Mammoth Book of Best New SF 14

by Gardner Dozois

  You run quickly out of options this year when searching for possibilities for a follow-up candidate for the title of best original SF anthology. The most solid contender is probably Skylife: Space Habitats in Story and Science (Harcourt), edited by Gregory Benford and George Zebrowski, which features two excellent original stories, “Reefs”, by Paul J. McAuley and “Open Loops”, by Stephen Baxter, as well as good reprints (of both stories and essays) by James Patrick Kelly, Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Joan D. Vinge, James Blish, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford himself and others. This is a worthwhile anthology, and a valuable addition to any SF library, but it somehow feels a bit musty—most of the reprint stories are from the late ’70s, as is the longest of the reprint essays, as if the book was really an anthology from the late ’70s that had somehow not seen print until the year 2000. With the exception of the originals by McAuley and Baxter, there’s little here reflective of the evolution of genre thinking about the theme during the decades of the ’80s and ’90s: without those two stories, there wouldn’t be much evidence that Skylife hadn’t originally been published twenty years ago (even the extensive bibliography doesn’t mention much that was published after the beginning of the ’80s). As is, the book seems out of balance, with the bulk of it composed of reprint material, much of it rather dated. I think they’d have been better off throwing out some of the reprints, both fiction and nonfiction, and commissioning more originals from contemporary authors (or fresh material from veterans such as Bear, Benford and Vinge, for that matter), especially if they could have got stories at the same level of quality as the two originals they do have. Still, in spite of these quibbles, Sky life will probably be the standard anthology on this theme for some time to come. At $28, it may be seen as a bit expensive by some, but when you throw in the eight pages of colour art, it’s probably worth it.

  Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora (Warner), edited by Sheree R. Thomas, is an anthology of huge historical significance, but can hardly be a serious contender for the title of best original SF anthology of the year, since it doesn’t really contain that much actual science fiction. Whatever its value as literature, most of the original material here is fantasy or horror of various stripes, or near-mainstream, or surrealism of one sort or another, or literary erotica; what science fiction there is here (with the exception of two of the reprints) tends to be quite “soft”, or to be mixed in a hybrid with one or more of the other genres mentioned. (The next Dark Matter anthology, being planned now, supposedly will concentrate more on science fiction.) The best of the original stories in Dark Matter are by Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, Linda Addison, Nisi Shawl, Leane Ross and Jewelle Gomez, the book also features rare and rarely seen material of great historic import from black writers not usually seen as part of SF’s family tree, such as W. E .B. Du Bois, George S. Schuyler, Ishmael Reed and Charles W. Chesnutt, more contemporary (but still classic) reprints by writers such as Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler, and an array of essays about racism and science fiction by Delany, Butler, Paul D. Miller, Charles R. Saunders and Walter Mosley. A landmark anthology.

  After this, we quickly run out of alternatives. Star Colonies (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Heifers, is probably an attempt to follow up on the success of last year’s acclaimed Moon Shots anthology (edited by Peter Crowther), but although it does contain good stories by Allen Steele, Pamela Sargent, Robert Charles Wilson and others, nothing here really reaches the level of quality of the best of the stories from Moon Shots. Far Frontiers (DAW), edited by Greenberg and Larry Segriff, is even weaker, although there’s still some entertaining material here by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Alan Dean Foster, Robin Wayne Bailey and others. This year’s assembled-online SFF.net anthology (number three in the “Darkfire anthology series”, according to the cover copy) is The Age of Wonders: Tales from the Near Future (SFF.NET), edited by Jeffry Dwight. This anthology seems weaker than last year’s SFF.net anthology, The Age of Reason, perhaps because of the limitation in potential story material implied by the subtitle, perhaps because that’s just the way it came out, with lots of minor stories, but it does feature a superior story by William Sanders, and interesting work by Brian Plante, Dave Smeds, Mary Soon Lee, Lawrence Fitzgerald and others (you won’t find this one in stores, so mail-order from: SFF Net, 3300 Big Horn Trail, Plano, TX 75075 -$14.95 for The Age of Wonders: Tales from the Near Future; the book can also be ordered online at sff.net, and back titles in the Darkfire series can be ordered either by mail or online). Guardians of Tomorrow (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Larry Segriff, was also pretty minor, although it featured interesting work by Willam H. Keith, Jane Lindskold, Kristine Kathryn Rusch and others. Such a Pretty Face: Tales of Power and Abundance (Meisha Merlin), edited by Lee Martindale, is a mixed SF/fantasy anthology that features good work by Gene Wolfe, Laura Underwood, K.D. Wentworth, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, and others. And, as usual, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XVI (Bridge), edited by Algis Budrys, presents novice work by beginning writers, some of whom may later turn out to be important talents.

