The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume One (The Best Science Fiction of the Year, #1) by Neil Clarke

The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume One (The Best Science Fiction of the Year, #1) Reviews

• 
  Bradley

  I'm honestly boggled by how much I loved this collection of short stories. Clarke put together a really great anthology and I feel edified and thrilled about almost every single one of these.
  
  There's a lot of extra-sol colonization stories, each and every one of them very different in tone and complexity, but all of these were pretty awesome. I was rather surprised and awed by the level of both science and the complexity of the stories.
  
  There were also some really fantastic AI stories with one dovetailing into a robot story with "Today I am Paul" and especially that gem of a story, "Cat Pictures Please".
  
  I've read a few of them from this collection already, but they're still great, like "Folding Beijing".
  
  What I was pretty thrilled about, in general, was reading Geoff Ryman, David Brin, and Seanan McGuire, but I was even more pleasantly surprised by the stories by Yoon Ha Lee and Sean McMullen.
  
  In fact, I think I've just discovered some of my absolute favorite new unknown authors through this book! It's crazy. I've been reading so many novels and just a handful of short stories all this time, completely missing out on a whole WIDE FIELD OF AWESOMENESS. I've got to get EVERYTHING by Sean McMullen now. It's crazy. This is like a NEED for me, now. :)
  
  There were a few I didn't really care for, but I can't say they were written badly or they weren't that interesting because every story in this collection was interesting. It's just a matter of taste and subject matter. But there were over thirty great stories here and I think I'm in love. I think I'm gonna check out every single one of these collections that Neil Clarke puts together. If this is going to be a representative sample, I'm going to be in dog heaven. :)
  
• 
  Jonathan

  This one is super tough to rate because there were some really excellent tales in this book...but on the other hand there were quite a few I found to be completely off the mark. Unfortunately there seemed to be no middle ground. Either they were great or terrible. :(
• 
  Oleksandr Zholud

  This is an anthology of short SF works (from short stories to novellas) collected by x, who is the Publisher/Editor-in-Chief of
  Clarkesworld a monthly science fiction and fantasy magazine first published in October 2006 and currently one of the major SFF publications, with quite a few of SFF works, which ended up in nominee lists of Hugo, Nebula, Locus and other SFF awards. This is his first annual collection of SF stories. A few of them ended up in awards’ lists or even won.
  
  The contents:
  
