The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 17 Read online

  The 2002 Nebula Awards, presented at a banquet at the Warwick Hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on April 19, 2003, were: Best Novel, America Gods, by Neil Gaiman; Best Novella, “Bronte’s Egg,” by Richard Chwedyk; Best Novelette, “Hell is the Absence of God,” by Ted Chiang; Best Short Story, “Creature,” by Carol Emshwiller; Best Script, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson; plus the Author Emeritus Award to Kathleen MacLean and the Grandmaster Award to Ursula K. Le Guin.

  The World Fantasy Awards, presented at the Twenty-ninth Annual World Fantasy Convention at the Hyatt Regency in Washington, D.C., on November 3, 2003, were: Best Novel, The Facts of Life, by Graham Joyce and Ombria in Shadow, by Patricia A. McKillip (tie); Best Novella, “The Library,” by Zoran Zivkovic; Best Short Fiction, “Creation,” by Jeffrey Ford; Best Collection, The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories, by Jeffrey Ford; Best Anthology, The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling and Leviathan Three, edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Forrest Aguirre (tie); Best Artist, Tom Kidd; Special Award (Professional), to Gordon Van Gelder for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; Special Award (Nonprofessional), to Jason Williams, Jeremy Lassen, and Benjamin Cossel, for Night Shade Books; plus the Life Achievement Award to Donald M. Grant and Lloyd Alexander.

  The 2003 Bram Stoker Awards, presented by the Horror Writers of America during a banquet in New York City on June 7, 2003, were: Best Novel, The Night Class, by Tom Piccirilli; Best First Novel, The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold; Best Collection, One More for the Road, by Ray Bradbury; Best Long Fiction, “My Work Is Not Yet Done,” by Thomas Ligotti and “El Dia de Los Muertos,” by Brian B. Hopkins (tie); Best Short Story, “The Misfit Child Grows Fat on Despair,” by Tom Piccirilli; Nonfiction, Ramsey Campbell, Probably: Essays on Horror and Sundry Fantasies, by Ramsey Campbell; Best Anthology, The Darker Side: Generations of Horror, edited by John Pelan; Best Screenplay, Frailty, by Brant Hanley; Best Work for Young Readers, Coraline, by Neil Gaiman; Poetry Collection, The Gossamer Eye, Mark McLaughlin, Rain Greaves, and David Niall Wilson; Best Alternative Forms, Imagination Box, by Steve and Melanie Tem; plus the Lifetime Achievement Award to J.N. Williamson and Stephen King.

  The 2002 John W. Campbell Memorial Award was won by Probability Space, by Nancy Kress.

  The 2002 Theodore Sturgeon Award for Best Short Story was won by “Over Yonder,” by Lucius Shepard.

  The 2002 Philip K. Dick Memorial Award went to The Mount, by Carol Emshwiller.

  The 2002 Arthur C. Clarke award was won by The Seperation, by Christopher Priest.

  The 2002 James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award was won by Light, by M. John Harrison and “Stories For Men,” John Kessel (tie).

