The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 13

by Gardner Dozois

  Very few small-press titles, though, will be findable in the average bookstore, or even in the average chain store, which means that mail order is still your best bet, and so I’m going to list the addresses of the small-press publishers mentioned above: NESFA Press, P.O. Box 809, Framinghan, MA 01701-0809 – $25 for The Compleat Boucher, by Anthony Boucher; Golden Gryphon Press, 3002 Perkins Road, Urbana, IL – $23.95 for The Dragons of Springplace, by Robert Reed and $24.95 for The Robot’s Twilight Companion, by Tony Daniel; Wildside Press, P.O. Box 45, Gillette, NJ 07933-0045 – $15 for A Safari of the Mind, by Mike Resnick; North Atlantic Books, P.O. Box 12327, Berkeley, CA, 94701 – $30 for Baby Is Three: Volume VI: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, by Theodore Sturgeon; Meisha Merlin Press, P.O. Box 7, Decatur, GA. 30031 – $16 for Sex and Violence in Zero-G, by Allen Steele; Tachyon Publications, PMB 139,1459 18th Street, San Francisco, CA. 94107 – $17 plus $2.50 postage for Futures Past, by A.E. van Vogt; University of Tampa Press, 401 West Kennedy Blvd., Tampa, FL. 33606 – $24.95 plus $2.50 postage for Where Garagiola Waits and Other Baseball Stories, by Rick Wilber; Alexander Publishing, 13243 Vanowen Ave, 5, North Hollywood, CA 91605 – $15.95 for Dragon’s Fin Soup, by S.P. Somtow; MP Books, P.O. Box 407, Nedlands, Western Australia 6909, Australia – $29.95 for Antique Futures: The Best of Terry Dowling; Ticonderoga Publications, P.O. Box 407, Nedlands, Western Australia 6009, Australia – $17.95 plus $5 shipping for The Lady of Situations, by Stephen Dedman and $19.99 for New Adventures in Sci, by Sean Williams; Cascade Mountain Publishing, 1652 NW Summit Dr., Bend, OR 97701 – $12.95 for Dakota Dreamin’, by Bill Johnson; Haffner Press, 5005 Crooks Rd., Suite 35, Royal Oak, MI 48073-1239 – $32 plus $5 postage for The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson, Volume One: The Metal Men and Others and $32 plus $5 postage for The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson, Volume Two: Wolves of Darkness; University Press of New England/Wesleyan, 23 South Main St., Hanover, NH 03755 – $16.95 plus $2.50 postage for Seven for the Apocalypse, by Kit Reed; Night Shade Books, 870 East El Camino Real, 133, Mountain View, CA 94040 – $16.95 for Really, Really, Really, Really, Weird Stories, by John Shirley.

  It was a moderately unexciting year overall in the reprint anthology field, although there were still a few good values here and there.

  The best bets for your money in this category, as usual, were the various best-of-the-year anthologies, and the annual Nebula Award anthology, Nebula Awards 33 (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), edited by Connie Willis; this year there was also a retrospective anthology of work by past winners of the SFWA Grand Master Award (see below). Science fiction is being covered by two best-of-the-year anthology series, the one you are holding in your hand, and the Year’s Best SF series (HarperPrism), edited by David G. Hartwell, now up to its fifth annual volume. (It would be inappropriate for me to review Hartwell’s Year’s Best SF, since it’s a direct competitor to this volume, but suffice it to say that the general critical consensus seems to be that in a field as large and diverse as science fiction, there’s more than enough room for two “best” anthologies every year; in fact, there’s usually not all that much overlap between my selections and Hartwell’s, which means that a greater spectrum of writers gets a chance to be showcased every year than would otherwise be the case.) If there was a new edition in a new best-of-the-year series concentrating on genre work of various sorts published in Australia, The Year’s Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy (HarperCollins Australia Voyager), edited by Jonathan Strahan and Jeremy G. Byrne, which was up to volume two last year, I didn’t see it. Once again, there were two best-of-the-year anthologies covering horror in 1999: the latest edition in the British series The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (Robinson, Caroll & Graff), edited by Stephen Jones, now up to volume ten, and the Ellen Datlow half of a huge volume covering both horror and fantasy, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (St. Martin’s Press), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, this year up to its twelfth annual collection. In spite of the increasing popularity of the fantasy genre, fantasy, as opposed to horror, is still only covered by the Windling half of the Datlow/Windling anthology.

