Good fun! ( )

Either 2001 was a bummer year for sci fi, or this anthology isn't very good. ( )

2001 - Quite a number for a film and were we having a space odyssey in the real 2001? No we weren't. This collection highlights what Dozois thinks were the best shorter length science fiction stories of 2001. Dozois was embracing the future and his selections drew 5 of the 26 from stories that were published on the internet, as well as stories from what was then more traditional sources ... a few anthology selections and the more prominent magazines, especially 'Asimov's Science Fiction' and 'The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction'. Gardner also does his usual lengthy summation (maybe a tad too lengthy) of various trends and events in the year. This turned out to be a good collection with only a few stories that put me off. There were a few too many stories that didn't thrill me that prevents me from calling this a great collection.

I've been sampling stories from this collection this year and last, and the very recent death of Gardner Dozois prompted me to speed up my reading. I won't go over all the stories - I'll comment on some of those that I particularly enjoyed or disliked. I was surprised at how many of these I had read before, perhaps as much as a third of them, but back then I was reading a lot of short fiction in the science fiction magazines and some have appeared elsewhere since 2001. The included material was:

•xi • Summation: 2001 • essay by Gardner Dozois
•1 • New Light on the Drake Equation • novella by Ian R. MacLeod
•44 • More Adventures on Other Planets • novelette by Michael Cassutt
•59 • On K2 with Kanakaredes • novelette by Dan Simmons
•91 • When This World Is All on Fire • novelette by William Sanders
•131 • Computer Virus • novelette by Nancy Kress
•141 • Have Not Have • novelette by Geoff Ryman
•157 • Lobsters • novelette by Charles Stross
•178 • The Dog Said Bow-Wow • shortstory by Michael Swanwick
•192 • The Chief Designer • novella by Andy Duncan
•229 • Neutrino Drag • novelette by Paul Di Filippo
•247 • Glacial • Revelation Space • novelette by Alastair Reynolds
•281 • The Days Between • novelette by Allen Steele
•303 • One-Horse Town • novelette by Howard Waldrop and Leigh Kennedy
•330 • Moby Quilt • novella by Eleanor Arnason
•365 • Raven Dream • novelette by Robert Reed
•385 • Undone • novelette by James Patrick Kelly
•408 • The Real Thing • novelette by Carolyn Ives Gilman
•438 • Interview: On Any Given Day • shortstory by Maureen F. McHugh
•452 • Isabel of the Fall • novelette by Ian R. MacLeod
•470 • Into Greenwood • novelette by Jim Grimsley
•497 • Know How, Can Do • novelette by Michael Blumlein
•514 • Russian Vine • shortstory by Simon Ings
•528 • The Two Dicks • novelette by Paul J. McAuley
•542 • May Be Some Time • novelette by Brenda W. Clough
•577 • Marcher • shortstory by Chris Beckett
•591 • The Human Front • novella by Ken MacLeod
•631 • Honorable Mentions: 2001 • essay by Gardner Dozois

The opening novella, "New Light on the Drake Equation" by Ian R. MacLeod was quite good, a story about one elderly man in France who has dedicated his life to SETI - the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence. A very personal story, very different from what I think of as a typical science fiction story. This was much more about the human side of life's journey with attention paid to little details, the personal cost of his obsession, a love lost story with a touch of eroticism. A great start to the collection and a reminder of how much I enjoyed reading MacLeod's short fiction in the 90's in Asimov's science fiction magazine. I loved this story.

"More Adventures on Other Planets" by Michael Cassutt was also enjoyable. Calling it a love story between two rovers, Earl and Rebecca, on a Jovian moon would do it a disservice.

There is one story in here that I thought was complete dreck - "Lobsters" by Charles Stross. It had even been nominated for a Hugo in the novelette category, placing 4th in the votes. So some people found it much better than I did. The story that followed, "The Dog Said Bow-Wow" by Michael Swanwick won the Hugo for best short story. It was a farce that would never have won my vote! The story that follows these two, 'The Chief Designer' a novella by Andy Duncan was better - it won the Sturgeon Award and was nominated for the Hugo in the Best Novella category. It placed 4th in the votes coming behind Brenda Clough's remarkable "May Be Some Time" which appears later in this collection. I was about a third of the way through these when I finished Andy Duncan's remarkable story which is built around the soviet side of the space race when I thought - "This is a remarkably mellow batch of stories." These are a thinking person's stories rather than any sort of action adventure or wild fables. Still, Duncan's story about the soviets shows the competitive drive that once existed in the space race that allowed amazing things to happen in a relatively short period of time, and the costs associated with that.

Alastair Reynold's "Glacial" I had read just a few years ago (2015) in his Galactic North collection. Reynold's stuff is almost always great and this story is no exception. Allan Steele's "The Days Between" is another excellent story. I believe it was incorporated into his novel "Coyote".

I have a little higher standard for something that is a year's best compilation - I like to think that EVERY story in it should be really good for the average reader. That wasn't the case here, but the majority of the stories were pretty good and so I'll rate it at 3 1/2 stars. ( )

Mighty poor pickings ( )

This is the third of these anthologies I've read, though it's been years. In retrospect, I don't believe I read all the tales in the previous editions, but I did with this one hoping to discover at least one gem.
To lay this on at the most basic - with the exception of only two tales, these are literary works with just enough sci-fi elements to fit poorly into the sci-fi category. I'd say more on that, but that pretty much sums it up. Will I pick up another of these anthologies? No.
Most of the stories were wordy enough to border on tedious, had no climax I could discern with flat endings that seemed to just...end. I felt no excitement, had trouble identifying with any of the characters and was highly disappointed that there was so little sci-fi here. I think the people who put these collections together need to be something other than literary critics. They need to find out what it is that makes true sci-fi, not disguised literary pieces.
Would I recommend these anthologies to a sci-fi reader? No. Absolutely not. I would recommend them to someone who enjoys literary works as there is very little sci-fi to distract the reader.
I should've been forewarned as I slogged my way through the summation. It, like most of the tales, could lose a great deal of content and not losing anything. ( )