Anthologies are made or broken by the less than household names. People know what to expect from seeing Neil Gaiman or Elizabeth Bear on the author list. But they’re the seasoning on top; it’s the quality of the larger number of stories by lesser-known authors that decides the quality of the collection as a whole. Year’s Best SF 14 gets a big thumbs up.

Once the overall high quality of the writing became a given, what I most appreciated was the sheer variety. Different futures, different sorts of people and cultures, different story lengths and even different ways of telling a story.  Neil Gaiman’s "Orange" is just the A side of a Q&A investigative interview, but tells a story as clearly as more traditional narratives. Kathleen Ann Goonan’s "Memory Dog" is told by a dog, and no we’re not talking the usual cutesy talking animal. M. Richart’s "Traitor" is as current as the evening news.  Paolo Bacigalupi’s "Pump Six" is one of a few apocalyptic futures offered, and this apocalypse is as clear an extension of an aspect of today’s culture as it is horrible to contemplate. Without ever naming the culture in question, Carolyn Ives Gilman’s "Arkfall" is a delicately handled example of how different current cultures extrapolate to different future possibilities, including the technology they embrace and why. And that’s only a small sampling of the contents.

There’s a book introduction giving an overview of SF as a whole, while each of the 21 stories comes with its own intro, discussing both the author and story. I think a few of those go too far in what they reveal about the story to someone who hasn’t read it, but on the whole I enjoyed the extra context they provide.

The overall quality is high enough that I really can’t pick a favorite, and would have just as tough a time picking a least favorite story—which is even more rare. Grab a copy for yourself to get a feel for what some of the best SF writers today are thinking, offered up in neatly digestible-sized pieces of enjoyable and thought provoking reading.