The Year’s Best Science Fiction Twenty-Sixth Annual

by Gardner Dozois

  Only a whisker-thickness behind is Fast Forward 2, edited by Lou Anders. The best stories here are probably those by Paolo Bacigalupi and Ian McDonald, but the book also contains good work by Benjamin Rosenbaum and Cory Doctorow, Nancy Kress, Jack Skillingstead, Chris Nakashima-Brown, Paul Cornell, Karl Schroeder and Tobias S. Bucknell, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Kay Kenyon, and others.

  Don’t let the fact that it’s being published as a YA anthology put you off—The Starry Rift, edited by Jonathan Strahan, is definitely one of the best SF anthologies of the year, everything in it fully of adult quality, and almost all of it center-core SF as well.

  Best stories here are those by Kelly Link and Ian McDonald (his gorgeously colored Future India story, “The Dust Assassin”), but there are also excellent stories by Paul McAuley, Gwyneth Jones, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Walter Jon Williams, and others, including an atypical near-future story by Greg Egan, more openly political than his stuff usually is. The fact that several stories are told in the first person by teenage narrators, usually young girls, may make several of the stories seem a bit familiar if read one after the other (and is also the only real indication that this is a YA anthology), so space them out over time.

  Another excellent anthology is Sideways in Crime, edited by Lou Anders. Most Alternate History stories are SF (particularly those that add a time-travel element), but we’ve already seen a fair amount of Alternate History Fantasy in the last few years (it’s an Alternate World, but in it griffins or giants are real, or magic works), and now we’ve got Alternate History Mystery, producing a book that’s a lot of fun; most of the stories would fall under the Alternate History Mystery SF heading, I guess (including one with crosstime travel), rather than the Alternate History Mystery Fantasy heading, since although there’s a couple of fairly wild alternate possibilities here, there’s none with griffins or where magic works. The best stories in the book is probably by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, but there’s also excellent work by Kage Baker, Paul Park, Mary Rosenblum, Theodore Judson, S. M. Stirling, Chris Roberson, and others. The most likely Alternate, as it requires the fewest changes from our own time line, is Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s story; the least likely is probably Mike Resnick and Eric Flint’s story, even more so than Chris Roberson’s story with its crosstime-traveling zeppelins.

  Several of the basic plotlines here are pretty similar—important man found dead under strange, usually politically charged circumstances—although the settings change radically from story to story, so I’d recommend that you read these a few at a time rather than all in one sitting.

  There are also some some good solid stories in The Solaris Book of Science Fiction II (Solaris), edited by George Mann, which is more even in quality than the first volume—none of the stories are as bad as the worst of the stories in the first one . . . but then again, none of the stories are as good as the best of the good stories were. The best stories here, in my opinion, are by Peter Watts, Eric Brown, Mary Robinette Kowal, Karl Schroeder, and Dominic Green. If I had to narrow it down to only two picks, it would be the Dominic Green and the Mary Robinette Kowal.

  In the past, I’ve criticized the British magazine Postscripts for not running enough core science fiction, and as if to twit me on this, Postscripts 15, a huge double-length (or longer) issue that is probably best considered as an anthology rather than a magazine, edited by Nick Gevers, bills itself an “all science fiction issue!” Not that that’s true, of course. By my definitions, there’s at least six or seven fantasy stories of one sort or another here, a reprinted article by Arthur C. Clarke, a metafiction piece by Brian W. Aldiss about meeting the Queen, and a fascinating autobiographical article by Paul McAuley about growing up in post–World War II England. Nevertheless, there is plenty of core science fiction here, most of it of excellent quality. Many of the best stories here are to be found in the special “Paul McAuley section,” which features, in addition to the above-mentioned autobiographical essay, a novel excerpt from McAuley’s The Quiet War, and four good stories by McAuley, one of which, “City of the Dead,” may be the pick of the issue, rivaled only by Ian McDonald’s (“A Ghost Samba”), which does almost as good a job of painting an evocative picture of a future Brazil as his Cyberaid stories have done with a future India. There are other good SF stories here by Chris Robertson, Matthew Hughes, Steven Utley, Jay Lake, Robert Reed, Mike Resnick, Beth Bernobich, Brian Stableford, Stephen Baxter, and others. The best of the fantasy stories are by Justina Robson, Jack Dann, and Paul Di Filippo.

