The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18 Read online

  It was another good year in 2004 for original fantasy anthologies; there were a lot of them published, although only a few really stood out. Annoying as the overheated editorial copy is (almost as annoying as in 2001’s Redshift, which was going to be the Dangerous Visions of science fiction, just as Flights is supposed to be the Dangerous Visions of Fantasy), the best overall fantasy anthology of the year is probably Flights: Extreme Visions of Fantasy (Roc), edited by Al Sarrantonio. There’s nothing either particularly “dangerous” or “extreme” here (Neal Barrett Jr.’s story may be the most dangerous, and it contains nothing that wasn’t in Dante hundreds of years ago, while any issue of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet or Polyphony – or The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, for that matter – will contain experiments with the fantasy form considerably more extreme than anything in this anthology), the book contains too much horror for my taste (just as Redshift did), and too many of the stories are minor or weak. But it’s such a huge anthology, that, all being said, the good stories left behind once you toss the others out still make up into a large anthology of first-rate fantasy stories by Gene Wolfe, Elizabeth Hand, Tim Powers, Thomas M. Disch, Patricia A. McKillip, Neil Gaiman, Orson Scott Card, Elizabeth A. Lynn, Jeffery Ford, the beforementioned Barrett, and a number of others. Another good original was a YA fantasy anthology called The Faery Reel: Tales from the Twilight Realm (Viking), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling, which had good work by Tanith Lee, Gregory Frost, Jeffery Ford, Patricia A. McKillip, Kelly Link, Katherine Vas, and others. Emerald Magic: Great Tales of Irish Fantasy (Tor), edited by Andrew M. Greeley, was a mixed reprint and original anthology (mostly original) that featured good work by Charles De Lint, Tanith Lee, Diane Duane, and others. Other original fantasy anthologies, not operating on the level of these first three but still worthwhile at relatively cheap mass-market paperback prices, included Masters of Fantasy (DAW), edited by Bill Fawcett, The Magic Shop (DAW), edited by Denise Little, Rotten Relations (DAW), edited by Denise Little, Little Red Riding Hood in the Big Bad City (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers, and Faerie Tales, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Russell Davis. There was also a new volume in a long-running sword-and-sorcery anthology series, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress XXI (DAW), edited by Diana L. Paxson, this the first one not edited by the late Bradley herself, and a new volume in a longrunning comic fantasy series, Turn the Other Chick (Baen), edited by Esther M. Friesner, although it’s overpriced as a hardcover and should have been a mass-market instead. (Plus, as indicated, good fantasy stories could be found this year in ostensible SF anthologies such as The First Heroes and Conqueror Fantastic.)

  As the newly emerging slipstream/fabulism/New Wired/interstitialist/postransformationist subgenre continues to precipitate out from the parent body of genre SF/fantasy, further individual subvarieties are already beginning to differentiate themselves, so that although one may not be able to define the differences precisely, it’s pretty easy to discern a difference in flavor between, say, the Polyphony camp and the Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet camp or The Third Alternative camp, and a difference between all of them and what China Mieville seems to mean when he talks about the “New Weird.” I think at this point I tend to prefer the more robust and muscular “interstitialism” of the Polyphony books and All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, with its mixing of tropes from various genres (which usually means that the stories at least have plots and action), to the more abstract and surreal stuff you usually find in Lady Churchill’s and some of its imitators – but it’s early days yet for this whole area, and I’ve heard readers argue it exactly the other way around, for reasons exactly opposite the reasons for my own preferences. At any rate, my favorite anthology this year among those that dance on the edge of genre (considering it to be a slipstream/fabulism anthology rather than an Alternate History anthology, which in some ways is a better fit for it anyway) was the beforementioned All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, followed by Polyphony, Volume 4 (Wheatland), edited by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake, which features strong and quirky work by Lucius Shepard, Alex Irvine, Tim Pratt, Theodora Goss, Jeff VanderMeer, Greg van Eekout, and others. Leviathan, Volume Four: Cities (Night Shade Books/Ministry of Whimsy), edited by Forrest Aquirre, is a good deal more surreal and self-consciously “decadent,” but still features interesting if sometimes somewhat abstract work by Jay Lake, Stephen Chapman, Ursula Pflug, and others. McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories (Vintage), edited by Michael Chabon, a follow-up to last year’s McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, again promises to deliver a kind of retropulp sensibility that most of the stories don’t really manage to deliver (All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories comes a good deal closer), but any anthology with stories by Stephen King, Peter Straub, and China Mieville in it is probably going to be worth reading, and this one is too, especially at trade paperback prices.