  There wasn’t a big standout anthology in fantasy this year, as there has been some years. The best original fantasy anthology of the year was probably Black Heart, Ivory Bones (Avon), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, the latest in their long series of anthologies of updated fairy tales, featuring good stories by Howard Waldrop, Severna Park, Brian Stableford, Jane Yolen, Tanith Lee, Esther Friesner, Russell Blackford and others. A Young Adult version of the same kind of thing, updated fairy tales, lacking the sharp edges of the adult version but still containing some good material, was A Wolf at the Door and Other Retold Fairy Tales (Simon & Schuster), also edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, which featured good work by Neil Gaiman, Jane Yolen, Janeen Webb, Tanith Lee, Kelly Link, Patricia A. McKillip and others.

  The two Datlow/Windling anthologies are primarily Eurocentric in orientation, though, and some may prefer the more offbeat and unconventional fantasy to be found in Dark Matter, or the fantasies inspired by Caribbean folk tales featured in whispers from the cotton tree root (Invisible Cities Press), edited by Nalo Hopkinson, which contains “Caribbean fabulist fiction” from a large cross section of writers whose work will be unfamiliar to most genre readers, as well as from a few more-familiar figures such as Ian McDonald and Hopkinson herself.

  The rest of the year’s original fantasy anthologies (and original fantasy anthologies seem to be proliferating as reprint fantasy anthologies dwindle) were the usual welter of “pleasant but minor” theme anthologies, each containing a couple of interesting stories, but rarely more than that; as they’re all inexpensive paperbacks, you may get your money’s worth out of individual titles, but don’t expect anything really special. They included: Warrior Fantastic (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Heifers, which features interesting work by Charles de Lint, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Alan Dean Foster and others; Spell Fantastic (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Heifers, which featured work by Jane Lindskold, Nina Kiriki Hoffman and others; Civil War Fantastic (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg, which featured work by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Nancy Springer, Karen Haber, Mike Resnick and Catharine Asaro and others; New Amazons (DAW), edited by Margaret Weis, featuring work by Nancy Springer, Jo Clayton and others; and Perchance to Dream (DAW), edited by Denise Little, which featured worthwhile stuff by Diane Duane, Peter Crowther, Nancy Springer, Bruce Holland Rogers, Michelle West and others. The Chick Is in the Mail (Baen), edited by Esther M. Friesner, is another entry in a one-joke anthology series that has probably gone on for too long; this one features good writers such as Harry Turtledove, William Sanders, Nancy Kress, Charles Sheffield and Friesner herself, all trying gamely to deal with the lame theme, although one gets the feeling that they could have better spent the time writing something else for some other market instead. Another fantasy anthology was the latest, and probably the last, in
a very long-running series: Swords & Sorceresses XVII (DAW), edited by the late Marion Zimmer Bradley.