  
  Introduction: A State of the Short SF Field in 2015 a general state of the genre and SF market. The general move toward online in magazines, but high reliance of kickstart-type one-time efforts but problems with sustainability. Surprisingly, no mention of Puppies scandal.
  Today I Am Paul by Martin L. Shoemaker a robot that emulates Alzheimer patient’s relatives and this inadvertently gives self-awareness. 4* nominated for Nebula
  Calved by Sam J. Miller father-son conflict in environmentally devastated world. A dad works long shifts in sea after emigrating from drowned USA, worries that his teenage son stopped enjoying their times together. 2.5*
  Three Bodies at Mitanni by Seth Dickinson a group of three astronaut judges are sent on a mission across the universe – find seeded centuries ago human colonies and if they changed enough to rival ‘traditional’ humans – destroy them. another take on post-humanity, but with a lot of bickering. Nice ideas, mediocre execution. 3*, was nominated for AnLib
  The Smog Society by Chen Qiufan a strange story about an old guy whose wife left him and who joins the group that monitor smog data and relation between pollutions and psychic issues. 3*
  In Blue Lily’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard a girl accidentally brings an epidemy, which affects both humans and living ships. A group of scientists investigate. 2*
  Hello, Hello by Seanan McGuire a scientist works on software that helps AI to understand a sign language, like her deaf siter uses. From her sister’s videophone someone calls and tries to communicate with her kids, hidden behind a generic image generated by that sign recognition. The surprise I guessed almost instantly. 2.5*
  Folding Beijing by Hao Jingfang Hugo award winner for the best novelette. A story of a man, who works on separating garbage in the Third Space – the worst part of Beijing built in three spaces, from almost utopic First with individual houses and self-driving clean cars to ‘ordinary’ second that produces for the First and finally the Third that works on waste disposal of the first two. I think that class system was too bluntly done. 2.5*
  Capitalism in the 22nd Century by Geoff Ryman a group of people are gathered (thousands?) to be sent from Earth, they are modified for new environments, but were they told truth? 2*
  Hold-Time Violations by John Chu some kind of strange pocket universe, with different competing groups which fight over keeping that reality version or changing it actually an attempt to revive one’s mother 2*
  Wild Honey by Paul McAuley an interesting post-apoc, where an old woman works with genetically modded bees, which generate honey with specific qualities, including healing. A local gang came to cure their member and maybe loot. 3*
  So Much Cooking by Naomi Kritzer a quarantine story years before COVID-19 – a cooking blog entries by a women, who has to cope with ever lesser variety of food and ever greater number of dependents. 3.5*
  Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn a team of investigators come to a little town, to find out why of coop members in pregnant w/o a document allowing it. I cannot see originality. 1*
  Another Word for World by Ann Leckie two groups co-habitate on a planet, representatives of both go to a meeting on a flyer, which it shot from the sky. Losing computer that translated they have to find a way to understand each other. 2*
  The Cold Inequalities by Yoon Ha Lee while the title clearly references the famous ‘Cold Equations’, the story’s protagonist (AI?) likes books among digitized materials a colony ship carries, while a stowaway appears… 2*
  Iron Pegasus by Brenda Cooper a woman pilot and her android(?) companion answer to a distress signal to find out that a human has died and a companion (which lacks rights of a person) is alone. 2*
  The Audience by Sean McMullen a first crewed ship travels to a planet beyond Oort cloud, a great ocean under ice cover. An attempt to break ice leads to vanishing of several members (from their suits) and discovering another life. 3.5*
  Empty by Robert Reed a bizarre piece about a world after humans went extinct with different AIs solving problems. 2*
  Gypsy by Carter Scholz a ship from environmentally devastated Earth, with POVs of each member as the ship moves to another star to restart the mankind. As they go, different accidents happen, decreasing their number. 3*
  Violation of the TrueNet Security Act by Taiyo Fujii a world, where internet as we know it is dead after an attack. A new system bases on quantum computing and no anonymity. The protagonist works checking old sites attempting to connect to the new net to wipe them off. 2.5*
  Damage by David D. Levine a fighter ship AI with a personality and built-in love of its pilot. The war between Earth and asteroids, the latter ('our' side) are losing and plan a desperate mission that will leave millions dead. 3*
  The Tumbledowns of Cleopatra Abyss by David Brin remains of humanity live underwater on Venus, which is still bombareded by comets in a terraforming project. They lost a war to some aliens, who decided to keep Venus project going. An interesting take on post-human low tech civilization in ocean. 3.5*
  No Placeholder for You, My Love by Nick Wolven a weird word where people (?) live in a constant party, and meet each other only once, maybe a group of simulations to find some optimum? 2*
  Outsider by An Owomoyela a planet was colonized centuries ago, people changed to adept to the new environment, including a kind of telepathy. A ship from Earth comes, with a single runaway, but the story from a person from this new colony. 3*
  The Gods Have Not Died in Vain by Ken Liu the middle story out of three, much better to read from the start, which is in
  The End is Nigh. 3.5*
  Cocoons by Nancy Kress some alien form cocoons humans and they re-appear changed, but is any change for worse? A new glance on an old alien invasion. 3*
  Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World by Caroline M. Yoachim a new list of seven wonders, some closely following the classic ones, which a linked by a story of several persons as mankind grows, withers and dies. 3*
  Two-Year Man by Kelly Robson there are classes of (hu)man – 2, 4, 8 years, lowest to highest, but who set the hierarchy and is it justified? A 2-year janitor brings from work a baby/being scheduled for an incinerator. 2.5*
  Cat Pictures Please by Naomi Kritzer Hugo winner, one of the best stories of the 2010s, now extended to at least two YA novels. A remake of x’s story (referenced openly in the text) about an AI that guides people to make the world a better place. 5*
  Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan by Ian McDonald a story set in Venus of old SF, where it was a lustrous jungle / ocean world. A very pleasant homage. 4*
  Meshed by Rich Larson a sport recruiter checks a potential young star for basketball, but the boy don’t want to install a usual monitoring/control system because it was related to a war trauma of his granddad. 3.5*
  A Murmuration by Alastair Reynolds a researcher observes flocks of birds, finds how they a like neuron networks. 4*
  
• 
  Leo Robertson

  
  Here's my podcast review of this book!
  
