Variety SF

3 stories

2012-01-25T00:55:00.000+05:30

None particularly strong. I liked "The Beautiful People" best among this lot.

Robert Bloch's "The Beautiful People" (B); download; Best-Seller Mystery Magazine, July 1960; non-genre: An "ugly" but rich woman with serious inferiority complex contrives to get a handsome playboy & childhood love in marriage. But the man cannot stop looking at other women, eventually bringing in the wife's wrath...

A lot of story text is devoted to the beauty of a human face, & social advantage or disadvantage it brings.

Among the stories in the classics section of Ellen Datlow's Sci Fiction.
[ss] L Sprague de Camp's "The Reluctant Shaman" (B); Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1947; humor: Some "stone throwing" sprites normally found near some native American tribes are "helping" a businessman & his neighbors. Chaos reins.

Collected in: "The Best of L Sprague de Camp".
[novelette] Seth Dickinson's "The Immaculate Conception of Private Ritter" (B); download; Asimov's web site (2012?): A human army unit, on a genocide mission to other human inhabited worlds, comprises of confused zombies. This is the story of one of the zombies, Private Keshaun Ritter, learning some of her personal history.

L Sprague de Camp's "Nothing in the Rules" (novelette, humor): What if mermaids were allowed in women's swimming competitions?

2012-01-22T20:09:00.001+05:30

While a light story, I got a feeling it's dragging a bit near end.

Story summary.

Item: Merfolk exist. Particularly near Cyprus.

Item: Since they live in the ocean, their hairs get wet. So they need to sit on rocks for a while to dry them! Won't it be wonderful if they had human bathing caps, so their hair remains dry?

That's how, Miss Delfoiros, the mermaid charged with procuring 10,000 bathing caps for merfolk, ended up in the New York City. In exchange for helping her get the caps, Herbert Laird, a swimming coach, will secure her participation in a forthcoming women's swimming competition; he wants to put Louis Connaught, his arch rival competitor coach, down in his place.

Fun ensues. Later, a (female) sea lion will also get added to the melee!

Collected in.

"The Best of L Sprague de Camp".

Fact sheet.

First published: Unknown, July 1939.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.

James H Schmitz's "Trouble Tide" (novelette, smuggling, free)

2012-01-20T20:33:00.001+05:30

Last third is action packed, but first two thirds is a much better read - a detective story that pieces together several apparently disjointed data sets on a human settled non-earth world:

A sea animal herd ("frayas") suddenly dies during its annual migration.
A coastal sea animal herd ("sea beefs") is behaving in a very weird way - a lot of animals have simply vanished; others that need to come up to surface for breathing every few minutes now seem to have developed some equivalent of gills.
Flow rate of a sea current somehow ties up the relative times of the two events.
...

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, May 1965.
Download full text from Baen Books.
Caution: This is a long novelette - nearly novella length.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of James H Schmitz.

Roberto Bolaño's "Labyrinth" (short story, non-genre, free): Some character portraits

2012-01-19T02:10:00.001+05:30

I find this story noteworthy primarily because of beautiful language & unusual presentation. In some sense, it's actually a borderline genre case. Style reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five". Here we have no time travel, assuming that that indeed was the case in Vonnegut's book. What we have, instead, is a picture - a group photograph, & the story is of people in the picture & of the speculative bits of their lives outside the frame.
With a suggestion that there is something sinister cooking.

Story is set in Paris.

Fact sheet.

First published: ? (in Spanish?)
Download full text of English translation by Chris Andrews from The New Yorker.
Rating: B.

L Ron Hubbard's "To the Stars" aka "Return to Tomorrow" (novella, space opera)

2012-01-15T23:59:00.002+05:30

Excellent but relatively slow moving first half. Second half is action packed, but a very minor piece - mostly genocides at the slightest (or no) provocation!