  There were also several cross-genre anthologies this year: Irresistible Forces (Penguin/NAL), edited by Catherine Asaro, which mixed SF with romance, and To Weave a Web of Magic (Berkley), editor anonymous, that mixed fantasy with romance; and Murder by Magic (Warner Aspect), edited by Rosemary Edghill; and Powers of Detection: Stories of Mystery and Fantasy (Ace), edited by Dana Stabenow, both of which mixed fantasy with the mystery story.

  As usual, novice work by beginning writers, some of whom may (or may not) later turn out to be important talents, was featured in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XX (Bridge), edited by Algis Budrys, and two new anthologies from the Annual Phobos Fiction Contest for new writers, Absolutely Brilliant in Chrome (Phobos Books), edited by Keith Olexa, and All the Rage This Year: The Phobos Science Fiction Anthology 3 (Phobos Books), edited by Keith Olexa.

  I don’t follow horror anymore, but several anthologies that I noted in passing included: Dark Dreams: A Collection of Horror and Suspense by Black Writers (Dafina Books), edited by Brandon Massey; Gothic! Ten Original Dark Tales (Candlewick Press), edited by Deborah Noyes; A Walk on the Darkside: Visions of Horror (Roc), edited by John Pelan; Tales of Van Helsing (Ace), edited by Jeanne Cavalos; and Haunted Holidays (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Russel Davis.

