Gardner Dozois’ 23rd annual collection of the Year’s Best Science Fiction is, as ever, the perfect introduction to an eclectic mix of wonderful new fiction, selected with an unerring eye for all that’s good about contemporary SF, whether it’s the modern space opera set in an impossibly distant future, or the elegiac pastoral. The only shame of it is that at 660 pages and over 300,000 words, it still doesn’t seem quite enough.

I treasure these annual collections, and on this occasion I’m taking my sweet time over reading it, so this will be by way of a review of the first half-dozen stories, just about any of which are worth the price of admission on their own.

I first read Ian McDonald’s novella “The Little Goddess” in Asimov’s magazine last year. Once of the disappointments for me this year is that I have read a few of these stories before, which is the price of a magazine subscription. Set in a future India, this is the story of a young girl selected at birth to be a goddess, and is an exploration of the bizarre world she finds herself in, and her eventual escape from it. Those who pick up a science fiction collection with a narrow view of what constitutes the genre will be dismayed by stories such as these. I’ve read book reviewers on Amazon complain that there aren’t enough space stories in these collections, but those people are missing out on a richly textured reading experience that immerses you in a completely different reality.

Second up is Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The Calorie Man,” which is a zeitgeisty tale of a world gone wrong under the twin influences of fossil fuel depletion and GM crops. This is the kind of story that should be required reading, in my opinion, because it focuses the mind on precisely why GM crops are wrong: not because of “frankenstein” mixes of genetically adjusted wheat or corn entering the food chain, but because copyrighted and sterile seeds are pure evil.

In this story, everything is seen in terms of calories and joules: how much energy it is worth, and how much energy it requires to get it. Nobody can afford to travel far in this future, and suburban commuting areas have been abandoned, being slowly reclaimed by the huge multinational seed companies for calorie production. Nobody can grow anything without a licence (sounds horribly plausible, doesn’t it?). There’s a hint of some horrible interlude of dying off, a Great Extinction, as people literally scrabbled in the dirt for a few calories to survive. River traffic is back, and everything runs on a kind of futuristic clockwork: powerful springs that have to be wound up by genetically modified beasts on treadmills.

This is a fantastic vision of the future with a powerful contemporary relevance.

Alastair Reynolds’ “Beyond the Aquila Drift”, third up, is a satisfying modern space opera, set in a future in which humanity has discovered and made use of an interstellar transport system. They can use it, but they don’t understand it fully, and when it throws up an occasional error, nobody knows why. The error in this story is a huge one that sneaks up on the narrator and is revealed to him piece by piece. This reminded me of one of the classic stories of the Golden Age, and makes this collection three for three.

“Second Person, Present Tense,” by Daryl Gregory was also in Asimov’s last year, but it’s another stunning tale, this one of a designer drug that separates the “self” from the “mind”, which is described in terms of the English parliamentary system. The self is the Queen, who “approves” decisions taken by the parliament (the mind), but only after they have already been made, and the neural messages sent out to the body, like so many rubberstamped laws. It’s a brilliant analogy, and the idea that the “Queen” might die, and be replaced, makes for a superb piece of short fiction. Again, recommended reading for anyone, SF fan or not.

“The Canadian who came Almost all the way Back from the Stars” is co-written by Jay Lake and Ruth Nestvold. It’s a story of theoretical physics set in a remote Canadian nature reserve, and it’s also a tale of doomed platonic love, conspiracy theories, and office politics. Fantastic, in all the ways you can think of.

Finally, taking us 124 pages in (what’s that? 62,000 words?), we have “Triceratops Summer” by Michael Swanwick. This one struck me as being a kind of pastoral, elegiac companion piece to Ray Bradbury’s famous story, “A Sound of Thunder.” A building contractor is on the way home one day when his journey is halted by a herd of triceratops crossing the road. As a set-up for a short story this is brilliant, and the subdued little tale that follows is just lovely. It asks that question, What would you do if…? and answers it in exactly the way that I think I would.

There you have it: the first fifth of the 23rd annual collection: every one a winner so far.