  American publishers, especially the big trade houses, seem to like their genres segregated—no fantasy in science fiction anthologies, no science fiction in fantasy anthologies, no mystery or mainstream in either. That’s not true of Australian publishers, however, where it seems to be okay to jumble different genres together in the same anthology, and it’s certainly the rule with Dreaming Again: Thirty-Five New Stories Celebrating the Wild Side of Australian Fiction, edited by Jack Dann—the follow-up to 1998’s monumental Dreaming Down Under, edited by Dann and Janeen Webb, which brings us a similarly rich stew of fiction by Australian authors working in different genres, horror, fantasy, slipstream, science fiction. A wide variety of moods, too, with some stories horrific and grim, others seeming almost to be Young Adult pieces. There’s a bit too much horror here for my taste—a few zombie stories go a long way with me, and there’s lots of zombie stories here, to the point where it almost seems to become a running (or lurching) joke—but there’s also enough fantasy and science fiction stories in this huge volume to make up into respectable anthologies of their own, and if horror is your cup of blood, you’ll find the horror stories to be of high quality. Almost everything here is of high quality, in fact (even the stories I didn’t care for were excellently crafted), a rich smorgasbord, by thirty-six different authors, representative of the obviously busy Australian scene. The best science fiction is from Garth Nix, Margo Lanagan, Lee Battersby, Stephen Dedman, Simon Brown, Sean McMullen, Ben Francisco and Chris Lynch, Rowena Cory Daniels, and Jason Fischer. Fantasy (sometimes shading into horror) is best represented here by Terry Dowling, Rjurik Davidson, Peter A. Ball, Russell Blackford, Isobelle Carmody, Richard Harland, and Cecilia Dart-Thornton.

  The question, raised in the past by Greg Egan and others, as to whether there is such a thing in the first place as specifically Australian science fiction, as opposed just to science fiction in general, is a question too large to be settled here, but most of the stories in Dreaming Again that take place on Earth at least feature Australian settings, and a few of the stories—mostly the fantasies—seem to draw on Australian myths and legends.

  Flying in the face of what I said above about American trade publishers, The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Ellen Datlow, is a cross-genre anthology featuring SF, fantasy, horror, and slipstream stories. Oddly, for a book that puts “Science Fiction” first in its title, especially from a company like Del Rey, which is known for its solid, core, rather traditional science fiction, the smallest element in the mix is science fiction, with horror, fantasy, and slipstream making up the bulk of its contents—and what science fiction there is is soft near-future SF, with Datlow herself announcing in the Introduction (rather proudly, I thought) that “you won’t find off-planet stories or hard science fiction” in the anthology. The best story in the book, by a good margin, is one of those near-future SF stories, in fact, Maureen McHugh’s “Special Economics,” although there is also good SF work by Paul McAuley and Kim Newman, Pat Cadigan, and Jason Stoddard. More unclassifiable but still readable stuff, often on the borderline between slipstream and SF/fantasy, is provided by Elizabeth Bear, Jeffery Ford, Laird Barron, Christopher Rowe, Lucy Sussex, and others.

  Extraordinary Engines (Solaris), edited by Nick Gevers, is a steampunk anthology, many of whose stories double almost by definition as Alternate History. The best stories here are by Ian R. MacLeod and Kage Baker, but there’s also first-rate work by Jay Lake, Robert Reed, Jeff VanderMeer, James Lov
egrove, Keith Brooke, and others.

  One of last year’s strongest anthologies, appearing unexpectedly out of nowhere was disLOCATIONS, edited by Ian Whates, from very small press publisher NewCon Press. This year, Whates and NewCon Press published three original anthologies: Subterfuge, Celebrations, and Myth-Understandings. None of these is quite as strong as disLOCATIONS, but all contain good stories of various types, and all deserve your attention. The strongest of these is Subterfuge, which, probably not coincidentally, considering my tastes, contains the highest percentage of science fiction (although all three anthologies contain a mix of SF and fantasy). Best stories here are by Neal Asher and John Meaney, but there are also good SF stories here by Pat Cadigan, Una McCormack, Tony Ballantyne, and others. The best of the fantasy stories are by Tanith Lee and Dave Hutchinson. The best story in Celebrations, an anthology commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the British Science Fiction Association, is a Phildickian SF piece by Alastair Reynold, but there’s good work, both SF and fantasy, by Stephen Baxter, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Ken MacLeod, Dave Hutchinson, Brian Stableford, Liz Williams, and Molly Brown. The weakest of the three anthologies is Myth-Understandings, which features mostly fantasy. Best story here is Tricia Sullivan’s, although there’s also strong work by Liz Williams, Justina Robson, Pat Cadigan, Kari Sperring, and others.

