The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection Read online

  There are also a slew of horror semiprozines, too many to list here, although the most visible of them are probably Midnight Graffiti, American Fantasy, Fear, and Grue; all of these magazines are in competition with Weird Tales to fill the vacuum left in the horror short-fiction market by the demise of The Twilight Zone Magazine and Night Cry. It’s a good bet that one of these magazines will make it up into the pro classification within the next couple of years; so far Midnight Graffiti, edited by Jessie Horsting and James Van Hise, seems to be giving Weird Tales its stiffest competition for this spot, although they’re a little light on the amount of fiction they publish per issue. The Horror Show, one of the top horror semiprozines, died this year. Once again, there was no issue of Whispers, either. There is also a semiprozine aimed at the High Fantasy market, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, but, to date, the fiction published there has yet to reach reliable levels of quality. As ever, Locus and SF Chronicle remain your best bet among the semiprozines if you are looking for news and/or an overview of the genre. Thrust is the longest-running of those semiprozines that concentrate primarily on literary criticism. Among other criticalzines, Short Form was taken over by Mark Van Name, who has seemingly returned it to a reliable schedule of publication after several missed issues. However, although there is still a lot of interesting material here, they don’t seem to review much short fiction anymore, which was the raison d’etre for the magazine’s existence in the first place; critical theorizing and polemics we can get elsewhere, in plenty, but short fiction reviews are vanishingly rare. Steve Brown and Dan Steffan only managed to get out one issue of Science Fiction Eye this year; admittedly, it was a fat issue stuffed with fascinating material, but the magazine’s seeming inability to stick to their announced publishing schedule must be a worry to subscribers. The New York Review of Science Fiction—edited by a Cast of Thousands, including Kathryn Cramer, L.W. Currey, Samuel R. Delany, David G. Hartwell, Greg Cox, Robert Killheffer, John J. Ordover, and Gordon Van Gelder—has managed to infuriate many over the last two years with its highly opinionated reviews and didactic theoretical essays, but it has also managed to solidly establish itself as the most reliable and intriguing of the new crop of criticalzines; it’s already been a Hugo finalist once, and I strongly suspect that it will be again—it might even win, one of these days. Another offbeat and interesting criticalzine is OtherRealms, edited by Chuq Von Rospach and Laurie Sefton, a hard-copy version of an online “electronic fanzine” that is accessible through the computer networks; this may well be the wave of the future, if the networks become large and widespread enough.

  (Locus, Locus Publications, Inc., P.O. Box 13305, Oakland, California 94661, $40.00 for a one-year first-class subscription, 12 issues; Science Fiction Chronicle, Algol Press, P.O. Box 2730, Brooklyn, NY 10202-0056, $27.00 for one year, twelve issues; Thrust, Thrust Publications, 8217 Langport Terrace, Gaithersburg, MD 20877, $8.00 for four issues; Science Fiction Eye, Box 43244, Washington, DC 20010-9244, $10.00 for one year; Short Form, Hatrack River Publications, P.O. Box 18184, Greensboro, NC 27419-8184, one-year subcription (six issues) $24.00; Weird Tales, Terminus Publishing Company, Box 13418, Philadelphia, PA 19101-3418, $18.00 for six issues; New Pathways, MGA Services, P.O. Box 863994, Plano, TX 75086-3994, $10.00 for a one-year four-issue subscription, $18.00 for a two-year subscription. Nova Express, White Car PubLications, P.O. Box 27231, Austin, TX 78755-2231, $8 for a one-year four-issue subscription; Strange Plasma, Edgewood Press, P.O. Box 264, Cambridge, MA 02238, $8 for three issues; Journal Wired, P.O. Box 76, Shingletown, CA 96088; Other-Realms, 35111–F Newark Blvd., Suite 255, Newark, CA 94560, $11 for a one-year four-issue subscription; Ice River, David Memmott, 953 N. Gale, Union, OR 97883, $9 for a one-year three-issue subscription; Grue Magazine, Hells Kitchen Productions, Box 370, Times Square Station, New York, NY 10108, $11.00 for three issues; American Fantasy, P.O. Box 41714, Chicago, IL 60641, $16.00 a year; The New York Review Of Science Fiction, Dragon Press, P.O. Box 78, Pleasantville, NY, 10570, $24.00 per year; Midnight Graffiti, 13101 Sudan Road, Poway, CA 92604, one year for $24.00.)

