The Year's Best SF 25 # 2007

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  The big story in the original anthology market this year was the launch of several new annual original anthology series, which, if they can manage to establish themselves, will brighten up the genre short fiction scene considerably. All of them were uneven–all featured good stories, all featured mediocre work, and the percentage of actual science fiction in each varied from volume to volume, sometimes considerably. Although none of the debut anthologies in these series clearly dominated the others, on balance I’d have to give a slight edge to The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction (Solaris), edited by George Mann; best stories here were by Stephen Baxter and Keith Brooke, although there was also good work by Peter F. Hamilton, Jay Lake and Greg Van Eekhout, Paul Di Fillipo, Neal Asher, Eric Brown, and others; the majority of the stories here were science fiction, which also gave it an edge, in my eyes at least. Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge (Pyr), edited by Lou Anders, probably had a higher ratio of good solid competent stories to mediocre ones than The Solaris Book of New SF, but fewer of its stories rose noticeably above that level; best work here is by Ian McDonald, but the book also featured good work by Robert Charles Wilson, Elizabeth Bear, John Meaney, Paul Di Filippo, and others, most of which again were SF, although a few stretched the definition a bit. In terms of literary quality, judging the stories just as stories, regardless of genre, the best of the newly-launched anthology series was probably Eclipse One: New Fantasy and Science Fiction (Night Shade Books), edited by Jonathan Strahan, but I couldn’t help but be disappointed by how little science fiction there was here, most of the stories falling on the fantasy/slipstream/New Weird end of the spectrum instead; considerations of genre aside, Eclipse One featured strong work by Andy Duncan, Lucius Shepard, Eileen Gunn, Bruce Sterling, Maureen McHugh, Kathleen Ann Goonan, and others.

  Let’s hope that one or more, preferably all three, of these anthology series survives.

  Alien Crimes (Science Fiction Book Club), edited by Mike Resnick, a book of mystery/SF hybrids, turned out to be one of the most solid SF anthologies of the year, in spite of its unpromising premise; the best work here was by Gregory Benford and Pat Cadigan, although there was also good work by Walter Jon Williams, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Harry Turtledove, and Resnick himself.

  Future Weapons of War (Baen), edited by Joe Haldeman and Martin H. Greenberg, is a bit more substantial than the average Greenberg anthology, featuring good work by Kristine Kathyrn Rusch, Paul J. McAuley, Geoffrey A. Landis, Brian Stableford, and others. Man vs. Machine, edited by John Helfers and Martin H. Greenberg, also features some solid work. Other pleasant but minor mass-market paperback anthologies this year included Time Twisters (DAW), edited by Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg, The Future We Wish We’d Had (DAW), by Martin H. Greenberg and Rebecca Lickiss, Places to Be, People to Kill (DAW), by Martin H. Greenberg and Britiany Koren, and Under Cover of Darkness (DAW), by Julie E. Czerneda and Jane Panccia.

  Noted without comment is The New Space Opera (Eos), edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan.

  Some of the best and most solidly science fiction-oriented anthologies of the year were almost stealth-published, with the likelihood being that few readers came across them, and perhaps were not able to find them even if they went looking for them. Best of these was disLOCATIONS (NewCon Press), edited by Ian Whates, and published by a very small press in an edition of only five hundred copies; nevertheless, there were strong to very strong stories here by Ken MacLeod, Brian Stableford, Pat Cadigan, Hal Duncan, and others. Another very small press, Hadley Rille Books, published three anthologies this year, all edited by Eric T. Reynolds, the best of which was Visual Journeys (Hadley Rille Books), which also doubled as a collection of space art by artists such as Chesley Bonestell and Bob Eggleton, each matched with a story inspired by the artwork; best stories here were by James Van Pelt and Justin Stanchfield, although there was also good work by Jay Lake, Richard Chwedyk, Christopher McKitterick, G. David Nordley and others, almost all center-core science fiction. Also worthwhile was Ruins Extraterrestrial (Hadley Rille Books), which featured strong work by Lavie Tidhar, Sue Blalock, Christopher McKitterrick, and others, with the best story being by Justin Stanchfield. The least impressive of the three, by a good margin, and the one that featured the smallest proportion of SF, was Ruins Terra (Hadley Rille Books), although there was interesting work here by Jenny Blackford and Lyn McConchie. Triangulation: End of Time (PARSEC Ink), edited by Pete Butler, is not as strong as Visual Journeys or Ruins Extraterrestrial, but does contain good work by Tim Pratt, Ian Creasey, Jeste de Vries, and others.