  #HasTotallyTakenOffAlready #TooMuchFun
• 
  Karl

  Table of Contents:
  Vii - Introduction: A State of the Short SF Field in 2015 by Neil Clarke
  001 - “Today I Am Paul” by Martin Shoemaker
  012 - “Calved” by Sam J. Miller
  025 - “Three Bodies at Mitanni” by Seth Dickinson
  043 - “The Smog Society” by Chen Quifan
  055 - “In Blue Lily’s Wake” by Aliette de Bodard
  072 - “Hello, Hello” by Seanan McGuire
  088 - “Folding Beijing” by Hao Jingfiang
  122 - “Capitalism in the 22nd Century” by Geoff Ryman
  135 - “Hold-Time Violations” by John Chu
  147 - “Wild Honey” by Paul McAuley
  151 - “So Much Cooking” by Naomi Kritzer
  181 - “Bannerless” by Carrie Vaughn
  200 - “Another Word for World” by Ann Leckie
  230 - “The Cold Inequalities” by Yoon Ha Lee
  239 - “Iron Pegasus” by Brenda Cooper
  251 - “The Audience” by Sean McMullen
  274 - “Empty” by Robert Reed
  298 - “Gypsy” by Carter Scholz
  359 - “Violation of the TrueNet Security Act” by Taiyo Fujii
  383 - “Damage ” by David D. Levine
  401 - “The Tumbledowns of Cleopatra Abyss” by David Brin
  435 - “No Placeholder for You, My Love” by Nick Wolven 454 - “Outsider” by An Owomeyla
  471 - “The Gods Have Not Died in Vain” by Ken Liu
  492 - “Cocoons” by Nancy Kress
  505 - “Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World” by Caroline M. Yoachim
  520 - “Two-Year Man” by Kelly Robson
  532 - “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer
  540 - “Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan” by Ian McDonald
  570 - “Meshed” by Rich Larson
  580 - “A Murmuration” by Alastair Reynolds
  599 - 2015 Recommended Reading List
  
• 
  Jen

  This is yet another book that I learned about thanks to a
  Chuck Wendig
  blog post. This one was recommended by Angie Penrose and her love for it makes me want to read it, too, to see if the stories she mentioned (or others) will stick with me like they stuck with her. And since one of the two stories she mentioned is by
  Seanan McGuire. . . :-)
  
  ...................................................................................
  
  I am now reading this book (April 24, 2017), and my plan is to review each of the many stories one-by-one, as I finish them. . . .
  
  Today I Am Paul by Martin L. Shoemaker, Read April 24, 2017.
  5 stars - amazing/outstanding
  This story was devastating. It was about a woman - Mildred - with Alzheimer's and her android medical attendant, who can emulate people from her life. After a fire, unfortunately Mildred's body gave up its fight, and she died. The android medical attendant was kept by the surviving family. Mostly powered down, sometimes it is activated to play with Mildred's youngest granddaughter, Millie.
  
  And in the end, Millie asks the android about her grandmother and . . . "Today I am Mildred." That final line destroyed me. It was devastating.
  
  The only reason I'm not giving this story a full five stars is two-fold: 1) because it was mostly a "dry story" emotion-wise, because the narration was from the android's POV, which doesn't really effect my rating; and 2) because there weren't any high points, no laughter-inducing scenes. I decided to give it the full five stars because A) I understood it! (And "understanding" is not a guarantee for all of the stories in this collection, unfortunately, so understanding a story completely is worth A LOT); and B) I did experience an emotional "high." I cried. :-)
  
  So this was an outstanding story. And, bonus (and proving that five stars is "the right" rating), it is now April 27th and I can still remember how this story ended...and how devastating it was.
  