  Dead in 2003 or early 2004 were: HARRY CLEMENT STUBBS, 81, who, writing as HAL CLEMENT, was one of the major figures in science fiction for over fifty years, author of the classic “hard science” novel Mission of Gravity, as well as well-known novels such as Cycle of Fire, Needle, Iceworld, Noise, and others; JACK CADY, 71, well-known fantasy and horror writer, winner of the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the Bram Stoker Award, author of such novels as The Off-Season, The Hauntings of Hood Canal, and Street: A Novel, as well as many short stories, the best-known of which was probably the Nebula-winning “The Night We Buried Road Dog”; KEN GRIMWOOD, 59, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Replay, as well as novels such as Breakthrough, Elise, and Into the Deep; JOAN AIKEN, 79, prolific British YA fantasy author, whose nearly one hundred books include The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Black Hearts of Battersea, Dido and Pa, and Cold Shoulder Road, among many others, and whose many short stories were collected in A Touch of Chill, More Than You Bargained For, and many other collections; HOWARD FAST, 88, who was better-known for his historical novels such as Spartacus and Freedom Road, but who also wrote the occasional SF or fantasy story, collected in The Edge of Tomorrow, The General Zapped an Angel, and A Touch of Infinity; JANE RICE, 90, author known mainly for short fiction whose stories appeared with fair frequency in magazines such as Unknown and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction throughout the middle decades of the last century; PETER T. GARRATT, 54, British psychologist, fan, and author, a frequent contributor to Interzone; WILLIAM RELLING, Jr., 49, horror writer; JULIUS SCHWARTZ, 89, agent and longtime editor for D.C. Comics, a beloved figure in SF fandom for many years who was also credited with revitalizing the comic book industry in the 1950s and ushering in the “Silver Age” of comics; STEFAN WUL, 81, French SF writer, author of Le Tempe du Passe, Omsen Serie (the basis for the movie Fantastic Planet), and L’Orphelin de Perdide; KIR BULYCHEV, 69, Russian SF writer, author of Alice: The Girl from Earth and Half a Life; ZHENG WENGUANG, 74, one of the founding fathers of Chinese SF; PAUL ZINDELL, 67, author of the well-known play “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds”; DONALD BARR, 82, science educator and SF writer, author of Space Relations and Planet in Arms; JACQUES CHAMBON, 60, editor, critic, and translator, a major figure in the French SF publishing world; GEORGE and JAN O’ NALE, publishers of Cheap Street Press; MIKE HINGE, 72, SF artist, who did cover work for Amazing, Analog, and many other publishers; MEL HUNTER, 75, SF artist who did many covers for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, as well as for other markets; DON LAWRENCE, 75, British comics artist; WARREN ZEVON, 56, well-known singer and songwriter, author of the classic fantasy song “Werewolves of London,” among many others; GREGORY PECK, 87, famous film actor, perhaps best-known to genre audiences for his roles in On The Beach and The Boys From Brazil; RICHARD CRENNA, 76, film actor, perhaps best-known to genre audiences for his roles in Marooned and A Fire in the Sky; BUDDY HACKETT, 79, comedian and film actor, perhaps best known to genre audiences for his roles in The Love Bug and as the voice of Scuttle the seagull in Disney’s The Little Mermaid; JOHN RITTER, 55, television and film actor, perhaps best-known to genre audiences for his role as a killer robot on a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, “Ted”; HUME CRONYN, 92, film actor, perhaps best-known to genre audiences for his roles in Cocoon and Cocoon: The Return; HARRY WARNER, JR., 80, Hugo-winning fannish historian, author of All Our Yesterdays and A Wealth of Fable: An Informal History of Science Fiction Fandom in the 1950s; LLOYD ARTHUR ESHBACH, 93, writer and publisher, editor of Fantasy Press and of the first nonfiction book about science fiction, Of Worlds Beyond: The Science of Science Fiction, author of The Land Beyond the Gate and other novels; WILLIS E. McNELLEY, 82, SF critic, editor, and academic, compiler of The Dune Encyclopedia and coeditor of the anthologies Mars, We Love You and Above the Human Landscape; ROY TACKETT, 78, longtime fan and fanzine fan; JOHN FOYSTER, 62, long-time convention organizer and fanzine fan, a major force in Australian fandom; LORI WOLF, 43, well-known fan and convention organizer, a prominent figure in Texas fandom; MARGUERITE BRADBURY, 81, wife of writer Ray Bradbury; HERB BRIN, father of SF writer David Brin; MARY C. PANGBORN, 96, sister and sometime collaborator of SF writer Edgar Pangborn, who also wrote some solo stories of her own; and GRACE C. LUNDRY, longtime fan and wife of fan Don Lundry.

  OFF ON A STARSHIP

  William Barton

  Vivid, colorful, and packed with more Sense-of-Wonder evoking moments than most author’s trilogies, the story that follows sweeps us along with a young man who’s embarked on the greatest adventure of his (or anyone else’s) life, one as full of dangers, marvels, and enigmatic mysteries as any boy’s heart could yearn for – and a few surprises that even the most imaginative young man couldn’t have suspected were in store for him!

  William Barton was born in Boston in 1950 and currently resides in Durham, North Carolina. For most of his life, he has been an engineering technician, specializing in military and industrial technology. He was at one time employed by the Department of Defense, working on the nation’s nuclear submarine fleet, and is currently a freelance writer and computer consultant. His stories have appeared in Aboriginal SF, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Sci Fi
ction, Amazing, Interzone, Tomorrow, Full Spectrum, and other markets. His books include the novels Hunting On Kunderer, A Plague of All Cowards, Dark Sky Legion, When Heaven Fell, The Transmigration of Souls (which was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award), and Acts of Conscience, and, in collaboration with Michael Capobianco, Iris, Fellow Traveler, and Alpha Centauri. His most recent novels are White Light, in collaboration with Michael Capobianco, and the solo novel, When We Were Real.

