2008
was a great year for short speculative fiction, and Jonathan Strahan captures
some of it in his The Best Science
Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 3.
By my count (which will certainly be disagreed with), we saw no less
than four that will go down in history as some of the best the genre has
produced, backed up by several more very, very solid stories. Every best-of anthology has its share of
stories the reader shakes their head in wonder How’d that get in here?, but with Volume 3, it happens less often than usual.
Strahan,
as usual, does his share to cover a wide variety of sub-interests. Volume
3 contains everything from hard sf to space opera, urban to secondary world
fantasy, literary pieces to pulp.
Depending which version the reader purchases (there were two printings,
each with a different story order), it’s possible their version will open with
the brilliant “26 Monkeys, and the Abyss” by Kij Johnson. It is the obtuse little tale of a woman who
buys into a traveling monkey show, and the personal issues she must deal with
in the aftermath. Showcasing the fact
genre authors can indeed produce quality, literary material, spec fic at short
length doesn’t come much better. Moving
from literary to pulp, Garth Nix’s “Beyond the Sea Gates of the Scholar Pirates
of Sarsköe” tells the story of a fantastical pirate adventure that doesn’t give
Robert Louis Stevenson a run for his money, but does Tim Powers. “Crystal Nights” by Greg Egan is a standard
Frankenstein-esque science fiction idea: an advance in technology leads to
creations beyond mankind’s control, told from Egan’s pro-science perspective.
“Evidence
of Love in a Case of Abandonment: One Daughter's Personal Account” by M.
Rickert is titled as such due to the court case it is, darkly and satirically
commenting on regarding women and children in society. Johnson’s earlier story is brilliant, but so
too is Ted Chiang’s “Exhalation.” One of
the top stories of the new millennium let alone the year, Chiang perfectly
interleaves genre and humanism in this story of a robot dissecting its own
head. “Five Thrillers” by Robert Reed is
a very nice story that works at two levels.
One hand gives the reader some action telling of a sociopath performing
“necessary” acts for society, while on the other questions and quandaries pop
up from the situations he’s in, causing the reader to pause every now and
then—particularly over the ending. Another great story is “Fixing Hanover” by
Jeff VanderMeer. At heart a familiar
tale (the problems of technology in the hands of power-hungry ego-maniacs), on
the surface, however, it is not. Using the most subtle of setups, VanderMeer
deftly cuts to the core of the issue: a broken robot is discovered at some
undetermined time in the future after an unknown catastrophe has destroyed most
of the Earth, and a handyman is forced to repair it.
Though
she passed nearly a decade prior, Joan Aiken’s posthumously published “Goblin
Music” is a little jewel shining. With
the air of stories from bygone days, it’s charming playfulness of a girl, the
goblin musicians she befriends, and the litte “kitten” who becomes her
mate. Impossible not to beguile. Not a take on Stanislaw Lem’s novel, “His
Master’s Voice” by Hannu Rajaniemi isthe story of a technologically souped up
dog and his equally styling partner, a cat, who attempt to rescue their owner
from behind a supposedly impenetrable firewall.
Margo Lanagan’s “Machine Maid” takes material very little covered in sf
and converts it into a relatively successful story. A prim woman discovers her
husband’s sex doll, and in the process of dealing with the thing, learns about
herself and their relationship. Another
tale vying for the ages is Richard Bowes “If Angels Fight” about two childhood
friends, one of whom has a guardian angel watching over him. Later in life, after some changes in fortune,
the second friend must find the first.
Gorgeously well written and structured, Bowes digs into the lives of his
characters—adding just a drop of the fantastic—to produce a sublime knockout.
Finding
the perfect intersection of Austen’s Pride
and Prejudice and Shelley’s Frankenstein,
“Pride and Prometheus” by John Kessell interleaves ideas from both authors’
works and biographies in perfect fashion—right down to the style of
writing. Highly recommended. Moving from sophisticated to blunt,
“Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear parallels a black scientist researching
a little known ocean creature, called a shoggoth, off the coast of Maine just
before WWII. It proves hindsight is
easy, but what the story lacks in subtlety it makes up for in its message. Catch-22 set in a near-future China where companies are more than just a place
you come and go from everyday to work, “Special Economics” examines a scenario
wherein a young Chinese woman signs on for factory work and gets more than she
bargained for. Not only her place of
employment, it’s also her dormitory, clothing shop, restaurant, and social hour
rolled into one, and getting out of debt to the system may just be
impossible. Perhaps trying to do
a little more than it should in a short story, “The Art of Alchemy” by Ted
Kosmatka nevertheless tackles racism and the realities of corporate greed in a
tale that ends on a The Dispossessed
note. The corporate elements more convincingly portrayed than the racial side
of the thematic coin, metallurgy is the name of the game. (I would guess Cormac McCarthy never read the
tale, but would later unwittingly borrow one of the killing devices for his The Advocate script.)
