A review by octavia_cade
The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction by

adventurous slow-paced

3.0

The thing about "best," in anthologies like this, is that "best" is ultimately subjective. These are the stories that Dozois liked the best, and I think it's safe to say that our tastes do not always coincide. That being said, I do like most of the stories here. I don't know that there's a single one that I'd rate as five star, so no absolute knock-outs from my perspective, but there are a few that I'd rate as four star stories. I particularly enjoyed "The Lincoln Train" by Maureen F. McHugh, which I thought was the pick of the bunch, and there were a few others that made an impression. I have to say, though, that the longer the pieces were, the more likely they were to leave me cold - with the exception of Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life" there wasn't a single novella here where I wasn't thinking Would you please just get on with it, and I felt the same way about a good portion of the novelettes. My preference for short fiction (actually short fiction) becomes ever more entrenched. 

I haven't read any other of Dozois' "Best of" anthologies, and while I mean to get around to them eventually, there are certainly other anthologists for whom I have greater sympathy of taste, I think.