Year's Best SF 7
David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer
498 pages
published in 2002

I was not impressed by the 1999 entry in this series of yearly anthologies, as it was filled with mediocre or worse stories. However, I still like a good yearly anthology and even if I prefer Gardner Dozois' efforts, I thought I'd buy this anyway. Even the best editor can't cover the entire field after all. There is though some overlap between this and Dozois' 2001 anthology: Computer Virus, Russian Vine, Glacial and The Dog Said Bow-Wow can all be found in both anthologies.

The quality of stories in this anthology is higher then in Year's Best SF 5, though still not as good as I'd would've liked. None of them really sparkle or engage the imagination in the way the best science fiction does. The quality was much higher in Dozois' 2001 anthology. Partially this may be because the editors here have deliberately limited their scope in selecting stories, to only those they see as proper science fiction. This I feel has lend a certain blandness and sameness to the anthology.

• Computer Virus - Nancy Kress
  Not one of her more inspired efforts. A fairly mundane story of an escaped AI holding a family hostage in their own high security home. Labours to get to the point that you know, an AI should be treated as you would a human being.
• Charlies Angels - Terry Bisson
  Jack Villon, New Orleans Supernatural Private Eye (who doesn't believe in the supernatural) gets called in when a Mexican statue goes on a rampage. Lightly told, but as in the Kress story with a very laboured message attached.
• The Measure of All Things - Richard Chwedyk
  This is one of the best stories in this volume. Genetic enginering and nanotech made it possible to create miniature dinosaurs, not alive or intelligent according to their creators, so they could be sold as toys and treated as toys. Now, years after the fad has faded, plenty of these "toys" are left in charity homes, badly traumatised and/or crippled. Very sentimental, but in a good way.
• Russian Vine Simon - Ings
  Bittersweet story about an Earth ruled by alien invaders who managed to cull literacy out of humanity.
• Unders Game Michael - Swanwick
  Devastating ultra short parody of a certain Orson Scott Card story.
• A Matter of Mathematics - Brian Aldiss
  A reworking of An Apollo Asteroid from Year's Best SF 5; less confusing this time, but still rather dull.
• Creative Destruction - Edward M. Lerner
  One of the better stories in this volume. The introduction calls this a condensed novel, which it does feel like.
• Resurrection - David Morrell
  So cryogenics is available and useable, but how would it be if you had your father frozen for decades waiting for a cure for his disease? A very humane story, one of those stories that concentrates on the effects new technology has on people rather than on the nuts and bolts of the technology itself.
• The Cats Pajamas - James Morrow
  James Morrow is one of those writers I know I should probably like, but can't get into. This story, a sort of ironic reworking of The Island of Dr. Moreau is no different. I think it's Morrow's writing style as much as anything that sets me off.
• The Dog Said Bow-Wow - Michael Swanwick
  This is the story that largely made me reconsider Michael Swanwick. I read it first online wen it was considered for the Hugo or the Nebula. Very cleverly written, the best story in here.
• The Building - Ursula K. Le Guin
  If you needed any evidence that Le Guin is still an extremely good writer when she's on, this provides it. More of an anthropology study than a story, a very good lesson in creating a believable society both alien and knowable, if not known.
• Grey Earth - Stephen Baxter
  Eh. An extract from one of his Manifold novels published as a sort story. Not bad, but so very dull that I don't understand why this was included. I wonder about Baxter in general; to me he is the most overrated science fiction writer currently active.
• The Lagan Fishers - Terry Dowling
  Alien crystalline structures are turning up at random all over the world, apparantely benign. One of them ends up in the backyard of a man still trying to come to terms with the death of his wife. The Lagan ends up giving him a purpose again.
• In Xanadu - Thomas M. Disch
  Pointless, not half as clever as it thinks it is.
• The Go-Betweens - Lisa Goldstein
  Dull little story about an ambassador to an alien planet, who gets angsty about her job.
• Viewpoint - Gene Wolfe
  Not something you would expect from Wolfe this, a near future thriller about a man who gets $100,000 from a tv program,
• Anomalies - Gregory Benford
  If you can view the universe as a computer program, than there are bound to be bugs in it... Nice story, Benford at his best.
• Glacial - Alastair Reynolds
  Set in the same universe as Revelation Space, this is a well done blend of hard science fiction and a murder mystery.
• Undone - James Patrick Kelly
  Okay but confused story about a woman in the middle of a galactic war whose ship makes a slightly too long time jump to escape her enemies...