It’s
become quite apparent that short length speculative fiction is bursting at the
seams for quantity. The number of
magazines and ezines printing its short stories, novelettes and novellas outstrips
any other genre by a mile, dozens and dozens of new anthologies and collections
published each year. Gardner Dozois’ The Year’s Best Science Fiction series
running since 1984, Rich Horton’s Science
Fiction: The Best of the Year and Fantasy:
The Best of the Year series starting in 2006, and David Hartwell and
Kathryn Cramer’s Year’s Best SF
(1996) and Year’s Best Fantasy (2001)
all on the scene, it’s amazing there was room for one more. Rearranging the words, Jonathan Strahan
started The Best Science Fiction and
Fantasy of the Year in 2006.
Significantly more fantasy than science fiction (despite the cover), and
overlapping the other year’s best anthologies all around, Volume One is a solid start for readers interested in the umbrella
view of (short) speculative fiction.
The
anthology opens on a comfortable note: Neil Gaiman. “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” is,
technically, a science fiction story, though Gaiman uses it for symbolic purposes. The story of two boys who go to a party
looking for girls, they find relating to them is more than they bargained
for. Possessing an age-old moral, it is
written in the author’s signature feathery-light prose. A smooth stylist in his
own right, Peter Beagle presents a refined version of his talents in the YA offering
“El Regalo”. The story of a
Korean-American brother-sister tandem, their rivalry (capital ‘R’) is everything
childhood is made of—one sibling going back in time to save the other, resulting
in a touching, nostalgic story with a target younger audience. “I, Rowboat” by Cory Doctorow is a story for
those interested in science fiction for science fiction’s sake. Taking one yet-possible idea and stacking it
up against an even further-in-the-future-possible idea, it is Asimov’s laws of
robot sentience set against the uplifting of ‘animal’ sentience of singularity
proportions. At times overtly
ideological and poorly written, at all others it is pure genre. (For my money, Alfred
Bester’s “Fondly Fahrenheit” and John Sladek’s Tik-tok are better commentary on Asimov’s robots.) The second YA piece in the anthology, Ellen
Klages’ “In the House of the Seven Librarians” is the story of a baby girl
found by a group of librarians who decided to lock the doors when a new, bigger
library is announced on the other side of town.
A love affair with silent book halls everywhere, it is a charming,
nostalgic paean about a girl who grows up in a library (like Bod grows up in a
graveyard), but lacks re-readability and fluidity.
Switching
gears, Christopher Rowe’s “Another Word for Map is Faith” is an allegorical
tale of a group of fundamental Christians following maps in a dis-United States
of America. The symbolism abstract, it is one of the better stories in the
collection. Another story involving
faith and belief, Margo Lanagan’s dark satire “Under Heaven, Over Hell” tells
of a group stuck in a purgatory-esque locale (see the title) and their DMV
experiences getting to their eternal destination. Taking the piss out of any religion which
posits the black and white of heaven and hell, it is a well-written tale. Incarnation
Day by Walter Jon Williams is the bizarre yet relatable story of children
raised in cyberspace in preparation for inhabiting real bodies. Interestingly insightful into personal
development, it has a well-rounded approach to both coming of age, technology,
and the universality of the human spirit.
A good addition to the anthology.
“The Night Whiskey” by Jeffrey Ford is a weird—perhaps Weird—tale of a
town wherein a deathberry grows, and every year the inhabitants celebrate by
drinking a little of the liquor distilled from it. Strange things happening while drunk on the
strong spirit, even stranger things happen one particular year when a new
Harvester is needed. Not Ford’s best
work, but a solid story. Another fantasy novelette is Benjamin Rosenblaum’s “A
Siege of Cranes”. Bordering on surreal,
Rosenblaum invests enough realism in the narrative of a man tracking the evil
which destroyed his village to maintain a cohesive plot. Though a bit
inconsistent stylistically, it soars with obtuse imagery. “The American Dead” by Jay Lake is a
politicized tale about a Mexican boy with the American dream. An unsubtle story using unsubtle symbolism, its
message nevertheless strikes numerous chords of truth.
An
abstract, exceedingly well written work that requires some parsing out, Frances
Hardinge’s “Halfway House” is about many things, including a train station, a
boy abandoned by his mother, and a relaxing house in the countryside. The use of language continually keeping the
reader en guarde (or perhaps off
guard), it is one of the strongest shorts in the anthology linguistically. Tim Power’s “The Bible Repairman” is a touch
of necromancy that threatens to backfire.
Ostensibly set in the greater Los Angeles area, it is the story of a man
who gives a little bit of soul every time he expurges the unwanted bits of a
client’s bible. "The Calorie
Man" by Paolo Bacigalupi is the first look at the ideas that would go on
to underpin The Windup Girl. On the surface the rescue story of a
geneticist, a little deeper it becomes an examination of genetically modified crops
and the big business backing. Featuring
kink springs, gene rippers, megadonts, spring guns, SoyPro, genehack weevil,
AgriGen, and so many other ideas from Bacigalupi’s first novel, this story (and
“Yellow Card Man”) would be a great curiosity-satisfier for those seeking more
in the novel’s world. “Pol Pot’s
Beautiful Daughter (Fantasy)” by Geoff Ryman is a divisive story to say the
least. Using as a basis the real life
daughter of the notorious dictator, he tells a story of a young woman haunted
by ghosts, all the while reminding the reader it’s fantasy (hence the tagline
to the title). Personally I thought it a
fulfilling, sanguine endeavor with nothing but the best intentions. There are others who feel, otherwise, of
course. (See here for
an in-depth look at the novelette and the surrounding controversy.)
