Another sf anthology revisited from my bookshelves (though I found I’d left a bookmark at page 402, and don’t remember previously reading the last few stories). This is Hartwell’s selection of the best stories of 2002: of his 23 choices, I think I count precisely one which made it to the Nebula shortlist, and two which were Hugo nominees (one of which, Michael Swanwick’s “Slow Life”, won). That year’s double winner was Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, which I guess is excluded from Hartwell’s collection as fantasy rather than science fiction.

I liked very much almost all of Hartwell’s selection. The one that really got under my skin was A.M. Dellamonica’s “A Slow Day At The Gallery”; two others that had stuck in my mind from first reading were Charles Stross’s “Halo” and Greg Egan’s “Singleton”. There were unfortunately a couple of mawkish stories about cute old people, which I note is a disturbing and not particularly funny or interesting trend in American sf these days. All the others are very good. Worth returning to.

LibraryThing Unsuggestion: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. Also numerous other books I have read, some of which I even enjoyed.