**Full review to be added closer to publication!**

Jonathan Strahan did a truly fantastic job of collecting some phenomenal science fiction from the last year and putting it in an easy to access collection. There are a number of new-to-me authors of sci-fi that I will surely be looking up more from!

A high-quality collection with a number of stories I’d encountered elsewhere. Inequality, climate collapse/apocalypse, and even online trolling show up in multiple stories. Suzanne Palmer’s The Painter of Trees is probably the bleakest (through much competition) of the apocalypse/species wipeout stories, about a few enhanced beings overseeing the death of the last of another intelligent species whose planet they’ve colonized. Ted Chiang has a short story that only manages to sketch out his usual depths. Alec Nevala-Lee has a good story about an explorer robot trying to find its way home. There’s also a useful introductory essay and list of recommended reading.

A well curated group of stories by both well know authors and several that were new to me. There weren’t any stories that I disliked, which is rare when I read an anthology, but my favorite was The Bookstore the End of America by Charlie Jane Anders. I highly recommended this for anyone who’s a fan of science fiction.

A fantastic collection. Worthy of the name, I'm glad that these best of anthologies continue to exist. Strahan has done a good job with the flow and selection of the stories here. It was a good mix of well-known genre authors that I'm familiar with and folks I've never heard of who are surely up-and-coming.

“The Bookstore at the End of America” by Charlie Jane Anders was definitely a standout for me, Ladders and Lanterns by Malka Older made me pick up her latest novel, and “I (28M) created a deepfake girlfriend and now my parents think we’re getting married” by Fonda Lee was I think the funniest of the collection.

If you're a fan of anthologies or just want to dive into a collection that features some of the most interesting voices in SF right now, this is the book for you.

A great compendium of great science fiction. Highly recommend for fans of the genre and those interested in expanding their genre choices. Purchasing for library.

Review of eGalley

An eclectic mix of science fiction and speculative fiction from 2019. Fans of the genre will find much to appreciate in this showcase of twenty-eight diverse stories considered the best of the year. All are eminently imaginative, but “The Bookstore at the End of America” by Charlie Jane Anders and “The Work of Wolves” by Tegan Moore are stand-out, especially memorable tales.

Recommended for readers of science fiction as well as for aficionados of imaginative, out-of-the-box stories.

I received a free copy of this eBook from Gallery Books / Saga Press and NetGalley
#TheYearsBestScieceFictionVolume1 #NetGalley

Thank you Netgalley and Gallery Books /Saga Press for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

What I like the most about anthologies is that you can get a snippet of some author's writing that you may not know otherwise. A good bit of these authors I've unfortunately never heard of, yet now I yearn to look up more of their works.

This list of short stories is wonderfully well curated, and so vast in it's array of topics that it didn't just feel like a collection based on one theme, which I was worried about. Strahan definitely managed to pull the best of the years stories from an already wonderful year of them. If anything, reading this made me even more excited to see how even better next years will be.

A wonderfully well-curated collection of (some) of the best voices working is SFF now. Jonathan Strahan's collections never let me down and this is another great one. There is something in here for everyone—the chosen stories are diverse, eclectic, full of heart, and positively overflowing with imagination—and Strahan's introduction outlining the best work and most notable events in the SFF publishing world was fantastic, too.

An excellent collection of short SFF stories from writers who are now very well known and others who deserve to be. What's especially nice about this anthology is the inclusion of stories by famous authors that haven't been widely anthologized elsewhere, and that play against the author's type a little bit. Strahan's introduction is long and repetitive, and could have used considerable editing, but you can skip it and get right to the stories.

I got this mixed up with another book & will add tomorrow am having tech problems will be back tomorrow as want to get this cleaned up now

As I have said before, I am wary of anthologies - I worry about changes in quality and tonal whiplash between stories in themed multi-author collections. However, when I saw that Saga Press was launching a new series of the year’s best science fiction anthologies called The Year’s Best Science Fiction vol 1 edited by Jonathan Strahan with the best of 2019’s short fiction, I figured it would be a good bet and requested an eARC from NetGalley. I wasn’t wrong! This collection is full of excellent stories. Are they necessarily what I would have picked personally? No, but I can’t argue that there is a dud in the bunch. It contains many of this year’s Hugo nominees, like “As the Last I May Know” by S. L. Huang and “A Catalog of Storms” by Fran Wilde. (Fun fact - I met Fran Wilde at NYCC a few years ago and she made my day by complimenting me on the Wonder Twins tshirt I was wearing.) Among my favorites are Hugo nominee “Emergency Skin” by N. K. Jemisin. This story was a fascinating, surprising take on a post-Apocalyptic earth with a very unreliable second person narrator. So much fun! I also loved “The Bookstore at the End of America” by Charlie Jane Anders, which was full of warmth and heart and really made me miss going to bookstores during this pandemic. Probably my favorite story from the entire collection is “I (28M) created a deepfake girlfriend and now 000 my parents think we’re getting married” by Fonda Lee. Written in an incredibly realistic style of a series of internet posts, it is a cheeky yet introspective look at technology and relationships in the digital age. A great anthology all round.

This seems to be the first in a replacement series for the late Gardner Dozois' annual "best of" books. The intro reads like Gardner's did, add as summary of the previous year's activities on the field. It also mentions Gardner more than once. I don't know why the numbering starts over, though. I can't believe the first in a series like this would sell better than the fortieth.

A collection of new science fiction short stories from authors around the world.
I love well done science fiction short stories. When an author can truly make a story less than 50 pages and yet make you feel like you live in the world they have created, they have truly mastered the craft. Most of these authors showe that mastery. Because the stories come from such a variety of sources, the besides the normal piecing together of the new worlds presented, occasionally you had to also understand the culture where these stories originated. One example of this is "Kali_Na" by Indrapramit Das. This story presented not only a fascinating future where worship has gone high tech, but also brings those not as familiar with prejudices and worship in this future India to a level of understanding that makes the story enjoyable without being an encyclopedia entry.
My favourite two stories were "The Work of Wolves" by Tegan Moore and "At the Fall" by Alec Nevala-Lee.
"The Work of Wolves" is the story partners learning to work together. The twist? One is human while the other is an improved dog. "At the Fall" is the story of a nearly impossible trip home for the robot Eunice across the bottom of the sea. The time perspective on this one made it even more fascinating. With both of these, I loved the well thought-out internal perspectives and the way both stories built to the climax with slow steps that made the end that much more rewarding.
I would recommend this book to those who enjoy science fiction or multicultural fiction. Both with find lots to enjoy.
Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read a pre-release copy of this book.

Strahan is a very talented editor and this collection reflects that. A mix of stories of pretty consistently high quality. It includes some big scifi names and lesser known ones. My faves were the speculative fiction, but the others were enjoyable as well. Recommended.

I really appreciate the ARC for review!!

I loved all of the stories in this collection, which has plenty of variety to suit various tastes. Some were by authors I knew, and for others this was my first exposure to them (but I will look up more by all of them).