But first half is amongst the best treatments I've seen of the social aspects of time dilation:

By the time you return, none of your loved ones will be around.
Soldiers in an alien invading army need to be brave enough to understand that they will never see their loved ones. Which seriously limits soldier recruiting options.
Since none now living will be around when the wanderer returns, earth cannot care in the least about space goers.
Dubious trade ethics since neither party will see the other ever again.
When you return with that precious ore, the technology on earth has moved way beyond, & the stuff is no longer precious.

Story is from the point of view of Alan Corday, a young man who wants to spend some time on Mars to earn a bit, so he can get married. He'll get shanghaied on a star ship, & his life will never be as anything he'd foreseen.

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, February/March 1950.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.

Mark Niemann-Ross' "Humnity by Proxy" (novelette): Illustrating good engineering

2012-01-14T23:27:00.002+05:30

If you are an engineer involved in some sort of product development, you'll probably love it. Even general audiences should be able to love the first of its several linked stories; it's very beautiful.

Story summary.

There are actually several linked stories there - linked in the sense that a specific man's relatives appear in several stories. But linked primarily because of "sawhorse" - a gadget that's a non-hominid but flexible robot that can be built with nearly today's technology. Individual stories are about sawhorse in action or under develpment:

An old woman in an old-age home. Very funny story.
Soldiers caught in an ambush in the field. They'll arrive safely because of ingenuity of one of them & of some engineers who built the "sawhorse" that's carrying their load.
Story of the original engineering of the gadget, including some selling theatrics. Includes the story of an injured soldier whose life was ruined because of injuries, injured because some explosives sensors in his truck were not well tested in common field conditions.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, January-February 2012.
Rating: A.
Added to my "best of 2012" list.

Lester del Rey's "Dead Ringer" (short story, creepy, free)

2012-01-13T23:30:00.036+05:30

Plot idea is rather common; I've seen more than one story like this of Kuttner alone.

Story summary.

Most of the story is a creepy one - a man has convinced himself that there are aliens among us, aliens in the shape of humans, aliens who intend to take over earth. And that these aliens cannot be killed; they get resurrected. Of course, he's unable to convince anyone.

There is a surprise ending, but may be I've already spoiled it.

Fact sheet.

First published: Galaxy, November 1956.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks, Feedbooks.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Lester del Rey.

My "best of the year" picks: 2012

2012-01-13T01:21:00.001+05:30

The list is in order in which I found the stories.

Here is some background information, & how I pick the stories. (Badly needing revision, but this is the only background information I have right now.)

The list.

Links on author or publisher name fetch more matching fiction. Where I have a separate post on the story, link on story title goes there. If I'm aware of an online copy, I include download link too.

[ss] Gwendolyn Clare's "All the Painted Stars"; download; Clarkesworld, January 2012: An alien fighter pilot is itching for a fight, & gets involved in it. And finds a second purpose in life...
[novelette] Mark Niemann-Ross' "Humnity by Proxy"; Analog, January-February 2012: Several linked stories, illustrating good engineering (of a gadget).

Related.

Fiction originally published during 2012.
My "best of the year" 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 picks.
"Best of" lists.

Legend: ss = short story; ff = flash fiction.

"Clarkesworld", January 2012 (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

2012-01-13T01:15:00.001+05:30

This is among the most interesting issues of Clarkesworld I've ever seen. Two quite decent stories. Last one below is readable, but has too many fancy things & situations to hold my interest.

Whole magazine, fiction & other stuff, is here. I've only read fiction.

PS: They normally have 2 stories per issue, except December which has 3. I don't know why this issue has 3.

[ss] Gwendolyn Clare's "All the Painted Stars" (A); download: An alien ("Sheekah") fighter pilot is itching for a fight, & gets involved in it. And finds a second purpose in life...

Added to my "best of 2012" list.
Rahul Kanakia's "What Everyone Remembers" (B); download: This story is a ... sort of descendant of James Blish's "Surface Tension". Post-apocalypse, a woman is preparing to carry on the human line via humanized cockroaches.
Aliette de Bodard's "Scatterd Along the River of Heaven" (B); download text/audio: A freedom fighter who had to live in exile once freedom came, seen at her funeral from the eyes of a grandaughter she never knew.

