Best SF

Welcome to Best SF – now in its second decade reviewing short SF.

I’ve actually been reading SF since 1969, when I was 9 years old and began reading the Hugh Walters children’s books (‘Mission to Mercury’, ‘Voyage to Venus’, etc). I progressed through Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom books, Asimov, and whatever I could lay my hands on in the local library.

After a slightly fallow patch during the 80s, I picked up a copy of one of the earlier Gardner Dozois annual anthologies, and then got bitten by the short story bug. Aided by working at the time in central london, with a couple of excellent (and now sadly departed) SF bookshops, I started collecting the many series of Year’s Best SF anthologies from various editors, and also set up a database to store notes about the stories I was reading.

I launched Best SF on April 16th 2000 and there are now over 900 reviews on the site. Since I relaunched the site using WordPress in 2010 I’m now reviewing stories individually as I read them, and then putting together a cumulative review of the magazine or anthology in which they appear. You will hopefully find a new review on the site several days of the week. There’s also a weekly email update you can sign up to.

The best way to find material is through using the search box above to look for something specific, or use the Categories listing in the right-hand column to browse. The Year’s Best, Nebulas, and Hugo categories go back many, many years!

And the site now offers you the opportunity to comment and contribute!

Mark Watson