  Although I’m not convinced by its arguments in favor of there being such a thing as “Canadian SF,” as distinct from regular SF, Tesseracts Eleven (EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy), edited by Cory Doctorow and Holly Phillips, features good work by Claude Lalumiere, Andrew Gray, Elisabeth Vonarburg, Candas Jane Dorsey, Hugh A.D. Spencer, and others, although, like Eclipse One, very little of it is really science fiction by any reasonable definition. Much the same can be said of another enjoyable anthology, Logorrhea (Bantam Spectra), edited by John Kilma; although it had one of the most unlikely themes of the year, stories inspired by words which had won a spelling bee, it managed to deliver strong work by Liz Williams, Alex Irvine, Daniel Abraham, Tim Pratt, Theodora Goss, Jay Lake, and others, although you’ll find little core science fiction here either and not even much genre fantasy. Eclipse One would probably fit in better down here, on the border of SF/fantasy and slipstream, than it does up with the mostly-SF anthologies such as The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction and Fast Forward 1. Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing (Interstitial Arts Foundation), edited by Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss, and Text: UR: The New Book of Masks (Raw Dog Screaming), edited by Forrest Aguirre, slipped even more into slipstream/literary surrealism, a bit too much for my taste, in fact.

  The most political anthology of the year was Glorifying Terrorism (Rackstraw Press), edited by Farah Mendlesohn, whose very existence is a rather brave protest (since everyone involved in it is theoretically breaking the law) against Great Britain’s vague and silly law forbidding the mention in print of anything that “glorifies terrorism”; unsurprisingly in an anthology so nakedly and passionately didactic, polemics trumps art in most of the stories, although there is good work here by Una McCormack, Lavie Tidhar, Charles Stross, Lucy Kemnizter, and others. The long-running critical journal Foundation celebrated its hundredth issue with a special fiction issue, Foundation 100: The Anthology (Science Fiction Foundation), edited by Farah Mendlesohn and Graham Sleight, which functioned as an original anthology; best stories here are by Greg Egan and Una McCormack, although there’s also good work by John Kessel, Vandana Singh, David Marusek, and others. Mildly controversial (although in practice it was actually pretty respectful, on average, with a few partial exceptions more playful than really sacreligious) was A Cross of Centuries : Twenty-Five Imaginative Tales About the Christ (Thunder’s Mouth Press), a mixed reprint (mostly) and original anthology edited by Michael Bishop.

  It was probably a weaker year than last year for novellas published as individual chapbooks, although some good ones still did appear. PS Publishing brought out Starship Summer, by Eric Brown; Illyria, by Elizabeth Hand; Template, by Matt Hughes; Crystal Cosmos, by Rhys Hughes; Hereafter & After, by Richard Parks; and City Beyond Play, by Philip Jose Farmer and Danny Adams. Subterranean Press published Rude Mechanicals, by Kage Baker; Missile Gap, by Charles Stross; The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate, by Ted Chiang; Space Boy, by Orson Scott Card; The River Horses, by Allen M. Steele; The Sagan Diary, by John Scalzi; Pilot Light, by Tim Powers and James P. Blaylock; The Kragen, by Jack Vance; The Voyage of the Proteus, by Thomas M. Disch; and All Seated on the Ground, by Connie Willis. MonkeyBrain Books issued Cenotaxis, by Sean Williams; and Escape from Hell!, by Hal Duncan. Aqueduct Press brought out Of Love and Other Monsters, by Vandana Singh; Making Love in Madrid, by Kimberley Todd Wade; and We, Robots, by Sue Lange. Tor published A Wa
r of Gifts, by Orson Scott Card.

  SF stories continued to be found in unlikely places, from the Australian science magazine Cosmos to Cricket. The MIT Technology Review (www.technologyreview.com), of all places, suddenly popped onto the radar this year as a good place to look for strong SF, publishing an excellent story by Greg Egan and good ones by David Marusek and Bruce Sterling.

  Even discounting the stories from the specific terrorism-themed anthology, there were a lot of stories about terrorism out there this year, I suppose not surprising considering the world we live in. There were a lot of stories featuring huge airships or zeppelins, pirates, and wooden sailing ships that can fly or travel between worlds. Could this be the influence of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies? (Would think that movies like Stardust and The Golden Compass, that also feature airships, came out too late in the year to influence most of its short fiction.) And for whatever reason (I’m not even going to venture a guess), there were a lot of stories about dogs this year too. There was also a substantial amount of Alternate History published in 2007, not only in the Alternate History magazine, Paradox, but in most of the other print and electronic magazines as well.

