Hartwell's selection. The one that really got under my skin was A.M. Dellamonica's 'A Slow Day At The Gallery'; two others that had stuck in my mind from first reading were Charles Stross's 'Halo' and Greg Egan's 'Singleton'. There were unfortunately a couple of mawkish stories about cute old show more people, which I note is a disturbing and not particularly funny or interesting trend in American sf these days. All the others are very good. Worth returning to. show less

If this was the best of the year, it was a bad year for science fiction. There were a total of three stories I considered worth the effort of having read. Unless you just want to own the complete set, skip this one.

F/SF