  I don’t pay close attention to the horror genre any more, but there didn’t seen to be any Big Prestigious Anthology—like last year’s 999—there either; the most prominent anthologies seemed to be Dark Terrors 5 (Gollancz), edited by Stephen Jones and David Sutton, and a mixed original and reprint anthology, October Dreams: A Celebration of Halloween (CD Publications), edited by Richard T. Chizmar and Robert Morrish (CD Publications, PO Box 943, Abingdon, MD 21009—$40 for October Dreams). I’ve already counted Black Heart, Ivory Bones as a fantasy anthology, and Dark Matter as a science fiction anthology, but reasonable cases could be made for considering them to be horror instead, depending on how you squint at them. There were also several other anthologies that existed on the borderline of fantasy and horror this year, some stories seeming to belong in one camp, some in the other (some of them even threw in a smidgen of science fiction): Treachery and Treason (Penguin/Roc), edited by Laura Ann Gilman and Jennifer Heddle, featured interesting work by Lois Tilton, Karen Haber, Esther Friesner, Jerry Oltion, K.D. Wentworth, Scott Edelman and others; Graven Images (Ace), edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and Thomas S. Roche (Ace), featured worthwhile material by Lois Tilton, Gene Wolfe, Kathe Koja, Tanith Lee, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and others; and Mardi Gras Fantastic: Tales of Terror and Mayhem in New Orleans (Cumberland House), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Russell David, featured stories by Peter Crowther, Bruce Holland Rogers, Charles de Lint, Jane Lindskold, Elizabeth Ann Scarborough and others. There was also a hybrid fantasy/horror anthology from Australia, Mystery, Magic, Voodoo & the Holy Grail (Voyager), edited by Stephanie Smith and Julia Stiles, featuring no names which would be familiar to the American genre audience.

  An extremely disappointing story in the anthology market this year was the announcement of the cancellation of the long-promised new Avon Eos anthology series, which was supposed to be “like Full Spectrum”, a project upon which a lot of hopes had been pinned. That leaves little to look forward to in this market except for the next volume in the Starlight anthology series, promised for 2001, and a new SF anthology edited by Peter Crowther, about Mars, said to be in the works.

  It was a relatively stable year in the novel market, with no significant gains in the overall number of novels published, but no really dramatic losses, either, in spite of the mergers and cutbacks and shakeups of the last couple of years. There are still a lot of science fiction/fantasy/horror books being published, in spite of recent talk about how these genres are “dying”, and a lot of them seem to have done quite well commercially. Barring a sudden catastrophic recession in the publishing industry of Great Depression-like proportions (which could happen, of course, especially if we head into a societywide Depression of cataclysmic severity), the probability is that there will continue to be a lot of genre books published in the foreseeable future as well. (Quality is a much more subjective call, of course; and some critics seem to delight in gloomy talk about how nothing worthwhile gets into print any more, but it seems to me that, on the contrary, there are still plenty of novels of quality being published out there, including some that probably wouldn’t have been printed ten or fifteen years ago.)

  According to the news magazine Locus, there were 1,927 books “of interest to the SF field”, both original and reprint, published in 2000, down by 2 per cent from 1999’s total of 1,959, but still a hefty number. Original books were down by 7 per cent, down 1,027 from last year’s total of 1,107. The number of new SF novels was down slightly, with 230 novels published, as opposed to 251 novels published in 1999. The number of new fantasy novels was also down, with 258 novels published, as opposed to 275 published in 1999, still higher than 1998’s total of 233. Horror was also down, with 80 novels published as opposed to 1999’s total of 95 novels.

  It’s interesting to compare these totals by category with the totals from 1995: there were 239 new SF novels published in 1995, 230 published in 2000, so SF is really only down by nine titles when compared to five years ago. There were 227 new fantasy novels published in 1995, as opposed to 258, so fantasy has grown by 31 titles when compared to 1995. There were 193 new horror novels published in 1995, as opposed to 80, so horror has dwindled by 113 titles when compared to 1995. In spite of all the talk over the last five years about how science fiction as a commercial category is dying, there’s really not that much difference in the number of SF books published in 2000 and in 1995, nor has fantasy grown enough by comparison to really be said to have “swallowed” SF or driven it off the bookshelves, as is sometimes averred. Horror isn’t “dead” either, in spite of the funeral services that have been read over that genre.

