The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 4

By: Neil Clarke - editor

Narrated by: Shari Peele, Morgan Hallett, Catherine Ho, Luis Moreno, Jennifer O'Donnell, Richard Poe

Length: 29 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's Summary

From Hugo Award-winning editor Neil Clarke, the best science fiction stories of the year are collected in a single volume. 

Keeping up-to-date with the most buzzworthy and cutting-edge science fiction requires sifting through countless magazines, e-zines, websites, blogs, original anthologies, single-author collections, and more - a task accomplishable by only the most determined and voracious readers. For everyone else, Night Shade Books is proud to introduce the latest volume of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, a yearly anthology compiled by Hugo and World Fantasy Award-winning editor Neil Clarke, collecting the finest that the genre has to offer, from the biggest names in the field to the most exciting new writers. 

The best science fiction scrutinizes our culture and politics, examines the limits of the human condition, and zooms across galaxies at faster-than-light speeds, moving from the very near future to the far-flung worlds of tomorrow in the space of a single sentence. Clarke, publisher and editor-in-chief of the acclaimed and award-winning magazine Clarkesworld, has selected the short science fiction (and only science fiction) best representing the previous year's writing, showcasing the talent, variety, and awesome "sensawunda" that the genre has to offer. 

Table of Contents 

Introduction: A State of the Short SF Field in 2018
When We Were Starless - Simone Heller
Intervention - Kelly Robson
All the Time We've Left to Spend - Alyssa Wong
Domestic Violence - Madeline Ashby
Ten Landscapes of Nili Fossae - Ian McDonald
Prophet of the Roads - Naomi Kritzer
Traces of Us - Vanessa Fogg
Theories of Flight - Linda Nagata
Lab B-15 - Nick Wolven
Requiem - Vandana Singh
Sour Milk Girls - Erin Roberts
Mother Tongues - S. Qiouyi Lu
Singles' Day - Samantha Murray
Nine Last Days on Planet Earth - Daryl Gregory
The Buried Giant - Lavie Tidhar
The Anchorite Wakes - R.S.A. Garcia
Entropy War - Yoon Ha Lee
An Equation of State - Robert Reed
Quantifying Trust - John Chu
Hard Mary - Sofia Samatar
Freezing Rain, a Chance of Falling - L.X. Beckett
Okay, Glory - Elizabeth Bear
Heavy Lifting - A.T. Greenblatt
Lions and Gazelles - Hannu Rajaniemi
Different Seas - Alastair Reynolds
Among the Water Buffaloes, a Tiger's Steps - Aliette de Bodard
Byzantine Empathy - Ken Liu
Meat and Salt and Sparks - Rich Larson
Umbernight - Carolyn Ives Gilman

©2019 Neil Clarke (P)2019 Recorded Books

Not science fiction - it is young adult romance

I tried listening to the first three stories. Every one was a nice, fluffy, beautifully written expression of a young woman's feelings. Lost loves, regrets, blah blah. Not compelling, nor interesting. I returned this book.

Pretty bad

I honestly could not finish this book. Most publishers can not tell the difference between fantasy and science fiction. This is true in this case. Most of the stories are fantasy that takes place in the future, or in space, or in a research facility and that gets them tagged as sci fi.

Listening to the 5-10 stories I did listen to was a chore. It became more daunting of a task as I moved on.

The one story I listened to that had some science in it had very bad science in it. You would not need to know much science to know that what they are saying is not true, not possible. Most scientists would say something like "There is a non zero probability of that occurring" when what they really mean is that something is not possible.

A lot of times an audio book like this might start out weak but it gets better. This one did not.

If this really is the "best" science fiction of some year, I weep for that year.