  IT WAS THE BEST of times. It was the worst of times. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to go?

  It was, oh, I guess the middle of November 1966, that night, maybe seven p.m., dark out, of course, cold and quiet. The sky over Woodbridge, Virginia, was flooded with stars, so many stars the black night, clear and crisp, had a vaguely lit-up quality to it, as if ever so slightly green. Maybe just the lights from the gas stations and little shopping centers lining Route 1, not far away.

  I was walking home alone from the Drug Fair in Fisher Shopping Center, up by the highway, where I’d read comic books and eaten two servings of ketchupy French fries, moping by myself. I’d stayed too long, reading all the way through the current Fantastic Four so I could put it back and not pay. I was supposed to have been home by six-thirty, so my mom could head out on her date.

  Out with some fat construction worker or another, some guy with beery breath and dirty hair, the sort of guy she’d been “seeing” (and I knew what was meant by that), one after another, in the two years since she’d run off my dad, leaving me home alone to look after my two little sisters, ages three and seven.

  I remember thinking how pissed off she was going to be.

  I was standing on the east rim of Dorvo Valley, looking down into the shadows, thinking about how really dark it was down there, an empty bowl of land, looking mysterious as ever. Murray and I named it that when we’d discovered it three years ago, maybe a half-mile of empty land, cleared of underbrush, surrounded by trees, called it after a place in the book we’d been trying to write back then, The Venusians, our answer to Barsoom, though we’d kind of given it up after Pirates of Venus came out.

  Murray. Prick. That was why I was at Drug Fair alone. There’d been a silence after I called his house, then his mother had said, “I’m sorry, Wally. Murray’s gone off with Larry again tonight. I don’t know when he’ll be home. I’ll tell him you called.”

  I felt hollow, remembering all the times we’d sat together at Drug Fair, reading comics for free, drinking cherry cokes and eating those ketchupy French fries. Remembered last summer, being here in Dorvo, the very last time we’d “played Venus” together, wielding our river-reed swords, lopping the sentient berry clusters from the Contac bushes we called Red Devils, laughing and pretending we’d fallen into a book. Our book.

  Murray’s dad was the one named them Contac bushes, telling us they were really ephedra, and that’s where the stuff in allergy medicines came from.

  But then school started, eleventh grade, and we’d met Larry. Larry, who was going steady with Susie. Pretty blonde Susie, who had a chunky girlfriend named Emily, who wore glasses.

  Something like this had happened before, when we were maybe ten or eleven, and Murray had joined Little League, telling me it would help him find his way as an “all-around boy.” This time, I think, the key word would be pussy, instead of baseball.

  I stood silent, looking out across the dark valley, the black silhouette of the woods beyond, above them, the fat golden spire of Our Lady of Angels Catholic Church, floodlit from below, where I’d been forced to go before my parents split up. In the Dorvo Valley mythos, on our wonderfully complete Venus, lost Venus, we’d called it the Temple of Venusia, and the city at its feet, no mere shopping center, but the Dorvo capitol, Angor, portmanteau’d kiddy-French Angel of Gold.

  I realized I’d better get going. Through the black woods, down the full length of Greenacre Drive, past Murray’s house, where his parents would be sitting, silent before the TV, drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, across the creek, up Staggs Court to my furious, desperately horny mom.

  If I was lucky, she’d spend the night with whoever it was, and I wouldn’t have to lay in bed in the dark by myself, listening to their goings-on.

  I blew out a long breath, a long wisp of warm condensation flickering like a ghost in the bit of light from the sky full of stars, and stopped, eyes caught by some faint gleam from deep in the valley of the shadow. I felt my heart quicken, caught in a mythopoeic moment. Look, Murray. A cloud skimmer . . . !

  Yeah. Right. Where’s Murray now? In a dark movie theater somewhere, with his hand groping up a girl’s dress, like a real grown-up boy.

