The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 24 Read online

  Supernatural, Vampire Diaries, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Chuck, and zombie show The Walking Dead are returning, as are the SF comedies Eureka and Ware house 13. Doctor Who and Primeval are returning, and a Torchwood spin-off, Torchwood: The New World, set in the United States, will be starting up. There will also be an American version of the BBC show, Being Human, about a vampire, a ghost, and a werewolf living together in the same apartment (which always sounds to me like the setup for a joke: “A vampire, a ghost, and a werewolf walk into a bar . . .”) Merlin is returning, and will be joined by another Arthurian fantasy series, Camelot. Two live-action superhero shows, No Ordinary Family and The Cape, started up; The Cape has already died.

  Movie director Steven Spielberg will be making his first foray into series television with two new shows: Terra Nova, in which scientists escape through time from a doomed and ruined Earth to attempt to restart the human race in a prehistoric era, and Falling Skies, in which embattled guerilla militiamen battle alien invasion forces who have destroyed much of the Earth and killed most of the people. (Guess that Spielberg doesn’t envision much of a future for humanity.)

  Blood and Chrome, a new prequel to Battlestar Galactica, is coming up, as are a slew of animated superhero shows, including Young Justice, following the adventures of the young sidekicks of Justice League characters, Green Lantern: The Animated Series, and Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

  Most of the quality work on television seems to be being done on HBO these days, from the campy fun of vampire show True Blood to nongenre dramatic series such as Boardwalk Empire and Big Love. Coming up from them is the long-awaited miniseries versions of George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. A miniseries version of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars is supposed to be coming up from AMC.

  The 68th World Science Fiction Convention, Aussiecon 4, was held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, from September 2 to September 6, 2010. The 2010 Hugo Awards, presented at Aussiecon 4, were: Best Novel (tie), The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi and The City and the City, by China Miéville; Best Novella, “Palimpsest,” by Charles Stross; Best Novelette, “The Island,” by Peter Watts; Best Short Story, “Bridesicle,” by Will McIntosh; Best Related Book, This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is “I”), by Jack Vance; Best Professional Editor, Long Form, Patrick Nielsen Hayden; Best Professional Editor, Short Form, Ellen Datlow; Best Professional Artist, Shaun Tan; Best Dramatic Presentation (short form), Doctor Who: “The Waters of Mars”; Best Dramatic Presentation (long form), Moon; Best Graphic Story, Girl Genius, Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm, by Kaja and Phil Foglio, art by Phil Foglio; Best Semiprozine, Clarkesworld; Best Fanzine, StarShipSofa: Best Fan Writer, Frederik Pohl; Best Fan Artist, Brad W. Foster; plus the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer to Seanan McGuire.

  The 2009 Nebula Awards, presented at a banquet at the Hilton Cocoa Beach Oceanfront Hotel in Cocoa Beach, Florida, on May 15, 2010, were: Best Novel, The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi; Best Novella, The Women of Nell Gwynne’s, by Kage Baker; Best Novelette, “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast,” by Eugie Foster; Best Short Story, “Spar,” by Kij Johnson; Ray Bradbury Award, District 9, by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell; the Andre Norton Award to The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente; the Solstice Award to Tom Doherty, Terri Windling, and Donald A. Wollheim, the Author Emeritus Award to Neil Barrett, Jr.; and the Grand Master Award to Joe Haldeman.

  The 2010 World Fantasy Awards, presented at a banquet at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Columbus, Ohio, on October 31, 2010, during the Nineteenth Annual World Fantasy Convention, were: Best Novel, The City and the City, by China Miéville; Best Novella, “Sea-Hearts,” by Margo Lanagan; Best Short Story, “The Pelican Bar,” by Karen Joy Fowler; Best Collection (tie), The Very Best of Gene Wolfe/The Best of Gene Wolfe, by Gene Wolfe and There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales, by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya; Best Anthology, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny: From Poe to the Pulps/From the 1940s to Now, edited by Peter Straub; Best Artist, Charles Vess; Special Award (Professional), to Jonathan Strahan, for editing anthologies; Special Award (Nonprofessional), to Susan Marie Groppi, for Strange Horizons; plus the Life Achievement Award to Terry Pratchett, Peter Straub, and Brian Lumley.