  Calved by Sam J. Miller, Read April 24, 2017.
  4 stars - very good
  The really enjoyable part of this story - for part of the why I'm giving it four stars - was the setting/world. Climate Change led to the complete melting of the polar regions and many cities were sunk. This story featured a refugee from what used to be New York City living in Greenland, but not on Greenland because apparently it, too, sunk. So. . . Very Interesting!
  
  Anyway, this was the story of Dom, an ice-grunt, and his teenage son, Thede. Thede is a sullen teenager, bitter over his father's long work-related absences. Dom gifts him his most prized possession, a t-shirt featuring a New York City slogan. But all too soon, the shirt is gone from Thede's possession.
  
  Thede's mother had told Dom that Thede was being bullied. (She also said that he was in love.) Thede wouldn't talk about any of it with Dom, though. So when Dom sees his utterly unique shirt on a strange boy, he beats the boy up, takes his clothes, and dumps him in the water.
  
  Then in the end, Dom gives the shirt, all wrapped up, back to his son and asks him to open the package after he is gone, as he's due to leave that very day for another job, a year-long job. He was hoping his son would take comfort from the shirt. Instead, a rather jumpy Thede shares just enough of his life with Dom that Dom realizes three things: 1) Thede was not being bullied over his father's work; 2) the shirt had not been taken by a bully, it was gifted away out of love; and 3) the boy he had beaten up was his son's best friend, and his son is gay (and being bullied for it) and in love with that friend.
  
  So instead of finding comfort when he opens the package, Thede will learn an uncomfortable truth about who Dom is. :-(
  
  Perhaps needless to say, but this ending was highly depressing and resulted in my feeling torn over how to rate this story. So I'm giving it four stars just for being a very good story.
  
  Three Bodies at Mitanni by Seth Dickinson, Read April 25, 2017.
  3.5 stars - good
  This story was, I think, about three humans (???) on a living spaceship (???) travelling around space to visit planets where human seedships landed and human colonization occurred. On the last planet they are to check out, they find a very worrisome change in the human species, and ultimately decide to annihilate it. They left one survivor, the Mitanni ambassador who came to them to plead their case for survival (she did not do a very good job at it), who will be put "in storage" for the return to Earth. So ultimately, the Mitanni people could be revived/resurrected. I'm not sure why they left the ambassador alive, if the Mitanni people were of such concern that they were [almost] wholly eradicated. So that confused me, and much of the story was confusing for me because the science talk went in one eye and out the other. :-(
  
  The Smog Society by Chen Qiufan, Read April 25, 2017.
  4 stars - very good; really enjoyed
  This was the story of a city in China (???) that was plagued by horrible smog. So, another "climate change" story, only this one took a decidedly different direction. Rain is pretty much nonexistent in this future world, I gathered. And, interestingly (and if I understood it properly), the smog is so horrible because the people are "horrible" - as in horribly depressed. The ending sort of lost me, as it seemed that the Smog Society was destroyed by the government and so Lao Sun openly went to a daycare to cheer up the children and he "looked up at the sky. The smog seemed to be thinning, too." ??? I suspect that Lao Sun's life will soon be cut short if he is discovered. :-(
  
  In Blue Lily's Wake by Aliette de Bodard, Read April 26, 2017.
  3.5 stars - good
  This story was both interesting, and very confusing. I understood it, and I didn't. The one thing I AM sure of is that the ending lost me. This was both the story of Yen Oanh, who is some sort of government representative, I think, sent to (I think) pass judgment on the mindship floating around "the planet." (I don't know/remember which planet, so there you go.)
  
  It was also the story of Thich Tim Nghe, who was patient zero for the Blue Lily Plague and either gave it to the mindship or contracted it from the mindship and changed it so that it was deadly for the mindship. (Did that make sense?)
  