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  This was a stronger year than last year overall in the original anthology market. The two best SF anthologies of the year were probably the mixed original-and-reprint anthologies What Might Have Been? Volume 1: Alternate Empires (Bantam Spectra), and What Might Have Been? Volume 2: Alternate Heroes (Bantam Spectra), both books edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg, and both packed with some very good stories, including stories that have made it on to major award ballots this year and last. Check out in particular the Frederik Pohl, the Robert Silverberg, the Harry Turtledove, the Gregory Benford, the Karen Joy Fowler, and the George Alec Effinger in Volume 1, and the Silverberg, the Sheila Finch, the Barry N. Malzberg, the Marc Laidlaw, and the Walter Jon Williams in Volume 2. These belong on the shelves of everyone who enjoys Alternate History stories. As an aside, I might mention that this has been a good year in general for Alternate History stories in SF, with several excellent ones by Silverberg, John Crowley, Bruce Sterling, Neal Barrett, Jr., and others, none of them connected to the Benford/Greenberg anthologies, appearing here and there throughout the genre. In addition, the stories from another good anthology, Time Gate (Baen), edited by Robert Silverberg with Bill Fawcett, can also be read as de facto Alternate History stories, deriving most of their impact from the throwing together of computer simulations of Famous Figures from history, and working out how they would interact. The best story here is the Silverberg, but everything in the book is well worth reading. There are a few Alternate History stories in the next two anthologies as well—including one that will probably get the author run out of Texas on a rail—but mostly they’re filled with prime examples of that very strange new subgenre that is being referred to (no doubt with tongue firmly in cheek) as “cowpunk”—bizarre hybrids of SF/fantasy/horror with the traditional Western story. The major creative force behind cowpunk seems to be Joe R. Lansdale—he brought us a good anthology of stories of this sort a couple of years ago, and this year he was back with two more: Razored Saddles (Dark Harvest), edited by Lansdale and Pat LoBrutto, and The New Frontier (Doubleday), edited by Lansdale alone. These are hugely enjoyable books, and the Benford/Greenberg anthologies beat them out only by a hair for the title of best SF anthologies of the year. Squinted at from a slightly different perspective, they could also be considered horror anthologies, in which case they would be rivaled by only one other book for the title of best horror anthology as well. As you might have guessed, these are enormously eclectic books, with an amazing range of subject matter, mood, and choice-of-attack. In Razored Saddles, check out in particular the Lewis Shiner, the Chet Williamson, the Howard Waldrop, the Lansdale, the Scott A. Cupp (get ready for the tar and feathers, Scott), the Al Sarrantonio, and the Neal Barrett, Jr.; particularly noteworthy in The New Frontier are the Barrett, the John Keefauver, the Shiner, the Loren D. Estleman, and the Cupp—although actually there are almost no bad stories in either book. Pat LoBrutto has been the literary godfather of cowpunk, the editor who cared enough to somehow force this stuff on the timid world of corporate publishing, and I hope that his recent departure from Doubleday doesn’t spell the end of this strange subgenre; I’d like to see more books like this.

  Other interesting and offbeat one-shot SF anthologies this year included Foundation’s Friends (Tor), edited by Martin H. Greenberg, an anniversary shared-world anthology in which various writers created stories set in some of Asimov’s fictional worlds, and The Microverse (Bantam Spectra), edited by Byron Preiss, David M. Harris, and William R. Alschuler, an extremely handsome, coffee-table-book-sized mixed anthology of SF and scientific essays on the topic of subatomic worlds; as usual with these big glossy Byron Preiss books, the art, the photos, and the nonfiction essays are generally stronger than the fiction, but this one does contain excellent work by Connie Willis and Gregory Benford, and good stuff by Silverberg, Rudy Rucker, and others.

