A review by nwhyte
Year's Best SF 8 by Greg Egan, Eleanor Arnason, Michael Moorcock, Nancy Kress, Paul Di Filippo, J.R. Dunn, Richard Chwedyk, Ursula K. Le Guin, Charles Stross, David G. Hartwell, Bruce Sterling, Neal Asher, Michael Swanwick, Ken Wharton, Robert Sheckley, Robert Reed, Jack Williamson, Gene Wolfe, Geoffrey A. Landis, Terry Bisson, Kathryn Cramer, A.M. Dellamonica, Carol Emshwiller, Charles Sheffield, Robert Onopa

3.0

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 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.