tashaw's review against another edition
5.0
This collection is GOLD. Some of my particular favorites were by Cat Rambo, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Seanan McGuire, Daniel H. Wilson, and the always incomparable Neil Gaiman.
bhavik's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
4.25
This was such an interesting collection of stories. Some took me a while to get through, while others were captivating. My favorites were:
- Cimmeria, from the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology
- The Thing About Shapes To Come
- Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead
- How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps
- The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever
- HM: Skullpocket
jhstack's review
4.0
Not usually one for short fiction anthologies, but there's plenty of intriguing premises and up-and-coming diverse authors in this collection!
the_oakland_readers's review against another edition
4.0
This was a good book, no matter what your cousin tells you.
cmd_prompt's review against another edition
4.0
My favorite stories were The Thing About Shapes to Come by Adam-Troy Castro, The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever by Daniel H. Wilson, and How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (though that last was a re-read).
kate_kathleen's review against another edition
dark
funny
informative
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
This was the first in the Best of American Science Fiction and Fantasy in the series and what a treat! I picked this up while browsing the shelves at my public library which I haven't done in forever. There were names I knew and new authors for me to enjoy.
gettyhesse's review against another edition
5.0
It is unusual how consistently excellent these stories were.
marita379's review against another edition
5.0
This was without a doubt one of the best short story collections I've read, and easily deserves its 5 star rating from me. But because memory is a fickle mistress and i have stopped trusting it I'm going to review each story separately as a note to my future self who cant remember exactly what they were about.
How to Get Back to the Forest - Sofia Samatar : 4 stars. "You have to puke it up." A raw, haunting story about girls and their bodies, controlled and uncontrollable and as Sofia Samatar says in the contributor's notes "the idea of rebellion as a kind of sympathetic reaction." A great start to the collection.
Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead - Carmen Maria Machado : 5 stars. A Kickstarter shaped story about a girl trying to follow her sister down into the land of the dead. Beautiful and original with a great balance between the classic orphic tale of descending into the underworld and all the modern nuances of internet projects.
Tortoiseshell Cats Are Not Refundable - Cat Rambo : 3 1/2 stars. I am being unfair with my rating because that was a really good story about cloning (both the narrator's dead wife and the tortoiseshell cat in the title) with very interesting implications and causes for thought. All in all everything is handled really well and it just suffers from being a scifi story placed between two of my favorite fantasy stories in this collection so I was harsher with my rating than i would normally have been.
The Bad Graft - Karen Russell : 5 stars. !!! This was a very Weird story about a woman who got possessed by a Joshua tree during her honeymoon and the subsequent collapse of her marriage. It sort of carries the vibe of the film "The honeymoon" only it's done A LOT better. The story is simply fantastic.
A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i - Alaya Dawn Johnson : 4 stars. I was expecting to be disappointed because I'd loved the Summer PRince so much and I thought that a short story couldn't possibly capture all the beauty and feeling ADJ managed to infuse the Summer Prince with. Especially a story about vampires . Needless to say i was w r o n g. An amazing and complex and wonderful story.
Each to Each - Seanan Mcguire : 4 1/2 stars. This story was basically why i decided to finally get off my ass and read this anthology i mean. It's got everything. Mermaids. Genetic experiments. The ocean. TS Eliot. Seanan Mcguire really never disappoints me.
Ogres of East Africa - Sofia Samatar : 4 1/2 stars. I loved the format of this story, with the description and cataloging of the ogres and then the notes and kind of "background info" provided by the narrator. A great story about identity and racism and reclaiming what the world is trying to steal from you and yours.
Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology - Theodora Goss : 5 stars and a lot of exclamation marks. If you make a list of all the things I love to see in stories then this story would cross out a good deal of them. Stories shaping reality!! This is a bunch of anthropologists who literally created an entire civilization. It ran away from them, of course, as civilizations tend to do, and nobody could quite imagine how it would end up but. Stories made real! Stories shaping the world! and finally: weird creepy twins!!
Sleeper - Jo Walton : 4 stars. Again, this is a story about how the narrative shapes the reality. A woman works on the biography of a possible Soviet Sleeper agent SORT OF. A biography that features an AI based on the subject but programmed by the author. Revolution via strange King Arthur-like imagery. Sign me up.
How the Marquis Got His Coat Back - Neil Gaiman : 3 stars. But Marita, I hear you say. It's the Marquis! more than that it's Neil Gaiman! And I will nod myself and say: yes. but this was probably one of the most disappointing stories in this collection. It pales between the amazing stories that surround it and lbh I doubt it would have made it in if it wasn't so recognizably Neil Gaiman, and about such a beloved character.