  I think I understood that Yen Oanh was going to put an end to the [dead] mindship's endless circling of the planet, but the ending, when Thich Tim Nghe and Yen Oanh met, confused me. Yen Oanh seemed to want Thich Tim Nghe to leave the ship, and Thich Tim Nghe reaches out to "her future" . . . but that's where the story ended so I'm not entirely sure that what I think was going on is what was going on. :-/
  
  I think part of the problem for this story is that we were kind of dumped into the "middle" of it. Events were already in progress when we started and then the ending didn't really clear anything up or resolve anything. And there are a lot of "I think" mentions in this story's review, aren't there? Oh, well. . .
  
  Hello, Hello by Seanan McGuire, Read April 27, 2017.
  5 stars - amazing/outstanding
  I've decided that I am going to give the stories that I understand, and that make me laugh and/or cry, a full five stars. So I upped the first story's rating. :-)
  
  Anyway, this story was really fantastic. I love it! It's about two sisters, one of whom is deaf, who communicate via a very technologically advanced bit of hardware/software. It's neural-net-based and managed/maintained by the sister who can hear. This sister is married (to a woman! :-D) and has two children. Nine-year-old Billie has struck up a friendship with an unknown woman calling from her aunt's home. Tasha, the deaf sister, rehabilitates birds and doesn't know who is making the calls, as she was home alone when most were placed. So the "hearing" sister ("Mom") eventually arranges for Billie to keep the woman on the phone while she drives to Tasha's to catch the intruder in the act. Well, to "Mom's" surprise, the "woman" is a pied crow!
  
  This sets "Mom's" colleagues ablaze with rapturous delight and plans for more animals to be placed in front of the camera to see if the neural net will/can translate them, too.
  
  In the end,

  Tasha would be so delighted.
  In the moment, so was I.

  I have no idea why this made me cry. But it did. :-)
  
  And I would say "now to read more!" but sadly this book is due back to the library today, April 27th, and it's 4:45a and I'm tired and I didn't get to read as much as I had hoped since starting it and. . . So I'll have to place it on hold again and get it once the four people waiting for "my" copy (and just one other) have done with it/them. :-(
• 
  Zoe's Human

  11 of the 30 stories in this also appear in
  The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection. These would include three of the best stories: "Today I Am Paul" by Martin L. Shoemaker, "Calved" by Sam J. Miller, and "Meshed" by Rich Larson. It also includes the two I least liked from this collection: "Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan" by Ian McDonald and "A Murmuration" by Alastair Reynolds. I didn't even bother to finish the former.
  
  So what does this new series have to offer that Dozois' award winning The Year's Best Science Fiction collections do not?
  
  For one thing, better introductions for the book and the individual stories. I'm interested in the overall state of affairs of science fiction and short work, but TYBSF's summation is 28 pages long and reads like a company report. Neil Clarke gives the same overview, in laymen's terms, in 6. Likewise, the individual introductions to the stories in TYBSF go on a bit longer than needed, seeming to sometimes attempt to list everything ever written by the author. Clarke keeps them short here - a paragraph, a couple of their more significant works.
  
  It also offers 19 stories that aren't in the other volume. Even better, 16 of those were strong stories, warranting 4 or 5 star stories from me. The remaining 3 were good. I wasn't wowed but I liked them.
  
  So which to read? Well, who says you can't have two collections? After all, between the two, there are still 44 distinct stories in addition to the 11 repeats. Other than the introductory material, which many don't even read, I'd call it a draw between these two magnificent science fiction collections.
  
  I received a complimentary copy of this book via a Goodreads giveaway. Many thanks to all involved in providing me with this opportunity.
• 
  MJD

  Excellent collection of science fiction short stories.
• 
  Delia Turner

  This mammoth volume assembles three score proper science fiction stories from the year 2015. Everything in it has the "what if this goes on?" variety of plot. Some of the stories are set in the near future, some farther off, and reading all of them gave this reader the feeling that I was in a hall of mirrors with endless reflections going off in all directions, providing different perspectives on some of the same ideas.
  