  The best fantasy anthology of the year (it also featured some soft horror) was almost certainly The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales (Viking), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling, which featured strong work by Kij Johnson, Pat Murphy, Kelly Link, Jeffrey Ford, Christopher Barzak, and others. Similar in feel but not as strong was a “sampler” from Fantasy magazine, Fantasy (Prime), edited by Sean Wallace and Paul Tremblay. The Solaris Book of New Fantasy (Solaris), edited by George Mann, was announced, but although it looks like it might be quite strong, it came out too late in the year to be considered and will have to be held over for next year. Pleasant but minor original fantasy anthologies this year included Wizards, Inc. (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Loren L. Coleman, Heroes in Training (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Jim C. Hines, Pandora’s Closet (DAW), edited by Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg, Fate Fantastic (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Daniel M. Hoyt, Army of the Fantastic (DAW), edited by John Marlo and John Helfers, If I were an Evil Overlord (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Russell Davis, and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress XXII (Norilana Books), edited by Elisabeth Waters.

  Noted without comment is Wizards (Berkley), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.

  There was a Romance/Fantasy cross-genre anthology this year, Best New Romantic Fantasy 2 (Juno), edited by Paula Guran, and a Gay Fiction/Fantasy cross, So Fey: Queer Fairy Fictions (Haworth), edited by Steve Berman. As far as I can tell there was only one shared-world anthology this year (at one point in genre history, there’d have been a half-dozen or more of them), The Grantville Gazette III (Baen), edited by Eric Flint.

  As usual, novice work by beginning writers, some of whom may later turn out to be important talents, was featured in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XXIII (Galaxy), edited by Algis Budrys; this year must have produced an especially good crop of new writers, since the book seemed more substantial than it usually does, with good work by Andrea Kail, Aliette de Bodard, and Jeff Carlson.

  I don’t follow horror closely anymore, but there, as far as I could tell, the big original anthology of the year seemed to be Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural (Tor), edited by Ellen Datlow, which featured good work by Laird Barron, Glen Hirshberg, John Grant, Pat Cadigan, Jeffrey Ford, Terry Dowling, and others. Other original horror anthologies included The Restless Dead (Candlewick), edited by Deborah Noyes, Dark Delicacies 2: Fear (Caroll & Graf), edited by Del Howlson and Jeff Gelb, and The Secret History of Vampires (DAW), edited by Darrell Schweitzer. H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu, who seems to get around pretty spryly for an Ancient Horror, appeared in High Seas Cthulhu (Elder Signs Press), edited by William Jones, Frontier Cthulhu: Ancient Horrors in the New West (Chaosium), edited by William Jones, and The Spiraling Worm: Man Versus the Cthulhu Mythos (Chaosium), edited by David Conyer. Can Cthulhu Meets Abbott and Costello be far behind?

  (Finding individual pricings for all of the items from small-presses mentioned in the Summation has become too time-intensive, and since several of the same small presses publish anthologies, novels, and short-story collections, it seems silly to repeat addresses for them in section after section. Therefore, I’m going to attempt to list here, in one place, all the addresses for small-presses that have books mentioned here or there in the Summation, whether from the anthologies section, the novel section, or the short-story collection section, and, where known, their web site addresses. That should make it easy enough for the reader to look up the individual price of any book mentioned that isn’t from a regular trade-publisher; such books are less-likely to be found in your average bookstore, or even in a chain superstore, and so will probably have to be mail-ordered. Many publishers seem to sell only online, through their web sites, and some will only accept payment through PayPal. Many books, even from some of the smaller presses, are also available through Amazon. com.)