  (Finding individual pricings for all of the items from small presses mentioned in the summation has become too time-intensive, and since several of the same small presses publish anthologies, novels, and short-story collections, it seems silly to repeat addresses for them in section after section. Therefore, I’m going to attempt to list here, in one place, all the addresses for small presses that have books mentioned here or there in the summation, whether from the anthologies section, the novel section, or the short-story collection section, and, where known, their Web site addresses. That should make it easy enough for the reader to look up the individual price of any book mentioned that isn’t from a regular trade publisher; such books are less likely to be found in your average bookstore, or even in a chain superstore, and so will probably have to be mail ordered. Addresses: PS Publishing, 98 High Ash Drive, Leeds L517 8RE, England, UK, www.pspublishing.co.uk; Golden Gryphon Press, 3002 Perkins Road, Urbana, IL 61802, www.goldengryphon.com; NESFA Press, P.O. Box 809, Framinghan, MA 01701-0809, www.nesfa.org; Subterranean Press, P.O. Box 190106, Burton, MI 48519, www.subterraneanpress.com; Old Earth Books, P.O. Box 19951, Baltimore, MD 21211-0951, www.oldearthbooks.com; Tachyon Press, 1459 18th St. #139, San Francisco, CA 94107, www.tachyonpublications.com; Night Shade Books, 3623 SW Baird St., Portland, OR 97219, www.nightshadebooks.com; Five Star Books, 295 Kennedy Memorial Drive, Waterville, ME 04901, www.galegroup.com/fivestar; Wheatland Press, P.O. Box 1818, Wilsonville, OR, 97070, www.wheatlandpress.com, Small Beer Press, 176 Prospect Ave., Northampton, MA 01060, www.smallbeerpress.com; Wildside Press/Cosmos Books/Borgo Press, P.O. Box 301, Holicong, PA 18928-0301, or go to www.wildsidepress.com for pricing and ordering; Thunder’s Mouth, 245 West 17th St., 11th Flr., New York, NY 10011-5300, www.thundersmouth.com; Rose Press, 22 West End Lane, Pinner,
Middlesex, HA5 1AQ, England, UK, [email protected]; Agog! Press, P.O. Box U302, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia, www.uow.ed.au/~rhood/agogpress; Aqueduct Press, P.O. Box 95787, Seattle, WA 98145-2787, www.aqueductpress.com; Phobos Books, 200 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003, www.phobosweb.com; Fairwood Press, 5203 Quincy Ave. SE, Auburn, WA 98092, www.fairwoodpress.com; BenBella Books, 6440 N. Central Expressway, Suite 508, Dallas, TX 75206, www.benbellabooks.com; Red Deer Press/Robert J. Sawyer Books, 813 MacKimmie Library Tower, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4, www.reddeerpress.com; Darkside Press, 4128 Woodland Park Ave., N. Seattle, WA, 98103; MirrorDanse Books, P.O. Box 3542, Parramatta NSW 2124 Australia, www.tabula-rasa.info/MirrorDanse; Haffner Press, 5005 Crooks Rd., Suite 35, Royal Oak, MI 48073-1239, www.haffnerpress.com; Meshia Merlin, P.O. Box 7, Decatur, GA 30031, www.meishamerlin.com; North Atlantic Press, P.O. Box 12327, Berkeley, CA, 94701; Prime, P.O. Box 36503, Canton, OH, 44735, www.primebooks.net; Arsenal Pulp Press, 103-1014 Homer Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6B 2W9, www.arsenalpress.com; Fairwood Press, 5203 Quincy Ave SE, Auburn, WA 98092, www.fairwoodpress.com; MonkeyBrain Books, 11204 Crossland Drive, Austin, TX 78726, www.monkeybrainbooks.com; Cambrian Publications, P.O. Box 41220, San Jose, CA 95160-1220, www.cambrianpubs.com; Shambhala Publications, Horticultural Hall, 300 Massachusetts Ave., Boston, MA 02115, www.shambhala.com; Red Jacket Press, 3099 Maqua Place, Hohegan Lake, NY 10547, www.redjacketpress.com; Black Inc., Level 5, 289 Flanders Lane, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia, www.blackincbooks.com; Willowgate Press, P.O. Box 6529, Holliston, MA 01746, www.willowgatepress.com; Wesleyan University Press, University Press of New England, Order Dept., 37 Lafayette St., Lebanon, NH 03766-1405, www.wesleyan.edu/wespress; Underwood Books, P.O. Box 1919, Nevada City, CA 95959, www.underwoodbooks.com; Overlook Press www.overlookconnection.com; Bloomsbury Publishing, 38 Soho Square, London W1D 3HB, UK, www.bloomsbury.com; CSFG Publishing, P.O. Box 89, Latham Act 2615, Australia, www.astspeculativefiction.com.av; Véhicule Press, Independent Publishers Group, Order Department, 814 North Franklin Street, Chicago IL 60610, www.vehiculepress.com.

  It was another strong year for novels – and although some of the biggest sellers were out on the ambiguous fringes of genre, and yes, there were more fantasy books published than SF (the “SF-is-dying” crowd perk up their ears and sit forward eagerly), there’s still a huge number of SF novels being published every year, more than there were twenty years ago, and far more than any one individual reader could possibly read, even if one spent all of one’s time during the year doing nothing else.

  According to the newsmagazine Locus, there were 2,550 books “of interest to the SF field,” published in 2004 both original and reprint (but not counting “media tie-in novels,” gaming novels, novelizations of movies, or novels drawn from other TV shows; for the most part, these totals don’t reflect print-on-demand novels either, or novels offered as downloads on the Internet). This sets a new record, up by 5 percent from 2003’s total of 2,429, the fourth year in a row that the total has increased. Original books were up by 8 percent to 1,417 from last year’s total of 1,375, itself an increase of 8 percent over the 2002 total of 1,271; reprint books were up by 7 percent to 1,133 over last year’s total of 1,054 titles, itself an increase of 9 percent from the 2002 total of 970. The number of new SF novels was up by 7 percent to 253 titles as opposed to last year’s 236. The number of new fantasy novels was up by 14 percent to 389 titles as opposed to last year’s 340. Horror was also up, but only slightly, rising to 172 titles as opposed to last year’s 171 (in 2002, though, it only had 112 – which itself was the highest total since 1995; horror seems to be making something of a recovery from the Big Horror Bust of the late nineties).

