The year also featured excellent retrospective collections such as Aye, and Gomorrah: Stories (Vintage), by Samuel R. Delany; In This World, or Another, by James Blish; Transfinite: The Essential A. E. Van Vogt (NESFA Press), by A. E. Van Vogt; A New Dawn (NESFA Press), by John W. Campbell, Jr.; Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Finest Tales (Morrow), by Ray Bradbury; The Selected Stories of Chad Oliver, Volume One (NESFA Press), by Chad Oliver; Far From Earth: The Selected Stories of Chad Oliver, Volume Two (NESFA Press), by Chad Oliver; And Now the News …: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume IX (North Atlantic Books), by Theodore Sturgeon; A Plague of Demons and Other Stories (Baen), by Keith Laumer; Future Imperfect (Baen), by Keith Laumer; Scatterbrain (Tor), by Larry Niven; Martian Quest: The Early Brackett (Haffner Press), by Leigh Brackett; Midnight Sun: The Complete Stories of Kane (Night Shade), by Karl Edward Wagner; Owls Hoot in the Daylight and Other Omens (Night Shade), by Manly Wade Wellman; Sin’s Doorway and Other Ominous Entrances (Night Shade), by Manly Wade Welman; and The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” and Other Nautical Adventures (Night Shade), by William Hope Hodgson.
Meisha Merlin issued a reprint of George R. R. Martin’s excellent collection, Tuf Voyaging, Eos reprinted Isaac Asimov’s Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection, and Ace reprinted William Gibson’s Burning Chrome.
And “electronic collections” continue to be available for downloading online as well, at sites such as Fictionwise and ElectricStory.
As you can see, small-press publishers were even more important in the short story collection market this year than they usually are, with the bulk of the year’s collections coming from small-press publishers such as Golden Gryphon Press, NESFA Press, Five Star, Old Earth Books, Night Shade Press, Subterranean Press, Wheatland Press, and others. As very few small-press titles will be findable in the average bookstore, or even in the average chain superstore, that 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 who have little presence in most bookstores: Old Earth Books, P.O. Box 19951, Baltimore, MD 21211-0951—$25.00 for Limekiller!, by Avram Davidson; Golden Gryphon Press, 3002 Perkins Road, Urbana, IL 61802—$24.95 for Custer’s Last Jump and Other Collaborations, by Howard Waldrop et al; $24.95 for Budayeen Nights, by George Alec Effinger; $24.95 for Brighten to Incandescence, by Michael Bishop; Subterranean Press, P.O. Box 190106, Burton, MI 48519—$40.00 for GRRM: A RRetrospective, by George R.R. Martin, $40.00 for Unintended Consequences, by Alex Irvine, $40.00 for In For a Penny, by James Blaylock, $35.00 for The Devils in the Details, by James Blaylock and Tim Powers; Tachyon Press, 1459 18th St. #139, San Francisco, CA 94107—$14.95 for Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures, by Michael Swanwick, $8.95 for A Field Guide to the Mesozoic Megafauna and Five British Dinosaurs, by Michael Swanwick; NESFA Press, P.O. Box 809, Framingham, MA 01701-0809—$24.00 (plus $2.50 shipping in all cases) for The Selected Stories of Chad Oliver, Volume 1: A Star Above It, $24.00 (plus $2.50 shipping) for The Selected Stories of Chad Oliver, Volume 2: Far From This Earth, $29.00 for Transfinite: The Essential A. E. Van Vogt, by A. E. Van Vogt, and $26.00 for A New Dawn: The Complete Don A. Stuart Stories, by John W. Campbell, Jr.; Five Star Books, 295 Kennedy Memorial Drive, Waterville, ME 04901—$25.95 for American Beauty, by Allen M. Steele, $25.95 for Visitations, by Jack Dann, $25.95 for Deus X and Other Stories, by Norman Spinrad, $25.95 for In This World, or Another, by James Blish, $25.93 for Night Lives: Nine Stories of the Dark Fantastic, by Phyllis Eisenstein, $25.95 for Eye of Flame and Other Fantasies, by Pamela Sargent, $25.93 for Time Travelers, Ghosts, and Other Visitors, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman; Darkside Press, 4128 Woodland Park Ave., N. Seattle, WA, 98103—$40.00 for No Place Like Earth, by John Wyndham; Wheatland Press, P.O. Box 1818, Wilsonville, OR 97070—$19.95 for Dream Factories and Radio Pictures, by Howard Waldrop, $19.95 for Greetings From Lake Wu, by Jay Lake; PS Publishing, 98 High Ash Drive, Leeds L517 8RE, England, UK—$50.00 for Bibliomancy, by Elizabeth Hand; MirrorDanse Books, P.O. Box 3542, Parramatta NSW 2124—A$18.95 for Written in Blood, by Chris Lawson; Haffner Press, 5005 Crooks Rd., Suite 35, Royal Oak, MI 48073-1239—$40.00 plus $5.00 postage for Martian Quest: The Early Brackett, by Leigh Brackett; Meshia