Reissued collections this year included Dreamsongs 1 and Dreamsongs 2 (Bantam Spectra), by George R.R. Martin; N-Space (Tor), by Larry Niven; Shatterday (Tachyon), by Harlan Ellison; The Last Mimzy (Del Rey), by Henry Kuttner (which, in spite of a title change to make it look like a movie tie-in book, is actually a reprint of The Best of Henry Kuttner); Black God’s Kiss, (Pazio/Planet Stories), by C.L. Moore; Dandelion Wine (PS Publishing), by Ray Bradbury; At the Mountains of Madness (Del Rey), by H.P. Lovecraft; The House of Cthulhu (Tor), by Brian Lumley; Skeleton Crew (Penguin/Signet), by Stephen King; and Wall of the Sky, Wall of the Eye (Harcourt/Harvest), by Jonathan Lethem.
Many collections are also issued by the Science Fiction Book Club every year, too many to individually list here, and a wide variety of “electronic collections,” often called “fiction bundles,” continue to be available for downloading online as well, at sites such as Fictionwise and ElectricStory. It’s worth noting that some collections contain original material; for instance, Kage Baker’s collection, Gods and Pawns, featured two never-before-published novellas, and there was also previously unpublished material in Lucius Shepard’s Dagger Key and Other Stories, Michael Swanwick’s The Dog Said Bow-Wow, Kelly Eskridge’s Dangerous Space, Carolyn Ives Gilman’s Aliens of the Heart, and in other collections.
The reprint anthology market was moderately strong again this year, and again the ever-growing crop of “Best of the Year” anthologies are probably your best bet for your money in this market. As far as I could tell, there were fourteen “Best of the Year” anthologies of various sorts available in 2007. Science fiction was covered by six anthologies (or five and a half, depending on how you want to look at it): the one you are reading at the moment, The Year’s Best Science Fiction series from St. Martin’s, edited by Gardner Dozois, now up to its Twenty-fifth Annual Collection; the Year’s Best SF series (Eos), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, now up to its Twelfth annual volume, Best Short Novels: 2007 (Science Fiction Book Club), edited by Jonathan Strahan; Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2007 (Prime), edited by Richard Horton, a new series, Space Opera (Prime), edited by Richard Horton, and a retitled version of Jonathan Strahan’s Best series from a new publisher, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume One (Night Shade Books), edited by Jonathan Strahan (this is where the “half a book” comes in, although I doubt that it’ll divide that neatly in practice). The annual Nebula Awards anthology usually covers science fiction as well as fantasy of various sorts functioning as a de-facto “Best of the Year” anthology, although its not usually counted among them (and thanks to SFWA’s bizarre “rolling eligibility” practice, the stories in it are often stories that everybody else saw a year and sometimes even two years before); this year’s edition was Nebula Awards Showcase 2007 (Roc), edited by Mike Resnick. There were three (or two and a half) Best of the Year anthologies covering horror: the latest edition in the British series The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (Robinson, Caroll & Graff), edited by Stephen Jones, up to its Eighteenth volume; 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, Kelly Link, and Gavin Grant, this year up to its Twentieth Annual Collection; and, Horror: The Best of the Year 2007 Edition (Prime), edited by John Gregory Betancourt and Sean Wallace. Fantasy was covered by four anthologies (if you add two halves together): by the Kelly Link and Gavin Grant half of the Datlow/Link & Grant anthology, by Year’s Best Fantasy 7, edited by David G. Hartwell and Katherine Cramer (Tachyon); by Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2007 (Prime), edited by Rich Horton; by Best American Fantasy (Prime), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, and by the fantasy half of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume One (Night Shade Books), edited by Jonathan Strahan, into which Strahan’s previous Fantasy: The Very Best of—series seems to have been subsumed, since it’s no longer being published separately. There was also The 2007 Rhysling Anthology (Science Fiction Poetry Association/Prime), edited by Drew Morse, which compiles the Rhysling Award-winning SF poetry of the year. If you count the Nebula anthology and the Rhyslling anthology, there were fourteen “Best of the Year” anthology series of one sort or another on offer this year.