  Turning to retrospective SF anthologies, books that provide a historical/critical overview of the evolution of the field, one of your best bets here is the above-mentioned anthology of work by writers who have won SFWA’s Grand Master Award, The SFWA Grand Masters, Volume 1 (Tor), edited by Frederik Pohl, which may be the most substantial single-volume SF reprint anthology of the year, containing classic work by Robert A. Heinlein, Fritz Leiber, Clifford D. Simak, L. Sprague de Camp, and Jack Williamson, much of which may be unavailable to (or even unknown to) modern generations of readers; two more volumes are to follow. Historic perspective of an interestingly quirky sort is provided by My Favorite Science Fiction Story (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg, in which famous science fiction writers were asked to select their favourite science fiction story. The anthology features good work by Cordwainer Smith, Frederik Pohl, Roger Zelazny, Howard Waldrop, Ward Moore, Gordon R. Dickson, Theodore Sturgeon, James Blish, and others, plus interesting commentary from the selectors as to why they picked the story that they did. Some of the choices also shed light on the sources and inspiration for the selectors’s own work, something that’s suddenly very clear when you see Joe Haldeman select Frederik Pohl’s “Day Million” as his favorite SF story (for an idea of what I mean, read Haldeman’s own story “Anniversary Project” after first reading the Pohl), or Connie Willis select Ward Moore’s “Lot”, or Harry Turtledove select Howard Waldrop’s “The Ugly Chicken”; some of the choices are at first glance surprising, like Arthur C. Clarke selecting Theodore Sturgeon’s “The Man Who Lost the Sea”, but make perfect sense when you think about them, and give you an interesting new perspective from which to examine the selector’s work. The best work from the last few years of F&SF, including strong stories by Ursula K. Le Guin, Maureen F. McHugh, Bruce Sterling, John Crowley, Elizabeth Hand, and others, is featured in The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction: The Fiftieth Anniversary Collection, edited by Edward L. Ferman and Gordon Van Gelder (Tor). Noted without comment is The Good New Stuff (St. Martin’s Griffin), edited by Gardner Dozois, a retrospective overview of the evolution of “adventure SF” from the ’60s to the ’90s, a follow-up volume to last year’s The Good Old Stuff.

  There were several interesting “regional” reprint anthologies this year. Centaurus: The Best of Australian Science Fiction, edited by David G. Hartwell and Damien Broderick (Tor), gives us an overview of the booming Australian SF scene, and features good work by George Turner, Greg Egan, Chris Lawson, Lucy Sussex, Stephen Dedman, Cherry Wilder, Sean Williams, Hal Colebatch, Damien Broderick himself, and others. Northern Suns, edited by David G. Hartwell and Glenn Grant (Tor), showcases SF writers from Canada, and features good work from Cory Doctorow, Eric Choi, Sally McBride, Jan Lars Jensen, Nalo Hopkinson, W.P. Kinsella, Karl Schroeder, Geoff Ryman, and others. If you can get only one of these, Centaurus is slightly stronger than Northern Suns, but you ought to get both if you can afford it, to get a feeling for what’s happening in worlds of SF writing outside the usual American/British axis. For a look at a really different world, where the featured writers will be unknown to much of the English-speaking genre audience, check out The Dedalus Book of Spanish Fantasy, edited by Margaret Jull Costa and Annella McDermott (Dedalus).

  Two interesting small-press items, reprint anthologies somewhere on the borderland between SF and horror, are Technohorror: Inventions in Terror and Bangs & Whimpers: Stories about the End of the World, both edited by James Frenkel (Roxbury Park/Lowell House). Technohorror features good reprint work by Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, Damon Knight, Michael Swanwick, Pat Cadigan, Stephen King, and others (including an early Greg Egan story, from back when it looked as if he were going to turn out to be a horror writer instead of a hard-science writer), while Bangs & Whimpers (one of only two apocalyptic millennium-oriented books I can think of from this year, in SF, anyway, as opposed to the dozens that had be
en predicted) contains good reprints from Robert A. Heinlein, Robert Reed, Philip K. Dick, Frederik Pohl, James Tiptree, Jr., James Thurber, Isaac Asimov, and others.

