And yet another The Best Science
Fiction and Fantasy of the Year anthology to pore over, 2010’s being
Jonathan Strahan’s fifth. For those
familiar with Strahan’s author preferences, the selections will not come as a
surprise. It is a rich mix, from the
popular—ahem, well-known—to the far lesser known, male to female, native
English speakers to the international writer, a wide spread of viewpoints is
represented, but certainly some personal favorites once again make an
appearance. From the genre perspective,
it covers science fiction, fantasy, and everything between (but as always, do
ignore the cover, as fantasy once again holds the lion’s share). Enough lip service; it’s about the stories.
The anthology opens on a colorful splash with “Elegy for a Young Elk” by
Hannu Rajaniemi. Somewhere between hard
(quantum mechanic) science and fantasy (of a mythological bent), it is the
story of man living in a computer generated environment and the quest he is
sent on to the city by an ex-girlfriend.
Continually escalating plot exponentially in terms of reality, the
ending does close a circle, but seeming one of far too great imaginative
circumference for the length of the story.
Dark like a day threatening to rain, Neil Gaiman’s “The Truth Is a Cave
in the Black Mountains” is the story of a dwarf looking for treasure but with
much more on his mind. Possessing a
beautiful storytelling voice, it should be read aloud. The inclusion of a Gaiman story in a ‘year’s
best’ almost requisite for Strahan, this selection, however, does not
disappoint as much as others have.
Whether the moral is original, well, that is another story (ha!). “Seven Sexy Cowboy Robots” by Sandra McDonald
is a tale that appears absurd at the outset (cowboy robot sex slaves on ice
skates??), but once the reader enters they find interesting layers of gender
discussion in the story of a woman who got revenge on her husband by requesting
seven said robots as part of the divorce deal—intriguing in a bizarre way. “The
Spy Who Never Grew Up” by Sarah Rees Brennan is a modern take on Peter Pan
where, the boy who never grows old, has become a secret agent working for
MI-6. Neither superbly well-written or
sophisticated, it’s a light read that will appeal to the fairy-minded crowd,
but doesn’t have much lasting appeal.
Like Brennan’s story, Holly Black’s “The Aarne-Thompson Classification
Revue” is another less-than-serious affair that plays with a major trope of
fantasy: werewolves, in urban, tongue-in-cheek fashion. Written unnecessarily
in the present tense, it is sprightly, but in due course less-than-inspiring,
as well.
Taking a turn for the mildly-abstract, Damien Broderick’s “Under the
Moons of Venus” is an eerie story of a seemingly post-apocalyptic Earth and a
new moon that has appeared in orbit around Venus. A somber tone pervading, one man comes to
terms with life and science. Jumping
from our solar system to a medieval alternate world, Joe Abercrombie’s “The
Fool’s Job” is a story nominally set in his First
Law books. Nihilistic humor, blood
and gore, and poor prose (see this mouthful of dialogue: “Self-defeating would be if she was the one who’d end up way out past
the Crinna with her throat cut, on account of some blurry details on the minor
point of the actual job we’re bloody here to do.”), it is the story of a
small band of mercenaries sent to retrieve a numinous object in a remote
village that proves (of course) more difficult to infiltrate than they’d
originally thought. Alone one of Robert Reed’s Great
Ship stories, there is no need to have read any of the others to appreciate
its surreal strangeness. The story of an
alien who long remains isolated on the hull and interior of the ship—millennium,
in fact, strange events conspire to draw it into the open and to society. A foreboding, evocative piece, it’s possible
to ponder after the last word has been read—if not for mood alone. The usage of
present tense this time propelling the story into its conclusion, Kij
Johnson’s “Names for Water” is a nice
enough piece and a mild bit of feminism, but, unfortunately, easily
forgettable. The spirit is there in a metaphor
of technology, etc., but the substance a bit stretched. “Fair Ladies” by Theodora Goss is an inverted
fairy story. The supernatural entering
our world rather than us going to it, it is the story of Rudi, a young man who
falls in love with a woman his parents do not approve of. Ending on a bleak note, Goss captures the
imagination for the time it takes to read the story.