Related: Fiction from Clarkesworld.

Hal Clement's "Planetfall" (novella, first contact): A hard-sf look at the problem of first contact

2012-01-11T23:30:00.035+05:30

Note there are at least 2 versions of this story: original novella Hal Clement wrote, & longer "novel" that's the original story extensively padded by Sam Mervin. This post is based on Clement's solo novella.

This may be among the most weird first contact stories I've seen so far. With sufficiently different body chemistry & evolutionary environment, how hard can it get to recognize alien life & communicate with it, even if you notice there is (alien) intelligence somewhere around? This is actually a failed contact story, in spite of much effort from both sides.

Story summary.

A sessile, long-lived, technologically far in advance of us, star faring race of aliens extensively mines metals off all sorts of worlds. A "Conservationist", a sort of policeman to prevent unauthorized mining, has noticed some "poachers" attempting to steal metals off earth. His approach makes them run away, but they've left behind "mole robots", bombs that will cause much upheaval in earth's crust to turn its metals-denuded surface into a metals-rich surface again in a few million years. Which means death for much of local life.

He'll land here, & notice obvious signs of intelligence. But all through his attempts to communicate with humans, he won't even realize they're the ones he's trying to help.

Fact sheet.

First published: As a novel with additional material by Sam Merwin in Satellite Science Fiction, February 1957 as "Planet for Plunder". I'm not sure when the pure original novella version first saw the light of the day - probably 1972 in Robert Hoskins's anthology "Strange Tomorrows".
Rating: A.
Related: Stories of Hal Clement.

Octavia E Butler's "Speech Sounds" (short story, post-apocalypse survival, free): What if people could no longer speak or read?

2012-01-09T23:56:00.001+05:30

This is quite a dark story, but with a somewhat hopeful ending.

Story summary.

An unspecified "illness" swept through the world, killing many, & seriously paralyzing others. Paralysis not only of body, but of intellect too - some lost ability to speak, some lost ability to read or comprehend, ...

This is the story of a woman who, having lost everyone she loved, is looking
for some kind of companionship in this mad world.

Fact sheet.

First published: Asimov's, Mid-December 1983.
Download full text from Google cache.
Rating: B.
Winner of Hugo Award 1984 in short story category.

L Sprague De Camp's "The Hardwood Pile" (novelette, humor): Never pick a fight with a "Norway maple" sprite!

2012-01-09T01:22:00.001+05:30

Someone in the US imported a "Norway maple" sapling, & planted it there. It grew into a tree. It was home to Aceria, a maple spite, but she was happy so long as her tree was safe.

Now, years later, while Aceria was in hibernation, someone cut her tree & its boards are now in Dan Pringle's sawmill, ready for shipment. Aceria is now awake & requests Pringle to please not separate her trees components till she can find another "Norway maple" tree to haunt, but Pringle of course refuses; he has money tied up there. So sprite will need to show her magic to make Pringle fall in line...

Very funny story.

Collected in.

"The Best of L Sprague de Camp".

Fact sheet.

First published: Unknown, September 1940.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.

2 stories of a new trend?

2012-01-07T19:39:00.000+05:30

The stories with bot swarms are common. So are the stories where crawly creepy things move over the human bodies, to the disgust of victims. But adaptable bot swarms that are willingly allowed by humans to crawl all over their bodies to do specific things? I've seen two 2012 stories featuring this already, & I don't think I'd seen one of the kind before these.

First one makes a better read of the two.

[ss] Jessica Barber's "MonitorBot and the King of Pop" (B); download; Strange Horizons, 2 January 2012: A woman club dancer, under police surveillance because her brother is a "rebel", slowly makes friend with shape-shifting police robot assigned to watch her.
Aliette de Bodard's "Scatterd Along the River of Heaven" (B); download; Clarkesworld, January 2012: A freedom fighter who had to live in exile once the freedom came, seen at her funeral from the eyes of a granddaughter she never knew.