  Noted without comment are Future War, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (Ace), Armageddons, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (Ace), Isaac Asimov’s Valentines, edited by Gardner Dozois and Sheila Williams (Ace), Isaac Asimov’s Werewolves, edited by Gardner Dozois and Sheila Williams (Ace), and Isaac Asimov’s Solar System, edited by Gardner Dozois and Sheila Williams (Ace).

  Worth looking into in the reprint fantasy anthology market this year were The Mammoth Book of Arthurian Legends and The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy II, both edited by Mike Ashley (Carroll & Graf).

  Other than the above-mentioned “best” anthologies by Stephen Jones and Datlow and Windling, there didn’t seem to be a lot of reprint horror anthologies this year, but then again, I haven’t been following the horror field closely, so I might have missed them. One of the few I did see was 100 Hilarious Little Howlers, edited by Stephen Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg (Barnes & Noble).

  An associational anthology that many SF/fantasy fans might enjoy, one that features the work of familiar genre authors such as Stephen Baxter, Tom Holt, Liz Holliday, and Richard A. Lupoff, is Royal Whodunnits, edited by Mike Ashley (Robinson).

  It was a solid, if unexceptional, year in the SF-and-fantasy-oriented nonfiction and reference book field, with many of the best bargains in the related art book field.

  The single most substantial volume of the year, in fact, was a book that could be considered to be either a cultural history of the field or an art book, depending on how you squint at it (we’ll list it in both places), Frank M. Robinson’s monumental Science Fiction of the 20th Century (Collector’s Press). The Robinson book reproduces some of the most luminous (and most lurid) covers of the old pulp magazine era, thus making it one of the year’s best art books, but although those glorious pulp images speak well for themselves, Robinson’s discussion of the covers, setting them in their cultural context, is the icing on the cake, and functions as a shrewd and knowledgeable study of American pop culture in general, and science fiction in particular. Camille Bacon-Smith’s Science Fiction Culture (University of Pennsylvania Press) also offers a pop-culture perspective on science fiction, particularly on the interactions of science fiction and science fiction “fandom”. the several (only partially overlapping) subcultures of readers and enthusiasts – fans, originally from fanatic – that revolve (ostensibly, anyway) around the science fiction genre itself; but although there’s a large amount of useful information here, and even some valuable insights, the author’s sloppiness with matters of fact (most of them easily researchable) and generally vague grasp of genre history diminishes the book’s value as a reference tool, although many members of the lay audience may find it entertaining and accessible.

  There were also several drier, more academically oriented, reference books this year, probably more for the specialist than for the average reader, including: Fantasy and Horror: A Critical and Historical Guide to Literature, Illustration, Film, TV, Radio, and the Internet, edited by Neil Barron (Scarecrow Press); Strange Constellations: A History of Australian Science Fiction, by Russell Blackford, Van Ikin, and Sean McMullen (Greenwood Press); and The Fantasy Literature of England, by Colin Manlove (Macmillan UK). The extremely valuable research tool The Locus Index to Science Fiction (1984–1998), by Charles N. Brown and William G. Contento, combined with the Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections, by William G. Contento, is now available in CD form, from Locus Press for $45 – and if you have anything other than the most casual of interests in the SF field, this is an essential purchase that will pay for itself many times over in short order (myself, I find that there’s rarely a week that goes by when I don’t use it to look up something). It can be ordered on-line, at the Locus Online site, www.locusmag.com, and regular updates for it are available there as well. A more specialized, but also valuable, research tool, also in CD form, is the Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Weird Fiction Magazine Index (1890–1998), by Stephen T. Miller and William G. Contento, also available from Locus Press for $45.

  A generalized book of genre criticism was Deconstructing the Starships: Science, Fiction and Reality, by Gwyneth Jones (Liverpool University Press), while critical studies of individual writers included Demand My Writing: Joanna Russ/Feminism/Science Fiction, by Jeanne Cortiel (Liverpool University Press), and The Road to Castle Mount: The Science Fiction of Robert Silverberg, by Edgar L. Chapman (Greenwood). Books about writers included George Turner: A Life, by Judith Raphael Buckrich (Melbourne University Press), Tarzan Forever: The Life of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Creator of Tarzan, by John Taliaferro (Scribner), and a charming, frank, and insightful autobiography by Brian W. Aldiss. The Twinkling of an Eye, or, My Life as an Englishman (St. Martin’s Press). Books of interviews with genre figures included Pioneers of Wonder: Conversations with the Founders of Science Fiction, by Eric Leif Davin (Prometheus), and The Robert Heinlein Interview and Other Heinleiniana, by J. Neil Schulman (pulpless.com). Further on the edges of the field, there were also several critical studies of fairy tales, including When Dreams Come True: Classical Fairy Tales and Their Traditions, by Jack Zipes (Routledge), The Witch Must Die: How Fairy Tales Shape Our Lives, by Sheldon Cashdan (Basic Books), and No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock, by Marina Warner (Farrar Straus Giroux).