A simple
yet profound story, Robert Charles Wilson’s novelette “The Cartesian Theater”
is the story of a man tasked with bringing together two ideologically disposed
individuals to oversee an experiment of the most existential type. Playing with Descartes’ homunculus in pure
science fiction fashion, Wilson’s story fascinates while making the reader
think. Fiction within fiction, velvety
descriptions, and a subtly twisting climax, “Journey to the Kingdom” is a dark
fantasy that may be the millionth ghost story ever written, but is nevertheless
is presented and structured wonderfully.
For the active science fiction reader, “Eight Episodes” by Robert Reed
is a story in dialogue with the genre as much as it is science and cosmology
themselves, and eventually even the fiction/reality divide. Feeling like something Brian Aldiss could have
written, the story of a sci-fi television series dropped, picked up, and
dropped again is intelligent and reveals more upon a re-read. Switching to traditional fantasy, The Wizards of Perfil by Kelly Link is a
YA story about a land at war and the wizards in stone towers who stand aloof
above. The wizards served by children, a
new one arrives at the beginning, Halsa, who has a mind connection with her
cousin, Onion. The war and the mystery
of the wizards resolved in rather blasé fashion, the story is simple and simply
written. Far more memorable, “The
Saffron Gatherers” by Elizabeth Hand is the story of an archeologist visiting a
lover in San Francisco before heading off to Greece for an extended period of
research. Hand deftly paralleling the
fear of terrorism with a very mature love story and the gift it produces, this
is one of, if not the best story in the anthology.
Seemingly
an homage to the Heinlein’s YA work, “D.A.” by Connie Willis is an
uncomplicated tale about a girl going to space.
Mildly humorous, it is vanilla genre that slips in one eye and out the
other, little of substance. The ultimate
woodwork sci-fi writer, Paul Di Filippo has yet another piece selected for a
year’s best of. “Femaville 29” is a
story of an ex-cop living in a refuge camp after a tsunami sweeps through the
Canary Islands. A novel length work (or
at least novella) squeezed into a short story, it leaves me wondering what kind
of year was it for this to be one of the year’s best? A significant chunk of Gene Wolfe’s oeuvre
occupied by horror, “Sob in the Silence” is a fiction within fiction, and the
tale of a murderer who finds justice.
Conventional (for Wolfe), the story is suitably dark but written in a
style atypical for the author, which leads me to believe it is a tribute of
sorts. But to whom I do not know. Apparently a good year for Benjamin
Rosenbaum, his second piece in the anthology is “The House Beyond Your
Sky”. More abstract than his previous
entry, Rosenbaum juggles a lot of big ideas, cosmology, parallel universes,
externalized sentience, digitized personalities—and none are concrete. This is the modern, artistic side of the
genre in full stretch. Closing out the
anthology in classic style is Ian McDonald’s thriller “The Djinn's Wife”, which
despite borrowing a page (or two) from William Gibson’s Idoru, is simply begging to be made into a film. The imagery lush, character setup unique, and
the tension building, the author really captures magic—err, AI—in a bottle in
this story of love, politics, and the scary potential of technology from his River of Gods setting.
In the
end, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy
of the Year: Volume One, despite possessing a cover of glorious science
fiction possibilities, is predominantly fantasy. A solid anthology, it caters to the reader
who do not pigeonhole their interests in one niche of speculative fiction. Horror, traditional fantasy, cyberpunk,
social science fiction, hard science fiction, mundane fantasy—many, many
sub-genres of the genre are represented, even young adult. As always with anthologies of such size, some
stories will appeal while others will not.
Naturally, whether the reader concurs the majority are ‘best of the
year’ depends on whether their interests are in line with Strahan’s.
The
following is a list of the stories included in the anthology:
“How to
Talk to Girls at Parties” by Neil Gaiman
“El
Regalo” by Peter S. Beagle
“I,
Row-Boat” by Cory Doctorow
“In the
House of the Seven Librarians” by Ellen Klages
“Another
Word for Map is Faith” by Christopher Rowe
“Under
Hell, Over Heaven” by Margo Lanagan
Incarnation Day by Walter Jon Williams
“The Night
Whiskey” by Jeffrey Ford
“A Siege
of Cranes” by Benjamin Rosenbaum
“Halfway
House” by Frances Hardinge
“The Bible
Repairman” by Tim Powers
“Yellow
Card Man” by Paolo Bacigalupi
“Pol Pot's
Beautiful Daughter (Fantasy)” by Geoff Ryman
“The
American Dead” by Jay Lake
“The
Cartesian Theater” by Robert Charles Wilson
“Journey
into the Kingdom” by M. Rickert
“Eight
Episodes” by Robert Reed
The Wizards of Perfil by Kelly Link
“The Saffron
Gatherers” by Elizabeth Hand
“D. A.” by
Connie Willis
“Femaville
29” by Paul Di Filippo
”Sob in
the Silence” by Gene Wolfe
“The House
Beyond Your Sky” by Benjamin Rosenbaum
“The
Djinn's Wife” by Ian McDonald
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