For as good as James Patrick Kelly can be, “Plus or Minus” is an average
effort. The second Mariska Volochkova story he’s written, this time the young
woman is riding with a load of asteroid ice back to Earth aboard the creaky Shining Legend. The crew around her as eccentric as one would
expect on a space freighter, things start to go bad when their fuel supply is
accidentally dumped and the crew must figure out a way to make it back alive. Told you it was average. “The Man with the Knives” by Ellen Kushner is
the alternating narrative of a local healer and the sick foreign man who
collapses on her doorstep one day. Though
delirious with love lost and unable to speak properly, the two form a strange
relationship around a handful of surgical knives and books of anatomy found on
his person, coming round to form a well written, interesting story. Wholly a product of the times, Cory Doctorow’s “The Jammie Dodgers and the Adventure of the Leicester Square
Screening” is a one-off about a young thief who steals an old model cell phone
that has an built-in projector. Putting
it to nefarious use, the story possesses Doctorow’s typical anti-establishment
act, but more cohesively than usual.
One of the best of the anthology and not just the year, The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon by Elizabeth Hand is the story of three men who organize an act of
kindness for a woman who meant a lot to their early careers at the
Smithsonian. A touching piece that
involves the history of the U.S flight program in North Carolina, Hand’s velvet
prose tells an affective story with real substance. (See here for a longer
review.) “The Miracle Aquilina” by Margo
Lanagan is a dragon story, and while it possesses the author’s keen sense of
style, remains just an average dragon story.
A first contact story (or not), “The Taste of Night” by Pat Cadigan takes
a different look at the Fermi paradox: what if they’ve been communicating with
us all along, but we just didn’t have the sensory apparati to be aware? Bruce Sterling’s “The Exterminator’s Want-Ad”
is not so much a story rather the brief recollection of a right-wing hack
artist sent to prison when the lefties took power. A major resource shortage having brought the
civilized world to its knees, the man’s existence in a hippy-fied prison is
much to his disliking but capitalizes itself in techno-political humor. “Map of Seventeen” by Christopher Barzak is
the story of a young girl living in a small town which has difficulty accepting
her older brother’s boyfriend. That he’s
a merman also doesn’t help the discrimination.
The symbolism nicely structured along the lines of place, identity, and
open/narrow mindedness, Barzac’s story is progressive, soft fantasy for the
times. Maureen McHugh’s “The Naturalist”
is a classic zombie story balanced with McHugh’s sense of humanism. A semi-cynical piece, it is the story of a
prisoner turned loose in the wastelands of post-apocalyptic Cleveland populated
by the living dead. Taking a sharp twist
about halfway through, the theme is fully developed but the setting begs for
expansion. “Sins of the Father” by Sara
Genge is a forced concept on an idea that never seems to grow old. Another mer- story, the narrator is a man who
has had legs attached where once he had a fish tail. Disowned by his mother, a mermaid, everything
changes when he meets Rosita.
Acknowledgment of the Other has been captured better in fiction…
Retro space opera, Geoffrey Landis’ The Sultan of the Clouds is Arthur C. Clarke meets The Empire Strikes Back. The
story fun and adventure, Landis tells of a man who visits the cloud cities of
Venus with an attractive woman, and the trouble he gets into investigating the
child ruler’s strange motivations.
Entertaining but ultimately empty, the story sparkles for a moment but
quickly fades. (See here for a longer
review.) “Iteration” by John Kessel is a
quick, humanist view of a sim-city experiment in real life—emphasis on
quick. “The Care and Feeding of Your Baby
Killer Unicorn” by Diana Peterfreund, though having a plotline impossible to
predict given the title, remains as over-the-top story as one expects given the
title. Yes, angry unicorns, a girl with
special powers that she’s just learning to use, and many other common tropes of
modern YA fill out the story, rendering a story that will appeal to those who
like splash and sizzle, glitter and glam, coherency on the distant
horizon. (It’s also another example for
which the present tense adds nothing.) “The Night Train” by Lavie Tidhar gives
the appearance of being something new and fresh, but is in fact microwaved
genre with a splash of packet green salsa.