  Out on the edges of the field in a different direction are two reference books for places that don’t exist: The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi (Harcourt Brace), and Dictionary of Science Fiction Places, by Brian Stableford (Simon & Schuster). Also out on the borderlands somewhere, perhaps on the edge of Art Book Land, is The Book of End Times, by John Clute (HarperPrism), a collage of illustrations, quotations, and photographs dealing with the turning of the millennium and the end-of-the-world frenzy it’s been known to whip up.

  Which edges us neatly into the art book field, which was fairly strong this year. I’ve already mentioned Frank M. Robinson’s Science Fiction of the 20th Century, which, if considered as an art book, would be right up there at the top of the category. As would three retrospective collections, Legacy: Selected Paintings and Drawings by the Grand Master of Fantastic Art, by old master Frank Frazetta (Underwood), Transluminal: The Paintings of Jim Burns, by new(er) master Jim Burns (Paper Tiger), and Maxfield Parrish 1870–1966, by Maxfield Parrish (Abrams), a master not usually thought of as a genre artist at all, but one whose work has clearly had a deep and lasting impact on genre work, particularly fantasy landscape art. Last year, during his Locus Award acceptance speech, Arnie Fenner took me to task for referring to Spectrum 5 as “a sort of Best-of-the-Year series that compiles the year’s fantastic art”, but it’s hard to see any other description of the book that really fits (sorry, Arnie!); certainly it fits Spectrum 6: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art, by Cathy and Arnie Fenner (Underwood) just as well as it fit Spectrum 5, and is what makes this valuable as an overview of – just as it says – the contemporary fantastic art field, and places it near the top of the art book category as well. This year, though, it has a worthy rival in the overview-of-contemporary-fantastic-art category, Fantasy Art of the New Millennium. The Best in Fantasy and SF Art Worldwide, by Dick Jude (Voyager). Worth checking out as well is an overview of rarely seen art from what might just as well be another world, as alien as it is to the Western tradition, Spirit Country: Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art, compiled by Jennifer Isaacs (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco).

  Also worthwhile in this category were The Book of Sea Monsters, by Bob Eggleton (Paper Tiger); Soft As Steel, The Art of Julie Bell, by Julie Bell (Paper Tiger); and The World of Michael Parkes, by Michael Parkes (Steltman).

  There were a fair number of general genre-related nonfiction books of interest this year. Leading the list for most genre readers would probably be three nonfiction titles by well
-known genre writers: Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds!: Collected Essays 1934–1998, by Arthur C. Clarke (St. Martin’s Press), which is just what it says it is; Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia, by Gregory Benford (Avon Eos), also self-explanatory; and Borderlands of Science: How to Think Like a Scientist and Write Science Fiction, by Charles Sheffield (Baen), an odd but effective cross between science essays and writing-advice articles by a scientist who is also an SF writer (as are all three of these authors, by the way).

  Moving a bit further afield, we have a new book from one of my favourites, The Knowledge Web: From Electronic Agents to Stonehenge and Back – and Other Journeys Through Knowledge, by James Burke (Simon & Schuster). Anyone who has read Burke’s famous Connections, or seen any of the TV versions of Burke’s work, knows what they’re in for here – bits of obscure knowledge of the history of technology and surprising insights into ways in which they relate and interact, all flavoured with Burke’s wry, antic humour – and Burke doesn’t disappoint. Assuming continued interest in alternate history and in space travel on the part of SF fans (a fairly safe bet), then many may be intrigued by What If? The World’s Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, edited by Robert Crowley (Putnam), and Entering Space: Creating a Space-Faring Civilization, by Robert Zubrin (Putnam). And books such as The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, by Brian Greene (W.W. Norton & Co.), and At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity, by Stuart Kauffman (Oxford University Press), may help you keep up with some of the more extreme mind-bending conceptualization done by today’s cutting-edge hard science writers, such as Greg Egan or Brian Stableford or Alastair Reynolds.