Beginning with Robert Silverberg's poignant "Sailing to Byzantium," this outstanding follow-up to Dozois's Best of the Best Volume 1
(2005) pays homage to the science fiction novellas of the past two decades and by extension to the entire genre in all its varied glory. Michael Swanwick's "Griffin's Egg" holds down the hard SF end, while Joe Haldeman's "The Hemingway Hoax" is more of a fantastical mystery. Nancy Kress's "Beggars in Spain" and Ian McDonald's heartwrenching "Tendeléo's Story" describe two very different near futures where gifted minorities battle societal envy and fear. Far future ruminations on age and death include James Patrick Kelly's demented "Mr. Boy," Frederik Pohl's somber "Outnumbering the Dead" and Ian R. MacLeod's tender "New Light on the Drake Equation." Otherworldly culture clash appears in Ursula K. Le Guin's "Forgiveness Day" as well as the bittersweet trio of Alastair Reynolds's "Turquoise Days," Maureen F. McHugh's "The Cost to Be Wise" and Walter Jon Williams's "Surfacing." (Feb.)
