The Year’s Best Science Fiction, vol 25
There are pros and cons in reading a 788 page collection such as the twenty-fifth annual collection of The Year’s Best Science Fiction (containing stories published in 2007). The pros are primarily twofold: (1) that is a hell of a lot of pages, so there is room for some outstanding novellas and novelettes published in that year; (2) editor Gardner Dozois is primarily a fan of science fiction, as opposed to fantasy, slipstream, magic realism, and all the other sub-genres which nip around the edges of sf. Since my own taste is primarily sf as well, I prefer his annual volume (or Hartwell & Cramer’s) to those which combine f&sf, horror, and fringe genres.
There are two primary cons in such a huge volume: (1) A reader should not think of it as a “best of the year” volume while reading it, since an editor’s views will definitely diverge from the reader’s views, and having the expectations that each story will be a “best” story can easily lead to some enjoyable stories being dismissed as too “minor” to deserve inclusion in the volume. The more important con though is (2) that sf is not so much a “genre” as an umbrella for various types of speculative fiction: space opera, worldbuilding (both physical worlds and cultures), future history, cyberpunk, steampunk, alternate history (which it shares with historical fiction and might be a separate category itself, but there is enough connection between AH and SF to mention it here), secret history (ditto), hard science, and probably several others I’ve forgotten momentarily. Since I prefer certain sub-genres to others, it is unlikely that I would like every story in the book. Not that there is anything wrong with abandoning some stories mid-stream, but as a reviewer it is important that I explain my prejudices instead of blithely rejecting stories as “bad stories,” when in fact they might be very good stories which just fall outside my own comfort zone.
The volume opens with David Moles’ “Finsterra,” the story of poachers trying to kill endangered alien species which are so huge they serve as worlds themselves. The protagonist is an engineer in the employ of one of the poachers, a totally despicable person engaged in a basically evil activity, but she serves him without qualms or self-doubts. Perhaps I have a moral blind spot, but it kind of puts a damper on the story when the only moral people in it are treated as the enemy. Fortunately, the story is enjoyable reading and all works out well in the end,
John Barnes’ badly-titled “An Ocean is a Snowflake, Four Billion Miles Away” tells of two documentary film-makers who are stranded far from rescue on a distant world during a natural disaster. Léoa is a despicable person who first tries to undercut Thorby’s efforts for her own advantage, but who is later injured seriously in the disaster and rather than abandon her, which he could easily have done, Thorby struggles to save her life in addition to rescuing himself. A good human-interest story combined with a believable adventure.
“The Sky is Large and the Earth is Small,” by Chris Roberson (and what is it with these mock-poetic titles?) is set in his alternate history Celestial Empire in which China is the dominant power in the world. The story tells of an astronomer who has spent much of his life imprisoned by the emperor after having been tortured for information which he has never revealed about the military weaknesses of the Mexica Empire which has been at war consistently with the Middle Kingdom. The story’s primary concern is the conversations between the prisoner and a bureaucrat writing a report on the feasibility of invading Mexico, a struggle of wits between a desperate interrogator (who needs to complete his report at the risk of his own future) and a seemingly senile old-timer. Goods stuff.
Robert Silverberg’s “Against the Current” tells of a man who suddenly finds himself slipping backwards in time, slowly at first, but increasingly faster. At first thought this might seem intriguing–think of all the knowledge of the future such a person might employ–but things are rarely so simple, and Silverberg is too smart to fall into such a trap. First the man’s money is useless since all American currency has been changed in recent decades. Then his credit card’s expiration date is unbelievable. This was an intriguing story, more evidence that even in his semi-retirement Silverberg is still one of our finest writers.
I do not normally enjoy either military sf or adventure thrillers seeped in high tech, but Neal Asher is one of the few writers in those genres whose stories I find both readable and interesting. When an amoral fortune hunter nearly kills a xeno-archaeologist to steal the ancient artifact he has uncovered (which might have the capability of reviving a long-vanished alien race), it starts a series of events involving the xeno-archaeologist tracking her down both for revenge and to recover his artifact. There are no moral characters in this story (which is one reason why I prefer Alastair Reynolds to most other writers in the high-tech sub-genre of the space opera sub-genre, in addition to the fact that he never forgets that the story is primarily about the people in it), but the plot is fast-moving and always interesting. I suspect that some other readers would really like this story a lot if I enjoyed it as much as I did.
