The Year's Best Science Fiction (completed)

As a sci-fi fan, this was one of the most enjoyable reading experiences, not to mention challenging as well. I found this book randomly in the adult section of my libary, so I gave it a shot and it was definitely worth it. While I enjoyed it, I am aware that there are some people who are quite skeptical about science fiction, such as this one English teacher that I know, and I don't blame them. When people hear the words, "sci-fi", the first images that pop up in their heads is aliens battling humans, human expansion to planets, the apocolpyse and if we'll survive, etc, and that is some of the ideas in this collection of sci-fi short stories but it goes far beyond that. Fans of the sci-fi genre, will be able to distinguish this book as an impressive tome of philosophy. What I mean in philsophy is that this book incorperates sci-fi into the one topic that no one will ever understand: human nature. In many of the planets in space that the main characters of each story go to, they find out the hard way that no matter where they are, they can never escape their nature. For example, in one short story, a team of space explorers come across a single under-developed planet in which they send out undetectable "drones" to survey the alien race that inhabits the planet and come to like these strange creatures. However, another alien race from space as well comes into contact into the alien race from the planet. From the perspective of their drone cameras, they can distinguish this as a conquest in the making as more corpses appear in the civilization on the planet. Most of the team wants to go down onto the planet to save the civilization but only being armed with three laser pistols against a whole army, the captain of the team has no choice but to order the team to stand down and retreat back to Earth. As they escape the space zone above the planet and are ready for take off, they witness a complete genocide as the civilization falls under superior fire power. Unable to do anything, the team grits and close the warp gate that brought them there in the first place and recording it as if nothing happened. This story is a scientific way of expressing that human nature is mostly distinguishable as carrying about one's self and ignoring helping others. The other aspects of human nature, both positive and negative, are explored in each of the different short stories. Like mentioned earlier, this is a long collection ideal for sci-fi fans but people who aren't into sci-fi shouldn't touch this book, for they won't be able to understand what is happening from page one.