Merlin, P.O. Box 7, Decatur, GA 30031—$16 for Tuf Voyaging, by George R. R. Martin; Small Beer Press, 360 Atlantic Avenue, PMB #132, Brooklyn, NY 11217—$5.00 for Other Cities, by Benjamin Rosenbaum, $16 for Kalpa Imperial, by Angelica Gorodischer; Prime, P.O. Box 36503, Canton, OH, 44735—$29.45 for Little Gods, by Tim Pratt; Night Shade Books, 3623 SW Baird St., Portland, OR 97219—$35.00 for Owls Hoot in the Daylight and Other Omens, by Manly Wade Wellman, $35.00 for Sin’s Doorway and Other Ominous Entrances, by Manly Wade Wellman, $35.00 for Midnight Sun: The Complete Stories of Kane, $35.00 for The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” and Other Nautical Adventures, by Willliam Hope Hodgson, $15.00 for Ghosts of Yesterday, by Jack Cady; North Atlantic Press, P.O. Box 12327, Berkeley, CA, 94701—$35.00 for And Now the News …: The Complete Short Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume IX.
The reprint anthology market was somewhat weak this year overall, with fewer of the big retrospective anthologies that have distinguished the last couple of years in this category. As usual, the most reliable bets for your money in this category were the various “Best of the Year” anthologies, although there were some changes in editorial lineups this year, and some new players added to the game. In 2004, science fiction is being covered by four “Best of the Year” anthology series, up from last year’s three: the one you are holding in your hand, The Year’s Best Science Fiction series from St. Martin’s Press, now up to its twenty-first annual volume; the Year’s Best SF series (Eos), edited by David G. Hartwell, now up to its ninth annual volume, and Science Fiction: The Best of 2003 (ibooks), edited by Jonathan Strahan and Karen Haber, with Strahan replacing founding editor Robert Silverberg; Jonathan Strahan is also editing a new science fiction Best of the Year series devoted to novellas, starting this year, and available only from the Science Fiction Book Club. Once again, there were two 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, now up to Volume Fourteen, 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), this year up to its Sixteenth Annual Collection—this year, though, saw Kelly Link and Gavin Grant taking over the “fantasy” half of the book from longtime editor Terri Windling, so that the series is now edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant. Fantasy is also covered by Year’s Best Fantasy (Eos), edited by David G. Hartwell and Katherine Cramer, now up to its fourth annual volume. The other Best anthology covering fantasy (ibooks), a series launched in 2002 by editors Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber, is taking a break this year, and when it returns in 2005, will be edited by Jonathan Strahan and Karen Harber, instead of Silverberg and Harber. Similar in a way, and also good, is the annual Nebula Award anthology, Nebula Awards Showcase 2003 (Roc), edited by Nancy Kress.
The best stand-alone reprint anthology of the year was probably One Lamp: Alternate History Stories from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (Four Walls Eight Windows), edited by Gordon Van Gelder; I’ve used five of the fourteen stories here in one Best of the Year anthology or another over the years, and certainly would have used some of the others, classics like Poul Anderson’s “Delenda Est,” C. M. Kornbluth’s “Two Dooms,” and Alfred Bester’s “The Men Who Murdered Mohammed,” if I’d been doing such an anthology back when they were first published (unlikely, since “Two Dooms” was published when I was eleven). Cities (Gollancz), edited by Peter Crowther, brings together four of the novellas earlier published as individual chapbooks in Britain by PS Publishing, first-rate stuff by Geoff Ryman, China Mieville, Paul Di Filippo, and Michael Moorcock. Infinity plus two (PS Publishing), edited by Keith Brooke and Nick Gevers, similarly brings together smart work by contemporary authors, most of them
British. The Mammoth Book of Future Cops (Carroll & Graf), edited by Maxim Jakubowski and M. Christian, is a, well, mammoth mixed reprint and original anthology, featuring good work by Stephen Baxter, China Mieville, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Paul J. McAuley, Mike Resnick, Joe Haldeman, and others. Also worthwhile were The Best Time Travel Stories of All Time, edited by Barry Malzberg, and a sequence of “first sale” anthologies covering science fiction, fantasy, and horror, all from DAW, all edited by Steven H. Silver and Martin H. Greenberg: Wondrous Beginnings, Magical Beginnings, and Horrible Beginnings.