  The 2009 Bram Stoker Awards, presented by the Horror Writers Association were: Best Novel, Audrey’s Door, by Sarah Langan; Best First Novel, Damnable, by Hank Schwaeble; Best Long Fiction, The Lucid Dreaming, by Lisa Morton; Best Short Fiction, “In the Perches of My Ears,” by Norman Prentiss; Best Collection, A Taste of Tenderloin, by Gene O’Neill; Best Anthology, He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson, edited by Christopher Conlon; Nonfiction, Writers Workshop of Horror, by Michael Knost; Best Poetry Collection, Chimeric Machines, by Lucy A. Snyder; plus Lifetime Achievement Awards to William F. Nolan and Brian Lumley.

  The 2010 John W. Campbell Memorial Award was won by The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi.

  The 2010 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for Best Short Story was won by Shambling Towards Hiroshima, by James Morrow.

  The 2009 Philip K. Dick Memorial Award went to Bitter Angels, by C. L. Anderson.

  The 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award was won by The City and the City, by China Miéville.

  The 2010 James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award was won by Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales, by Greer Gilman and Ooku: The Inner Chambers, volumes 1 & 2, by Fumi Yoshinaga (tie)

  The 2010 Sidewise Award went to 1942, by Robert Conroy (Long Form) and “The Fixation,” by Alastair Reynolds (Short Form).

  The 2010 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award went to Mark Clifton.

  Dead in 2010 or early 2011 were:

