Every five
or ten years, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine is poring over its backlog and
publishing a fresh ‘best of’. The first
several editions edited by Edward L. Ferman, in the late 90s the magazine
underwent transition, and Gordon van Gelder was added to editing duties. But 1999’s Fiftieth Anniversary edition is different in more than just terms
of editor. The backlog search limited to
the decade, The Best from Fantasy &
Science Fiction: The Fiftieth Anniversary anthology features only stories published in the 90s. Moreover, where the later anthologies (the 60th Anniversary and the Very Best of Vol. 2), contain stories by
authors the majority of readers are familiar with, the fiftieth goes a more
esoteric route. Sharon Farber, Bruce
Holland Rogers, Ray Vukcevich, Esther M. Friesner, Dale Bailey, and Michael
Blumlein are generally authors known only to those deeply involved in speculative
fiction. The quality of their stories,
however, is another matter. Popularity
not always equalling excellence, the lesser known names add an air of
originality for unfamiliar readers, making the anthology an unexpected but no
less enjoyable selection of stories from the Magazine.
Kicking
things off is Elizabeth Hand’s touching novella “Last Summer at Mars Hill”. About two teens dealing with
their parent’s health problems during a summer holiday in Maine, it is
paranormal fantasy (the fantasy sparing in its use) which touches upon terminal
illness in poignant fashion. “Maneki
Neko” by Bruce Sterling is a one-off about the Asian cat sitting at the cash
register of businesses worldwide.
Tsuyoshi, a video renovator, thinks nothing of passing along snippets of
interesting old video onto the web when asked.
Helping his wife deliver a maneki
neko one day, all hell breaks loose after following one instruction on his
smartphone. Sterling’s satirical take on
modern life does explain how all of the cats ended up scattered around the
world, but goes little further. “No
Planets Strike” by Gene Wolfe is a tale that, when divided into its component
parts (alien planet, Shakespeare, talking barnyard animals, bad fairies, and
Christian mythology), simply should not work.
Wolfe turning it all into a delight, the story becomes one of the most
unique in the anthology. “Sins of the
Mothers” by Sharon N. Farber is a story that brings adoption and gene
technology into sharp focus. The story
of an adopted man who finds his birth mother later in life, his reasons for
seeking her out are not precisely altruistic.
Irreverently
irresistible, “The Finger” by Ray Vukcevich is the story of a boy whose middle
finger has special power; flipping the bird leads him straight to manhood. A
delight, this is storytelling to be enjoyed for masterful language and the fun
and nostalgia (at least for boys) of the premise. “Lifeboat on a Burning Sea” by Bruce Holland
Rogers is about a man working on a project to create A.I. Projecting life beyond the grave, the project
is called TOS (The Other Side), but goes on to have effect on this side. “Gone” by John Crowley is a moody, minimalist
piece about a woman whose partner has run away with their children in a world
where a space ship orbits the Earth and peace loving Elmer robots do housework
and common chores. A bizarre story for
the robot premise, it nevertheless manages to draw mysterious emotions from
within. “First Tuesday” by Robert Reed
is the story of one evening a Stefan’s house.
The dreadlocked president campaigning at their home virtually, all
manner of topics are raised, from the father’s racism to the progress of
society, and culminates in yet another quality Reed story. The fool who was not a fool, the magic stick
the brothers fall for, and the princess who loves books, “The Fool, the Stick,
and the Princess” by Rachel Pollack is a parable about the wisdom of
ignorance. Oh, and ogres attack.
Regardless
of one’s stance on abortion, Esther M. Friesner’s “A Birthday” is an affective
piece. Set in a world where women can
follow the virtual lives of the children they chose to abort, it is the story
of a woman given the day off on her aborted daughter’s birthday. Powerful, thought-provoking material. Not Harlan Ellison’s most well-known story,
“Sensible City” nevertheless captures a spark of the man’s dynamite in Twilight
Zone fashion. The tale of two ruthless
cops on the run, they encounter an evil they may not be prepared for. Tanith Lee’s “All the Birds of Hell” is a
novelette masterpiece. Imagery and mood
seeping off the page, the story of a museum curator watching over two corpses
in a frozen Siberia is light though deceivingly rich material that eases its
weight onto the mind effortlessly. “We
Love Lydia Love” is a premise that could have been fleshed out by Pat Caidgan,
but was instead by Bradley Denton. The
story of a dead pop star’s image used to voice new music, transhumanism’s the
gig. “Paul and Me” by Michael Blumlein
revisions the Paul Bunyan myth in surprisingly poignant terms.
“Have Gun,
Will Edit” by Paul Di Filippo, part of his Plumage for Pegasus stories, is the
highly satirical tale of a world wherein aging science fiction writers have no
qualms having their younger competition taken out mafia-style. The boat plying
both sides of the river, however, they can likewise be bought for a price. An homage to Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes,
“Quinn's Way” by Dale Bailey is a more contemporary tale of two boys. Their fathers not the American Golden Age
ideal Bradbury portrayed, the two boys face even more difficult choices when a
circus comes to town. Homage a dodgy
literary niche, Bailey makes his work very well.
“The
Lincoln Train” by Maureen McHugh is a Civil War story about a girl forced to move
west with her mother after the North has won the war. Not McHugh’s best story, nor anything new
thematically, it nevertheless is written in the author’s confident, minimalist
hand. The penultimate story is Ray
Bradbury’s fantastical homage to Laurel and Hardy. Likewise not Bradbury’s best story, it
nevertheless is enjoyable. And the final
story is “Solitude” by Ursula Le Guin.
Set in her Hainish universe, in particular a society with strong taboos
regarding contact and communication between men and women, it results in a
world where the two sexes live apart, meeting only in secret rendezvous to
carry on the species. A subtly powerful
story about the desire for solitude and the desire for companionship, Le Guin
strikes a perfect, bittersweet note between the two.
In the
end, The Best From Fantasy & Science
Fiction: The Fiftieth Anniversary Anthology is, as one would expect given
the success of the Magazine, a
quality and varied selection of stories from the archives of Fantasy & Science Fiction. All stories published in the final decade of
the 20th century, many of the authors are not known from best-seller lists,
but nevertheless offer excellent pieces of work. The stories that meet that standard naturally
dependent on the reader’s expectations, it’s safe to say, however, they won’t
find fault in the basics—prose, plotting, and voicing all up to snuff, making
for yet another winning set of stories from the history of the Magazine.
The
following is the table of contents for the anthology:
Last Summer
at Mars Hill by Elizabeth Hand
Maneki
Neko by Bruce Sterling
No Planets
Strike by Gene Wolfe
Sins of
the Mothers by Sharon N. Farber (as S.N. Dyer)
The Finger
by Ray Vukcevich
Lifeboat
on a Burning Sea by Bruce Holland Rogers
Gone by
John Crowley
First
Tuesday by Robert Reed
The Fool,
the Stick, and the Princess by Rachel Pollack
A Birthday
by Esther M. Friesner
Sensible
City by Harlan Ellison
All the
Birds of Hell by Tanith Lee
We Love
Lydia Love by Bradley Denton
Paul and
Me by Michael Blumlein
Have Gun,
Will Edit by Paul Di Filippo
Forget
Luck by Kate Wilhelm
Quinn's
Way by Dale Bailey
Partial
People by Terry Bisson
The
Lincoln Train by Maureen F. McHugh
Another
Fine Mess by Ray Bradbury
Solitude
by Ursula K. Le Guin
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