  Turning
to the SF anthology series, 1989 saw the publication of Full Spectrum 2 (Bantam Spectra), edited by Lou Aronica, Shawna McCarthy, Amy Stout, and Patrick LoBrutto. Last year, talking about Full Spectrum 1, I said that the stories in that particular book were remarkably consistent in quality, with none of them really bad … but with none of them of really first-rate quality, either. My opinion of Full Spectrum 2 is almost the reverse: the anthology does contain a fair number of bad stories this year, but it also contains two of the very best stories of 1989, by Michael Swanwick and Kim Stanley Robinson—and, to be fair, the bulk of the stories in this very large anthology are still pretty good, falling somewhere between the two extremes; you certainly get your money’s worth here in entertainment value. It’ll be interesting to see what Full Spectrum 3, already in the works, will be like, especially as McCarthy and LoBrutto will very probably not be associated with it. Full Spectrum 2 doesn’t seem to have had the impact on the science fiction community that Full Spectrum 1 had, in spite of the Swanwick and Robinson stories, but this is still potentially one of the most important SF anthology series to be introduced in many years, and I wish it well. Another important new series is Pulphouse (Pulphouse Publishing), edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, a quarterly hardcover anthology—billed as a “hardback magazine”—that is primarily available by subscription. Each issue of Pulp-house has a specific theme; they started last year with Horror (Pulphouse One), and so far have cycled their way through Speculative Fiction, Fantasy, and Science Fiction issues, and so back to Horror again (Pulphouse Five). Interestingly, some of these themed issues seem to work better than others—last year’s Speculative Fiction issue, for instance, was quite bad, and this year’s Fantasy issue (Pulphouse Three) was, surprisingly, quite good. Pulp-house Three, in fact, is the best of the Pulphouse issues to date, and a good anthology by anyone’s standards, containing a first-rate story by Alan Brennert, and very good ones by Janet Kagan, Steve Perry, Marina Fitch, and Charles de Lint. Pulphouse Four (the Science Fiction issue) doesn’t contain anything quite as good as the best of the stuff from the previous issue, but still contains good work by Bridget McKenna, Ray Aldridge, Bruce Boston, Kim Antieau, and others. Pulphouse Five (back to Horror again) isn’t as strong a horror anthology as Pulphouse One had been, but still features good work by Elizabeth Hand, George Alec Effinger, Scott Edelman, Francis J. Matozzo, and others. These books are uneven, yes, but the series as a whole is one of the most interesting to come along in some time, and definitely deserves your support. (Subscription address: Pulphouse Publishing, Box 1227, Eugene, OR 97440; $17.95 per single issue, $30 for a half-year subscription (two issues) or $56 for a full-year subscription (four issues); you can also write to them to obtain information about their short-story collection and chapbook novella lines.)

  New Destinies (Baen), edited by James Baen, featured some solid work, but, as usual, nothing really outstanding. Synergy Four (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), edited by George Zebrowski, featured some good work, particularly a moving story by Chad Oliver, but I continue to feel that at $8.95 for a rather slender mass-market paperback, this series is grossly overpriced, and I wonder if it will survive. L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Vol. V (Bridge), edited by Algis Budrys, is the usual compendium of novice work; some of the writers featured here may well become famous someday, but it’s not going to be for any of the stories in this particular book. A promising new British anthology series was started this year, Zenith (Sphere), edited by David S. Garnett; the first issue featured interesting work by Christopher Burns, William King, Lisa Tuttle, and others. There was also a volume of the British series Other Edens this year, but I missed it; I’ll consider it for next year.

  The new incarnation of Universe, now edited by Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber, didn’t appear this year, but is promised for 1990. Silverberg, the former editor of New Dimensions, was probably the most important original anthology editor of the 1970s, and it’ll be interesting to see what he and Haber can do with Universe here in the 1990s.

  There didn’t seem to be as many shared-world anthologies this year as there were last year, but they included: Arabesques II (Avon), edited by Susan Shwartz; The Man-Kzin War II (Baen), edited by Larry Niven; There Will Be War, Vol. 8 (Tor), edited by Jerry Pournelle; and an interesting Kipling-pastiche tribute anthology, A Separate Star (Baen), edited by David Drake and Sandra Miesel.

