Locus, February 2013

by Locus Publications

  This leaves me with random observations, mostly on novels, that don’t really fit into the already-rickety structure of this overview. For me, in addition to Lanagan’s Sea Hearts, the most important fantasy novels of the year were, in order of appearance, Tim Powers’s Hide Me Among the Graves, Caitlín R. Kiernan’s The Drowning Girl, and Graham Joyce’s Some Kind of Fairy Tale. In one sense, each of these is the work of a master tale-teller doing what he or she does best, but at the same time each deepens and extends their earlier work. Power’s novel continues his crypto-historical fantasia of 19th century England that we saw in The Anubis Gates and The Stress of Her Regard, taking us up to the time of the Pre-Raphaelites, but adding a degree of insight into the conflicted passions of the Rossetti family that would do a straight historical novel proud (though without forgoing his usual fireworks). Some Kind of Fairy Tale is also something of a piece with Joyce’s earlier Midlands novels like The Facts of Life and The Limits of Enchantment, and is no less evocative than those earlier novels, but its exploration of changeling folklore even more clearly stakes his claim to the heritage of Arthur Machen and other great early-20th-century fantasists. Kiernan’s The Drowning Girl is simply astonishing, a raw nerve of a novel that combines Kiernan’s stunning language and imagery with a degree of carefully modulated narrative control that she’s always seemed just on the verge of achieving, and which she nails unequivocally this time out.

  Of the SF novels, I’ve already named Robinson’s 2312 and Harrison’s Empty Space as my choices for best of the year – given the caveat that there are several others on our Recommended Reading list that I haven’t read. Both Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Fractal Prince and Greg Egan’s The Eternal Flame were impressively pyrotechnic in ways that are unique to these authors, but each suffered a bit as followups to earlier novels (Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief and Egan’s The Clockwork Rocket) which first introduced us to their radically disorienting settings (weirdly distorted physics in Egan’s case, an information-drenched future solar system in Rajaniemi’s). These sequels somewhat blunted the shock of the new, though the stories themselves may even have gained in complexity. Maybe you just can’t step in the same novum twice, and still keep it as fresh. On the other hand, Nick Harkaway’s Angelmaker seemed more assured in handling SF materials than his previous novel The Gone-Away World, resulting in a more coherent (but still fairly hyperactive) SF-espionage adventure. I was also pleased to see Nancy Kress continue her quietly competent but always compelling track of what we might call normal SF, not only with her story collection, but with the post-apocalyptic After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall.

  That post-apocalyptic business also was the focus of the other best original anthology of the year, along with Strahan’s Edge of Infinity: Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s After, with chilling stories by everyone from Genevieve Valentine to Jeffrey Ford to Gregory Maguire – and again aimed at the YA market, thus reinforcing the point I made way back at the beginning. Maybe this shouldn’t surprising for a year which saw the first Hunger Games film rake in half a billion dollars, an ongoing succession of apocalyptic video games (Fallout 3, Resident Evil 6), the TV series The Walking Dead setting cable-ratings records, and a nonexistent Mayan prophecy terrorizing the astronomically illiterate worldwide. So universal cataclysm joins the problems of adjusting to a new school or coping with divorcing parents in the lexicon of teen anxiety and Hollywood story pitches, and SF readers can knowingly yawn at the familiarity of it all – until we can’t. There were some real apocalyptic events during 2012, and probably the scariest story of the year, in hindsight, is Jeffrey Ford’s ‘‘Blood Drive’’ in After. I won’t describe it here, but it’s worth seeking out.

  –Gary K. Wolfe

  2012, TRENDS AND RECOMMENDATIONS by Faren Miller

  Faren Miller (2006)

  For the year, I saw a lot of urban dystopias in SF, fantasy and YA, some set in alternate earthly cities while others ranged further afield. Books for younger readers (like the two belatedly reviewed in this issue) can make cities seem the most surreal, yet weirdness shows up all over. Often it’s bluntly portrayed, with characters who mince no words – whether or not some oaths were invented to suit strange gods, the basic bodily functions stay pretty much the same for humans, elves, and others.