  Addresses: PS Publishing, Grosvener House, 1 New Road, Hornsea, West Yorkshire, HU18 1PG, England, UK www.pspublishing.co.uk; Golden Gryphon Press, 3002 Perkins Road, Urbana, IL 61802, www.goldengryphon.com; NESFA Press, P.O. Box 809, Framinghan, MA 01701-0809, www.nesfa.org; Subterranean Press, P.O. Box 190106, Burton, MI 48519, www.subterraneanpress.com; Solaris, via www.solarisbooks.com; Old Earth Books, P.O. Box 19951, Baltimore, MD 21211-0951, www.oldearthbooks.com; Tachyon Press, 1459 18th St. #139, San Francisco, CA 94107, www.tachyonpublications.com; Night Shade Books, 1470 NW Saltzman Road, Portland, OR 97229, www.nightshadebooks.com; Five Star Books, 295 Kennedy Memorial Drive, Waterville, ME 04901, www.galegroup.com/fivestar; NewCon Press, via www.newconpress.com; Wheatland Press, P.O. Box 1818, Wilsonville, OR 97070, www.wheatlandpress.com, All-Star Stories, see contact information for Wheatland Press; Small Beer Press, 176 Prospect Ave., Northampton, MA 01060, www.smallbeerpress.com; Locus Press, P.O. Box 13305, Oakland, CA 94661; Crescent Books, Mercat Press Ltd., 10 Coates Crescent, Edinburgh, Scotland EH3 7AL, www.crescentfiction.com; Wildside Press/Cosmos Books/ Borgo Press, P.O. Box 301, Holicong, PA 18928-0301, or go to www.wildsidepress.com for pricing and ordering; Thunder’s Mouth, 245 West 17th St., 11th Flr., New York, N.Y. 10011-5300, www.thundersmouth.com; Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, Inc. and Tesseract Books, Ltd., P.O. Box 1714, Calgary, Alberta, T2P 2L7, Canada, www.edgewebsite.com; Aqueduct Press, P.O. Box 95787, Seattle, WA 98145-2787, www.aqueductpress.com; Phobos Books, 200 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003, www.phobosweb.com; Fairwood Press, 5203 Quincy Ave. SE, Auburn, WA 98092, www.fairwoodpress.com; BenBella Books, 6440 N. Central Expressway, Suite 508, Dallas, TX 75206, www.benbellabooks.com; Darkside Press, 13320 27th Ave. NE, Seattle, WA 98125, www.darksidepress.com; Haffner Press, 5005 Crooks Rd., Suite 35, Royal Oak, MI 48073-1239, www.haffnerpress.com; North Atlantic Press, P.O. Box 12327, Berkeley, CA, 94701; Prime, P.O. Box 36503, Canton, OH, 44735, www.primebooks.net; Fairwood Press, 5203 Quincy Ave. SE, Auburn, WA 98092, www.fairwoodpress.com; MonkeyBrain Books, 11204 Crossland Drive, Austin, TX 78726, www.monkeybrainbooks.com; Wesleyan University Press, University Press of New England, Order Dept., 37 Lafayette St., Lebanon NH 03766-1405, www.wesleyan.edu/wespress; Agog! Press, P.O. Box U302, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Austrailia, www.uow.ed.au/~rhood/agogpress; MirrorDanse Books, P.O. Box 3542, Parramatta NSW 2124, www.tabula-rasa.info/MirrorDanse; Arsenal Pulp Press, 103-1014 Homer Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6B 2W9, www.arsenalpress.com; DreamHaven Books, 912 W. Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN 55408; Elder Signs Press/Dimensions Books, order through www.dimensionsbooks.com; Chaosium , via www.chaosium.com; Spyre Books, P.O. Box 3005, Radford, VA 24143; SCIFI, Inc., P.O. Box 8442, Van Nuys, CA 91409-8442; Omnidawn Publishing, order through www.omnidawn.com; CSFG, Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild, www.csfg.org.au/publishing/anthologies/the_outcast; Hadley Rille Books, via www.hadleyrillebooks.com; ISFiC Press, 707 Sapling Lane, Deerfield, IL 60015-3969, or www.i
sficpress.com; Suddenly Press, via suddenlypress@yahoo.com; Sandstone Press, P.O. Box 5725, One High St., Dingwall, Ross-shire, IV15 9WJ; Tropism Press, via www.tropismpress.com; SF Poetry Association/Dark Regions Press, www.sfpoetry.com, checks to Helena Bell, SFPA Treasurer, 1225 West Freeman St., Apt. 12, Carbondale, IL 62401; DH Press, via diamondbookdistributors.com; Kurodahan Press, via web site www.kurodahan.com; Ramble House, 443 Gladstone Blvd., Shreveport LA 71104; Interstitial Arts Foundation, via www.interstitialarts.org; Raw Dog Screaming, via www.rawdogscreaming.com; Norilana Books, via www.norilana.com; coeur de lion, via www.coeurdelion.com.au; PARSECink, via www.parsecink.org; Robert J. Sawyer Books, via www.sfwriter.com/rjsbooks.htm; Rackstraw Press, via http://rackstrawpress; Candlewick, via www.candlewick.com; Zubaan, via www.zubaanbooks.com; Utter Tower, via www.threeleggedfox.co.uk; Spilt Milk Press, via www.electricvelocipede.com; Paper Golem, via www.papergolem.com; Galaxy Press, via www.galaxypress.com.