Reviews

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 4, by Kij Johnson, Robert Charles Wilson, Catherynne M. Valente, Margo Lanagan, Rachel Swirsky, Geoff Ryman, Peter S. Beagle, Jo Walton, Karen Joy Fowler, Elizabeth Bear, Jonathan Strahan, Holly Black, Diana Wynne Jones, Bruce Sterling, Sara Genge, Eileen Gunn, Alexander C. Irvine, Michael Swanwick, Robert Reed, Andy Duncan, Ellen Kushner, Stephen Baxter, Pat Cadigan, Kelly Link, Peter Watts, Sarah Monette, James Patrick Kelly, Nicola Griffith, John Kessel, Ellen Klages, Damien Broderick

ederwin's review

4.0

I prefer reading novels over short works, but short works are good for finding new authors. This was a good and very diverse collection. Diverse to the point that I don't know how several of the stories were considered SF or Fantasy. A few stories I loved, a bunch that I simply liked, and only one that I didn't bother to finish. I now have the names of a few authors whose other work I will seek out.

(The danger in this approach is evident from this collection itself. Not all authors have one single style. There is only one author who has two stories in this collection, and they are about as different as possible. One is a simple tale, appropriate for children, about a cat walking across Japan; while the other is a dark tale of a woman being repeatedly raped and tortured by an extraterrestrial.)