Gwendolyn Clare's "All the Painted Stars" (short story, free)

2012-01-06T23:30:00.044+05:30

A fighter pilot of an alien elder race has idled too long, & is itching for a fight. And finds justification for siding with humans in their fight with other unspecified aliens. Result is a first contact with humanity, & second purpose in life for the alien...

It's quite nostalgic of classic science fiction.

Fact sheet.

First published: Clarkesworld, January 2012.
Download full text from publisher's web site.
Rating: A.
Added to my "best of 2012" list.

3 stories of James H Schmitz

2012-01-06T00:27:00.000+05:30

All are colorful in their own way (but "Balanced Ecology" is more colorful than others). List is in order of my preference, best first.

[ss] "Balanced Ecology" (B); download; Analog, March 1965: A jungle world knows how to defend itself against greedy humans.
Nominated for Nebula Award 1966 in short story category.
[novelette] "The Winds of Time" (B); download; Analog, September 1962: A man & a woman are trapped, kidnapped, & ... harassed ... by ... aliens.
[ss] "A Nice Day for Screaming" (B); download; Analog, January 1965: One of the early exploration ships in "pseudospace", a kind of parallel space, is chased by ... something.

Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of James H Schmitz.

"AntipodeanSF", January 2012 (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

2012-01-05T00:06:00.001+05:30

7 science fiction stories of flash fiction length. I liked one ("Bugsy!"), & found two at least readable ("The Lightning Gun", "When The Alphabet Vomits On A Birth Certificate").

Julie Wornan's "Bugsy!" (A); download: Little baby knows far more than her parents suspect...
Antoinette Rydyr's "The Lightning Gun" (B); download: A gun that hits the target 10 years after firing...
Jamie Richter's "When The Alphabet Vomits On A Birth Certificate" (B); download; humor: Crazy government requirements of would-be parents...
Christine Gladstone's "What If" (B); download: Lifecycle of life...
Des McNicholas' "The Candidate" (C); download: NASA is hell bent of keeping the fact secret that there is an impenetrable & invisible barrier around earth...
See also: David Brin's "Crystal Spheres": Star travel is impossible because there is an invisible barrier around each star system that can only be breached from inside, not from outside...
Mark Webb's "Shipwrecked" (C); download: Elder aliens visiting earth some centuries ago cannot decide whether to destroy humanity seeing its cruelty, or help it mix with galactic culture in future...
David Scholes' "Trathh" (C); download: Adventures of some crash-landed aliens on earth. I didn't get the punchline, though.

Piers Anthony's "Macroscope" (novel, space opera): Snakes & ladders for star travel

2012-01-03T21:35:00.001+05:30

Going by the amount of praise it has received, you'll have to take my views with a pinch of salt. I found the later parts extremely tedious to wade through. Primarily because of many jarring diversions, most of which seem to be here to simply add pages rather than further the story. Early parts - about half the book or more - however, is very readable.

Story employs a variety of stock tropes, as you would expect in a space opera. There are a few things, however, that were new to me:

To be able to take shock of 10g acceleration during interplanetary travel, you "liquify" the human traveler! For star travel, you further "gassify" the protoplasm to better prepare for bigger shocks. And for inter-galactic travel, you further transform the gas into a living radiation being (radiation idea is, of course, quite old.)
An alien signal that hypnotizes the human receiver to use him as a zombie or interacts with him in an individual-specific way is quite old. Author, however, puts it to novel uses I'd not seen before.

Story summary.

A "macroscope" is two devices in one: a sort of infinite-resolution telescope with range across the galaxy; & a receiver of (alien) "broadcast" signals on various "macroscopic" bands. There are a variety of broadcasts available in aether, but two play a key role in the story:

"Destroyer" fries the brains of anyone smart enough to comprehend the broadcast!
"Traveler" seems to provide a lot of extremely useful information, provided you can get past "destroyer" (because "destroyer" signal is far too strong).