  In the horror market, the best original horror anthology was clearly Blood Is Not Enough (Morrow), edited by Ellen Datlow, which featured very good new work by Tanith Lee, Susan Casper, Pat Cadigan, Chet Williamson, Edward Bryant, and others, as well as some classic reprints. It was rivaled only by Razored Saddles and The New Frontier, if you consider them horror anthologies. I also enjoyed a British anthology of “quiet horror,” Dark Fantasies (Legend), edited by Chris Morgan, which featured good work by Brian Stableford, Christopher Evans, Lisa Tuttle, Brian W. Aldiss, and others. Also entertaining was Spirits of Christmas (Wynwood), edited by Kathryn Cramer and David G. Hartwell, a mixed original and reprint anthology that featured good work by Gene Wolfe, Michael Swanwick, Susan Palwick, Martha Soukup, and others. Book of the Dead (Bantam), edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector, was somewhat tiresome, with only Lansdale and Bryant handling the material with any real panache. Night Visions VI (Dark Harvest) was disappointing. Other original horror anthologies included: Scare Care (Tor), edited by Graham Masterton; Stalkers (Dark Harvest), edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg; Phantoms (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Rosalind M. Greenberg; and Post Mortem (St. Martin’s), edited by Paul F. Olson and David B. Silva—all contained interesting work, but none enough to make them exceptional.

  A new original horror anthology series, Borderlands, edited by Tom Monteleone, has been announced for next year.

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  It was a decent if unspectacular year for novels overall, even though once again there were no clearly dominant novels, novels clearly destined to sweep the awards, as there have been in years when novels such as William Gibson’s Neuromancer or Frederik Pohl’s Gateway were on the lists. Locus estimates that the total number of books published this year dropped by 8 percent—the first decrease since 1982—but, even so, they estimate that there were 279 new SF novels (a 12% drop from last year’s all-time high of 317), 277 new fantasy novels (a slight increase over last year’s total), and 176 new horror novels (down 3% from last year’s count of 182). So even with an 8% drop, there were still 732 new SF/fantasy/horror novels published in 1989, according to Locus—clearly the novel field has expanded far beyond the ability of any one reviewer to keep up with it, even a reviewer who doesn’t have as much other reading at shorter lengths to do as I have. Once again, I must admit that I was unable to read all the new novels released this year, or even the majority of them. In fact, I had less time for novels this year than ever before, and was able to read very few of them.

  So, therefore, I am going to limit myself here to mentioning those novels that have gotten a lot of attention and acclaim this year. They include: Good News from Outer Space, John Kessel (Tor); Look into the Sun, James Patrick Kelly (Tor); Dream Baby, Bruce McAllister (Tor); Tides of Light, Gregory Benford (Bantam Spectra); A Fire in the Sun, George Alec Effinger (Doubleday Foundation); Tourists, Lisa Goldstein (Simon & Schuster); Hyperion, Dan Simmons (Doubleday Foundation); A Talent for War, Jack McDevitt (Ace); Buying Time, Joe Haldeman (Morrow); Sugar Rain, Paul Park (Morrow); Soldier of Arete, Gene Wolfe (Tor); Imago, Octavia Butler (Warner); The Stone Giant, James Blaylock (Ace); A Child Across the Sky, Jonathan Carroll (Legend); Orbital Decay, Allen M. Steele (Ace); Prentice Alvin, Orson Scott Card; The Parasite Wars, Tim Sullivan (Avon); Homegoing, Frederik Pohl (Del Rey); Being Alien, Rebecca Ore (Tor); The Stress of Her Regard, Tim Powers (Ace); Dawn’s Uncertain Light, Neal Barrett, Jr. (NAL Signet); Paradise, Mike Resnick (Tor); Out on Blue Six, Ian MacDonald (Bantam Spectra); The New Springtime, Robert Silverberg (Warner); Carrion Comfort, Dan Simmons (Dark Harvest); The Tides of God, Ted Reyno
lds (Ace); The City, Not Long After, Pat Murphy (Doubleday Foundation); Rimmrunners, C.J. Cherryh (Warner); Lyonesse: Madouc, Jack Vance (Underwood-Miller); Phases of Gravity, Dan Simmons (Bantam Spectra); On My Way to Paradise, Dave Wolverton (Bantam Spectra); Farewell Horizontal, K.W. Jeter (St. Martin’s); and The Boat of a Million Years, Poul Anderson (Tor).

  Of the first novels, the biggest stir was probably made by Allen M. Steele, although Ted Reynolds and Dave Wolverton got a fair amount of press too.