  One takeaway of the field represented here was that many of the stories were cluttered with invented vocabulary and names as a substitute for vividness, and focused too much on world-building or on the technical details of the various sciences they drew from. But that could be my reaction because I am drawn to lucidity and simplicity in stories. I particularly enjoyed Nancy Kress's "Cocoons," "Martin Shoemaker's "Today I Am Paul," and Naomi Kritzer's "Cat Pictures, Please" for those reasons, and also because they seemed more story-like than some of the others, with characters I cared more about. I confess that I grew up reading SF in a time when it shared more clarity and story structure with modern YA, so I sometimes get impatient.
  
  There were a lot of common themes in the stories; space travel, culture, politics, war, diplomacy. Many of the stories focus on the provisional nature of identity in a universe populated by avatars, machine consciousnesses, and altered humans. The last story posited consciousness in a murmuration of starlings. Some stories had travel portals to get around the vast distances of space, while others used generation ships, stasis, or stored data to get humans or their successors from one place to another.
  
  The brief biographies of authors prefacing each story were an intimidating roster of publications. Having pulled away from hard science fiction after my first few decades (I moved into reading more fantasy), I was unfamiliar with many of the names. This is a good introduction to the present-day field, and I recommend it.
• 
  Charles Sheard

  Several of these stories were both thought-provoking and enjoyable (
  Martin L. Shoemaker's "Today, I am Paul";
  Seth Dickinson's "Three Bodies at Mitanni";
  Seanan McGuire's "Hello, Hello";
  Paul McAuley's "Wild Honey"; Carrie Vaughan's "Bannerless";
  Sean McMullen's "The Audience"; and
  Carter Scholz's "Gypsy"). Many managed one or the other, but not necessarily both. Unfortunately, several managed neither. But that is all to be expected with an anthology; no one is likely to enjoy all the individual parts equally. The combined whole, however, effectively spurs the mind to wander in many directions, poking into the dimly lit corners of ideas and dreams that were but waiting to be explored. It inspires, and thereby succeeds.
• 
  Peter

  A collection of short science fiction stories all centered around the single theme of them all being released in the year 2015. I guess that's not really a theme, it's just a collection.
  
  And as a collection, some I liked, some I didn't. I'll be honest, I'm reading a few of these in a row (the publisher offered them in an ebook bundle), and so it's likely going to be very hard to remember which stories were in which book, all of that aside from my general difficult retaining all but the most memorable short stories very long at all. I just remember generally liking the stories, except a few which were a slog.
  
  In this one, I think the ones I liked were "Three Bodies at Mitanni" by Seth Dickinson, "So Much Cooking" by Naomi Kritzer, "Another Word for World" by Ann Leckie (both of the last two I've read before). Most of the others were fine, although I remember disliking "Two-Year Man" by Kelly Robson (I believe I remember the author's name as someone whose style does not mesh well with me? Not poor quality, just not my thing), and "Botanica Verenicus" by Ian McDonald (it has a much longer name, and the story was too long as it was).
  
  But overall it was a pretty good collection. 3 stars, I think. Might have been 4 if most of the stories I liked weren't rereads, which might be a little unfair for a 'best of' anthology, but I'm going with it regardless!
• 
  Pearse Anderson

  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.
• 
  Drew Ericsson

  This might be the worst science fiction anthology I've come across.
  
  While I agree that editors (or anyone, for that matter) should not discriminate against people from oft-discriminated against groups (which I think is the part of the aim here), they should discriminate for talent. These stories are for the most part naïve, unsophisticated, undramatic non-narratives, consisting almost entirely of telling instead a healthy dose of showing, absent characterisation and plot, and little in the way of cause-and-effect.
  
  Much of the politics and science are out of date and, often, just plain wrong, and sound as if written by junior high school-level ideologues. Most of the stories are not science fiction at all; they are out-moded activism dressed in a patina of futurism that rubs off at the merest touch. The fact that one story even mentions hentai tells me all I need to know about the kind of messed-up weirdoes the awards-system is promoting.
• 
  Anthony A

