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Title: An unexceptional gathering of current stars in the field
Review: Hartwell's not a particularly adept editor. He's taken with a lot of star power and evidently lets a writer's prestige be the only criterion for inclusion in his anthologies. Most of these stories are competently written, but they lack spark, that sense of wonder that used to fill the field until about 15 years ago. It's like a lot of rock music these days: great talent with nothing much to say. How some of these stories made it into a "year's best" book is beyond me, but one thing is clear. The science fiction field is running dry. No story here has a decent (or even a twist) ending. Nothing here is genuinely memorable. I so much wanted these anthologies to be a counterpoint to the drab Dozois anthologies, but they aren't. If this is the best we can do, then I'd say we're in trouble. (And the sad part is that younger readers don't know how good science fiction used to be.)
