The Best of the Best, Volume 1 Read online

  THE BEST OF THE BEST

  20 Years of

  THE YEAR’S BEST

  SCIENCE FICTION

  ALSO BY GARDNER DOZOIS

  ANTHOLOGIES

  * * *

  A DAY IN THE LIFE

  ANOTHER WORLD

  BEST SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF THE YEAR #6–10

  THE BEST OF ISAAC ASIMOV’S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE

  TIME-TRAVELERS FROM ISAAC ASIMOV’S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE

  TRANSCENDENTAL TALES FROM ISAAC ASIMOV’S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S ALIENS

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S MARS

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S SF LITE

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S WAR

  ROADS NOT TAKEN (with Stanley Schmidt)

  THE YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION #1–2

  FUTURE EARHTS: UNDER AFRICAN SKIES (with Mike Resnick)

  FUTURE EARHTS: UNDER SOUTH AMERICAN SKIES (with Mike Resnick)

  RIPPER! (with Susan Casper)

  MODERN CLASSIC SHORT NOVELS OF SCIENCE FICTION

  MODERN CLASSIC OF FANTASY

  KILLING ME SOFTLY

  DYING FOR IT

  THE GOOD OLD STUFF

  THE GOOD NEW STUFF

  EXPLORERS

  THE FURTHEST HORIZON

  WORLDMAKERS

  SUPERMEN

  COEDITED WITH SHEILA WILLIAMS

  * * *

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S PLANET EARTH

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S ROBOTS

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S VALENTINES

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S SKIN DEEP

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S GHOSTS

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S VAMPIRES

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S MOONS

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S CHRISTMAS

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S CAMELOT

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S WEREWOLVES

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S SOLAR SYSTEM

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S DETECTIVES

  ISAAC ASIMOV’S CYBERDREAMS

  COEDITED WITH JACK DANN

  * * *

  ALIENS!

  UNICORNS!

  MAGICATS!

  MAGICATS 2!

  BESTIARY!

  MERMAIDS!

  SORCERERS!

  DEMONS!

  DOGTALES!

  SEASERPENTS!

  DINOSAURS!

  LITTLE PEOPLE!

  DRAGONS!

  HORSES!

  UNICORNS 2

  INVADERS!

  ANGELS!

  DINOSAURS II

  HACKERS

  TIMEGATES

  CLONES

  NANOTECH

  IMMORTALS

  FICTION

  * * *

  STRANGERS

  THE VISIBLE MAN (Collection)

  NIGHTMARE BLUE (with george Alec Effinger)

  SLOW DANCING THROUGH TIME (with Jack Dann, Michael Swanwick, Susan Casper, and Jack C Haldeman II)

  THE PEACEMAKER

  GEODESIC DREAMS (collection)

  NONFICTION

  * * *

  THE FICTION OF JAMES TIPTREE, JR.

  THE BEST OF THE BEST

  20 Years of

  THE YEAR’S BEST

  SCIENCE FICTION

  Gardner Dozois

  st.Martin’s Griffin New York

  THE BEST OF THE BEST. Copyright © 2005 by Gardner Dozois. Foreword copyright © by Robert Silverberg. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Best of the best : 20 years of the Year’s best science fiction / [edited by] Gardner Dozois.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-33656-X(pbk)

  EAN 978-0312-33656-1

  ISBN 0-312-33655-1 (hc)

  EAN 978-0312-33655-4

  1. Science fiction, American. 2. Science fiction, English. I. Dozois, Gardner R. II. Year’s best science fiction (New York, N.Y.)

  PS648.S3B499 2005

  813'.0876608—dc22

  2004051411

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4

  contents

  * * *

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  FOREWORD · Roben Silverberg