This story is of a quest - 4 individuals travel all over the galaxy, with the help of information provided by Traveler, to locate & disable the destroyer source. They'll eventually find the purposes of both destroyer & traveler, & get some enlightenment in the psychology of sentient beings.

Fact sheet.

First published: 1969.
Rating: B.
Nominated for Hugo Award 1970 in novels category.
Related: Stories of Piers Anthony.

James H Schmitz's "Grandpa" (novelette, adventure, free)

2012-01-02T22:54:00.001+05:30

This appears to be a widely anthologized story.

Story summary.

A group of early explorers on the newly opened world of Sutang is trapped by a local lifeform. Only the ingenuity of our teenage hero can save the group's life...

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, February 1955.
Download full text from Webscription.
Rating: A.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of James H Schmitz.

Biren Shah's "An Easy Sale" (flash fiction, free)

2011-12-29T23:30:00.020+05:30

Actually, I don't know why I liked it - probably because of funny language. Story itself is ... sort of ... routine - interaction of a man & a women, neither truly human. But the language is interesting.

Fact sheet.

First published: Nature, 27 October 2011.
Download full text from publisher's site.
Rating: B.

3 stories

2011-12-28T00:19:00.000+05:30

None top notch. Neither crappy. Average fare.

Christopher Anvil's "Leverage" (B); download; Astounding, July 1959: Human pioneers on a new world are harrased by local versions of gnats, crows, & dinosaur birds. Until someone has an idea...
Christopher Anvil's "The Sieve" (B); download; Astounding, April 1959: Pioneer (human) agricultural communities on this tough planet need to get rid of the useless & lazy among themselves to survive.
[ff] Kathryn Cramer's "You, In Emulation" (B); download; Nature, 20 October 2011: What if you could check out my brain dump from your local library & interact with it during rental period & make friends with it?

Murray Leinster's "Checkpoint Lambda" aka "Stopover in Space" (novel): Young hero foils a major robbery attempt

2011-12-26T23:30:00.030+05:30

This is one of the more mundane stories of the author. Fast moving action, yes, but irritating repetitions, & at least one major event is resolved by convenient last-minute arrangement of circumstances.

Title is the name of a space station in orbit around a star called Canis Lambda. The station is located at the intersection of major space lanes of a star-faring humanity, & serves both as a lighthouse & a way station. This is where most of action happens.

Story summary.

The Golconda Ship, with its fabulous but unspecified treasures, is expected to dock with Checkpoint Lambda. So a gang of robbers have taken control of the Checkpoint ahead of arrival - killing all crew & transit passengers at station.

That's when Scott, a newly minted Space Patrol officer, arrives to take charge of the station. Of course, 2 dozen robbers already in control of station don't stand a chance against a Space Patrol officer.

A substantial part of the story is devoted to surviving a disaster - cores of 4 comets will soon impact the station, & few available maneuver options are frustrated by robbers' chief who doesn't believe there is a danger here.

Fact sheet.

First published: Amazing Stories, June & August 1966.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

L Sprague de Camp's "Employment" (as by Lyman R Lyon) (short story, free): Making prehistorical animals from their fossils!

2011-12-24T23:30:00.035+05:30

This is only the second story I've seen from before Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park" that deals with animating prehistoric animals to life today (other is "Amber Insect"). But the method here is very weird.

This, however, is not a monster story; it's more a light fun read. We see the reification of

"a huge wolf, about the size of a Great Dane, but twice as muscular and ten times as mean-looking."
"a specimen of Arctotherium, the immense bear from the California Pleistocene."
A couple of elephants.

And plans are afoot to revive a T-rex.

Story summary.

A machine that does a sort of biochemical equivalent of electrolysis. Put a certain solution in a tank. Add as much fossil of a single animal as you have. Also add a lot of rock from area immediately surrounding the location where fossil was found; apparently, in the process of fossilization, many of the molecules of animal's body would have drifted to surrounding rock!

Put on the power, & over the next few days, stray molecules of animal that had diffused through surrounding rock are pulled back to their correct places, & you have ... the original animal back, skin, hair & all! Only its heart needs to be revived with a separate electrical process, & you get a fully grown animal.