  In the relatively few science fiction novels I read, the series prevailed. Iain M. Banks and Lois McMaster Bujold both caught me up again in very long-running series, with her Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance and his The Hydrogen Sonata. For smaller, more recent projects, I’d list two sequels: Brian Slattery’s Lost Everything and Rebecca Ore’s short novel Time and Robbery. Rudy Rucker grabbed me with a standalone, the wildly entwined lives of Turing and Burroughs back in the hipster 1950s.

  Fantasy is (in)famous for its duos, trilogies and series; fortunately, the supply of good ones shows no signs of slacking. I enjoyed Ben Aaronovitch’s Whispers Under Ground, Daniel Abraham’s The King’s Blood, and Beth Bernobich’s The Queen’s Hunt, along with Glamour in Glass by Mary Robinette Kowal, And Blue Skies from Pain by Stina Leicht, and Worldsoul: City of Fire by Liz Williams. When two series books showed up in one year, I could go with either The Ruined City or The Wanderers by Paula Brandon (AKA Paula Volsky); ditto for The Killing Moon or The Shadowed Sun by N.K. Jemisin. Series-related? Joe Abercrombie’s Red Country. For standalones, The Steel Seragio by the Careys is quite unique. I also recommend K.J. Parker’s Sharps and Anna Tambour’s Crandolin – not least for their admirably brief titles! – and chime in with the chorus of praise for Graham Joyce’s postmodern deconstruction (or whatever you want to call it) Some Kind of Fairy Tale.

  To those works, mostly on the ‘‘official list,’’ I would add other books which only I seem to have read. Further highlights from Brit-based publishers Gollancz and Orbit: The Folly of the World by Jesse Bullington and The Minority Council by Kate Griffin (pseudonym of Catherine Webb). From smaller publishers: Against the Light by Dave Duncan (47North) and The Great Game by Lavie Tidhar (Angry Robot). Finally, personal kudos to major US publishers for Devil Said Bang by Richard Kadrey (Harper Voyager), Crucible of Gold by Naomi Novik (Del Rey), and Touchstone by Melanie Rawn (Tor). Many of these ‘‘alternates’’ also fit in with previously mentioned trends, like the series (Novik’s is #7 but still going strong, while Rawn’s trilogy-opener fulfils its promise in this year’s sequel), as well as dystopianism and swearing (both too numerous to specify).

  For first novel, I’d pick Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed, Bad Glass by Richard E. Gropp, The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey, and The Man From Primrose Lane by James Renner.

  For young adult, Zeuglodon by James Blaylock, A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge, Railsea by China Miéville, Dodger by Terry Pratchett, and The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente (one long title that suits me fine).

  In collection, I join the chorus for Peter Dickinson’s Earth and Air; Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter’s Midnight and Moonshine (as collection or ‘‘mosaic novel’’), Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s Permeable Borders, Patricia McKillip’s Wonders of the Invisible World, Holly Phillips’s At the Edge of Waking, and James Van Pelt’s Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille.

  I won’t comment on any other category, since I read little or nothing there.

  –Faren Miller

  READING RECOMMENDATIONS FROM SOMEONE WHO DEFINITELY DID NOT READ EVERYTHING THIS YEAR: A PARTIAL LIST FOR 2012 by Jonathan Strahan

  Jonathan Strahan (2010)

  A caveat, issued before and no doubt to be issued again in the future: once upon a time, many years ago, I read a large number of new novels published each year, keeping up with the new and the interesting. Now, however, I keep an eye on everything that is published, but only manage to dip selectively into what I hope will prove to be highlights of the year as they make their way slowly on to the Locus Recommended Reading list each February.

  This year
the novels, anthologies, collections and short stories that really stood out for me were the ones that seemed to either stake out some new territory for the author or the field, or ones that delivered on some long held promise. The most surprising novel of the year, and arguably the best, was Caitlín R. Kiernan’s ferocious, uncompromising The Drowning Girl, which unflinchingly lays out the life, love, and state of mind of her protagonist in an excoriating tour de force of a book that only seems to grow in the memory with each passing day. It clearly establishes, if we needed any further evidence, Kiernan as one of our very finest writers.