Windows - Susan Palwick : 4 stars. A mother visits her son in prison to play him a clip sent by his sister who has been selected to be a passenger/crew/citizen of a generation ship. A story that focuses on the people left behind. Very real despite its Scifi setting.
The Thing About Shapes to Come - Adam-Troy Castro : 4 stars. What if humans stopped giving birth to baby shaped babies and gave birth instead to geometrical shapes, like spheres, or pyramids, or cubes. How do you love your child against all odds, not because it's your duty but because you genuinely honestly Just Do? A very strange but still beautiful and touching story.
We Are the Cloud - Sam J. Miller: 5 stars. Named by the author a "supervillain origin story", in a world that's ours, with a couple more gadgets and maybe a more prominent capacity for the oppression of the weak and different and unlucky. The most horrifying things mentioned in this are real, happening now, and as Miller says in the contributor's notes: In a world like that none of us come out clean. A must read, honestly.
The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever - Daniel H. Wilson : 3 stars Not one of my favorites. Still a beautiful story about the end of the world but not exactly my cup of tea. But then again I'm a fantasy girl, so I am probably being very unfair to it.
Skullpocket - Nathan Ballingrud : 4 stars. This didn't get my attention from the start but when it did, boy was it worth it. Probably the most classically horror story of the bunch -although all of the stories have an undertone of horror, probably understandable since they were chosen by Hill- it's got hints of Jerusalem's Lot and a slightly Lovecraftian feel.
I Can See Right Through You - Kelly Link : 5 stars. I have a hit and miss relationship with Kelly Link but this story was an absolute hit. The story of two former co-stars, lovers, friends, Maggie and Will, the Demon Lover. It's a story about the intimacy created by being loved by millions of people, and the loneliness that comes with it, and the weirdness, and the, yes, sometimes, horror of people's love.
The Empties - Jess Row : 5 stars. Narratives are static. Real life is kinetic. How do you write about the end of the world while you're living the end of the world? How do you reconcile years and years of watching the films, and reading the stories, and thinking you know how the story goes only to realize that the stories are really just stories, and have absolutely nothing to do with your reality?
The One They Took Before - Kelly Sandoval : 5 stars. You might have noticed by now that I, like a true millennial, am biased in favor of stories set in what is undoubtedly today. Not yesterday, or tomorrow, today. Add faeries to this and you've got a story of pain and longing and the need for autonomy and freedom that's as magical as anything.
The Relive Box - T C Boyle : 3 stars. Another victim of my Fantasy bias, this is a very interesting story that failed to captivate me that much. About a man and his daughter and their Relive Box, a machine that allows you to (you guessed it) relive points of your life. Addiction is unavoidable, and destructive.
How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps - A. Merc Rustad : 5 stars. A great end to a fantastic collection. The author says it's one of the most personal stories they've written and you can tell, you can definitely tell, reading it because it's almost raw in its honesty. I cried, a little, to be quite honest. And it wasn't just the mention of polyamory that made me cry. Nor the asexual character. Although they helped.
How to Get Back to the Forest - Sofia Samatar : 4 stars. "You have to puke it up." A raw, haunting story about girls and their bodies, controlled and uncontrollable and as Sofia Samatar says in the contributor's notes "the idea of rebellion as a kind of sympathetic reaction." A great start to the collection.
Help Me Follow My Sister into the Land of the Dead - Carmen Maria Machado : 5 stars. A Kickstarter shaped story about a girl trying to follow her sister down into the land of the dead. Beautiful and original with a great balance between the classic orphic tale of descending into the underworld and all the modern nuances of internet projects.
Tortoiseshell Cats Are Not Refundable - Cat Rambo : 3 1/2 stars. I am being unfair with my rating because that was a really good story about cloning (both the narrator's dead wife and the tortoiseshell cat in the title) with very interesting implications and causes for thought. All in all everything is handled really well and it just suffers from being a scifi story placed between two of my favorite fantasy stories in this collection so I was harsher with my rating than i would normally have been.
The Bad Graft - Karen Russell : 5 stars. !!! This was a very Weird story about a woman who got possessed by a Joshua tree during her honeymoon and the subsequent collapse of her marriage. It sort of carries the vibe of the film "The honeymoon" only it's done A LOT better. The story is simply fantastic.
A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i - Alaya Dawn Johnson : 4 stars. I was expecting to be disappointed because I'd loved the Summer PRince so much and I thought that a short story couldn't possibly capture all the beauty and feeling ADJ managed to infuse the Summer Prince with. Especially a story about vampires . Needless to say i was w r o n g. An amazing and complex and wonderful story.
Each to Each - Seanan Mcguire : 4 1/2 stars. This story was basically why i decided to finally get off my ass and read this anthology i mean. It's got everything. Mermaids. Genetic experiments. The ocean. TS Eliot. Seanan Mcguire really never disappoints me.
