Just so-soIf this is the best American Science fiction, things have gone downhill. A few of the stories were mildly interesting, but the others got to a point where I began rapidly flipping pages to the next one in hopes of finding one I liked. YMMV

read for eng 368 speculative lit. most of these stories aren’t great unfortunately

I felt about this one the way I felt about the Karen Joy Fowler one: picking a guest editor who is not necessarily known for their deep engagement with speculative fiction can lead to some interesting inclusions. While I truly loved about ten of the stories in here and found another four or so to be admirable, this collection had the highest rate of stories I very much did not enjoy in any BASFF so far. There were a bunch of new authors to me, which was exciting, but I also find myself growing a...

My expectations for a Best of anthology are simple - the story is SO good, so well written, cleverly conceived, you're happy every time you encounter it. This collection, however, reads more like filler - as if having resigned itself to being just an installment, put together to fulfill an obligation. Many selections in this effort hit me as uninspired rewrites of old tropes, many with characters I would hope never to meet. Most of the selections were pieces I had decided were not worth a re-rea...

Disclaimer to anyone reading this: these are my quick notes with some spoilers to come back to for a speculative fiction unit for my classes next year. Life sentence: * built from this hypothetical: what if technology allowed you to abolish prisons? You'd still deprive and isolate by taking away memory of the past as time served.  Another avatar p 26-63Thai boy in orphanage called to adventure who is versed in the tropes. Tension of class and language with mentor.  Cliffhanger is annoying.  Betw...

These particular 'best of' anthologies are fun because the guest editor receives a shortlist of stories stripped of the authors' names, so he or she doesn't know who wrote them or where they were published. This means that sometimes it happens that an author has two stories in the book; this year it's Elizabeth Bear. It also means that sometimes a published source is heavily represented: when Carmen Maria Machado was guest editor it was 'Nightmare' magazine, this year it's the 'New Suns' antholo...

I ate this shit up, some great work here, with some inclusions I skipped over/didn't connect with. Gabaldon tended to focus on historical fantasy and soft sci-fi, covering topics from haircutting to cannibalism. Great contributor's notes as always.Fav pieces here: Thirty-Three Wicked Daughters by Kelly Barnhill, The Galactic Tourist Industrial Complex by Tobias S. Buckell, Between the Dark and the Dark by Deji Bryce Olukotun, Life Sentence by Matthew Baker, Shape-ups at Delilah’s by Rion Amilcar...

If this is the best America has to offer then I feel bad for the country, its literary tradition, and its science fiction fanbase. I pride myself on always finishing a book, regardless of whether or not I enjoy it, because a part of me believes that there might still be some redeeming quality nestled away somewhere. Not in this case! It was the first time I had to skip full sections of a book (stories in this case) because they were so unbearable. Any redeeming qualities would have come at the c...

As a whole I found this collection to be worthwhile there were some stories I loved and a few I disliked or even hated, but I feel I got a lot out of it. Here are my thoughts on the individual stories. ---"Life Sentence" by: Matthew BakerIn a world where felons have memories erased instead of being sent to prison, Washington returns home after "serving" a life sentence (i.e having his lifetime of memories erased). He has no knowledge of what he did, the kind of man he was, just basic knowledge o...

Favorites:Bullet Point by Elizabeth Bear – I would love a whole survivalist series like this story. The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt From Lucy Westenra’s Diary) by Gwendolyn Kiste – good twist on the old story, would love to follow the protagonist's future adventuresShape-Ups At Delilah’s by Rion Amilcar Scott – this one was both uncomfortable and funny. Light musings over society's demands, expectations, and restrictions. Canst Thou Draw Out The Leviathan by Christopher Caldwell – I en...

The stories were all over the place. Most were romance-ish.

Overall, a mixed bag, as I suppose nearly any short story collection tends to be. Sacrid's Pod was my favorite - the story of a young woman in a prison cell that gives her everything that she could ever want... except her freedom. Would we make that trade? Many of the stories were just meh. There was also a strong trend of stories wherein there was not a single redeemable male character. I am a fan of feminist literature, and I will even go so far as to say that I think women are, as a whole, be...

Not your usual choices in a compilation and I only mildly wasn’t interested in one of them.

I read this as part of a reading challenge to move outside of my comfort zone of usual genres. I picked this anthology mainly because Diana Gabaldon, famous for her "Outlander" series, was the guest editor making the final selections for this compendium.There are twenty stories in this volume averaging 20 pages each, ten of each genre - sci-fi or fantasy, but quite frankly I was so out of my comfort zone that I quite often couldn't tell which genre was which.Of the 20 stories there were two that...

A strategic diversion from the space operas, and I love good short fiction. A palette cleanser between novels. Great writers write great short stories.

More of a 3 or a 3.5, but the stories I actually enjoyed were so good that I bumped it up a star. Diana Gabaldon was a bizarre choice for guest editor and I found myself questioning a lot of her choices. There's way more emphasis on fairy tales and fantasy-adjacent stories than previous anthologies in this series, as well as authors primarily known for children's work. While that's not necessarily a bad thing, it definitely impacted the tone in a way I didn't care for. I also didn't like that Ga...

Mildly interesting. A handful of okay stories surrounded by mostly swill. Not much actual science fiction for a "Best of" collection, but lots of standard woke tropes including lesbian mermaids and gay whalers. What on earth were they thinking by letting Diana Gabaldon edit?

3.5 stars. The writing was good, and I loved the introduction by Diana Gabaldon but I just didn't connect with any of the stories. Good but nothing memorable.

Not even close to matching the title. I should have known as soon as I saw so many that were originally published in Lightspeed. I've tried collections from them twice, and they were lousy both times.The first story is SF and is so simple and dull as to be embarrassing. Many years ago, a Harrison Ford movie covered the same subject, without the SF, in just as dull and boring a way. We didn't need it again.The second story is fantasy that's also nothing interesting or new. An orphan in Thailand i...

As usual, my likes lean toward the sci-fi side of the collection. Favorites: Between the Dark and the Dark by Deji Bryce Olukotun, about how culture evolves on a generation ship and how those left behind on Earth are quick to condemn what they view as the ultimate tabooSacrid's Pod by Adam-Troy Castro, in which a women is sent to an AI-operated prison by her family because she rebelled against their oppressive religious culture. Sacrid's AI liaison explains how inescapable her pod is, but also t...