  I have been reading science fiction anthologies since I was in high school, starting with the very first annual of The Year's Best Science Fiction by Gardner Dozois. I have to say that this Volume One of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, edited by Neil Clarke just might be the best science fiction anthology that I have ever read. It is loaded with stories of deep space travel, other worlds, and alien intelligence - which is, of course, my favorite type of science fiction. It seems like every year there are more and more anthologies of all sorts. If you are a fan of science fiction short stories and the associated anthologies, then I highly recommend this particular anthology. Of course, every anthology has its share of (what I consider) junk stories, but this one, overall, is excellent.
• 
  kvon

  A bunch of short stories, usual mixed bag of some memorable, and some not (also I skipped around a lot). We'll see over time which ones are most memorable--right now I'm thinking Capitalism in the 22nd Century for its paranoia, Folding Beijing for its imaginative world, and Hello, Hello by Seanan Mcguire for its humor.
• 
  Brittany

  I read a few of these stories and while I found the writing to be nice it was just too emotionless for me. I know that this is a science fiction book that really isn't going to probably tell what character's are feeling. But it made me feel detached from the whole thing and I didn't want to continue to read another story of the same appeal.
• 
  Kieran McAndrew

  Speculative Fiction is a way of exploring the human condition in new and interesting ways. In this volume, all of the stories bring humanity into sharp focus and there isn't a bad story in the collection.
  
  Clarke's selection is excellent and the stories sit well with each other. A bonus is that this book is huge.
  
  Here's to the start of a real annual event.
• 
  Federico Lucifredi

  A great collection — had not read so many good ones since the collected PKD short story volumes at the turn of the millennium.
  
  So many to choose from, I cannot pick a favorite. Seth Dickinson's "Three Bodies at Mitanni" is a strong contender — the kind of hard Sci-Fi entwined with moral questions I enjoy reading.
• 
  Desislava

  As a fan of Clarkesworld, I was more than happy to acquire some of my favourite stories from the magazine in print here. Of course, there were other exciting stories too, and still others were just fine. Not surprising for an anthology of this size. Overall it's a diverse selection of novel, quality fiction. It served me as a go-to book to open at a random story and get my daily dose of awe. It also packs a brief yet informative introduction by Neil Clarke and a handy reading list. Lastly, I found the layout neat, with author info before each piece.
  
  And it's almost time for volume 2, yay!
• 
  Michelle

  Patchy.
  
  Some stories I enjoyed. Too many I did not enjoy.
  
  I expect to not enjoy some in a group of short stories, this had too many of these for me to rate the book highly.
  
  If the good stories had been great instead then I’d give a higher rating,but too few were for me.
• 
  L

  As with any collection, this one had some work that was just out of this world (no pun intended) and some that wasn't my cup of tea. I was entertained, left to think about some things, and I have some new (for me) authors to seek out. What more could I ask?
  
  A few days later--Naturally, as I read I kept a list of the authors whose stories grabbed me for one reason or another. Today the inevitable happened. I went on a sci-fi spree on Amazon. Why was I not surprised? Anticipate some sci-fi reviews in the future.
• 
  Jeff J.

  A strong collection highlighting the best short science fiction from 2015. My favorites were the stories from Naomi Kritzer and Nancy Kress, and I continue to be impressed with the work coming out of Asia.
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  Jay Clement

  87-2020. I like checking out these SF collections from time to time. There were a bunch of fine and interesting short fiction stories here. The diversion was welcomed in these isolating and divisive times.
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  F. William Davis

  I had lost interest about half way through and delayed finishing this for a few months but I had a bit more fun in the second half. The very last short story was my favourite and although I have a natural aversion to cat stories I quite liked the cat pictures story in this collection.
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  Lainy

  A good collection of science fiction shorts. A good way to be introduced to the genre. There was some very good ones and then some not so good ones but over all its introduced me to some new authors to try.
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  Aaron Neath

  (Ignore the finished date, late updating Goodreads!)
  
  Really good collection, and great value for an audible credit.
  
  Consistently good stories, no real stinkers.
  
  Special mention to 'So Much Cooking' which is from 2015 but eerily accurate about some aspects of 2020 lockdown culture.
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  Jeremiah John

  Neil Clarke selects science fiction stories that have big ideas and extrapolate technology. I liked it better than the Dozois anthology, even while there was some overlap.