Ogres of East Africa - Sofia Samatar : 4 1/2 stars. I loved the format of this story, with the description and cataloging of the ogres and then the notes and kind of "background info" provided by the narrator. A great story about identity and racism and reclaiming what the world is trying to steal from you and yours.
Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology - Theodora Goss : 5 stars and a lot of exclamation marks. If you make a list of all the things I love to see in stories then this story would cross out a good deal of them. Stories shaping reality!! This is a bunch of anthropologists who literally created an entire civilization. It ran away from them, of course, as civilizations tend to do, and nobody could quite imagine how it would end up but. Stories made real! Stories shaping the world! and finally: weird creepy twins!!
Sleeper - Jo Walton : 4 stars. Again, this is a story about how the narrative shapes the reality. A woman works on the biography of a possible Soviet Sleeper agent SORT OF. A biography that features an AI based on the subject but programmed by the author. Revolution via strange King Arthur-like imagery. Sign me up.
How the Marquis Got His Coat Back - Neil Gaiman : 3 stars. But Marita, I hear you say. It's the Marquis! more than that it's Neil Gaiman! And I will nod myself and say: yes. but this was probably one of the most disappointing stories in this collection. It pales between the amazing stories that surround it and lbh I doubt it would have made it in if it wasn't so recognizably Neil Gaiman, and about such a beloved character.
Windows - Susan Palwick : 4 stars. A mother visits her son in prison to play him a clip sent by his sister who has been selected to be a passenger/crew/citizen of a generation ship. A story that focuses on the people left behind. Very real despite its Scifi setting.
The Thing About Shapes to Come - Adam-Troy Castro : 4 stars. What if humans stopped giving birth to baby shaped babies and gave birth instead to geometrical shapes, like spheres, or pyramids, or cubes. How do you love your child against all odds, not because it's your duty but because you genuinely honestly Just Do? A very strange but still beautiful and touching story.
We Are the Cloud - Sam J. Miller: 5 stars. Named by the author a "supervillain origin story", in a world that's ours, with a couple more gadgets and maybe a more prominent capacity for the oppression of the weak and different and unlucky. The most horrifying things mentioned in this are real, happening now, and as Miller says in the contributor's notes: In a world like that none of us come out clean. A must read, honestly.
The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever - Daniel H. Wilson : 3 stars Not one of my favorites. Still a beautiful story about the end of the world but not exactly my cup of tea. But then again I'm a fantasy girl, so I am probably being very unfair to it.
Skullpocket - Nathan Ballingrud : 4 stars. This didn't get my attention from the start but when it did, boy was it worth it. Probably the most classically horror story of the bunch -although all of the stories have an undertone of horror, probably understandable since they were chosen by Hill- it's got hints of Jerusalem's Lot and a slightly Lovecraftian feel.
I Can See Right Through You - Kelly Link : 5 stars. I have a hit and miss relationship with Kelly Link but this story was an absolute hit. The story of two former co-stars, lovers, friends, Maggie and Will, the Demon Lover. It's a story about the intimacy created by being loved by millions of people, and the loneliness that comes with it, and the weirdness, and the, yes, sometimes, horror of people's love.
The Empties - Jess Row : 5 stars. Narratives are static. Real life is kinetic. How do you write about the end of the world while you're living the end of the world? How do you reconcile years and years of watching the films, and reading the stories, and thinking you know how the story goes only to realize that the stories are really just stories, and have absolutely nothing to do with your reality?
The One They Took Before - Kelly Sandoval : 5 stars. You might have noticed by now that I, like a true millennial, am biased in favor of stories set in what is undoubtedly today. Not yesterday, or tomorrow, today. Add faeries to this and you've got a story of pain and longing and the need for autonomy and freedom that's as magical as anything.
The Relive Box - T C Boyle : 3 stars. Another victim of my Fantasy bias, this is a very interesting story that failed to captivate me that much. About a man and his daughter and their Relive Box, a machine that allows you to (you guessed it) relive points of your life. Addiction is unavoidable, and destructive.
How to Become a Robot in 12 Easy Steps - A. Merc Rustad : 5 stars. A great end to a fantastic collection. The author says it's one of the most personal stories they've written and you can tell, you can definitely tell, reading it because it's almost raw in its honesty. I cried, a little, to be quite honest. And it wasn't just the mention of polyamory that made me cry. Nor the asexual character. Although they helped.
detailsandtales's review against another edition
4.0
As with any short story collection, there were stories I liked more than others. Overall, however, most of these stories kept me reading.
lyrrael's review against another edition
5.0
I've actually been working on reading this one since January, and you know, I loved about 90% of the stories in this. That's really saying something -- I tend to not be much of a fan of short stories -- but the story curation on this one was superb.