The year's best science fiction Book

[Commentary on individual stories as I read them]

Inappropriate Behavior (novelette) by Pat Murphy
That one needs a bit of time to sink in - it's all about failures to communicate on so many different levels, not only the obvious one. Makes me want to read more by Murphy.

Start the Clock (shortstory) by Benjamin Rosenbaum
That was new and different and making you think. Yes.

The Third Party (novelette) by David Moles
Ambitious in places but it does not really work.

The Voluntary State (novelette) by Christopher Rowe
Too much ... something. Colorful? All over the place? Short? Long? Not sure, but it does not come together in an interesting way.

Shiva in Shadow (novelette) by Nancy Kress
This was such a frustrating one. I loved the psychological juxtaposition, the exploration of how things stay same and yet are different. But it failed so hard on the hard science, which I could forgive, and on how doing science works - which is something I can't forgive because it just repeats the same old prejudices that annoy me to no end.

The People of Sand and Slag (novelette) by Paolo Bacigalupi
Not bad. Although once again not truly new or touching.

The Clapping Hands of God (novelette) by Michael F. Flynn
The resolution of the story is interesting. But ugh, what is in this anthology with the way scientists are represented? Who would send a bunch of such amateurish-behaving anthropologists out? Really?!

Tourism (shortstory) by M. John Harrison
Weird. I guess the new weird, but definitely not the good weird.

Scout's Honor (shortstory) by Terry Bisson
And another one with a scientist as a main characters. This time kind of autistic. Only it does not really work. Especially not with the resolution because no way the same person wrote the framing text and the e-mails, because remember - autistic, unable to read other people? Also, timeline problems. Ugh. Stupid.

Men Are Trouble (novelette) by James Patrick Kelly
Huh ... Not what I expected and really, really good. This was one of those few cases when a female first person narrator is written by a man but still reads like a woman. Respect! Also a fascinating world and a good story.

Mother Aegypt • [Company] (novella) by Kage Baker
I'm more and more convinced that Kage Baker and I are not going to become friends. (That said, I *am* curious how this fits into her larger time-travel universe. Anybody knowing it in more detail and willing to explain the story to me in that context?)

Synthetic Serendipity (shortstory) by Vernor Vinge
A little bit positive, a little bit hopeful in there. I liked it.

Skin Deep (shortstory) by Mary Rosenblum
I read this a while ago and I remember roughly what it was about when I read the last lines but not how it made me feel ...

Delhi (shortstory) by Vandana Singh
Not the best of Singh's works, but a good one and as always a refreshing view into a different culture (and the more I think about it, the more boring it becomes that it's always London in our stories - why should it be? Why not Delhi?).

The Tribes of Bela [Colonel Kohn] (novella) by Albert E. Cowdrey
I liked the different voices and some of the worldbuilding (though others were rather hole-y), but overall if left me with the feeling that I've read something similar already.

Sitka (shortstory) by William Sanders
Alternative histories will almost never ever make me happy (there was one by Greg Egan, but that one was about Turing ...) and silly ones double so.

Leviathan Wept (shortstory) by Daniel Abraham
Yes! This one! Clever, multi-layered, connecting a very personal catastrophe and the world as a whole, introducing a complex would without over-explaining it and a world that could be very well an extension of our own (and that written in 2004, not in 2018!). Great!
OMG, and now I looked it up and that's one of the guys who wrote "The Expanse"?! OK, I have to read/watch the series!

499 • The Defenders • (2004) • shortstory by Colin P. Davies
504 • Mayflower II • [Xeelee] • (2004) • novella by Stephen Baxter
562 • Riding the White Bull • (2004) • novelette by Caitlín R. Kiernan
588 • Falling Star • (2004) • shortstory by Brendan DuBois
603 • The Dragons of Summer Gulch • (2004) • novelette by Robert Reed
628 • The Ocean of the Blind • (2004) • shortstory by James L. Cambias
649 • The Garden: A Hwarhath Science Fictional Romance • [Hwarhath] • (2004) • novella by Eleanor Arnason
688 • Footvote • (2004) • shortstory by Peter F. Hamilton
706 • Sisyphus and the Stranger • (2004) • shortstory by Paul Di Filippo (aka Sisyphe et l'étranger)
718 • Ten Sigmas • (2004) • shortstory by Paul Melko
726 • Investments • [Dread Empire's Fall] • (2004) • novella by Walter Jon Williams