A review by pearseanderson
The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1 by Neil Clarke

3.0

These are the best? 31 stories, and only seven of them really did something for me: Three Bodies; Hello, Hello; So Much Cooking; Bannerless; The Cold Inequalities; Two-Year Man; and Meshed. I'm not saying the rest were bad, just that, I dunno, I expected some others. Where my Tamsyn Muir at? After Best American SFF 2016, I'm more confused about others: Tor.com originals? Charlie Jane Anders? A better Ken Liu piece? Again, who knows, a handful of them felt like prequels and first chapters (Bannerless clearly was, but it worked as a standalone piece. Others not so much). Again, I couldn't finish Robert Reed. For me, a few too many were about first contact + space camp colonization—I know Neil just finished a Galactic Empire anthology, but I would've loved more of those types. Fewer astrophysicists, more civil engineers. I've read so much from this year of SFF I'm kinda sick of it. Some of these stories taught me how much the science fiction genre needs to improve. Infodumping has not fared well. First sentences and introductory paragraphs need work. Characters lack most memorable features. But these are fine stories. These are from the future of SF. These are increasingly diverse, increasingly interesting, but overall this anthology only pushed a couple buttons.