The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 24 Page 5
The most prominent of the year’s stand-alone reprint anthologies was probably The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction (Wesleyan University Press), edited by Arthur B. Evans and five others from the staff of academic journal Science Fiction Studies, an attempt at a definitive canon-forming book that gives a retrospective overview of the development of science fiction from 1844 to 2008, starting with Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells, passing through the Usual Suspects, and ending up with writers like Greg Egan, Geoff Ryman, Charles Stross, and Ted Chiang. Another retrospective, this time of the Alternate History subgenre, is The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories (Robinson, Constable & Robinson), a mixed reprint (mostly) and original anthology edited by Ian Watson and Ian Whates. Digital Domains: A Decade of Science Fiction & Fantasy (Prime Books), edited by Ellen Datlow, collects some of the best fiction that Ellen has published in the online magazines that she’s edited over the last few years, and the similar Unplugged: The Web’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy: 2008 (Wyrm Publishing), edited by Rich Horton, is also devoted to stories published in online venues. A retrospective look back over the history of the burgeoning subgenre of steampunk (there were at least three anthologies featuring it this year) is given in Steampunk Prime (Nonstop Press), edited by Michael Ashley, and in Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded (Tachyon Publications) a mixed reprint (mostly) and original anthology edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer.
A similar retrospective anthology for fantasy, a bit less inclusive than the Wesleyan anthology, is The Secret History of Fantasy (Tachyon Publications), edited by Peter S. Beagle, which features authors such as Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Maureen McHugh, Michael Swanwick, and others. Wings of Fire (Night Shade Books), edited by Jonathan Strahan and Marianne S. Jablon, is a mixed reprint (mostly) and original fantasy anthology about dragons, featuring Ursula K. Le Guin, George R. R. Martin, Lucius Shepard, Roger Zelazny, and others. The self-explanatory People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy (Prime Books), edited by Rachel Swirsky and Sean Wallace, is a reprint anthology featuring Peter S. Beagle, Theodora Gross, Neil Gaiman, Janet Yolen, Michael Chabon, and others.
Other good reprint anthologies include The End of the World: Stories of the Apocalypse (Skyhorse Publishing), edited by Martin H. Greenberg (one of two big End-of-the-World anthologies this year; do you think the universe is trying to tell us something?), Before They Were Giants: First Works from Science Fiction Greats (Paizo Publishing), edited by James L. Sutter; an anthology of cat fantasy/horror stories, Tails of Wonder and Imagination (Night Shade Books), edited by Ellen Datlow; a mixed reprint (mostly) and original anthology of military SF, Citizens (Baen Books), edited by John Ringo and Brian M. Thomsen; an anthology of Deal-With-the-Devil stories, Sympathy for the Devil (Night Shade Books), edited by Tim Pratt; Realms 2: The Second Year of Clarkesworld Magazine (Wyrm Publishing), stories from the e-zine, edited by Nick Mamatas and Sean Wallace; and an anthology of stories drawn from the now-defunct Talebones magazine, The Best of Talebones (Fairwood Press), edited by Patrick Swenson.
The big retrospective reprint horror anthology this year is Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror (Tachyon Publications), edited by Ellen Datlow, but there was also The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror (Running Press Book Publishers), edited by Stephen Jones, and Zombies: The Recent Dead (Prime Books), edited by Paula Guran. There were also several original zombie anthologies, an all-zombie single-author collection – Scott Edelman’s What Will Come After – and numerous zombie stories scattered through 2010’s magazines, e-zines, and anthologies (the best of which were probably “The Naturalist,” by Maureen McHugh and “The Crocodiles,” by Steven Popkes), as well as a TV show about them, so fans of the shuffling dead have a lot to be thankful for this year. I think there were actually more zombie stories than vampire stories in 2010, in spite of the continuing popularity of Twilight and True Blood.)
The most prominent genre-oriented nonfiction book of the year was almost certainly the biographical study Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: 1907–1948: Learning Curve (Tor), by William H. Patterson, Jr. This huge book is only the first half of an exhaustive (sometime too exhaustive) work that will almost certainly stand as the comprehensive biography of SF giant Robert A. Heinlein, especially as many of the sources that Patterson tapped are no longer available to be interviewed. SF fans will find it fascinating, of course, for its look at the early years of Heinlein’s writing career and the pulp magazine era of the forties, but the lengthy sections on Heinlein’s stint at the Naval Academy and as an active-duty sailor, and on his abortive career as a political campaign manager are interesting in their own right, providing a detailed look back at the America of the early twentieth century, a place so different in mores, customs, and lifeways from America in the twenty-first century that it might as well be an alien world.
Another exhaustive biography of a major genre author is supplied by C. M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary (McFarland), by Mark Rich. Kornbluth is a complex, fascinating, and immensely talented figure now in danger of being forgotten, certainly a worthwhile figure for a biological study and critical reassessment if there ever was one. Unfortunately, clouds of controversy have swirled around the book from its release, mostly for the intensely unflattering portrait it paints of Kornbluth’s friend and lifelong collaborator Frederik Pohl, which have caused Pohl to vehemently deny the veracity of many of Rich’s “facts” – all of which has cast something of a shadow over what by rights should have been one of the preeminent genre nonfiction books of the year.