“The
Dust Assassin” by Ian McDonald is the story of a young woman caught in a family
feud among India’s wealthy water monopolies. McDonald’s style buoying things
effortlessly, the fairy tale structure of the story has nevertheless been done
before. “The Gambler” by Paolo
Bacigalupi targets modern civilization/humanity’s penchant for ignoring
important issues, e.g. global warming, financial crises, gun problems, etc. in
favor of media far less concerned with the world as a whole, e.g. tabloid
gossip, fashion, spiritualism, etc. A
magical zoo set in rural America, Holly Phillips’ “The Small Door” tells of twins, one of whom is chronically
ill, and what they discover in the sheds of their neighbor’s yard. “Meghan McCarron’s “The Magician’s House” is
a strange little story shifting between somewhat classic fantasy to something
much more pagan, sexuality the thread seeming to bind it together.
“The New
York Times at Special Bargain Rates” by Stephen King is a rather straight-forward
afterlife story of a woman contacted by her dead husband, but written in King’s
polished hand. “The Thought War” by Paul
J. McAuley is an atypical zombie story, but nevertheless does not stand out. Like a bit of trivia in a magazine, it
interests precisely for the time it takes to read, no more. “Turing's Apples” by Stephen Baxter is a
story I’ve read somewhere before, I just can’t put my finger on it. Utilizing
familiar elements of Silver Age sci-fi (radio signals from extra-terrestrials,
super-computers, and lunar antennas), as well as the age-old motif of sparring
brothers and rational vs. emotional intelligence, the story nevertheless is
readable for the combination.
Unoriginal, it is hard sci-fi in short form ending on both a sappy and
sense-of-wonder note that is very much in the vein of Gregory Benford, Stephen
Baxter, Greg
Egan, and Isaac
Asimov. A very Jewish story, “Uncle
Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel” by Peter S. Beagle showcases the author’s
subtly charming talents in a tale of a painter, his wife, and the blue angel
which appears and demands to be his model.
Beagle’s adult work is so good.
In
the end, The Best Science Fiction and
Fantasy of the Year: Volume 3 proves speculative fiction in 2008 was as
alive as ever. Les Claypool says “they
all can’t be zingers,” and indeed Volume 3 is not front to back
greatest-ever. There are, however, an
inordinate number of stories that will stand taller through time than other
years. Kij Johnson, Richard Bowes, and
Ted Chiang have written stories that will be read for a long time. Nipping at their heels are great stories from
Jeff VanderMeer, Peter Beagle, and John Kessell, followed by some other really
strong inclusions. I am writing this
review from the vantage point of 2015 and having read many of Strahan’s
best-ofs since, and this one stands out as either the best, or top three.
The
following are the twenty-eight stories selected for Volume 3:
26
Monkeys, Also the Abyss by Kij Johnson
Beyond
the Sea Gates of the Scholar Pirates of Sarsköe by Garth Nix
Crystal
Nights by Greg Egan
Evidence
of Love in a Case of Abandonment: One Daughter's Personal Account by M. Rickert
Exhalation
by Ted Chiang
Five
Thrillers by Robert Reed
Fixing
Hanover by Jeff VanderMeer
From
Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled... by Michael Swanwick
Goblin
Music by Joan Aiken
His
Master's Voice by Hannu Rajaniemi
If
Angels Fight by Richard Bowes
Machine
Maid by Margo Lanagan
Marry
the Sun by Rachel Swirsky
Pretty
Monsters by Kelly Link
Pride
and Prometheus by John Kessel
Shoggoths
in Bloom by Elizabeth Bear
Special
Economics by Maureen F. McHugh
The
Art of Alchemy by Ted Kosmatka
The
Doom of Love in Small Spaces by Ken Scholes
The
Dust Assassin by Ian McDonald
The
Gambler by Paolo Bacigalupi
The
Magician's House by Meghan McCarron
The
New York Times at Special Bargain Rates by Stephen King
The
Small Door by Holly Phillips
The
Thought War by Paul J. McAuley
Turing's
Apples by Stephen Baxter
Uncle
Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel by Peter S. Beagle
Virgin
by Holly Black
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