  (And, for some historical perspective, the next time that you hear that the SF genre is “dying”, keep in mind that the number of original mass-market paperbacks published this year, 324, is alone higher than the total number of original genre books, of any sort, published in 1972, which was 225. And that a much wider audience of people have easier access to SF books than at any other time in the genre’s history; when I was a kid, you had to travel more than twenty miles by train or bus if you wanted to find a bookstore that carried science fiction titles, and there was no such thing even as a science fiction section in bookstores, let alone a science fiction specialty store.)

  I don’t have time to read many novels, with all the reading I have to do at shorter lengths, and this year I have read even fewer than usual—so rather than endorsing anything personally, I’ll limit myself to mentioning those novels that received a lot of attention and acclaim in 2000 including: The Telling (Harcourt), Ursula K. Le Guin; Genesis (Tor), Poul Anderson; The Coming (Ace), Joe Haldeman; In Green’s Jungles (Tor), Gene Wolfe; Eater (Eos), Gregory Benford; Probability Moon (Tor), Nancy Kress; Shrine of Stars (Eos), Paul McAuley; A Storm of Swords (Bantam Spectra), George R. R. Martin; The Fountains of Youth (Tor), Brian Stableford: Zeitgeist (Bantam Spectra), Bruce Sterling; Look to Windward (Orbit), Iain M. Banks; The Amber Spyglass (Knopf), Philip Pullman; Marrow (Tor), Robert Reed; Crescent City Rhapsody (Avon Eos), Kathleen Ann Goonan; The Sky Road (Tor), Ken MacLeod; Dervish Is Digital (Macmillan), Pat Cadigan; Galveston (Ace), Sean Stewart; Midnight’Robber (Warner Aspect), Nalo Hopkinson; The Light of Other Days (Tor), Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clarke; Candle (Tor), John Barnes; The Collapsium (Del Rey), Wil McCarthy; Mendoza in Hollywood (Harcourt), Kage Baker; The Miocene Arrow (Tor), Sean McMullen; Perdido Street Station (Macmillan), China Mieville; Ventus (Tor), Karl Schroeder; White Mars (St. Martin’s), Brian W. Aldiss and Roger Penrose; Wild Angel (Tor), Pat Murphy; Oceanspace (Ace), Allen Steele; The Fresco (Eos), Sheri S. Tepper; The Prophecy Machine (Bantam Spectra), Neal Barrett, Jr.; The Last Hot Time (Tor), John M. Ford; Empire of Unreason (Del Rey), J. Gregory Keyes; Lodestar (Tor), Michael Flynn; Wild Life (Simon & Schuster), Molly Gloss; Darwin’s Blade (Morrow), Dan Simmons; Jumping Off the Planet (Tor), David Gerrold; Colony Fleet (Eos), Susan R. Matthews; Daemonomania (Bantam), John Crowley; Ash: A Secret History (Eos), Mary Gentle; Blind Waves (Tor), Steven Gould; Kirith Kirin (Meisha Merlin), Jim Grimsley; Infinity Beach (HarperPrism), Jack McDevitt; The Memory of Fire (Bantam Spectra), George Foy; The Jazz (Tor), Melissa Scott; Lieutenant Colonel (Ace), Rick Shelley; Fortress of Dragons (Eos), C. J. Cherryh; The Glass Harmonica (Ace), Louise Marley; Spindle’s End (Putnam), Robin McKinley; Hunted (Eos), James Alan Gardner, Brain Plague (Tor), Joan Slonczewski; Colonization: Down to Earth (Del Rey), Harry Turtledove; The Quiet Invasion (Warner Aspect), Sarah Zettel; and The Truth (HarperCollins), Terry Pratchett.