  An odd item, another British small-press anthology, is The West Pier Gazette and Other Stories, Quercus One (Three Legged Fox Books), edited by Paul Brazier, an anthology of stories that have supposedly been previously published in electronic form on the members-only Quercus SF site (quercus-sf.com—although it doesn’t seem to have been updated for several years, and may be fallow). Half of the book is taken up by rather specialized Alternate History stories about alternate fates for the now-destroyed West Pier in Brighton, England, hence the title, and the rest of the book is devoted to more generalized SF, fantasy, and slipstream stories. Best thing here is a high-tech literalization of Egyptian mythology by Liz Williams, but there are also good stories by Geoff Ryman, Lavie Tidhar, Andy W. Robertson, Chris Butler, and others.

  Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty and Strangeness, edited by Mike Allen, is a mixed science fiction/fantasy anthology, with a few slipstream stories thrown in for good measure. In an exceptional year for original anthologies, it doesn’t come in at the top of the heap, but there is a lot of good stuff here, and the cover, an effective use of an old painting, is lovely. The best story in Clockwork Phoenix, by a considerable margin, is an SF story by Vandana Singh, but there is also good work by John C. Wright, Cat Sparks, C. S. MacCath, and others. The best of the fantasy stories are by Tanith Lee, Marie Brennan, John Grant, Cat Rambo, Ekaterina Sedia, and others.

  Another good anthology, full of solid, enjoyable work, is Seeds of Change (Prime), edited by John Joseph Adams. Best story here by a substantial margin, and one of the best of the year, is Ted Kosmatka’s “N-Words,” but there is also good work to be had here from Ken MacLeod, Jay Lake, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Mark Budz, Tobias Buckell, and others

  2012 (Twelfth Planet Press), edited by Alisa Krasnestein and Ben Payne, delivers a smaller proportion of substantial work than Seeds of Change, although there are still worthwhile stories here by Sean McMullen and Simon Brown.

  There are probably no award-winners in Transhuman (DAW), edited by Mark L. Van Name and T.K.F. Weisskopf (title makes the subject matter self-explanatory, surely), but there is a respectable amount of good solid core SF. Best story here is by David D. Levine, but there are also good stories by Mark L. Van Name, Paul Chafe, Sarah A. Hoyt, Wen Spenser, and others.

  Future Americas (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers, and Front Lines (DAW), edited by Denise Little, are a bit more substantial than these DAW anthologies usually are. Best story in Future Americas is by Brendan DuBois; best story in Front Lines is by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. The Dimension Next Door (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes, was worthwhile but minor.

  Another pleasant surprise last year was the sudden appearance of two pretty good ultra-small press anthologies from Hadley Rille Books, edited by Eric T. Reynolds, Visual Journeys and Ruins Extraterrestrial. Reynolds brought out another three anthologies this year, Return to Luna (Hadley Rille Books), Desolate Places (Hadley Rille Books—co-edited with Adam Nakama), and Barren Worlds (Hadley Rille Books—co-edited with Adam Nakama), but unfortunately they were much weaker, with some decent work but nothing particularly memorable. Return to Luna was marginally the strongest of the three.

  Noted without comment is Galactic Empires (Science Fiction Book Club), edited by Gardner Dozois.

  The best fantasy anthology was probably Fast Ships, Black Sails (Night Shade), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. Playful and a lot of fun, it’s an anthology of original pirate story/fantasy crosses, pirate/slipstream crosses, and even a few pirate/SF crosses. If some authors here give the impression that the whole of their research into pirates consisted of watching a DVD of Pirates of the Caribbean, others clearly know their stuff, and, for the most part, even the stories that are the sketchiest on the pirate stuff make up for it with the colorful fantasy element. There’s first-rate work here by Garth Nix, Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, Kage Baker, Jayme Lynn Blaschke, Naomi Novik, Howard Waldrop, Carrie Vaughn, and others. Also excellent is Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy (Subterranean), edited by William Schafer. The stories here are fairly representative of the kind of stories usually to be found on the Subterranean Web site, although none of them actually appeared there, being published for the first time here instead: fantasy, dark fantasy sometimes shading into horror, a smattering of science fiction, all extremely well crafted. The best stories here are by William Browning Spencer, Tim Powers, Patrick Rothfuss, Kage Baker, although there’s also good work by Caitlin R. Kiernan, Joe R. Landsdale, Mike Carey, and others. Also good was A Book of Wizards (Science Fiction Book Club), edited by Marvin Kaye, which featured novellas by Peter S. Beagle, Tanith Lee, Patricia A. McKillip, and others. There was also another installment in a long-running fantasy anthology series, Swords and Sorceress XXIII (Norilana), edited by Elizabeth Waters.

