Contents of Festivale Reel Life and Technology Bytes, Pictorial Guide to Melbourne and Victoria.

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How many "Year's Best" titles are there? Who decides what constitutes the best?

Now, Amazon lists some (only) positive reviews of this collections, so obviously their tastes run with the editor's. Mine, however, clearly do not.

I read the first six stories in this collection and hated every one. They lacked punch. They lacked physical or psychological thrills. They were just stories that left me without the feeling that my life had been enriched by them.

Why didn't I perservere? Because it is up to the editor to put his or her strongest stories at the front and back to draw one in, and then to leave one with a bang. If the first six stories are all unsatisfying, I don't want to go on with the collection.

Unsatisfying.

The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014 Edition by Rich Horton (ed). (Jun 2014), pb/kindle,576p, Prime Books