  PREFACE · Gardner Dozois

  BLOOD MUSIC · Greg Bear

  A CABIN ON THE COAST · Gene Wolfe

  SALVADOR · Lucius Shepard

  TRINITY · Nancy Kress

  FLYING SAUCER ROCK AND ROLL · Howard Waldrop

  DINNER IN AUDOGHAST · Bruce Sterling

  ROADSIDE RESCUE · Pat Cadigan

  SNOW · John Crowley

  THE WINTER MARKET · William Gibson

  THE PURE PRODUCT · John Kessel

  STABLE STRATEGIES FOR MIDDLE MANAGEMENT · Eileen Gunn

  KIRINYAGA · Mike Resnick

  TALES FROM THE VENIA WOODS · Roben Silverberg

  BEARS DISCOVER FIRE · Teny Bisson

  EVEN THE QUEEN · Connie Willis

  GUEST OF HONOR · Robert Reed

  NONE SO BLIND · Joe Haldeman

  MORTIMER GRAY’S HISTORY OF DEATH · Brian Stableford

  THE LINCOLN TRAIN · Maureen F. McHugh

  WANG’S CARPETS · Greg Egan

  COMING OF AGE IN KARHIDE · Ursula K. Le Guin

  THE DEAD · Michael Swanwick

  RECORDING ANGEL · Ian McDonald

  A DRY, QUIET WAR · Tony Daniel

  THE UNDISCOVERED · William Sanders

  SECOND SKIN · Paul J. McAuley

  STORY OF YOUR LIFE · Ted Chiang

  PEOPLE CAME FROM EARTH · Stephen Baxter

  THE WEDDING ALBUM · David Marusek

  1016 TO 1 · James Patrick Kelly

  DADDY’S WORLD · Walter Jon Williams

  THE REAL WORLD · Steven Utley

  HAVE NOT HAVE · Geoff Ryman

  LOBSTERS · Charles Stross

  BREATHMOSS · Ian R. MacLeod

  LAMBING SEASON · Molly Gloss

  acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the following materials:

  * * *

  “Blood Music,” by Greg Bear. Copyright © 1983 by Davis Publications, Inc. First published in Analog Science Fact/Science Fiction, June 1983. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “A Cabin on the Coast,” by Gene Wolfe. Copyright © 1981 by Gene Wolfe. First Published in Zu den Stemen (Goldmann, Verlag, Munich), edited by Peter Wilfert. First published in English in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 1984. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, the Virginia Kidd Literary Agency.

  “Salvador,” by Lucius Shepard. Copyright © 1984 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1984. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Trinity,” by Nancy Kress. Copyright © 1984 by Davis Publications, Inc. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, October 1984. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Flying Saucer Rock and Roll,” by Howard Waldrop. Copyright © 1984 by Omni Publications International, Ltd. First published in Omni, January 1985. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Dinner in Audoghast,” by Bruce Sterling. Copyright © 1985 by Davis Publications, Inc. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, May 1985. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Roadside Rescue,” by Pat Cadigan. Copyright © 1985 by Omni Publication International, Ltd. First published in Omni, July 1985. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Snow,” by John Crowl
ey. Copyright © 1985 by Omni Publications International, Ltd. First published in Omni, November 1985. Published by permission of the author and his agent.

  “The Winter Market,” by William Gibson. Copyright © 1986 by William Gibson. First published in Stardate, February 1986. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Martha Millard.

  “The Pure Product,” by John Kessel. Copyright © 1986 by Davis Publications, Inc. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, March 1986. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Stable Strategies for Middle Management,” by Eileen Gunn. Copyright © 1988 by Davis Publications, Inc. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, June 1988. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Kirinyaga,” by Mike Resnick. Copyright © 1988 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1988. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Tales from the Venia Woods,” by Robert Silverberg. Copyright © 1989 by Agberg Ltd. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1989. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Bears Discover Fire,” by Terry Bisson. Copyright © 1990 by Davis Publications, Inc. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, August 1990. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Even the Queen,” by Connie Willis. Copyright © 1992 by Davis Publications, Inc. First published in Isaac Asimov’s Fiction Magazine, April 1992. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Guest of Honor,” by Robert Reed. Copyright © 1993 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1993. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “None So Blind,” by Joe Haldeman. Copyright © 1994 by Bantam Doubleday Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, November 1994. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Mortimer Gray’s History of Death,” by Brian Stableford. Copyright © 1995 by Bantam Doubleday Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, April 1995. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Lincoln Train,” by Maureen F. McHugh. Copyright © 1995 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1995. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Wang’s Carpets,” by Greg Egan. Copyright © 1995 by Greg Egan. First appeared in New Legends (Tor). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Coming of Age in Karhide,” by Ursula K. Le Guin. Copyright © 1995 by Ursula K. Le Guin. First published in New Legends (Tor). Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, the Virginia Kidd Literary Agency.

  “The Dead,” by Michael Swanwick. Copyright © 1996 by Michael Swanwick. First published in Starlight 1 (Tor). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Recording Angel,” by Ian McDonald. Copyright © 1996 by Interzone. First published in Interzone, February 1996. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “A Dry, Quiet War,” by Tony Daniel. Copyright © 1996 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 1996. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Undiscovered,” by William Sanders. Copyright © 1997 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, March 1997. Published by permission of the author.

  “Second Skin,” by Paul J. McAuley. Copyright © 1997 by Paul J. McAuley. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, April 1997. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Story of Your Life,” by Ted Chiang. Copyright © 1998 by Ted Chiang. First published in Starlight 2 (Tor). Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, the Virginia Kidd Literary Agency.

  “People Came from Earth,” by Stephen Baxter. Copyright © 1999 by Stephen Baxter. First published in Moon Shots (DAW). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Wedding Album,” by David Marusek. Copyright © 1999 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 1999. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “1016 to 1,” by James Patrick Kelly. Copyright © 1999 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 1999. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Daddy’s World,” by Walter Jon Williams. Copyright © 1999 by Walter Jon Williams. First published in Not of Woman Born (Roc Books). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “The Real World,” by Steven Utley. Copyright © 2000 by SCIFI.COM. First published electronically on SCI FICTION, September 6. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Have Not Have,” by Geoff Ryman. Copyright © 2001 by Spilogale, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 2001. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Lobsters,” by Charles Stross. Copyright © 2001 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 2001. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  “Breathmoss,” by Ian R. MacLeod. Copyright © 2002 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, May 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Susan Ann Protter.