  Pleasant but minor fantasy anthologies included Warrior Wisewoman (Norilana), edited by Roby James; Enchantment Place (DAW), edited by Denise Little; Fellowship Fantastic (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes; Mystery Date (DAW), edited by Denise Little; Something Magic This Way Comes (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Sarah Hoyt; Witch High (DAW), edited by Denise Little; Catopolis (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Janet Deaver-Pack; My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon (St. Martin’s Griffin), edited by P. N. Elrod; Magic in the Mirrorstone: Tales of Fantasy (Mirrorstone), edited by Steve Berman; and Lace and Blade (Lada), a fantasy/romance cross edited by Deborah J. Ross.

  It’s worth mentioning here that some of the anthologies mentioned above as SF anthologies, such as Clockwork Phoenix, Dreaming Again, and the Whates anthologies, had substantial amounts of good fantasy in them as well, sometimes nearly half the contents.

  The line between fantasy and slipstream is often hard to draw rigorously, but anthologies that seemed to me more slipstream than fantasy (in spite of some of their titles) included: Paper Cities, An Anthology of Urban Fantasy (Five Senses Press), edited by Ekaterina Sedia; Subtle Edens (Elastic Press), edited by Allen Ashley; Alembical (Paper Golem), edited by Lawrence M. Shoen and Arthur Dorrance; Spicy Slipstream Stories (Lethe Press), edited by Nick Mamatas and Jay Lake; A Field Guide to Surreal Biology (Two Cranes Press), edited by Janet Chui and Jason Erik Lundberg; and Tesseracts Twelve (Edge), edited by Claude Lalumiere.

  Shared world anthologies, many of them superhero oriented, included Wild Cards: Inside Straight (Tor), edited by George R.R. Martin; Wild Cards: Busted Flush (Tor), edited by George R.R. Martin; Hellboy: Oddest Jobs (Dark Horse), edited by Christopher Golden; and Ring of Fire II (Baen), edited by Eric Flint.

  As usual, novice work by beginning writers, some of whom may later turn out to be imp
ortant talents, was featured in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume XXIV (Galaxy), the last in this long-running series to be edited by the late Algis Budrys. No word yet on whether the series will continue under different editor-ship.

  There were lots of stories about robots this year, and lots of stories about zombies, including a dedicated zombie anthology. There were at least three retropunk Space Pirate stories, and two stories about really nasty mermaids who kill people. There were two or three pastiches of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, and two gritty retellings of Hansel and Gretel. Stories appeared that were obviously inspired by Second Life, as well as by MMORPGs like Worlds of Warcraft, and by anime. There were several stories that tried to put new twists on the idea of people’s minds being uploaded into a computer, including several where survivors were not happy about having to continue to deal with nagging relatives who were now “virtual.” In addition to the dedicated Alternate History magazine, Paradox, there was also lots of Alternate History stuff published elsewhere, most of it leaning toward steampunk—there were three Alternate History anthologies, Sideways in Crime, Extraordinary Engines, and Steampunk, but almost every market featured steampunkish Alternate History stories this year, including a few Alternate History/Mystery crosses in Interzone, Postscripts, and elsewhere that could just as easily have fit into Sideways in Crime.

  Science fiction continued to pop up in unexpected places, both in print and online, from the Australian science magazine Cosmos to the MIT Technology Review. Even The New Yorker published two stories this year that could be considered to be genuine SF, an unheard of occurrence that made some observers glance at Hell to see if it had frozen over (there have been stories by SF writers in the The New Yorker before, but they’ve usually been slipstream/surrealist/literary pieces of the sort that is more typical of the magazine).