  Busy with all the reading I have to do at shorter lengths, I didn’t have time to read many novels this year, so, as usual, I’ll limit myself to mentioning novels that received a lot of attention and acclaim in 2004. They include: Camouflage (Ace), by Joe Haldeman; River of Gods (Simon & Schuster UK), by Ian McDonald; Crucible (Tor), by Nancy Kress; Light (Bantam Spectra), by M. John Harrison; Lurulu (Tor), by Jack Vance; Air (or Have Not Have) (St. Martin’s Griffin), by Geoff Ryman; Exultant (Del Rey), by Stephen Baxter; Forty Signs of Rain (Bantam), by Kim Stanley Robinson; Iron Sunrise (Ace), by Charles Stross; The Life of the World to Come (Tor), by Kage Baker; Superluminal (Eos), by Tony Daniel; The Zenith Angle (Del Rey), by Bruce Sterling; The Wizard (Tor), by Gene Wolfe; Iron Council (Del Rey), by China Mieville; The Algebraist (Orbit), by Iain M. Banks; White Devils (Tor), by Paul McAuley; Century Rain (Gollancz), by Alastair Reynolds; The Last Garden of Everness (Tor), by John Wright; Beyond Infinity (Warner Aspect), by Gregory Benford; Newton’s Wake (Tor), by Ken MacLeod; Banner of Souls (Bantam Spectra), by Liz Williams; Consequences (Roc), by Kristine Kathryn Rusch; Dead Lines (Ballantine), by Greg Bear; Forge of Heaven (Eos), by C. J. Cherryh; Crux (Tor), by Albert E. Cowdrey; Time’s Eye: A Time Odyssey (Del Rey), by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter; Affairs at Hampden Ferrers (Little Brown UK), by Brian Aldiss; The Runes of the Earth (Putnam), by Stephen R. Donaldson; The Skinner (Tor), by Neal Asher; Coyote Rising (Ace), by Allen Steele; Pandora’s Star (Del Rey), by Peter F. Hamilton; The Ordinary (Tor), by Jim Grimsley; One King, One Soldier (Del Rey), by Alexander C. Irvine; Eastern Standard Tribe (Tor), by Cory Doctorow; Stamping Butterflies (Gollancz), by Jon Courtenay Grimwood; Black Brillion (Tor), by Matthew Hughes; Mortal Love (Morrow), by Elizabeth Hand; The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah (Scribner) and The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (Scribner), by Stephen King; Polaris (Ace), by Jack McDevitt; The Family Tree (Tor), by Charles Stross; The Labyrinth Key (Del Rey), by Howard V. Hendrix; Alphabet of Thorn (Ace), by Patricia McKillip; Ringworld’s Children (Tor), by Larry Niven; Shadowmarch (DAW), by Tad Williams; Broken Angels (Del Rey), by Richard A. Morgan; Crossing the Line (HarperCollins), by Karen Traviss; Lost in Transmission (Bantam Spectra), by Wil McCarthy; Cowl (Tor), by Neal Asher; The Boy Who Would Live Forever (Tor), by Frederik Pohl; Crache (Bantam Spectra), by Mark Budz; Gaudeamus (Tor), by John Barnes; Very Bad Deaths (Baen), by Spider Robinson; In the Night Room (Random House), by Peter Straub; and Going Postal (HarperCollins), by Terry Pratchett.