  It was a slightly stronger year for first novels this year than last year. The two first novels that attracted the most attention were Revelation Space (Gollanz), by Alastair Reynolds, and Mars Crossing (Tor), by Geoffrey A. Landis. Other first novels included: Wheelers (Warner Aspect), Ian Steward and Jack Cohen; Soulsaver (Harcourt), Jams Stevens-Acre; Growing Wings (Houghton Mifflin) Laurel Winter; House of Leaves (Pantheon),
Mark Z. Danielewski; Ceres Storm (Tor), David Herter; and The Glasswrights’ Apprentice (Tor), Mindy L. Klasky. As usual, all publishers who are willing to take a chance publishing first novels should be commended, since developing new talent by publishing their maiden efforts, taking a risk on writers without a proven track record, is a chance that must be taken by someone if new talent is going to be able to develop, and if the field itself is going to survive.

  Looking over these lists, it’s obvious that Tor and Eos had strong years. Once again, in spite of complaints that nobody publishes “real” science fiction any more, the majority of novels here are centre-core science fiction novels. Even omitting the fantasy novels and the borderline genre-straddling work on the list, the Anderson, the Haldeman, the Le Guin, the Baxter and Clarke, the Benford, the Goonan, the McAuley, the Banks, the Kress, the Barnes, the Reed, the McCarthy, the Stableford, the Sterling, the Reynolds, the Landis and a half dozen others are science fiction by any even remotely reasonable definition, many of them “hard science fiction” as hard and as rigorous as it’s ever been written by anybody—in fact, despite what “they” say, I think more centre-core SF has been published in the last five years or so than ever before… as well as a large range of other kinds of work, from pure fantasy to borderland SF/fantasy hybrids of a dozen different sorts.

  Like last year, 2000 was also a good year for the reissuing of long-out-of-print classic novels. The SF Masterworks reprint series, from English publisher Millennium, has been doing an excellent job over the last two years of making classic novels available to the public again, with recent titles including such seminal works as Nova, by Samuel R. Delany, Pavane, by Keith Roberts, More Than Human, by Theodore Sturgeon, Ubik, by Philip K. Dick, Non-Stop, by Brian W. Aldiss, and more than thirty other titles, every single one of which belongs in the library of any serious student of the genre. Millennium’s recently launched Fantasy Masterworks reprint series is doing an equally good job of bringing classic fantasy books such as Little, Big, by John Crowley, Lud-in-tbe-Mist, by Hope Mirrlees, Fevre Dream, by George R. R. Martin, and The Land of Laughs, by Jonathan Carroll back into print, as well as doing omnibus volumes of Gene Wolfe’s “Book of the New Sun” series, Jack Vance’s “Dying Earth” stories, Roger Zelazny’s “Amber Chronicles”, and L. Sprague De Camp’s “Incomplete Enchanter” books, and hard-to-find collections by writers such as Robert E. Howard, M. John Harrison and Lord Dunsany. On this side of the Atlantic, reprint series such as Tor/Orb and Del Rey Impact, and a reprint line from Vintage are also performing invaluable services for the field by bringing long-unavailable novels back into print, including, this year, The Big Time (Tor), by Fritz Leiber, A Case of Conscience (Del Rey Impact), by James Blish, The Power (Orb), by Frank M. Robinson, The Empire of Isher (Orb), by A. E. Van Vogt, The Genocides (Vintage), by Thomas M. Disch, and many others. Ace is also reissuing classics from its backlist, such as The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin, Neuromancer, by William Gibson, and The Northern Girl, by Elizabeth A. Lynn, and Overlook Press offered an omnibus of James Blish’s famous “Okie” novels, Cities in Flight. Print-on-demand (POD) publishers are also having a big impact on making classic work available to readers again; Wildside Press (http://www.wildside.com) has already returned to easy availability (if not, technically, to print) almost all of the long-out-of-print and long-unavailable novels of writers such as R. A. Lafferty and Avram Davidson, and this is only the beginning of what should be a flood of “reissued” POD classic titles over the next few years.