A decent volume. As I noted on BLACK GATE, the speculative fiction best of the year volumes weren't so thin on the ground as John recalls them being, in the 1970s...there were more in that decade than in any other till the last two, in fantastic fiction (John is looking at the 1974 Carr...in the May 1974 F&SF, Harlan Ellison reviewed five sf BOTYs published in 1973, the Carr, the Wollheim, the Harrison/Aldiss, the Del Rey and the Ackerman (the last a last volume in the Ace Books series Frederik Pohl had started, before Ace all but collapsed in those years)...the Del Rey annual would soon be taken over by Gardner Dozois, his first annual series...and THE YEAR'S BEST HORROR STORIES was already emerging from DAW, and Lin Carter and Carr would have their fantasy BOTYs up and running soon after...not counting the Nebula Awards volumes, still pretty regular then, before they became infrequent and then back to nearly annual...
I can remember eagerly looking forward to Terry Carr's BEST SF OF THE YEAR volumes. He was the Gold Standard for excellence. Later, the massive Gardner Dozois tomes set the standard. Now, I like Rick Horton's more selective YEAR'S BEST SF anthologies.
3 comments:
A decent volume. As I noted on BLACK GATE, the speculative fiction best of the year volumes weren't so thin on the ground as John recalls them being, in the 1970s...there were more in that decade than in any other till the last two, in fantastic fiction (John is looking at the 1974 Carr...in the May 1974 F&SF, Harlan Ellison reviewed five sf BOTYs published in 1973, the Carr, the Wollheim, the Harrison/Aldiss, the Del Rey and the Ackerman (the last a last volume in the Ace Books series Frederik Pohl had started, before Ace all but collapsed in those years)...the Del Rey annual would soon be taken over by Gardner Dozois, his first annual series...and THE YEAR'S BEST HORROR STORIES was already emerging from DAW, and Lin Carter and Carr would have their fantasy BOTYs up and running soon after...not counting the Nebula Awards volumes, still pretty regular then, before they became infrequent and then back to nearly annual...
I can remember eagerly looking forward to Terry Carr's BEST SF OF THE YEAR volumes. He was the Gold Standard for excellence. Later, the massive Gardner Dozois tomes set the standard. Now, I like Rick Horton's more selective YEAR'S BEST SF anthologies.
And Neil Clarke, of CLARKESWORLD magazine, has now entered the fray, from the new version of NightShade Books.
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