Editor Patrick Neilsen Hayden shrewdly ventured into new territory this year by bringing us an excellent Young Adult anthology. New Skies: An Anthology of Today’s Science Fiction (Tor), catered to the long-neglected science fiction YA audience (for whom there’s been very little specific material published since the heyday of the Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton “juveniles” in the 50s and 60s) with good stories (originally published as “adult” SF, but suitable for the YA market) by Orson Scott Card, Connie Willis, Philip K. Dick, Greg Bear, Terry Bisson, Greg Van Eekhout, Kim Stanley Robinson, and others. Coming up next year is the fantasy companion volume, another YA anthology, New Magics: An Anthology of Today’s Fantasy.
Also covering new territory, or at least territory that most English-speaking readers will be unfamiliar with, is Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain (Wesleyan), edited by Andrea L. Bell and Yolanda Molina-Gavilan, an anthology providing an overview of SF published in Spanish from before 1900 to the present day.
Noted without comment: Future Crimes (Ace), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.
If there were any reprint fantasy or horror anthologies published this year, other than A Yuletide Universe: Sixteen Fantastical Tales (Warner), edited by Brian M. Thomsen, and the ones already mentioned, I missed them.
It was a rather weak year in the SF-and-fantasy-oriented nonfiction and reference book field, although there were a few worthwhile titles. As has been true for the last few years, there was a slew of literary biographies and studies of the work of individual authors, including Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams (Justin Charles & Co), by M. J. Simpson, Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Titan Books), by Neil Gaiman; Dreamer of Dune (Tor), by Brian Herbert; Snake’s-Hands: The Fiction of John Crowley (Cosmos), by Alice K. Turner and Michael Andre-Driussi; The True Knowledge of Ken MacLeod (SF Foundation), edited by Andrew M. Butler and Farah Mendlesohn; Attending Daedalus: Gene Wolfe, Artifice and the Reader (Liverpool University Press), by Peter Wright; The Road to Middle-Earth: How J.R.R. Tolkien Created a New Mythology (Houghton Mifflin), by Tom Shippey; Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: A Concordance: Volume 1 (Scribner), by Robin Furth; The Novels of Kurt Vonnegut: Imagine Being an American (Praeger), by Donale E. Morse; The Thomas Ligotti Reader (Wildside), edited by Darrell Schweitzer; Robert Aickman: An Introduction (Gothic Press), by Gary William Crawford; and the autobiographical Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life (Del Rey), by Terry Brooks.
There appeared a number of more-generalized reference books this year, including Reference Guide to Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror; Second Edition (Libraries Unlimited), by Michael Burgess and Lisa R. Bartle and The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (Cambridge University Press), edited by Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn, but the average reader will probably be more interested by—and have more fun with—two books of smart and trenchant reviews and essays: Up Through an Empty House of Stars: Reviews and Essays 1980–2002 (Cosmos), by David Langford, and Scores: Reviews 1993–2003 (Beccon), by John Clute.