  Without doubt, the first novel that drew the most attention this year, by a large margin, was Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (Bloomsbury) by Susanna Clarke, which was not only a huge best-seller, but which drew rave reviews everywhere, including sources from well outside the genre. Other first novels that received a fair amount of attention this year (although nothing came even close to the Clarke) were: City of Pearl (Eos), by Karen Traviss; Crux, by Albert E. Cowdrey; The Year of Our War (Gollancz), by Steph Swainston; The Holy Machine (Wildside), by Chris Beckett; The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (Del Rey), by Minister Faust; and Olympic Games (Tachyon), by Leslie What. Other first novels included: Trash Sex Magic (Small Beer), by Jennifer Stevenson; Orphanage (Warner Aspect), by Robert Boettner; Weapons of Choice (Del Rey), by John Birmingham; Fitzpatrick’s War (DAW), by Theodore Judson; The Gods and Their Machines (Tor), by Oisin McGann; The Labyrinth (Prime), by Catherynenne M. Valente; Through Violet Eyes (Dell), by Stephen Woodworth; Move Under Ground (Night Shade), by Nick Mamatas; Firethorn (Scribner), by Sarah Mickelm; The Arcanum (Bantam), by Thomas Wheeler; and Ghosts in the Snow (Bantam Spectra), by Tamara Siler Jones.

  There were a number of hard-to-classify novels out on the edge of genre this year, as well as associational novels by genre authors, and ventures into genre by well-known mainstream authors, including: The Jane Austen Book Club (Putnam), by Karen Joy Fowler; The Zenith Angle (Del Rey), by Bruce Sterling; The Confusion (Morrow), and The System of the World (Morrow), by Neal Stephenson; The Rebel: An Imagined Life of James Dean (Morrow), by Jack Dann; A Handbook of American Prayer (Thunder’s Mouth), by Lucius Shepard; Cloud Atlas (Random House), by David Mitchell; The Plot Against America (Houghton Mifflin), by Philip Roth; Adventures of the Artificial Woman (Simon & Schuster), by Thomas Berger; Stone Cribs (St. Mart
in’s Minotaur), a mystery novel by Kristine Kathryn Rusch writing as “Kris Nelscott”; and historical novel Owls to Athens (Tor/Forge), by H. N. Turteltaub (a pseudonym for Harry Turtledove). Some of these, especially the Stephenson and Fowler novels, were among the best-selling titles of the year.

  Small presses of varying sizes of “small,” including some that until recently had mostly concentrated on short-story collections, also published a fair number of novels this year, among them: The Scarlet Fig, or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone (Rose Press), by Avram Davidson; Perfect Circle (Small Beer), by Sean Stewart; Life (Aqueduct Press), by Gwyneth Jones; The Course of the Heart (Night Shade Books), by M. John Harrison; Harp, Pipe and Symphony (Prime Books), and Spondulix (Cambrian Publications), by Paul Di Filippo; Letters from the Flesh (Red Deer Press), by Marcos Donnelly; Medicine Road (Subterranean Press), by Charles de Lint; The Prince of Christler-Coke (Golden Gryphon Press), by Neal Barrett Jr.; Getting Near the End (Red Deer Press), by Andrew Weiner; Bengal Station (Five Star), by Eric Brown; The Holy Machine (Wildside Press), by Chris Beckett; and Kiss the Goat (Prime Books/Wildside), by Brian Stableford.

  Although there are a good number of fantasy novels and borderline genre-mixing things on these lists, there are also a lot of pure-quill center-core SF novels here that would clearly and unambiguously be science fiction by almost anybody’s definition, including those by Haldeman, McDonald, Harrison, Ryman, Kress, Stross, Baxter, Vance, Baker, Reynolds, Banks, MacLeod, Doctorow, Benford, Hamilton, Robinson, McAuley, Asher, Cowdrey, Brown, McCarthy, Morgan, Pohl, Traviss, and lots of others. So center-core science fiction still hasn’t been driven off the bookstore shelves, although gloomy prognosticators ensure us every year that this is just about to happen.