The Best Science Fiction of the Year
edited by Terry Carr - 1972
Carr had been editing annual collections of the best SF short fiction with Donald Wollheim since the mid sixties but they fell out and went their seperate ways, each producing a year's best anthology. This is Carr's first solo effort.
The works are all by well known figures in the field and most are OK or good although none are outstanding.
1 - Superb, would read again
None
2 - Enjoyable
The Sliced-Crosswise Only-on-Tuesday World - Philip Jose Farmer
Vaster than Empires and More Slow - Ursula K. Le Guin
All the last Wars at One - George Alec Effinger
The Fourth Profession - Larry Niven
3 - OK but forgettable
The Queen of Air and Darkness - Poul Anderson
In Entropy's Jaws - Robert Silverberg
A Meeting With Medusa - Arthur C. Clarke
The Frayed String on the Stretched Forefinger of Time - Lloyd Biggle Jr
How Can We Sink When We Can Fly - Alexei Panshin
No Direction Home - Norman Spinrad
4 - Dull or Annoying (or both)
Occam's Scalpel - Theodore Sturgeon
The sturgeon story (which isn't even SF) was described by an equally unimpressed reviewer as:
"...this story is about how it would be great if intellectual elites would manipulate the rest of us because we are all too stupid and greedy to do the right thing."
Like a lot of people I've had my eyes opened in the last four years as to how prevalent that mindset is.
The Anderson story won Nebula and Hugo awards and the Clarke story won a Nebula.