Collected in.

"The Best of L Sprague de Camp".

Fact sheet.

First published: Astounding, May 1939.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of L Sprague de Camp.

James H Schmitz's "The Searcher" (novella, thriller, free): Human heroes fight off evil alien

2011-12-23T23:59:00.002+05:30

This is mostly a fast moving story, though I found later parts a bit draggy.

Story summary.

Two private detectives arrive on a human world called Mezmiali, on trail of a smuggling ring. Suspects include administration of the government depot that is supposed to guard & analyze stray relics picked up all over the galaxy. A deal will soon be spoiled by detectives. A deal involving an alien communications device human explorers had picked up.

Also "goyal", the alien owner of the device, has come to take it back. He's a energy being & a swarm being too.

So our super-resourceful detectives have to outmaneuver both the smugglers & the alien.

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, February 1966.
Download full text from Webscription.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.
Related: Stories of James H Schmitz.

Edward W Ludwig's "The Lonely Ones" (short story, first contact, free): Stone age man is modern man what modern man is to...

2011-12-22T00:54:00.001+05:30

Man has looked through the Sol - all the way from Mercury to Pluto; no animal life anywhere. Now a party of 6 is on its way to Proxima Centauri to look. And they do find it there, but ... this is not what they wanted to find...

Fact sheet.

First published: Galaxy or If, July 1953.
Note: Project Gutenberg's HTML copy includes image of If's cover with the story, but attributes the story to Galaxy. ISFDB attributes it to If.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg.
Rating: B.
Related: Stories of Edward W Ludwig; first contact fiction.

Rich Horton (ed)'s "The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012" (anthology)

2011-12-21T00:27:00.001+05:30

Horton posted the ToC a couple of days back. 29 short stories picked by the editor from among those first published during 2011. I think it's several months before the book is actually available in a store.

Where I'm aware of online availability of a story, I include the link too. Links on author, publisher, or editor fetches more matching fiction.

Table of contents (29 stories, best first, unread last).

[ss] Chris Lawson's "Canterbury Hollow" (B); download; F&SF, Jan/Feb: Love story of a "balloted" couple - in world with too much population & too few resources; so periodically, ballots are drawn to decide who is to be prematurely killed!
Nina Allan's "The Silver Wind"; Interzone, March-April: Not read.
John Barnes's "Martian Heart"; Jonathan Strahan (ed)'s "Life on Mars": Not read.
Jonathan Carroll's "East of Furious"; Conjunctions:56, Terra Incognita: The Voyage Issue, Spring 2011: Not read.
Suzy McKee Charnas' "Late Bloomer"; Ellen Datlow (ed)'s "Teeth": Not read.
C S E Cooney's "The Last Sophia"; download; Strange Horizons, March 7: Not read.
Alan DeNiro's "Walking Stick Fires"; Asimov's, June: Not read.
Bradley Denton's "The Adakian Eagle"; George R R Martin (ed)'s "Down These Strange Streets": Not read.
Alexandra Duncan's "Rampion"; F&SF, May-June: Not read.
Neil Gaiman's "'And Weep Like Alexander'"; Ian Whates (ed)'s "Fables from the Fountain": Not read.
Theodora Goss' "Pug"; Asimov's, July: Not read.
Gavin Grant's "Widows in the World"; download (in two parts); Strange Horizons, February 7 & 14: Not read.
Yoon Ha Lee's "Ghostweight"; download text/audio; Clarkesworld, January: Not read.
Kat Howard's "Choose Your Own Adventure"; download; Fantasy, April: Not read.
Karen Joy Fowler's "Younger Women"; download; Subterranean, Summer: Not read.
Kij Johnson's "The Man Who Bridged the Mist"; Asimov's, October-November: Not read.
Vylar Kaftan's "The Sighted Watchmaker"; download; Lightspeed, December: Not read.
Margo Lanagan's "Mulberry Boys"; Ellen Datlow (ed)'s "Blood and Other Cravings": Not read.
Marissa Lingen's "Some of Them Closer"; Analog, January: Not read.
Kelly Link's "The Summer People"; Kelly Link & Gavin J Grant (eds)' "Steampunk!": Not read.
Paul McAuley's "The Choice"; Asimov's, February: Not read.
K J Parker's "A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong"; download; Subterranean, Winter: Not read.
Robert Reed's "Woman Leaves Room"; download; Lightspeed, March: Not read.
George Saunders' "My Chivalric Fiasco"; Harper’s Magazine, September: Not read.
Rachel Swirsky's "Fields of Gold"; Jonathan Strahan (ed)'s "Eclipse 4": Not read.
Lavie Tidhar's "The Smell of Orange Groves"; download text/audio; Clarkesworld, November: Not read.
Catherynne M Valente's "The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland, for a Little While"; download; Tor.com, July 27: Not read.
Genevieve Valentine's "The Sandal-Bride"; download; Fantasy, March: Not read.
E Lily Yu's "The Cartographer Wasps and the Anarchist Bees"; download text/audio; Clarkesworld, April: Not read.

