The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New SF - By Gardner Dozois Page 0,1

in Starlight 2 (Tor). Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, the Virginia Kidd Literary Agency.

“People Came from Earth,” by Stephen Baxter. Copyright © 1999 by Stephen Baxter. First published in Moon Shots (DAW). Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Wedding Album,” by David Marusek. Copyright © 1999 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 1999. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“1016 to 1,” by James Patrick Kelly. Copyright © 1999 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 1999. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Daddy’s World,” by Walter Jon Williams. Copyright © 1999 by Walter Jon Williams. First published in Not of Woman Born (Roc Books). Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Real World,” by Steven Utley. Copyright © 2000 by SCIFI.COM. First published electronically on SCI FICTION, September 6. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Have Not Have,” by Geoff Ryman. Copyright © 2001 by Spilogale, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 2001. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Lobsters,” by Charles Stross. Copyright © 2001 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 2001. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Breathmoss,” by Ian R. MacLeod. Copyright © 2002 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, May 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Susan Ann Protter.

“Lambing Season,” by Molly Gloss. Copyright © 2002 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, July 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Footvote,” by Peter F. Hamilton. Copyright © 2004 by Peter F. Hamilton. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Fluted Girl,” by Paolo Bacigalupi. Copyright © 2003 by Spilogale, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Ficion, June 2003. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Zima Blue,” by Alastair Reynolds. Copyright © 2005 by Alastair Reynolds. First published in Postscripts 4. Reprinted by permission of the author.

FOREWORD

Robert Silverberg

Gardner Dozois’s annual anthology, The Mammoth Book of Best New SF, is now a series that comprises twenty hefty volumes,1 which require close to three and a half feet of shelf space. You will find that three-and-a-half-foot expanse of Dozois anthologies in any science-fiction library worthy of the name. Their presence is essential, for the Dozois book is the definitive historical record of the most fertile twenty years in the history of the science-fiction short story. Volume by volume, each anthology is an exciting and memorable collection. Taken all in all, though, they form a whole rather greater than the sum of their parts: an extraordinary editorial achievement, a unique encyclopedic text. And now we are given a book that offers us The Best of the Best – editor Dozois’s selection of the finest of the hundreds of stories that make up those twenty anthologies.

In no way does this book, good as it is, replace those twenty anthologies. No one volume possibly could. It serves, rather, as a marker, a signifier, which by the luminous excellence of its material reminds us of the magnitude of Gardner Dozois’s total accomplishment in assembling this wondrous series.

The science-fiction short story’s illustrious history goes back a long way. Beyond doubt the Greeks and the Romans wrote them – tales of robot warriors and imaginary voyages, some of them voyages to the moon. Closer to our own day, Hawthorne, Poe, and Verne produced what was unquestionably science fiction. More than a century ago H. G. Wells, the first great modern master of the form, filled the popular magazines of his day with dozens of s-f stories – “The Country of the Blind,” “The Crystal Egg,” “The Star,” and many more – of such surpassing inventiveness that they have held their own in print ever since. From 1911 on, the Luxembourg-born gadgeteer Hugo Gernsback began publishing science fiction as a regular feature of his magazines Modern Electrics and Science and Invention, and it proved so popular that in 1926 Gernsback launched Amazing Stories, the first magazine devoted entirely to it. (Because new stories were so hard to find at first, Gernsback filled many of the early issues with the work of Poe, Verne, and Wells.) Amazing built an avid readership and before long had a vigorous pair of competitors: Wonder Stories and Astounding Stories. Those were followed by a host of others, gaudy pulp magazines with names like Startling Stories, Planet Stories, Cosmic Stories, and Super Science Stories, and then, after World War II, came a group of less flamboyant-looking magazines aimed at more sophisticated readers, most notably