Year's Best SF 10
Every year, Kathryn and David send us a bundle of the best science fiction short stories and novellas. It's a fixture of the calendar, like Aunt Hazel's noodle kugel and Grandma's chopped liver -- the recipe against which all future dishes of chopped liver are measured throughout the extended family. This year's collection has some pleasant bits. James Patrick Kelley's "The Dark Side Of Town" is a fresh look at drugs and games. Neal Asher's "Strood" has a ton of fun in store for readers who know what "To Serve Mankind" means, and of course that includes everyone all the way down to Dawn Summers. "Sergeant Chip" (Bradley Denton) is a nice Haldeman-seque war story about an augmented dog. And Steve Tomasula's "The Risk Taking Gene As expressed By Some Asian Subjects" takes the old genre of grad student stories (see H.G. Wells) in new and unexpectedly genetic directions.