  JAMES P. HOGAN, 69, author of Inherit the Stars. The Gentle Giants of Ganymede, and many others; E. C. TUBB, 90, veteran British SF writer, author of more than 1340 novels, including, his best-known, the thirty-two-volume Dumarest series of space operas; MARTIN GARDINER, 95, author, mathematician, and puzzle-maker, who wrote long-running mathematics columns for Scientific American and Asmiov’s Science Fiction; ARTHUR HERZOG III, 83, mainstream author who also wrote some books with SF elements, such as The Swarm; MERVYN JONES, 87, author of twenty-nine novels, including some SF; PATRICIA WRIGHTSON, 88, author of twenty-seven children’s and Young Adult books; STEPHEN GILBERT, 97, Irish SF and horror writer; three-time Edgar-winner and mystery mainstay, JOE GORES, 79, author of Hammett and 32 Cadillacs; ELISABETH BERESFORD, 84, British children’s author, creator of the long-running series about The Wombles; JOHN STEAKLEY, 59, SF writer, author of Armor; WILLIAM MAYNE, 82, author of more than 100 children’s books, some with SF elements; FRANK K. KELLY, 95, veteran writer; JIM HARMON, 76, author of more than forty stories in the fifties and sixties, most for Galaxy and Worlds of If; GEORGE EWING, 64, SF writer, contributor to Asmov’s and Analog; MELISSA MIA HALL, 54, SF/ horror writer and anthologist, a friend; JEANNIE ROBINSON, 62, author, dancer, and choreographer, wife of SF writer Spider Robinson, a friend; F. GWYNPLAINE MacINTYRE, 62, prolific short-story writer who was a mainstay of Asimov’s during the George Scithers years, and also sold to Amazing, Weird Tales, and elsewhere; MARY HUNTER SCHAUB, 66, SF and fantasy writer, author with Andre Norton of The Magestone; JENNIFER RARDIN, 45, urban fantasy writer, author of Once Bitten, Twice Shy; REBECCA NEASON, 55, fantasy and media novel writer; JOHN SCHOENHERR, 74, Hugo-winning SF cover artist and nature illustrator who did some of the most famous covers ever for Analog, including the cover for the serialization of Frank Herbert’s Dune; FRANK FRAZETTA, 82, famous fantasy artist, Hugo and World Fantasy Award–winner, best known for his covers for Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian and for covers for many books by Edgar Rice Burroughs; ROBERT McCALL, 90, artist perhaps best known for the movie poster for 2001: A Space Odyssey, although he also worked on Disney’s Epcot Center and the National Air and Space Museum, as well as for Life magazine;
AL WILLIAMSON, 79, comic artist; GEORGE H. SCITHERS, 80, founding editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction, who also served as editor for Amazing and Weird Tales and was a prominent agent and fanzine editor, winner of a Hugo and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention; RALPH M. VICINANZA, 60, perhaps the most successful and prestigious literary agent in the history of SF, certainly of the last several decades, who at one time or another was the agent for most of the prominent authors in the field, and who helped establish and expand the overseas market for American SF; LARRY ASHMEAD, 78, who at one time or another was a major book editor at Doubleday, Simon & Schuster, Lippincott, and Harper & Row; BOB GUCCIONE, 79, publisher of Pent house, probably best known in the field for launching the prestigious magazine OMNI; ELAINE KOSTER, 69, literary agent and publisher, who was responsible for helping to launch the career of Stephen King; EVERETT F. BLEILER, 90, bibliographer and scholar, compiler of The Checklist of Fantastic Literature: A Bibliography of Fantasy, Weird and Science Fiction Books Published in the English Language, as well as, with T. E. Ditky, the editor of The Best Science Fiction Stories, the first annual Year’s Best anthology series, winner of the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award; DONALD H. TUCK, 89, Hugo-winning Australian bibliographer, compiler of A Handbook of Science Fiction and Fantasy and The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy through 1968: A Bibliographic Survey of the Fields of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction through 1968; NEIL BARRON, 76, bibliographer and scholar, author of one of the standard SF references, Anatomy of Wonder; JERRY WEIST, 61, author, bookseller, and collector, author of the Hugo-winning Ray Bradbury: An Illustrated Life; GLEN GOODKNIGHT, 69, founder of the Mythopoeic Society; GLENN LEWIS GILLETTE, 64, SF writer who edited the SFWA e-newsletter for many years; LESLIE NIELSEN, 84, film and television actor, best known to genre audiences for starring in the classic film Forbidden Planet, although they’re likely to also know him from later movies like Airplane! and The Naked Gun; ANNE FRANCIS, 80, Nielsen’s costar from Forbidden Planet, who also did much television work, including episodes of The Twilight Zone; KEVIN McCARTHY, 96, film actor, best known to genre audience for starring in the original version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers; PATRICIA NEAL, 84, film actor, best known to genre audiences for costarring in the original The Day the Earth Stood Still; PETER POSTLETHWAITE, 64, British film actor, perhaps best known to genre audiences from Inception and The Lost World: Jurrasic Park; HAROLD GOULD, 86, film and television actor, perhaps best known to genre audiences from his appearances in episodes of The Twilight Zone, Lois & Clark, The Outer Limits, and The Ray Bradbury Theater, although I have little doubt that many of them would also remember him from The Sting; TONY CURTIS, 85, film actor, one of the most famous leading men of the fifties and sixties, his connection with the genre is fairly tenuous, although no doubt many will remember him from The Vikings and The Great Race, which had slight fantastic elements; JAMES GAMMON, 70, gravel-voiced film and television actor who appeared in The Milagro Beanfield War, Silverado, and TV’s The Wild Wild West and Batman, and did voiceover work in The Iron Giant; STEVE LANDESBERG, 74, television actor, best known as the eccentric detective in Barney Miller; BLAKE EDWARDS, 88, film director, perhaps best known for Victor Victoria and the Pink Panther movies; DINO DE LAURENTIIS, 91, film producer, best known to genre audiences for Dune, Barbarella, Conan the Barbarian, and an awful version of King Kong; ASENATH HAMMOND, 60, longtime fan and blogger, ex-wife of SF artist Rick Sternbach, a friend; ANNETTE STITH, widow of SF writer John E. Stith; MARY E. STUBBS, 87, widow of Harry Stubbs, who wrote SF as “Hal Clement”; BETTY BOND, 94, widow of SF writer Nelson Bond; EILEEN PRATCHETT, 88, mother of fantasy writer Terry Pratchett; NATHAN DATLOW, 93, father of editor Ellen Datlow; AVERY LEEMING NAGLE, 85, mother of SF writer Pati Nagle; GAIL ZETTEL 74, mother of SF writer Sarah Zettel; GARDNER McSWIGGIN, 82, uncle of editor Gardner Dozois.

  A HISTORY OF

  TERRAFORMING

  Robert Reed

  The sprawling, vividly imaginative story that follows traces the protagonist, Simon, from his childhood on a newly settled Mars hundreds of years into an increasingly strange future. Simon is an “atum,” a terraformer, and each step in his career as he grows in knowledge and abilities showcases the strengths and weaknesses, the ethical as well as physical pros and cons, of terraforming, as the terraformers create new worlds – and sometimes destroy old ones as well.