There were also several strong retrospective overview “Bests” drawn from various magazines this year, both print and electronic: Asimov’s 30th Anniversary Anthology (Tachyon), edited by Sheila Williams, features strong reprint work by John Varley, Ursula K. Le Guin, Bruce Sterling, Lucius Shepard, James Patrick Kelly, and others. The Best of Jim Baen’s Universe (Baen), edited by Eric Flint, features stories drawn from the first year of this important new electronic magazine, with good reprints by Gregory Benford, Elizabeth Bear, Garth Nix, Mike Resnick, Gene Wolfe, and others. Infinity Plus: The Anthology (Solaris), edited by Keith Brooke and Nick Gevers, draws from one of the longest-lasting and most established of all internet SF fiction sites, featuring good reprints from Paul McAuley, Ian McDonald, Tony Daniel, Michael Moorcock, Kim Stanley Robinson, Mary Gentle, Brian Stableford, and others. The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet (Del Rey), edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant, brings us the best from this critically acclaimed little magazine, including stories by Karen Joy Fowler, Theodora Goss, Jim Sallis, Nalo Hopkinson, James Sallis, John Kessel, Link herself, and others. The James Tiptree Anthology 3 (Tachyon), edited by Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, and Jeffrey D. Smith, offers a kind of “Best of” collection drawn from things shortlisted for the prestigious Tiptree award, including work by Ursula K. Le Guin, Geoff Ryman, Vonda McIntyre, Ted Chiang, and others.
The view from the perspective of different cultures is given by The SFWA European Hall of Fame (Tor), edited by James Morrow and Kathryn Morrow, Worlds Apart: An Anthology of Russian Fantasy and Science Fiction (Overlook), edited by Alexander Levitsky, and Speculative Japan: Japanese Tales of Science Fiction and Fantasy (Kurudahan Press), edited by Gene Van Troyer and Grania Davis.
Noted without comment is another big retrospective anthology, The Best of the Best Volume 2: 20 Years of the Best Short Science Fiction Novels (St. Martin’s Press), edited by Gardner Dozois.
Once beyond the parade of “Best of” anthologies of one sort or another, one of the best of the year’s reprint anthologies was probably Rewired: The New Cyberpunk Anthology (Tachyon), edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, which takes a retrospective look back at the influence of cyberpunk since the heady days of the Cyberpunk Wars in the ’80s, and which features good reprints by Greg Egan, Michael Swanwick, Cory Doctorow, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, David Marusek, and others.
Another substantial and intriguing anthology is the William Hope Hodgson tribute anthology, William Hope Hodgson’s Night Lands Volume II, Nightmares of the Fall (Utter Tower), edited by Andy W. Robertson, a follow-up to the original Hodgson tribute anthology from 2003. (Some commentators are listing this as an original anthology since the individual stories have never appeared in print before, but since they’ve all been available on the Night Lands website (www.thenightland.co.uk) for several years, I’ve decided to treat it as a reprint anthology. There is frequently interesting new content up on the website, though, including at the moment a new novella by John C. Wright, so you should check it out.) As with the previous anthology, all the stories here are written as homages set in the milieu of William Hope Hodgson’s strange and eccentric masterpiece The Night Land–one of the probable inspirations for later work such as Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth and Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun—and also as with the previous anthology, not all of the writers handle this stylistically tricky material with the same authority. As was true of the previous anthology, the best stories here are two long novellas by John C. Wright, who, with his mannered, Victorian, slightly faustian prose, seems to be born to write this sort of thing, but there is also good work from Gerard Houarnet, Brett Davidson, and Andy Robertson himself.
The somewhat pretentiously named Prime Codex: The Hungry Edge of S
peculative Fiction (Paper Golem), edited by Lawrence M. Schoen and Michael Livingston, is an anthology concentrating on reprints of work by new (or newish) writers such as Ruth Nestvold, Cat Rambo, Tobia S. Bucknell, and Ken Scholes.
Futures from Nature (Tor), edited by Henry Gee, is a collection of short speculative /satirical pieces that have been appearing in Nature magazine over the last couple of years—some of them are pretty slight, but many of them are sharp and amusing, and the book overall is a surprising amount of fun. Another fun anthology distinctly on the light side is This is My Funniest 2: Leading Science Fiction Writers Present Their Funniest Stories Ever (Benbella), edited by Mike Resnick.
Noted without comment is Dangerous Games (Ace), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.
Reissued anthologies of merit this year included Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears (Prime), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling, The Man-Kzin Wars XI (Baen), and Alternate Generals III (Baen), edited by Harry Turtledove.
2007 seemed a rather lackluster year in the SF and fantasy oriented nonfiction and reference book field, producing nothing that stirred up the passion and critical attention that last year’s Tiptree biography by Julie Philips did. The strongest nonfiction books of the year were probably Gateways to Forever, the Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines, 1970–1980 (Liverpool University Press), by Mike Ashley, and The Country You Have Never Seen: Reviews and Essays by Joanna Russ (Liverpool University Press), by Joanna Russ. I particularly liked the Ashley book because I knew most of the participants involved and lived through most of the events covered, while the Russ book, mostly made up of her review columns from F&SF in the ’70s, reminds us that she was one of the great genre reviewers of our time, worthy to be ranked with other great genre reviewers such as Damon Knight, Algis Budrys, and James Blish.
