Make no mistake, this is a fine collection, but it’s an unfortunate fact: If you bought and enjoyed the Strahan and your...
A fourth annual anthology from this editor, and not to be confused with its rival, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, edited by Jonathan Strahan, which appeared in April 2012.
Of the 29 mostly top-quality offerings, no less than six of what are arguably among the best stories here—perhaps inevitably—also appeared in the rival volume: Karen Joy Fowler’s “Younger Women,” Kij Johnson’s “The Man Who Bridged the Mist,” Paul McAuley’s “The Choice,” K.J. Parker’s “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong,” Robert Reed’s “Woman Leaves Room” and E. Lily Yu’s “The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees.” That disappointment aside, there’s plenty of great writing and dazzling ideas among the rest: “The Silver Wind” by Nina Allan, a wonderful yarn of a strange genius in an alternate-world London; a Martian odyssey from John Barnes; a stunning take on the essential tragedy of the vampire condition, “Late Bloomer” by Suzy McKee Charnas; the riveting and surpassingly strange “Walking Stick Fires” by Alan DeNiro; a tale of World War II, Indian magic and a blacklisted writer, Bradley Denton’s “The Adakian Eagle”; historical time travel from Theodora Goss; “Ghostweight” (Yoon Ha Lee), an ugly war on a distant planet; a weird life-after-death yarn from Rachel Swirsky; a typically elliptical and engrossing tale of fairyland from Catherynne M. Valente; a woman under an evil enchantment, forced to bear children for her enemies (C.S.E. Cooney’s excellent “The Last Sophia”); urban fantasy from Kelly Link and other eclectic offerings from Jonathan Carroll, Alexandra Duncan, Neil Gaiman, Gavin J. Grant, Kat Howard, Vylar Kaftan, Margo Lanagan, Chris Lawson, Marissa Lingen, George Saunders, Lavie Tidhar and Genevieve Valentine. The duplicates are worth re-reading too, of course.
Make no mistake, this is a fine collection, but it’s an unfortunate fact: If you bought and enjoyed the Strahan and your budget is limited, you’ll probably think twice about this one.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60701-344-0
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Prime Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
A thrilling and satisfying sequel to the 1969 classic.
Over 50 years after an extraterrestrial microbe wiped out a small Arizona town, something very strange has appeared in the Amazon jungle in Wilson’s follow-up to Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain.
The microparticle's introduction to Earth in 1967 was the disastrous result of an American weapons research program. Before it could be contained, Andromeda killed all but two people in tiny Piedmont, Arizona; during testing after the disaster, AS-1 evolved and escaped into the atmosphere. Project Eternal Vigilance was quickly set up to scan for any possible new outbreaks of Andromeda. Now, an anomaly with “signature peaks” closely resembling the original Andromeda Strain has been spotted in the heart of the Amazon, and a Wildfire Alert is issued. A diverse team is assembled: Nidhi Vedala, an MIT nanotechnology expert born in a Mumbai slum; Harold Odhiambo, a Kenyan xenogeologist; Peng Wu, a Chinese doctor and taikonaut; Sophie Kline, a paraplegic astronaut and nanorobotics expert based on the International Space Station; and, a last-minute addition, roboticist James Stone, son of Dr. Jeremy Stone from The Andromeda Strain. They must journey into the deepest part of the jungle to study and hopefully contain the dire threat that the anomaly seemingly poses to humanity. But the jungle has its own dangers, and it’s not long before distrust and suspicion grip the team. They’ll need to come together to take on what waits for them inside a mysterious structure that may not be of this world. Setting the story over the course of five days, Wilson (Robopocalypse, 2011, etc.) combines the best elements of hard SF novels and techno-thrillers, using recovered video, audio, and interview transcripts to shape the narrative, with his own robotics expertise adding flavor and heft. Despite a bit of acronym overload, this is an atmospheric and often terrifying roller-coaster ride with (literally) sky-high stakes that pays plenty of homage to The Andromeda Strain while also echoing the spirit and mood of Crichton’s other works, such as Jurassic Park and Congo. Add more than a few twists and exciting set pieces (especially in the finale) to the mix, and you’ve got a winner.
A thrilling and satisfying sequel to the 1969 classic.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-247327-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As in Resurrection (1966) and The Wreckage of Agathon (1970) Gardner demonstrates his agility at juggling metaphysical notions while telling a diverting tale. Here he has used as a means of discovering man's unsavory ways that muzziest of monsters, Grendel, from the Beowulf chronicle. As in the original, Grendel is a bewildering combination of amorphous threats and grisly specifics — he bellows in the wilds and crunches through hapless inhabitants of the meadhall. But Grendel, the essence of primal violence, is also a learning creature. Itc listens to a wheezing bore with scales and coils, a pedantic Lucifer, declaim on the relentless complexity of cosmic accident. He hears an old priest put in a word for God as unity of discords, where nothing is lost. And Grendel continues to observe the illusions of bards, kings, heroes, and soldiers, occasionally eating one. After the true hero arrives sprouting fiery wings, to deal the death blow, he shows Grendel the reality of both destruction and rebirth. Throughout the trackless philosophic speculation, the dialogue is witty and often has a highly contemporary tilt: "The whole shit-ass scene was his idea, not mine," says Grendel, disgusted by a sacrificial hero. At the close one is not sure if the savior is "blithe of his deed," but Gardner, the word-pleaser, should be.
Pub Date: Sept. 17, 1971
ISBN: 0679723110
Page Count: 186
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1971
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