The story of a cyberpunk girl waiting for an assassin in the Bangkok
train station where giant slugs act as engines, well, it only goes
action-adventure from there. Ultimately
going nowhere of significance, Tidhar flexes his pulp wings but flies nowhere. The hoing and humming ongoing, Ian Tregillis’
“Still Life (A Sexagesimal Fairy Tale)” is an alternate universe story about a
clockmaker named Tink who makes a sacrifice to free her people. Again, readable but forgettable.
The title meaning “Love Conquers All”, “Amor Vincit Omnia” by K. J.Parker is not the romance one might expect, rather an Unseen University—I mean
story of students at a medieval-esque university. The author for once utilizing magic rather
than alternate world as the reason behind the fantasy designation, the
supernatural is, however, as regulated as technology in her Engineer trilogy, and not utilized in a
manner ‘magic system’ aficionados would hope.
A typical Parker story of moral impasse, it is one of the better stories
in the anthology, but given the company, this is not a grand statement. “The Things” by Peter Watts is an alternate
perspective based on the film The Thing. Told from the alien’s point of view, readers
get the opposing view of events from the movie—a surprise resulting. Given Watts’ proclivity for hardline
interpretations of evolutionary theory, the result is not another Hollywood
styled thriller. “The Zeppelin
Conductors' Society Annual Gentlemen's Ball” by Genevieve Valentine feels more
like a testing out of a setting, any plot incidental. The recollections of a mate aboard a blimp,
adventure comes and goes in the skies.
Saving perhaps the best for last, Rachel Swirsky’s The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Window is a
capital way to close out the anthology.
What seems yet another epic fantasy is quickly and economically shuttled
into the tense, dark narrative of a woman’s trapped spirit and the evolving
land it is sporadically resurrected into.
Edged literary prose, relevant substance, and a transcendent ending, it
vies with Hand’s story for best of the anthology. (See here for a longer review.)
In the end, The Best Science
Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Vol. 5 is of suburban quality; most of the
stories are unable to distinguish themselves beyond the time it takes to read
them. Feeling slightly tired, the
anthology is not of the same caliber as other years’ anthologies. The low to standard quality stories are
offset by several which shine brightly, however; Elizabeth Hand, Rachel
Swirsky, Peter Watts, Robert Reed have all written pieces that have a chance of
transcending the year. The anthology is
thus difficult to quantify in one word.
‘Fair to poor’ covering the majority of content, there remain enough
quality stories, however, to pay more attention.
The following is the table of contents:
“Elegy for a Young Elk” by Hannu Rajaniemi
“The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains” by Neil Gaiman
“Seven Sexy Cowboy Robots” by Sandra McDonald
“The Spy Who Never Grew Up” by Sarah Rees Brennan
“The Aarne-Thompson Classification Revue” by Holly Black
“Under the Moons of Venus” by Damien Broderick
“The Fool Jobs” by Joe Abercrombie
Alone by Robert Reed
“Names for Water” by Kij Johnson
“Fair Ladies” by Theodora Goss
“Plus or Minus” by James Patrick Kelly
“The Man with the Knives” by Ellen Kushner
“The Jammie Dodgers and the Adventure of the Leicester Square Screening”
by Cory Doctorow
The Maiden Flight of
McCauley's Bellerophon by Elizabeth Hand
“The Miracle Aquilina” by Margo Lanagan
“The Taste of Night” by Pat Cadigan
“The Exterminator's Want-Ad” by Bruce Sterling
“Map of Seventeen” by Christopher Barzak
“The Naturalist” by Maureen F. McHugh
“Sins of the Father” by Sara Genge
The Sultan of the Clouds by Geoffrey A. Landis
“Iteration” by John Kessel
“The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn” by Diana Peterfreund
“The Night Train” by Lavie Tidhar
“Still Life (A Sexagesimal Fairy Tale)” by Ian Tregillis
“Amor Vincit Omnia” by K. J. Parker
“The Things” by Peter Watts
“The Zeppelin Conductors' Society Annual Gentlemen's Ball” by Genevieve
Valentine
The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Window by Rachel Swirsky
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