About the closest thing to a reference book produced this year was Science Fact and Science Fiction (Routledge), by Brian Stableford, which discusses the ways in which science fiction has influenced the sciences, and vice versa. Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction (Oxford University Press), edited by Jeff Prucher, is indeed a dictionary rather than the more-usual encyclopedia, a collection of words and phrases made popular in science fiction—decent bathroom reading, perhaps, but nothing you’d want to read through in one sitting. In Other Words (Subterranean), by John Crowley and Sides (Cemetery Dance), by Peter Straub are collections of essays by those authors. In Memory of Wonder’s Child: Jack Williamson (Haffner Press), edited by Stephen Haffner, is a collection of tributes to and obituaries of the late Jack Williamson. Shadows of the New Sun: Wolfe on Writers/ Writers on Wolfe (Liverpool University Press), edited by Peter Wright, is self-explanatory, as is Hugo Gernsback and the Century of Science Fiction (McFarland), by Gary Westfahl, and Naomi Mitchison: A Profile of Her Life and Work (Aqueduct), by Leroy Hall, as are Anne McCaffrey: A Life With Dragons (University Press of Mississippi), by Robin Roberts, and The Cultural Influences of William Gibson, the “Father” of Cyberpunk Science Fiction (The Edwin Mellen Press), edited by Carl B. Yoke and Carol L. Robinson. What Can Be Saved from the Wreckage? James Branch Cabell in the Twenty-First Century (Temporary Culture), by Michael Swanwick, is sort of self-explanatory, an examination of James Branch Cabell’s position in the literary canon and how it got to be that way. Perhaps needing a bit of explanation is Hugo Gernsback: A Man Well Ahead of His Time (Poptronix), by Hugo Gernsback, edited by Larry Steckler, which is a partial autobiography by Gernsback left behind after his death and edited and filled-out by Steckler. The WisCon Chronicles: Volume 1 (Aqueduct), edited by L. Timmel Duchamp, is a collection of essays, interviews, and panel transcriptions from the annual feminist SF convention, WisCon.
Worthy of note is a reprint of Barry Malzberg’s collection of critical essays, Breakfast in the Ruins (Baen). I don’t by any means always agree with Malzberg’s conclusions (particularly about the awfulness of being a genre writer), but those opinions have rarely been expressed more fiercely and eloquently than here.
A bit on the lighter side than most of the books above is The End of Harry Potter? (Tor), by David Langford, an analysis of the Harry Potter books written before the release of the final novel that tries to guess the ultimate outcome of the series from the clues planted in the first six books.
It was also a weak year in the art book field. Your best buy was almost certainly Spectrum 14: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art (Underwood Books), by Cathy Fenner and Arnie Fenner, the latest edition in a Best of the Year-like retrospective of the year in fantastic art. Students of genre art and genre history will want Emshwiller: Infinity X Two: The Life and Art of Ed and Carol Emshwiller (Nonstop Press), edited by Luis Ortiz, as valuable for its biographical text as for the examples of their art (yes, Carol draws too) it contains. Much the same could be said about another mixed text-and-pictures biographical book, of a once-famous artist and illustrator who later became equally famous for his fiction writing, Mervyn Peake: The Man and His Art (Peter Owen Publishers) compiled by Sebastian Peake and Alison Eldred, edited by G. Peter Winnington. Also interesting was Paint or Pixel: The Digital Divide in Illustration Art (NonStop Press), edited by Jane Frank (paint clearly wins, in my opinion).
Other art books included Dreamscape: The Best of Imaginary Realism (Salbru); Worlds of Amano (DH Press), by Yoshitaka Amano; The Fantastic World of Claus Brusen (Edition Brusen/Colophon), by Ole Lindboe; Modern Masters Volume 11: Charles Vess (Two Morrows Publishing), edited by Christopher Irving and Eric Nolen-Weathington; Rough Work: Concept Art, Doodles, and Sketchbook Drawings by Frank Frazetta (Underwood Books), edited by Arnie Fenner and Kathy Fenner; Kinuko Craft: Drawings and Paintings (Imaginosis), by Kinuko Craft; Rafal Olbinsky Women: Motifs and Variations (Hudson Hill Press), by Rafal Olbinski; and The Arrival (Hatchette Children’s Books), by Sahaun Tan.
Visual Journeys (Hadley Rille Books), edited by Eric T. Reynolds, the mixed art/fiction anthology where paintings are matched with the stories they inspired, if considered for the artwork rather than the stories, also makes an interesting sampler of past and recent Space Art.