It was another strong year in the art-book field. The most entertaining of these for many SF fans will probably be Galactic Geographic Annual 3003 (Paper Tiger), written and illustrated by Karl Kofoed, which exists on the borderline between art book and prose science fiction, partaking of both, with gorgeous paintings accompanied by lots of text; the idea here is that this is a copy of a National Geographic-like magazine from the year 3003 which has somehow slipped into the past for us to read; it’s all done with a slyly deadpan straight face and with a lot of loving attention to detail, right down to the phony future advertisements that pepper the layout—and some of the science-fictional thinking here is actually pretty good; a fun book. Fans of fantasy and science fiction art will also want to have the latest edition in a Best of the Year-like retrospective of the year in fantastic art, Spectrum 10: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art (Underwood Books), by Cathy Fenner and Arnie Fenner, as well as The Chesley Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy Art: A Retrospective (Artist’s and Photographer’s Press), edited by John Grant, Elizabeth Humphrey, and Pamela D. Scoville; The Art of John Berkey (Paper Tiger), by Jane Frank; Great Fantasy Art Themes from the Frank Collection (Paper Tiger), by Jane and Howard Frank; Robota (Chronicle Books), by Doug Chiang and Orson Scott Card; More Fantasy Art Masters (Watson-Guptill), by Dick Jude; and Frank Frazetta: Icon: A Retrospective by the Grand Master of Fantastic Art (Underwood Books), edited by Cathy and Arnie Fenner.
Among the sparse crop of general genre-related nonfiction books of interest this year, the standout item, and probably the one that will be the most solidly appealing to many genre fans, will almost certainly be Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years (Random House), by Bruce Sterling. Usually I’m skeptical of futurologists, who often seem to have an insecure grasp on The Way Things Actually Work, and produce impractical and romanticized scenarios of the Days To Come, but Sterling is as hardheaded and rational as he is vividly imaginative and incredibly well informed; we’ve been getting bits and pieces of Sterling’s future world in his fiction for decades now, and it’s not only interesting to see it laid out in this fashion, but serves to reinforce my long-held feeling that Sterling’s is one of the few science fiction futures that feels as if it might actually someday happen. A Short History of Nearly Everything (Broadway), by Bill Bryson, makes a gallant attempt to be exactly what the title says that it is, with special emphasis on scientific topics, everything handled with Bryson’s customary wit and élan. A Brief History of the Human Race (Norton), by Michael Cook, is pretty self-explanatory too, and has some fascinating data. And Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 (HarperCollins), by Simon Winchester, is a scary depiction of a natural disaster of such epic proportions that it might well be something from an apocalyptic science fiction novel.
Once again, it was a strong year for fantasy movies, but a mediocre one—the more critical among us might be tempted to say “piss-poor”—for science fiction movies.
The heavy-hitters at the box office this year for science fiction were the two Matrix sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions. I was so disappointed in The Matrix Reloaded, which is much worse than the original movie, The Matrix (which I was only lukewarm about to begin with), that I couldn’t force myself to go see Matrix Revolutions—although fairness prompts me to add that some people have said that it was much better than its predecessor. The Matrix Reloaded is a typical “computer game” movie, where the kids duck and bob in their seats throughout, their hands twitching as if manipulating imaginary joysticks, and plot and characterization and every other consideration take a very distant backseat in comparison to the importance of the CGI effects. Of course, much the same thing could be said about the original The Matrix itself—but the sequel is more bloated and repetitive and less inventive, and a lot more self-important and self-satisfied, with lots of Talking Heads blathering pompously to each other for extended periods of time. For a movie that has little reason for existence other than to deliver one action scene after another, it’s a curiously sluggish movie, too. Even many of the action scenes seem sluggish, especially the interminable Kung Fu fighting scenes, which seem to go on forever. When you find yourself sneaking glances at your watch during the Big Fight scene you know that the movie is doing something wrong. I wasn’t all that impressed with the much-ballyhooed CGI effects, either;
some of them are good, sure, but I could clearly spot it most of the time when the real-life (sort of) Neo changed into the computer-animated Neo, which sort of blunted the impact. I’ll leave it to you to decide for yourselves whether Matrix Revolutions was actually better or not.
Terminator 3 was another lame and spavined sequel (or sequel to a sequel, really) where even the action scenes, especially the endless car-chase sequences, generated tedium and ennui rather than tension and excitement; this one makes The Matrix Reloaded look like a masterpiece, and the franchise really should have thrown in the towel after the much-superior Terminator 2. Paycheck is slicker, in some ways, and has better actors in it, but it’s yet another movie based on a Philip K. Dick short story that manages to translate it to the screen as an action movie full of car chases and paranoid intrigue while somehow leaving out most of the philosophical/metaphysical speculation that made Dick’s work so interesting. Both of these movies, not cheap to make, performed “below expectations” at the box office, Paycheck doing the least well of the two. The Core was rotten to the, with good special effects but little else to recommend it, especially not plot-logic or even a pretense of scientific accuracy.
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