Related.

2011 edition of this anthology series.
Competing "best of 2011" anthologies: Dozois', [Strahan's], [Hartwell/Cramer's].
All anthologies (annotated but infrequently updated list of anthologies & collections).
My "best of 2011" list.
Fiction originally published during 2011.
"Best of" lists.

Variety SF

3 stories

L Sprague de Camp's "Nothing in the Rules" (novelette, humor): What if mermaids were allowed in women's swimming competitions?

Story summary.

Collected in.

Fact sheet.

James H Schmitz's "Trouble Tide" (novelette, smuggling, free)

See also.

Fact sheet.

Roberto Bolaño's "Labyrinth" (short story, non-genre, free): Some character portraits

Fact sheet.

L Ron Hubbard's "To the Stars" aka "Return to Tomorrow" (novella, space opera)

Fact sheet.

Mark Niemann-Ross' "Humnity by Proxy" (novelette): Illustrating good engineering

Story summary.

Fact sheet.

Lester del Rey's "Dead Ringer" (short story, creepy, free)

Story summary.

Fact sheet.

My "best of the year" picks: 2012

The list.

Related.

"Clarkesworld", January 2012 (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Hal Clement's "Planetfall" (novella, first contact): A hard-sf look at the problem of first contact

Story summary.

Fact sheet.

Octavia E Butler's "Speech Sounds" (short story, post-apocalypse survival, free): What if people could no longer speak or read?

Story summary.

Fact sheet.

L Sprague De Camp's "The Hardwood Pile" (novelette, humor): Never pick a fight with a "Norway maple" sprite!

See also.

Collected in.

Fact sheet.

2 stories of a new trend?

Gwendolyn Clare's "All the Painted Stars" (short story, free)

Fact sheet.

3 stories of James H Schmitz

"AntipodeanSF", January 2012 (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents & review

Piers Anthony's "Macroscope" (novel, space opera): Snakes & ladders for star travel

Story summary.

Fact sheet.

James H Schmitz's "Grandpa" (novelette, adventure, free)

Story summary.

Fact sheet.

Biren Shah's "An Easy Sale" (flash fiction, free)

Fact sheet.

3 stories

Murray Leinster's "Checkpoint Lambda" aka "Stopover in Space" (novel): Young hero foils a major robbery attempt

Story summary.

Fact sheet.

L Sprague de Camp's "Employment" (as by Lyman R Lyon) (short story, free): Making prehistorical animals from their fossils!

Story summary.

Collected in.

Fact sheet.

James H Schmitz's "The Searcher" (novella, thriller, free): Human heroes fight off evil alien

Story summary.

Fact sheet.

Edward W Ludwig's "The Lonely Ones" (short story, first contact, free): Stone age man is modern man what modern man is to...

Fact sheet.

Rich Horton (ed)'s "The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2012" (anthology)

Table of contents (29 stories, best first, unread last).

Related.