Among the general genre-related non-fiction books of interest this year, Where’s My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future That Never Arrived (Bloomsbury), by Daniel H. Wilson, draws on the same kind of retro-nostalgia for SF visions from the 1950s of what The Future was going to be like that also informs Greenberg and Lickiss’s anthology The Future We Wish We Had (it never seems to occur to anyone that the future we did end up with, with all its incredibly sophisticated advances in computer science, medicine, nanotech, and biological techniques, is in a number of profound ways far more amazing than a jetpack or a flying car). A welcome palliative to the retro-nostalgia attitude that devalues our own present and the future that will grow out of it is to be found in Beyond Human: Living with Robots and Cyborgs (Forge), by Gregory Benford and Elizabeth Malatre, which gives us a fascinating glimpse of the wonders of a high-tech future close enough that many of you reading these words may live to see it yourselves, barring a collapse of technological civilization or a dinosaur-killer asteroid. Speaking of which, Plagues, Apocalypses, and Bug-Eyed Monsters: How Speculative Fiction Shows Us Our Nightmares (McFarland), by Heather Urbanski, is an interesting overview of all the things that speculative fiction has warned us can go wrong, although it’s probably more aimed at a general audience than to a genre audience that will already be familiar with most of its content, and The World Without Us (St. Martin’s Press), by Alan Weisman, shows us just how quickly almost all traces of the human race will vanish from the face of the Earth after humanity has vanished, whether killed off by a super plague or taken by a more-democratic Rapture—only a few hundred to a few thousand years, in most cases (except for plastic bottles and lawn furniture, which will be here practically forever). It’s difficult to come up with a genre connection to justify mentioning The Cartoon History of the Modern World: Part 1, from Columbus to the U.S. Constitution (Collins), by Larry Gonick, but so many
SF fans love him, and his work is so full of the kind of color, exoticism, and descriptions of fallen empires and forgotten moments in history that provides much of the appeal of Alternate History and time-travel fiction, that I’m going to mention it anyway—erudite, extremely funny, and incredibly historically accurate. Do yourself a favor and read this. And the other Gonick volumes as well.
This was another good year for genre films, at least at the box-office (although, unlike last year, when there were one or two critical darlings, there were few films this year about which the majority of the critics could really muster up much enthusiasm). According to the Box Office Mojo site (www.boxofficemojo.com), nine out of the ten top-grossing movies of the year were genre films. Twelve out of the twenty top-grossing movies were genre films, and thirty-five out of the hundred top-grossing movies (more or less; I may have missed one somewhere) were genre films.
Before we start smugly congratulating ourselves on this here in the SF world, though, we should realize that most of these films were fantasy movies, superhero movies, and animated films, with little real SF on the list. The highest-ranked film on the box-office list that could make some claim to being SF was Transformers, which finished third in domestic grosses, earning $319,246,193. With its warring alien robots, I suppose it is SF, but, although it’s fast-paced and exciting, it’s bad SF, with science that’s nothing but hand-waving and technobabble and little plot logic or rigor in working out the implications of the basic situation—it’s really a comicbook movie in spirit, although based on a line of popular Hasbro toys (which later went on to inspire comics and graphic novels) rather than a comic book per se. The next sort-of SF movie on the list is I Am Legend, in sixth place, which made a mere $240,234,000 in domestic grosses. Based on a famous Richard Matheson novel (and filmed before both as The Omega Man and The Last Man on Earth), it’ll be harder to deny that this is SF—not only is it inspired by a book by a recognized genre writer, there’s even a (thin) scientific rationale why almost everybody in the world has turned into flesh-eating mutants … but I suspect that a big part of its popularity stems from the facts that people are watching it as a horror movie, and getting the same kind of thing out of it that you get from 28 Days or Dawn of the Dead, so I don’t know how much credit we can really take for it in the SF field. Although one mean-spirited critic said that the best actor in the movie was the dog that keeps the protagonist company, Will Smith actually does a credible job here, especially as he has to carry the whole movie practically by himself, with almost no other actors to play off of (unless you count the shrieking mutants). Some Matheson fans were pissed off that the movie radically changed the ending of the book, but they probably weren’t given their share of the $240,234,000 back. The only other movies that could justifiably be called SF on the whole rest of the hundred-movie list are Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem and The Last Mimzy (a disappointing version of the famous Henry Kuttner story “Mimzy Were the Borogroves”), which finished at sixty-seven and one hundred respectively, and were critical and box-office bombs. The Invasion, which didn’t even make it on to the top hundred list, is a remake of the ’50s paranoid horror classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers—which was scarier and better executed the first time around.
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