Hartwell, David G.

Year's Best SF 13 (Year's Best Sf)

The thirteenth annual collection of the previous year's finest short-form sf is at hand. Once again, award-winning editors and anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer have gathered together a stunning array of science fiction that spans a veritable universe of astonishing visions and bold ideas. Hitherto unexplored galaxies of the mind are courageously traversed by some of the most exciting new talents in the field—while well-established masters rocket to remarkable new heights of artistry and originality. The stars are closer and more breathtaking than ever before—and a miraculous future now rests in your hands—within the pages of Year's Best SF 13.

The Dark Descent

If you could have only one anthology of dark stories, this would be the one to have. Having observed that "fans of horror fiction most often restrict their reading to books and stories given a horror category label, thus missing some of the finest pleasures in that fictional mode," David G. Hartwell assembles here 56 important tales within an insightful critical framework; his purpose is to "clear the air and broaden future considerations of horror." Several well-known classics are included, but there are also dozens of lesser-known horror tales, including many by science fiction and literary writers. Get one copy for yourself. Get another for that friend or relative who doesn't understand why you like to read horror.

Year's Best Fantasy 8 (Year's Best Fantasy)

The Hard SF Renaissance

Edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, The Hard SF Renaissance (2002) is a thematic sequel to their 1994 anthology The Ascent of Wonder. The first anthology argued that "[t]here has been a persistent viewpoint that hard [science fiction] is somehow the core and the center of the SF field." The Hard SF Renaissance asserts that hard SF has truly become the heart of the genre and supports its assertion by assembling nearly a thousand pages of short stories, novelettes, and novellas originally published between the late 1980s and early 2000s. A different theory says hard SF stories are engineering puzzles disguised as fiction; The Hard SF Renaissance repudiates this theory in regard to modern hard SF. Most of the selections have strong prose and rounded characters, several are classics, and gadget-driven clunkers are mercifully few.

Contributors to The Hard SF Renaissance range from SF gods like Poul Anderson, Arthur C. Clarke, and Frederik Pohl; to promising newcomers like Alastair Reynolds, Karl Schroeder, and Peter Watts; and to acclaimed SF writers not usually associated with hard SF, like James Patrick Kelley, Kim Stanley Robinson, Bruce Sterling, and Michael Swanwick.

You may have noticed the lack of women in that list. It reflects the book: the 30-odd contributors (some with two stories) include only three women (Nancy Kress, Joan Slonczewski, and Sarah Zettel, with one story each). Some eyebrow-elevating omissions are Eleanor Arnason, Catherine Asaro, Nicola Griffith, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Connie Willis, all of whom have written hard SF stories in the period covered by The Hard SF Renaissance. They've certainly written SF harder than the book's implicit definition (the book reprints Kim Stanley Robinson's fine story "Sexual Dimorphism," in which fossil DNA serves as a metaphor for the protagonist's failing relationship; a few cosmetic changes and this SF story would be mainstream). The absence of several crucial authors makes The Hard SF Renaissance a less-than-definitive anthology of late-20th-century hard SF. --Cynthia Ward

Year's Best SF 12 (Year's Best Sf)

A banner year for bold, provocative, brilliantly inventive science fiction has produced some of the most enthrallingly original short sf since the genre's conception. In their twelfth remarkable collection of the very best of the last twelve months, award-winning editors and anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer present amazing stories of galaxy-shaking events, alien contact, utopian science, and technology run amok—tales that celebrate the continually evolving literary artistry of some of the form's finest, most respected practitioners . . . while showcasing the magnificent talents of the science fiction superstars of the near future.

Year's Best SF 11 (Year's Best Sf)

Man has mused about the nature of our universe since he first gazed up in wonder at the stars. Now some of the most fertile imaginations in speculative fiction offer bold and breathtaking visions of "what's out there" and "what's next" in the eleventh annual celebration of the very best short SF to appear over the past year.

Once again, acclaimed editors and anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer have compiled an extraordinary collection featuring stunning works from modern masters as well as dazzling gems from brilliant new talents -- tales that carry the reader to the far corners of the galaxy and beyond, into hitherto unexplored regions. Get ready to take glorious flight on a journey to the miraculous.

The Space Opera Renaissance

Year's Best Fantasy 6 (Year's Best Fantasy)

Year's Best SF 10 (Year's Best SF (Science Fiction))

A banner year for speculative fiction has yielded a crop of superb short form SF. Now the very best to appear over the past twelve months has been amassed into one extraordinary volume by acclaimed editors and anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, offering bold visions of days to come that are bright, triumphant, breathtaking, and strikingly unique. Once more, celebrated masters of the field join with exciting new voices to sing of explorations and invasions, grand technological accomplishments, amazing flights into the unknown, horrors and miracles, and the human condition.

Welcome to amazing worlds that could be -- and, perhaps, sooner than you have ever dared to imagine.

New tales from:

• Gregory Benford
• Terry Bisson
• James Patrick Kelly
• Pamela Sargent
• Jack McDevitt
• Gene Wolfe
• and more

"

A banner year for speculative fiction has yielded a crop of superb short form SF. Now the very best to appear over the past twelve months has been amassed into one extraordinary volume by acclaimed editors and anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, offering bold visions of days to come that are bright, triumphant, breathtaking, and strikingly unique. Once more, celebrated masters of the field join with exciting new voices to sing of explorations and invasions, grand technological accomplishments, amazing flights into the unknown, horrors and miracles, and the human condition.

Welcome to amazing worlds that could be -- and, perhaps, sooner than you have ever dared to imagine.

New tales from:

• Gregory Benford
• Terry Bisson
• James Patrick Kelly
• Pamela Sargent
• Jack McDevitt
• Gene Wolfe
• and more

Year's Best SF 6 (Year's Best SF (Science Fiction))

David Hartwell's guiding principle for his annual science fiction anthologies is that the stories be clearly science fiction--not fantasy, horror, or postmodern. As always, for the 2001 edition he has chosen stories representing the best of the SF field, along with several short pieces published in Nature magazine as part of a millennium celebration.

Don't miss Tananarive Due's "Patient Zero," which assumes Greg Egan's frequent spotlight on medical SF (this year Egan covers philosophy vs. science in his alternate history "Oracle"); Stephen Dedman's detective story about amputation, "The Devotee"; Stephen Baxter's hard SF "Sheena 5," which is about an enhanced squid and her mission; Ursula K. LeGuin's anthropological tale "The Birthday of the World"; or Nancy Kress's succinct, pithy "To Cuddle Amy."

2001 Hugo Award nominees include "Seventy-Two Letters" by Ted Chiang, "Oracle" by Greg Egan, and short story winner "Different Kinds of Darkness" by David Langford. --Bonnie Bouman

Get Ready To Expand Your Mind...

Acclaimed editor and anthologist David G. Hartwell is back with the sixth annual collection of the year's most impressive, thought-provoking, and just plain great science fiction.

Year's Best SF 6 includes contributions from the greatest stars of the field as well as remarkable newcomers -- galaxies and into unexplored territory deep within your own soul.

Here are stories from: