Bless the Beasts never really caught my attention, so to speak. It has an average plot, with average action and average characterisation. It tended to just, roll by. If that makes any sense.

Naturally the judgments of the casual reader are often attended with sneers of contempt by those in the know. Those in the know, know that Silverberg and Haber are very able editors, writers, and extremely nice people. But about half of these stories are not only among the year's worst, some actually don't make any sense at all. The odd choices are Robert Reed's "Coelacanths" and Orson Scott Card's "Angles." The Reed story is one of those intentionally confusing stories that compels the reader to "figure out" what's going on--as if readers really enjoy doing that, particularly when the reader is never, ever told, even in the end. Were the human beings in the story actually "bacteria" living on the surface of one character's bicuspid? Were they microminiaturized and living in multi-dimensions? I read the story twice and I still never understood where this was taking place or why. The Card story, published on his website (which means it was probably rejected by all other magazines), is part lecture about parallel universes and part story with obscurely elitist overtones. Only the last three pages make any kind of sense whatsoever. (I thought, in structure, "Angles" was trying to do what Harlan Ellison did so expertly in his story "Deathbird" of a decade ago.) Then there's the opening story by Charles Stross called "Tourist," an over-written, hyper-cyberpunk story that must have been included because of Mr. Stross' clear control of the English language. It's also a story that attempts to out-cyber William Gibson. But sparkly, techno-hip lanugage does not necessarily a techno-hip story make.

The truly great stories here are those by Brian Aldiss, Christopher Priest, and Geoffrey A. Landis. Indeed, the Landis might even be a classic of a kind. It's an old-fashioned John W. Campbell Jr. romp about conflicting ideologies regarding individualism and a great chase through relativistic space across the centuries. It's also very economically written and drew me right in.

But overall the anthology is very uneven and inexplicably eccentric. Like all other anthologists, Silverberg and Haber are mostly spotlighting their friends and not looking to publish the ACTUAL best stories of the year. (What a concept!) Card may be the success story of the year (perhaps the decade, and some would say of the century), but his contribution is easily his weakest story here and probably should have remained on his website. It was, however, the reason I bought this anthology in the first place.

I recommend buying any other collection but this, especially if the Landis is in it. Oh, one other thing: Be advised: there are only three SHORT stories in this collection. All others are Novella or Novelette length, a lot less bang for your buck.

To avoid differing writing styles, I generally prefer anthologies by a single author rather than these 'Best Of ...' type books. I purchased this because some of the authors count amongst my favorites in the genre. My opinion hasn't changed after reading this.

There are a couple of gems included. However, without going into the details of each story, I was slightly disappointed with the overall quality and consistency of this collection.

Everyone has different preferences, but these are authors that I have *really* enjoyed reading in the past. Having called these the years best is an exaggeration, as I felt at a minimum there had been far better short stories printed in the Analog and Asimov magazines during the year.