  Robert Reed sold his first story in 1986, and quickly established himself as one of the most prolific of today’s writers, particularly at short fiction lengths, and has managed to keep up a very high standard of quality while being prolific, something that is not at all easy to do. Reed stories such as “Sister Alice,” “Brother Perfect,” “Decency,” “Savior,” “The Remoras,” “Chrysalis,” “Whiptail,” “The Utility Man,” “Marrow,” “Birth Day,” “Blind,” “The Toad of Heaven,” “Stride,” “The Shape of Everything,” “Guest of Honor,” “Waging Good,” and “Killing the Morrow,” among at least a half-dozen others equally as strong, count as among some of the best short work produced by anyone in the eighties and nineties; many of his best stories have been assembled in the collections The Dragons of Springplace and The Cuckoo’s Boys. He won the Hugo Award in 2007 for his novella “A Billion Eves.” Nor is he nonprolific as a novelist, having turned out eleven novels since the end of the eighties, including The Leeshore, The Hormone Jungle, Black Milk, The Remarkables, Down the Bright Way, Beyond the Veil of Stars, An Exaltation of Larks, Beneath the Gated Sky, Marrow, Sister Alice, and The Well of Stars, as well as two chapbook novellas, Mere and Flavors of My Genius. His most recent book is a new novel, Eater-of Bone. Reed lives with his family in Lincoln, Nebraska.

  Mars

  SIMON’S FATHER STARTED talking about nuts on walls, about how the seeds he was working with looked very much like wall nuts. Then he winked, handing over the wonder that he had been carrying in his big palm. “What do you think of this, Simon?” But before the boy could answer, his father cautioned him to use both hands and be especially careful. “Not because you might damage the seed,” the man said. “Or because it would ever hurt you. But certain objects are important, sometimes even sacred, and they deserve all the consideration and respect that we can possibly show for them.”

  Considering how small it was, the seed was exceptionally heavy. It was black and hard as diamond but covered with small, sharp-edged pits. Against his bare palms, the object felt warm. Maybe the heat was leftover from where the seed was kept, or maybe it was warm in the same way that little boys were warm. Either answer might be true. He didn’t ask. He just held the object in his cupped hands and stared, wondering what would happen if the impossible occurred, if the seed decided to awaken now.

  For one person, time passed.

  Then his father asked again, “What do you think, Simon?”

  The boy’s thoughts were shifting quickly, clinging to no single idea. He was telling himself that he wasn’t even three-years-old. But on the earth he would already be four, and every four-year-old that he knew enjoyed large, impressive opinions. But if he lived near Neptune, he wouldn’t be a month old and his father would never take him riding along on his working trips. And if this were Mercury, then Simon would be many years old, and because of certain pernicious misunderstandings about calendars and the passage of time, he believed that on Mercury he would be an adult. He was remembering how people said that he was going to grow up tall and handsome. It was as if adults had the power to peer into the future. They didn’t admit to children that they had this talent, but the truth often leaked out in careless words and unwanted glimpses. Simon liked the idea of peering into the future. Right now, he was trying to imagine himself living in some important, unborn century. The nearly three-year-old boy wanted to be a grown man entrusted with some very important job. But for the time being, riding with his father seemed important enough. That’s what he was thinking when he handed back that precious and very expensive seed, grinning as he said, “It
’s delicious, Dad.” He had never been happier than he was just then.

  “Do you know how it works?”

  “Yes,” the boy claimed.

  “No, you don’t,” his father warned. “It’s my job to find homes for these little buggers, and I barely understand them.”

  That admission of ignorance made a deep impression. Quietly, Simon asked, “What do floor nuts look like?”

  Puzzled, his father blinked and said nothing.

  Simon pointed at the seed. “I’ve never seen a wall look like that.”

  His father said, “Oh,” and then softly laughed. “It’s not two words. ‘Walnut’ is one word. It’s the seed made by a species of earth tree.”

  “I know what trees are,” the boy boasted.

  “You’ve seen the pictures, at least.” His father turned away, setting the heavy black wonder back into its important drawer. Then as he walked to the front of the rover, he added, “Here’s something else to think about: One of my seeds is quite a bit more complicated than any unborn tree. There’s more information packed inside that hull than normal DNA can hold. And considerably more power than roots and leaves would ever show on their own.”

  Simon walked behind his father, looking through the wide windows. Mars was rocky and pale red, last night’s frost hiding in the coldest shade. The ground couldn’t have been rougher, yet the rover walked without rocking or lurching or jumping. High clouds and at least three mirrors looked down on them from the purple sky, and the skyhook known as Promise was straight ahead. Today the wind was blowing, moving hard enough to throw the smallest bits of dust. Dust was dangerous. The cold was dangerous. Mars liked to kill people, particularly careless children who didn’t listen to their fathers and other wise voices.

  But the world wouldn’t be dangerous much longer, Simon thought.