80! Memories and Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin (Aqueduct Press), edited by Karen Joy Fowler and Debbie Notkin, is an assemblage of critical articles, appreciations, poems, and even some fiction put together in honor of the eightieth birthday of SF writer Ursula K. Le Guin. All of it is worth reading, but the best piece here is a partial biography of Le Guin by Julie Phillips, the writer who did the biography of Alice Sheldon (“James Tiptree, Jr.”) a few years back, and that’s good enough to encourage hopes that Phillips will take a crack at a full-dress biography of Le Guin one of these days. I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (Hippocampus Press), by S. T. Joshi, takes a critical and biographical look at horror giant H. P. Lovecraft. Conversations with Octavia Butler (University Press of Mississippi), edited by Conseula Francis, is a collection of interviews conducted with the late author fron 1980 to just before her tragic death. Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Brabury Interviews (Stopsmiling Books), edited by Sam Weller, is a similar collection of interviews with Bradbury, nonfiction essays by Michael Moorcock are collected in Into the Media Web: Selected Non-Fiction, 1956–2006 (Savoy Books), by Michael Moorcock, and Understanding Philip K. Dick (University of South Carolina Press), by Eric Carl Link, adds another title to the ten-foot shelf of critical studies of Philip K. Dick (a writer almost completely ignored by academic critics during his lifetime, by the way – as were H. P. Lovecraft and C. M. Kornbluth, for that matter). Critic Gary K. Wolfe examines a wide range of authors in Bearings: Reviews 1997–2001 (Beccon Publications), Paul Kincaid and Niall Harrison offer a critical overlook of genre in Britain in British Science Fiction & Fantasy: Twenty Years, Two Surveys (Odd Two Out), L. Timmel Duchamp edits a nonfiction anthology of sixteen essays by well-known writers in Narrative Power: Encounters, Celebrations, Struggles (Aqueduct Press), and Bud Webster reviews some of the most prominent fiction anthologies in the field in Anthopology 101: Reflections, Inspections and Dissections of SF Anthologies (Merry Blacksmith Press).
Two perhaps contrasting perspectives on the genre’s ability as a predictive medium are offered in Visions of Tomorrow: Science Fiction Predictions That Came True (Skyhorse Publishing), by Thomas A. Easton and Judith K. Dial and The Wonderful Future That Never Was (Hearst Books), by Gregory Benford and the editors of Popular Mechanics magazine.
Of interest to those who lean toward the media side of the field may be The Science of Doctor Who
(John Hopkins University Press), by Paul Persons, and Firefly: Still Flying: A Celebration of Joss Whedon’s Acclaimed TV Series (Titan Books), by Joss Whedon.
An entertaining attempt at creating a modern Bestiary, of creatures drawn from myth and folklore, is The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals (Tachyon Publications), by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer.
After a strong year last year, 2010 seemed to be a somewhat weaker year in the art book market. The best, and certainly the most varied, was the latest in a long-running “Best of the Year” series for fantastic art, Spectrum 17: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art (Underwood Books), edited by Cathy Fenner and Arnie Fenner. Also worthwhile were two other varied collections of SF art, Sci-Fi Art Now (Collins Design), edited by John Freeman, and exposé 8: The Finest Digital Art in the Known Universe (Ballistic Publishing), edited by Daniel P. Wade. Evocative and painterly views of scenes from fantasy books by J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard were available in Middle-Earth: Visions of a Modern Myth (Underwood Books), by Donato Giancola and Sword’s Edge: Paintings Inspired by the Works of Robert E. Howard (Underwood Books), by Manuel Sanjulian, and scenes from Star Wars were on display in Star Wars Art: Visions (Abrams), edited by anoymous. There were collections of paintings by Bob Eggleton, Dragon’s Domain (Impact), by Bob Eggleton, and Jack Gaughan, Outermost (Nonstop Press), edited by Luis Ortiz, a collection by Daniel Merriman, Taking Reality by Surprise (Monarch Editions), two collections of work by William Stout, Inspriations (Flesk Publications) and Hallucinations (Flesk Publications), and there was also a collection by comics artist Neal Adams, The Art of Neal Adams (Vanguard Productions), by Neal Adams. Studies of pulp art included Savage Art: 20th Century Genre and the Artists that Defined It (Underwood Books), edited by Tim Underwood, Arnie Fenner, and Cathy Fenner, and Shameless Art: 20th Century Genre Art and the Artists That Defined It (Underwood Books), edited by Tim Underwood, Arnie Fenner, and Cathy Fenner. A collections of paintings that double as instructional books included Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (Andrews McMeel Publishing), by James Gurney, and OtherWorlds: How to Imagine, Paint and Create Epic Scenes of Fantasy (Impact Books), by Tom Kidd.
As you can see, Underwood Books had probably the strongest year in this area.