  “Lambing Season,” by Molly Gloss. Copyright © 2002 by Dell Magazines. First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, July 2002. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  foreword

  * * *

  Robert Silverberg

  Gardner Dozois’s annual anthology, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, began publication in 1984 and by now is a series that comprises twenty hefty volumes, which require close to three and a half feet of shelf space. You will find that three-and-a-half-foot expanse of Dozois anthologies in any science-fiction library worthy of the name. Their presence is essential, for the Dozois book is the definitive historical record of the most fertile twenty years in the history of the science-fiction short story. Volume by volume, each anthology is an exciting and memorable collection. Taken all in all, though, they form a whole rather greater than the sum of their parts: an extraordinary editorial achievement, a unique encyclopedic text. And now we are given a book that offers us The Best of the Best—editor Dozois’s selection of the finest of the hundreds of stories that make up those twenty anthologies.

  In no way does this book, good as it is, replace those twenty anthologies. No one volume possibly could. It serves, rather, as a marker, a signifier, which by the luminous excellence of its material reminds us of the magnitude of Gardner Dozois’s total accomplishment in assembling this wondrous series.

  The science-fiction short story’s illustrious history goes back a long way. Beyond doubt the Greeks and the Romans wrote them—tales of robot warriors and imaginary voyages, some of them voyages to the moon. Closer to our own day, Hawthorne, Poe, and Verne produced what was unquestionably science fiction. More than a century ago H. G. Wells, the first great modern master of the form, filled the popular magazines of his day with dozens of s-f stories—“The Country of the Blind,” “The Crystal Egg,” “The Star,” and many more—of such surpassing inventiveness that they have held their own in print ever since. From 1911 on, the Luxembourg-born gadgeteer Hugo Gernsback began publishing science fiction as a regular feature of his magazines Modern Electrics and Science and Invention, and it proved so popular that in 1926 Gernsback launched Amazing Stories, the first magazine devoted entirely to it. (Because new stories were so hard to find at first, Gernsback filled many of the early issues with the work of Poe, Verne, and Wells.) Amazing built an avid readership and before long had a vigorous pair of competitors: Wonder Stories and Astounding Stories. Those were followed by a host of others, gaudy pulp magazines with names like Startling Stories, Planet Stories, Cosmic Stories, and Super Science Stories, and then, after World War II, came a group of less flamboyant-looking magazines aimed at more sophisticated readers, most notably Galaxy Science Fiction and Fantasy and Science Fiction.

  Though much of the material in the science-fiction magazines of the 1930s and 1940s was crude and ephemeral, some was not, and, inevitably, book publishers began to collect the best
of it in anthologies. The first such volume was Phil Stong’s The Other Worlds (1941), which drew on the pulps for stories by Lester del Rey, Theodore Sturgeon, Murray Leinster, Harry Bates, and other well-known s-f masters of the day. Two years later, the knowledgeable Donald A. Wollheim edited The Pocket Book of Science Fiction, with stories by Sturgeon, Wells, Robert A. Heinlein, and more. Then, just after the war, came two major collections, both of them still of major significance: Adventures in Time and Space, edited by Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas, and The Best of Science Fiction, edited by Groff Conklin. The Healy-McComas book, studded with classics like Asimov’s “Nightfall” and Don A. Stuart’s “Who Goes There?”, was drawn largely from the pages of John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction, the dominant magazine in the field during the 1940s. The Conklin anthology also leaned heavily on Campbell’s magazine, but cast a wider net, with extensive representation of stories from the previous decade, including many from the Gernsback magazines, as well as work by Poe, Wells, and Arthur Conan Doyle.

  As the science-fiction magazines grew in number and quality in the post-war years, an inevitable next development was the coming of anthologies devoted to the best stories of a single year. The first of these was edited by Everett F. Bleiler and T. E. Dikty, a pair of scholarly science-fiction readers with long experience in the field, and it was called, not entirely appropriately (since it drew entirely on material published in 1948), The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1949.

  Science fiction then was a very small entity indeed—eight or nine magazines, a dozen or so books a year produced by semi-professional publishing houses run by old-time s-f fans, and the very occasional short story by the likes of Robert A. Heinlein in the Saturday Evening Post or some other well-known slick magazine. So esoteric a species of reading-matter was it that Bleiler and Dikty found it necessary to provide their book, which was issued by the relatively minor mainstream publishing house of Frederick Fell, Inc., with two separate introductory essays explaining the nature and history of science fiction to uninitiated readers.