I was immediately suspicious of “The Great Wall,” by Justin Stanchfield because of its premise: an immense wall is found on Titan, presumably an alien artifact, reminding me of Alastair Reynold’s fine novella “Great Wall on Mars.” But the story drew me in quickly: its setting is a ship containing government protectors whose job is keeping everybody away from the wall while governments on Earth argue over who has jurisdiction over it. The ship follows another ship presumably containing fortune hunters onto the surface of Titan right near the wall itself, where they encounter a mystery so stunning and so absorbing that I was totally hooked. This is one of my favorite types of sf story, a future mystery seeped in wondrousness, but involving real people who are more than placeholders. While the story’s ending did little to clear up the mystery of the wall, I was still pleased with its outcome.
Stephen Baxter’s “Last Contact” is a quintessentially-British story about a cozy end-of-the-world, in which the main character is primarily concerned with having time to care for her garden before the end comes, as compared to a similar American story which would probably descend into hysteria and violence. The story was fascinating for its glimpse at British attitudes moreso than for any other reason, sfnal or otherwise, but I definitely enjoyed it.
Alastair Reynolds is known for his very high-tech far futures in which civilization has progressed fairly directly from its current technological level for several millennia. In “The Sledge-Maker’s Daughter,” he proves that he has more weapons in his writing arsenal than just that one, writing a tale about a rural future in which civilization is struggling to survive following some type of total technological meltdown. The story has a fantasy ambiance about it (which itself is stunning for a Reynolds story), but it does a fine job of exploring how the remnants of that lost technology might still affect the new parameters of civilization.
Kage Baker is a fine writer whom I have been wanting to read more stories by for some time, but sadly she will not be writing any more stories since she died recently. This is more incentive to go back and read some of her other critically-acclaimed fiction from the past decade. “Hellfire at Twilight” is a Company story about a researcher seeking some forged papers from early 19th century England, where he encounters a weird cult which decides to use him as the centerpiece of one of its ceremonies. This is not the finest of her stories that I have read, but enjoyable, as all her fiction that I have read is.
Three of the stories struck me as the finest in the volume. First was Vandina Singh’s very strong “Of Love and Other Monsters,” a novella about a boy Arun who has no memories prior to his being rescued from a fire by a shopkeeper in India, who then raises him as her own son. The boy has the unnatural ability to enter people’s minds and somehow “meld” them with the minds of other people. Apparently there is another person Rahul Moghe with the same ability who stalks Arun for much of the story, successfully kidnapping him at one point. The story’s twin concerns are Arun’s search for his own origins, and why Rahul is so desperate to win him over to his own purposes. Both as a character development and a mystery, this story is very successful and bodes well for Singh as a major science fiction writer.
I reviewed Gregory Benford’s “Dark Heaven” on 11/1/09, but I’ll repeat here that it impressed me in several ways. The story is a noir mystery featuring a hard-boiled Louisiana detective named McKenna investigating a series of drownings which have all the earmarks of homicide, including mysterious marks on the arms of the victims. The fact that two such drownings occur within a few days of each other push the deaths past coincidence into probable murders. But there is so little evidence that McKenna seems to be spinning his wheels futiley as his superiors wait impatiently for him to turn his attention to other crimes awaiting resolution.
In the background of “Dark Heaven” are a race of aliens who have come to Earth and established a basehead on an island near the murders, totally isolated by federal agents who pretty much bully anybody who dares to come near them, including local police investigating crimes. At first, the aliens seem to be mostly background, the sfnal ingredient in the story but, knowing Benford’s fiction, I knew that would not last for long.
For my taste, the finest story in this book, and one of the best of the entire past decade, was Ted Chiang’s “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate.” Chiang is probably my favorite (and presumably a lot of other sf readers’ favorite as well) current writer of short fiction. This story tells of a “gate of years” which enables a person to step 20 years into the past or future and visit themselves temporarily in that alternate time. Several people do so, and their stories are always fascinating, but Chiang is not merely a storyteller. This story is also a morality tale about how one’s actions influence not only other people, but also oneself. This is one of Chiang’s finest stories (the others being “Story of Your Life” and “Hell is the Absence of God,” in my opinion) and well-deserved all the awards it won. If you have not read it yet, either find this volume or the recently-published The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction (reviewed here on 9/12/09).