  But the gleam was there, really there, and, after another moment, I started walking down through the long grass, stumbling over Red Devils and weeds, skirting around holes I could barely see, but remembered from long familiarity with the place, night vision growing keener as I went down in the dark.

  Looking toward the phantom gleam, I thought to shade my eyes with one hand, occluding the Golden Angel, cutting off more light from the stars.

  Stopped walking.

  Thought, um, no.

  I looked away, blinking like a moron. Looked back.

  The flying saucer was a featureless disk, not quite sitting on the ground, maybe sixty feet across. The size of a house, anyway. Not shiny or it would’ve reflected more starlight. There were things in the deeper shadows underneath it, landing legs maybe, and other shadows, moving shadows, rustling in the brush nearby.

  Near me. Something started to squeeze in my chest.

  Something else started to tickle between my legs. A need to pee.

  I slowly walked the rest of the way down the hill, until I was standing under its rim. The moving shadows in the underbrush were things roughly the size and shape of land crabs, a little bigger maybe, with no claws, though I couldn’t make out what was there in their place.

  They seemed to be taking hold of the Red Devils, bending them down, pulling off the little berry clusters. What the hell would clawless land crabs want with Contac berries?

  Robots. In a comic book, these would be robots.

  Anyway, they seemed to be ignoring me.

  I felt unreal, the way you feel when you’ve taken two or three Contac capsules, or maybe drank an entire bottle of Vicks Formula 44 cough syrup.

  There was a long, narrow ramp projecting from the underside of the saucer, leading up to an opening in the hull, not dark inside, but lit up very dim indigo, perhaps the gleam I’d seen from the valley’s rim. I walked up to it, heart stuttering weirdly, walked up it and went inside.

  In movies, flying saucers have ray cannons, and they burn down your city. And in my head, I could hear Murray, jealous Murray, girl on his fingers forgotten, wondering where I’d gotten the fucking nerve.

  But I went inside anyway.

  It turned out, the thing was like the saucer-starship from The Day the Earth Stood Still. There was a curved corridor, one wall solid, the other lattice wall sloping slightly inward. A little vertical row of lights here, beside something that looked like a door. Around the curve . . .

  I caught my breath, holding stock-still, heart racing up my throat.

  Held still and wondered again at finding myself here.

  The thing didn’t look much like Gort from the movie. Not so featureless. Real joints at elbows, wrists, knees, hips, but there was nothing where it’s face should be either, just a silvery shield, a curved pentagonoid roughly the shape of an urban policeman’s badge, like the Boston metro badge my Uncle Al wore.

  I stood in front of it, looking up. No taller than my dad, so only an inch or two taller than me. Looking up has to be an illusion. It looked a little bit like the robots I used to draw as part of the Starover stories I once tried to write, the ones that filled the background of all those drawings I did, of hero Zoltan Tharkie, policeman Dexteran Kaelenn, and all the odds-and-sods villains they faced together.

  I remember Murray and I used to sit together at Drug Fair, t
racing pictures from comic books and coloring books, filling in our own details, Tharkie and Kaelenn and the robots, Älendar and Raitearyón from Venus. I remember those two had had girlfriends, and . . .

  Stopped myself, shivering.

  I reached out and touched the thing.

  Cold. Motionless.

  My voice sounded rusty, as I whispered, “Klaatu, barada . . .” Strangled off a fit of giggles with something like a sneeze. Patricia Neal, I remembered, couldn’t pronounce the words the same way as Michael Rennie, substituting Klattu, burodda in her quaint American drawl. Quit it! Jesus!

  Nothing.

  I turned away from the silvery phantasm, maybe nothing more than an empty suit of armor? Slid my fingers along the light panel. Just as in the movie, the door slipped open, and I went on through.

  “Ohhhhh . . . !”

  I could hardly recognize my own voice, shocky and faint.

  There was another corridor beyond the door, and its far wall was transparent, like heavy glass, or maybe Lucite. There was smoky yellow light in the room beyond, lots of water, things like ferns. Something in the steamy mist . . .

  I put my nose to the warm glass, bug-eyed, remembering the scene from near the end of Tom Swift in the Race to the Moon, maybe my favorite book from the series, where they finally get aboard the robot saucer sent by the Space Friends.

  Little dinosaurs. Little tyrannosaurs. Little brontosaurs. Little pteranodons winging through the mist.