According to the Box Office Mojo site (www.boxofficemojo.com), nine out of ten of the year’s top-earning movies were genre films of one sort or another, if you accept animated films and superhero movies as being “genre films.” (The exception was The Karate Kid, in tenth place.) The year’s top five box-office champs were all genre movies by that definition, as were fourteen out of the top twenty earners, and roughly thirty-seven out of the top 100, more or less (I might have missed one here or there).
For the first time since 2004, when Shrek 2 pulled it off, the year’s number one box office champ (not counting 2009’s Avatar, which still pulled in more this year than any of the 2010 films) was an animated film, Toy Story 3. It and the second-place finisher, Tim Burton’s “reimagined” Alice in Wonderland, earned more than a billion dollars apiece worldwide, with a steep drop-off to the film in the third spot, the superhero movie Iron Man 2, which earned “only” $622,056,974 worldwide.
Unlike last year, there were few SF movies (as opposed to fantasy movies, superhero movies, and animated films), even bad SF with junk science like last year’s Avatar, Star Trek, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, let alone smaller-budgeted more “serious” movies such as Moon and District 9. The most notable exception, and the one that seemed to get the most critical respect, was the Philip K. Dick–like Inception, about manipulating people’s dreams for your own purposes, which also did well at the box office, finishing in sixth place. The low-budget alien invasion movie, Monsters, got a surprising amount of critical respect, although it barely made a ripple on the box-office charts. The soap-opera vampire romance The Twilight Saga: Eclipse came in at fourth place, and the more traditional fantasy movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 at fifth place (the new version of Clash of the Titans, another fantasy movie, finished in fourteenth place, still probably good enough to earn it a sequel). The rest of the top ten were rounded off by other animated films: Despicable Me in seventh place, Shrek Forever After in eighth, and How to Train Your Dragon in ninth (this was a big year for animated films, with Tangled coming in at tenth place, and Megamind and Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’ Hoole further down in the pack).
This shouldn’t surprise anybody – genre films (with the inevitable disclaimer, “of one sort or another”; often they’re superhero movies) have dominated the box office top ten for more than a decade now. You have to go all the way back to 1998 to find a year when the year’s top earner was a nongenre film, Saving Private Ryan.
In spite of the presence of some immense-earning Mega-Movies, it seemed like a lackluster year in some respects, with little getting much critical respect except for Inception (and even there, reviews were sharply mixed), and, to some extent, Toy Story 3 and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. Even at the box office, it was far from a year of universal success. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Wolfman, Jonah Hex, The Book of Eli, The Last Airbender, Yogi Bear, and (probably the most critically savaged movie of the year) Gulliver’s Travels were all disappointments to one degree or another, and attempts to establish viable new franchises such as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief were all failures. The “superhero” satire Kick-Ass was famously controversial for a short while for its scenes of extreme ultraviolence committed by an eleven-year-old girl, but in spite of all the tongue-clicking in Time and Newsweek, could only make it to sixty-seventh place on the box office list.
Although 2010 was still the second-highest grossing year of all time for the movie industry, estimated attendance was the lowest in fifteen years, 1.27 billion people, down 8 percent from the previous year. Does this mean that fewer people were paying more money to see movies? With the boom in movies released in 3-D and IMAX, for more expensive ticket prices, that’s quite possible. The increased accessibility of movies on the Internet and through services such as Netflix and On Demand, often only a few months after they come out in first release, plus the continuing recession, may be discouraging some people from going to the theater – although at 1.27 billion, that’s still a lot of people buying tickets!
Most of the buzz so far in 2011 (although we’re only a few weeks into it as I write these words) is for the upcoming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, the last of the Harry Potter franchise. The promised sequels to Avatar, Star Trek, 2012, and Transformers are still promised, as are film versions of Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, John Wyndham’s Chocky, and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation; no doubt some of these will show up sooner or later, although it’s hard to tell which (bet on Avatar; it’s made far too much money for there not to be a sequel, perhaps more than one of them). There’ll be a new Twilight movie, Breaking Dawn, which I believe will be split into two parts, as was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. So far, 2011 looks like it’s going to be a big year for Independence Day clones, aliens attacking all over the place, and will perhaps see a big resurgence in superhero movies, with Captain America and The Green Hornet, and Thor looming on the horizon like a thundercloud.
It was a lackluster year for SF and fantasy shows on television.
Lost ended with an anticlimactic everybody-goes-to-Heaven-and-leaves-almost-all-of-the-major-questions-unanswered-behind-them finale that disappointed most Losties, outraged many, and soured some retrospectively on the series to the point where they wouldn’t even buy the DVD. Heroes, FlashForward, The Prisoner, and Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica the Great White Hopes of last season, all died, and Stargate Universe will follow them into oblivion after running its last few episodes early this year. The long-running Smallville is finally coming to an end, and will run its final episode in the spring.
The long-running Medium is also ending, and the new vampire show The Gates closed its gates and returned to the quiet of its grave.
Fringe, The Event, and V all returned, but are wobbling in the ratings, and may not last out the year.