As usual, I recommend the 25th volume of The Year’s Best Science Fiction very highly.
There are two primary cons in such a huge volume: (1) A reader should not think of it as a “best of the year” volume while reading it, since an editor’s views will definitely diverge from the reader’s views, and having the expectations that each story will be a “best” story can easily lead to some enjoyable stories being dismissed as too “minor” to deserve inclusion in the volume. The more important con though is (2) that sf is not so much a “genre” as an umbrella for various types of speculative fiction: space opera, worldbuilding (both physical worlds and cultures), future history, cyberpunk, steampunk, alternate history (which it shares with historical fiction and might be a separate category itself, but there is enough connection between AH and SF to mention it here), secret history (ditto), hard science, and probably several others I’ve forgotten momentarily. Since I prefer certain sub-genres to others, it is unlikely that I would like every story in the book. Not that there is anything wrong with abandoning some stories mid-stream, but as a reviewer it is important that I explain my prejudices instead of blithely rejecting stories as “bad stories,” when in fact they might be very good stories which just fall outside my own comfort zone.
The volume opens with David Moles’ “Finsterra,” the story of poachers trying to kill endangered alien species which are so huge they serve as worlds themselves. The protagonist is an engineer in the employ of one of the poachers, a totally despicable person engaged in a basically evil activity, but she serves him without qualms or self-doubts. Perhaps I have a moral blind spot, but it kind of puts a damper on the story when the only moral people in it are treated as the enemy. Fortunately, the story is enjoyable reading and all works out well in the end,
John Barnes’ badly-titled “An Ocean is a Snowflake, Four Billion Miles Away” tells of two documentary film-makers who are stranded far from rescue on a distant world during a natural disaster. Léoa is a despicable person who first tries to undercut Thorby’s efforts for her own advantage, but who is later injured seriously in the disaster and rather than abandon her, which he could easily have done, Thorby struggles to save her life in addition to rescuing himself. A good human-interest story combined with a believable adventure.
“The Sky is Large and the Earth is Small,” by Chris Roberson (and what is it with these mock-poetic titles?) is set in his alternate history Celestial Empire in which China is the dominant power in the world. The story tells of an astronomer who has spent much of his life imprisoned by the emperor after having been tortured for information which he has never revealed about the military weaknesses of the Mexica Empire which has been at war consistently with the Middle Kingdom. The story’s primary concern is the conversations between the prisoner and a bureaucrat writing a report on the feasibility of invading Mexico, a struggle of wits between a desperate interrogator (who needs to complete his report at the risk of his own future) and a seemingly senile old-timer. Goods stuff.
Robert Silverberg’s “Against the Current” tells of a man who suddenly finds himself slipping backwards in time, slowly at first, but increasingly faster. At first thought this might seem intriguing–think of all the knowledge of the future such a person might employ–but things are rarely so simple, and Silverberg is too smart to fall into such a trap. First the man’s money is useless since all American currency has been changed in recent decades. Then his credit card’s expiration date is unbelievable. This was an intriguing story, more evidence that even in his semi-retirement Silverberg is still one of our finest writers.
I do not normally enjoy either military sf or adventure thrillers seeped in high tech, but Neal Asher is one of the few writers in those genres whose stories I find both readable and interesting. When an amoral fortune hunter nearly kills a xeno-archaeologist to steal the ancient artifact he has uncovered (which might have the capability of reviving a long-vanished alien race), it starts a series of events involving the xeno-archaeologist tracking her down both for revenge and to recover his artifact. There are no moral characters in this story (which is one reason why I prefer Alastair Reynolds to most other writers in the high-tech sub-genre of the space opera sub-genre, in addition to the fact that he never forgets that the story is primarily about the people in it), but the plot is fast-moving and always interesting. I suspect that some other readers would really like this story a lot if I enjoyed it as much as I did.
