Merry Christmas to all of you! Our Christmas dinner includes green salad, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, Mac & Cheese, dinner rolls, and jello salad. Desserts include apple pie, Oreo Cookie Cake, and Christmas cookies. What’s on your Christmas menu?

The Buffalo Bills need some help in order to make the Playoffs (and maybe win the AFC East Championship). The Dolphins are favored by 1 1/2 points over the Cowboys who don’t play well on the road (for example, losing to the Bills last Sunday 31-10) while winning 15 games in a row at home. Go Cowboys! How will your favorite NFL team perform today (or tomorrow)?

Last week, after the LA Chargers got blasted by the Las Vegas Raiders 63-21, the owner of the Chargers fired the Head Coach and the General Manager. This week, the Buffalo Bills flew to the West Coast as 11 1/2 point favorites over the Chargers. Will the Chargers come onto the field with fire and fury? Or will the struggling Chargers struggle against the Buffalo Bills? We’ll find out tonight at 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time on the Peacock Network.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Rest You Merry by Charlotte MacLeod — 1

Corpus Christmas by Margaret Maron — 201

A Highland Christmas by M. C. Beaton — 407

AA

Gardner Dozois edited his monumental Year’s Best Science Fiction series for 35 years. The series started in 1984 and ended in 2018 when Dozois died. In Robert Silverberg’s brilliant “Foreword” to The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year’s Best Science Fiction (2005), Silverberg presents Dozois’s strategy to be the anthology of record for Science Fiction. Every event, every compelling story, every innovation to the genre was meticulously recorded by Dozois for Posterity. That’s what makes this SF series so iconic and important.

This 655 page volume includes the best SF stories from 1984 to 2004. Not only did Dozois select the stories for this anthology, he provides introductions to each story to explain why the writer and this particular story made it into this Big Fat Book.

If you have a Science Fiction fan on your Holiday Gift List, The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year’s Best Science Fiction would make a wonderful present. Or, maybe Santa could bring this great book to you! How many of these stories are you familiar with? Any favorites? GRADE: A

Table of Contents:

ACKNOWLEGEMENTS — vii

FOREWORD by Robert Silverberg — xi

PREFACE by Gardner Dozis — xvii

• Blood music / Greg Bear — 1
• A cabin on the coast / Gene Wolfe — 19
• Salvador / Lucius Shepard — 28
• Trinity / Nancy Kress — 42
• Flying saucer rock and roll / Howard Waldrop — 78
• Dinner in Audoghast / Bruce Sterling — 93
• Roadside rescue / Pat Cadigan — 103
• Snow / John Crowley — 109
• The winter market / William Gibson — 121
• The pure product / John Kessel — 137
• Stable strategies for middle management / Eileen Gunn — 152
• Kirinyaga / Mike Resnick — 162
• Tales from the Venia Woods / Robert Silverberg — 177
• Bears discover fire / Terry Bisson — 191
• Even the queen / Connie Willis — 199
• Guest of honor / Robert Reed — 213
• None so blind / Joe Haldeman — 238
• Mortimer Gray’s History of death / Brian Stableford — 246
• The Lincoln Train / Maureen F. McHugh — 293
• Wang’s carpets / Greg Egan — 303
• Coming of age in Karhide / Ursula K. Le Guin — 328
• The dead / Michael Swanwick — 342
• Recording angel / Ian McDonald — 352
• A dry, quiet war / Tony Daniel — 363
• The undiscovered / William Sanders — 380
• Second skin / Paul J. McAuley — 400
• Story of your life / Ted Chiang — 418
• People came from earth / Stephen Baxter — 454
• The wedding album / David Marusek — 464
• 10¹⁶ to 1 / James Patrick Kelly — 502
• Daddy’s world / Walter Jon Williams — 520
• The real world / Steven Utley — 541
• Have not have / Geoff Ryman — 561
• Lobsters / Charles Stross — 577
• Breathmoss / Ian R. MacLeod — 597
• Lambing season / Molly Gloss — 647

Last week, Deb made the comment: “Christmas isn’t Christmas in our house without listening at least once to Elvis’s Christmas album—that is a mainstay.” And just by chance, I stumbled over these Christmas Elvis CDs (while searching for something else). Elvis Christmas is the only Elvis Christmas CD you really need to listen to. It includes all of the Christmas songs Elvis sings so well.

In the everlasting quest for Truth in Advertising, I’m including the other two Elvis Christmas CDs I found: Elvis Presley Blue Christmas and Elvis sings The Wonderful World of Christmas. If you check the Track Lists, you’ll find they’re identical (except for the deceptive titles and different album covers).

Do you listen to Elvis at Christmas time? Do you have a favorite song? GRADES: Elvis Christmas—A, Elvis Presley Blue Christmas and Elvis sings The Wonderful World of Christmas — B

TRACK LIST:

TRACK LIST:

TRACK LIST:

One look at the cover of No One Will Come Back For Us gives you a big hint about why I like this book: TENTACLES! That’s a dead give-away that Cthulhu and the Shoggoths are in the house! My favorite story in  No One Will Come Back For Us is “The Adventurer’s Wife” where a famous explorer goes to Africa and finds the ruins of an ancient race. The people in the village that protect the ruins warn the explorer not to take any of the ruins…but of course you know what happens.

Premie Mohamed’s other stories deal with monsters, gods, chaos, and strange beasts. The blurb on the back cover of No One Will Come Back For Us calls her stories “contemporary cosmic horror and dark fantasy.” That pretty much sums her work up. If you’re in the mood for some stories that will widen your eyes and send chills down your back, give No One Will Come Back For Us a try. GRADE: B

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Below the kirk, below the hill — 11

Instructions — 25

The evaluator — 31

At the hand of every beast — 49

The adventurer’s wife — 61

The general’s turn — 73

Sixteen minutes — 97

Fortunato — 101

The honeymakers — 121

Four hours of a revolution — 131

For each of these miseries — 145

Everything as part of its infinite place — 171

No one will come back for us — 191

Willing — 215

Us and ours — 225

The redoubtables — 243

Quietus — 259

Story notes — 275

Publication History — 289

Acknowledgements — 291

About the Author — 293