Publishers’ Weekly has a review of the Year’s Best SF:

The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection Edited by Gardner Dozois. St. Martin’s Griffin, $21.95 (704p) ISBN 978-0-312-55105-6

Veteran editor Dozois, 15-time Hugo winner, offers 30 stories, several of them Hugo-nominated. The table of contents is dominated by familiar names like Michael Swanwick and Greg Egan, but occasionally leavened with relative newcomers like Hannu Rajaniemi and more obscure authors like James Alan Gardner. Settings range from the present-day (Nancy Kress’s “The Erdmann Nexus”) to the distant future (Ian McDonald’s “The Tear”) and alternate history (Aliete de Bodard’s “Butterfly, Falling at Dawn”). Similarly the moods range from relatively upbeat (Dominic Green’s “Shining Armour”) to pessimistic (Swanwick’s “From Babel’s Fallen Glory We Fled”). In some entries the SF elements appear to be almost an afterthought, but most earn their inclusion. Dozois also provides short biographies, a detailed overview of the year in SF and a lengthy list of honorable mentions. This is a worthy addition to a venerable series. (July)

Ha, neat.

(yeah, I know, “Aliete” is mispelled. I’ve checked with Gardner Dozois, and everything should be fine in the final version of the book. Plus, I suspect I’m the only “de Bodard” writing spec-fic anyway *g*)

Amazon lists the book as coming out on June 23rd. *excited*

-Editor extraordinaire Jetse de Vries is running a series of very interesting articles on optimistic SF around the world here, and is also having a number of musings about change in Africa and the Islamic world respectively

-Mary Robinette Kowal over at AMC with an article on The Worst-Dressed Women Warriors in Fantasy. Oh yes. It’s amazing how movie women never ever dress sensibly for the battlefield (you’re left feeling they want to find themselves a husband/lover on the battlefield instead of victory). And don’t get me started on exposed necks and the general lack of helmets…

-Fellow Campbell Nominee Gord Sellar has a fascinating post on SF, culture and translation, taking the example of Korean spec-fic.
When you think about it, it’s a source of endless fascination how the US manages to export its myths, dreams and ways of thinking around the world. There’s a number of tropes (the self-made, uneducated man, the lone hero/maverick, the Frontier Myth) that feel very American to me, and that, as Gord points out,  shouldn’t translate well to other cultures (the lack of education would be a killer in France or in Asia).

I think a big part of it is economic factors (France was also exporting a large part of its culture at a time when it was the dominant economic power in Europe): a sort of mimetism, whereby people adhere to US values in the hopes of being as prosperous as the US. Also, of course, a very commercially-driven export, with an infrastructure geared towards selling as many copies worldwide as possible.

Still… Wonder why it’s working so well for the US, in comparison to other countries. Am I missing something else that’s obvious?