I was immediately suspicious of “The Great Wall,” by Justin Stanchfield because of its premise: an immense wall is found on Titan, presumably an alien artifact, reminding me of Alastair Reynold’s fine novella “Great Wall on Mars.” But the story drew me in quickly: its setting is a ship containing government protectors whose job is keeping everybody away from the wall while governments on Earth argue over who has jurisdiction over it. The ship follows another ship presumably containing fortune hunters onto the surface of Titan right near the wall itself, where they encounter a mystery so stunning and so absorbing that I was totally hooked. This is one of my favorite types of sf story, a future mystery seeped in wondrousness, but involving real people who are more than placeholders. While the story’s ending did little to clear up the mystery of the wall, I was still pleased with its outcome.
Stephen Baxter’s “Last Contact” is a quintessentially-British story about a cozy end-of-the-world, in which the main character is primarily concerned with having time to care for her garden before the end comes, as compared to a similar American story which would probably descend into hysteria and violence. The story was fascinating for its glimpse at British attitudes moreso than for any other reason, sfnal or otherwise, but I definitely enjoyed it.
Alastair Reynolds is known for his very high-tech far futures in which civilization has progressed fairly directly from its current technological level for several millennia. In “The Sledge-Maker’s Daughter,” he proves that he has more weapons in his writing arsenal than just that one, writing a tale about a rural future in which civilization is struggling to survive following some type of total technological meltdown. The story has a fantasy ambiance about it (which itself is stunning for a Reynolds story), but it does a fine job of exploring how the remnants of that lost technology might still affect the new parameters of civilization.
Kage Baker is a fine writer whom I have been wanting to read more stories by for some time, but sadly she will not be writing any more stories since she died recently. This is more incentive to go back and read some of her other critically-acclaimed fiction from the past decade. “Hellfire at Twilight” is a Company story about a researcher seeking some forged papers from early 19th century England, where he encounters a weird cult which decides to use him as the centerpiece of one of its ceremonies. This is not the finest of her stories that I have read, but enjoyable, as all her fiction that I have read is.
Three of the stories struck me as the finest in the volume. First was Vandina Singh’s very strong “Of Love and Other Monsters,” a novella about a boy Arun who has no memories prior to his being rescued from a fire by a shopkeeper in India, who then raises him as her own son. The boy has the unnatural ability to enter people’s minds and somehow “meld” them with the minds of other people. Apparently there is another person Rahul Moghe with the same ability who stalks Arun for much of the story, successfully kidnapping him at one point. The story’s twin concerns are Arun’s search for his own origins, and why Rahul is so desperate to win him over to his own purposes. Both as a character development and a mystery, this story is very successful and bodes well for Singh as a major science fiction writer.
I reviewed Gregory Benford’s “Dark Heaven” on 11/1/09, but I’ll repeat here that it impressed me in several ways. The story is a noir mystery featuring a hard-boiled Louisiana detective named McKenna investigating a series of drownings which have all the earmarks of homicide, including mysterious marks on the arms of the victims. The fact that two such drownings occur within a few days of each other push the deaths past coincidence into probable murders. But there is so little evidence that McKenna seems to be spinning his wheels futiley as his superiors wait impatiently for him to turn his attention to other crimes awaiting resolution.
In the background of “Dark Heaven” are a race of aliens who have come to Earth and established a basehead on an island near the murders, totally isolated by federal agents who pretty much bully anybody who dares to come near them, including local police investigating crimes. At first, the aliens seem to be mostly background, the sfnal ingredient in the story but, knowing Benford’s fiction, I knew that would not last for long.
For my taste, the finest story in this book, and one of the best of the entire past decade, was Ted Chiang’s “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate.” Chiang is probably my favorite (and presumably a lot of other sf readers’ favorite as well) current writer of short fiction. This story tells of a “gate of years” which enables a person to step 20 years into the past or future and visit themselves temporarily in that alternate time. Several people do so, and their stories are always fascinating, but Chiang is not merely a storyteller. This story is also a morality tale about how one’s actions influence not only other people, but also oneself. This is one of Chiang’s finest stories (the others being “Story of Your Life” and “Hell is the Absence of God,” in my opinion) and well-deserved all the awards it won. If you have not read it yet, either find this volume or the recently-published The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction (reviewed here on 9/12/09).
As usual, I recommend the 25th volume of The Year’s Best Science Fiction very highly.
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