  The most welcome return of the year was Kim Stanley Robinson’s grand tour, 2312. While Robinson has never left science fiction, this is his return to really epic SF, taking us again on the sort of journey though the solar system that he did years ago in The Memory of Whiteness, but adding the scope that he mastered in the Mars books, along with the subtlety that he perfected in his short fiction. 2312, probably his best novel to date, is a gender aware, far future love story between two unlikely participants that is steeped in both a heady love of science fiction and the future. Look for it on awards ballots, but read it first.

  And sitting between these two fine books, straddling the present day of The Drowning Girl and the widescreen future of 2312, is the other contender for novel of the year, M. John Harrison’s Empty Space. The third Kefahuchi Tract novel, following Light and Nova Swing, is mischievous, playful, and dark, spitting bile while confronting science fiction’s task of looking the future in the eye so we can understand the world we live in today. In a recent interview Harrison said, ‘‘A good ground rule for writing in any genre is: start with a form then undermine its confidence in itself.’’ Empty Space does that, and much more.

  Harrison wasn’t the only writer to cast a gimlet eye at genre, ask what it was good for, and then answer his own question neatly and rather brilliantly. With Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Graham Joyce tells, well, a fairy tale about a girl who went under the hill and came back, older, on Christmas Day, to a world and a family changed in her absence. Joyce uses this oldest of fairy tale tropes to interrogate the world we live in, family relationships, and the impact of love and loss, all in a stunning, wonderful book filled with sex and humour and joy and darkness.

  Sometimes our field takes a while to recognise a new writer, to take him or her into the fold. For some reason that’s happened with Frances Hardinge, a writer who stands firmly in the tradition of great British children’s writers like C.S. Lewis, Diana Wynne Jones, and perhaps most aptly, Joan Aiken. Her latest novel, A Face Like Glass, is the story of a young girl growing up in a strange world of cheese and face masks, where identity itself is open to question. Possibly more than any other book I’d recommend this year, I hope readers seek this one out, and then are drawn on to her other books – Verdigris Deep, Twilight Robbery, and the rest.

  The other book I’d list as essential from 2012 is a short story collection, At the Mouth of the River of Bees, by Kij Johnson. As is often mentioned, and as I’ll touch on below, this is an extraordinary time for short fiction, and Johnson has been at the forefront of it, producing a rich and varied stream of top-notch stories that have picked up most of the major awards in our field, including the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Nebula Awards. With stories like ‘‘The Man Who Bridged the Mist’’, ‘‘Spar’’, ‘‘Ponies’’, and ‘‘The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs Of North Park After the Change’’, At the Mouth of the River of Bees is the one collection from 2012 that belongs on every book shelf.

  While those books are the ones I’d recommend most, urge you to seek out, and expect to see on awards ballots as the year unfolds, they were by no means the only books of merit or interest published during 2012. In addition to 2312 and Empty Space, there were some excellent SF novels published, many of them instalments in new or ongoing series. After taking a decade-long break between Vorkosigan novels, Lois McMaster Bujold didn’t take long to follow up Cryoburn with the even better Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, a very funny social comedy set against a background of galactic intrigue. Paul McAuley continued to work on a broad canvas in his latest Quiet War novel, In the Mouth of the Whale, while Iain M. Banks returned once again to the Culture with the long and really quite entertaining The Hydrogen Sonata. Perhaps more fun, even if it broke little new ground for the field, was James S.A. Corey’s Caliban’s War, sequel to last year’s Hugo nominee Leviathan’s Wake, which is the kind of big, overstuffed 1970s SF novel that I’ve always rather loved. Alastair Reynolds moved into new territory with Blue Remembered Earth, first in a new series set in the near future of our Solar System. Reynolds has been growing and changing as a writer since he made his debut with Revolution Space, and I think this is his best work. Finally, I was happily surprised by John Scalzi’s provocative and amusing Redshirts, a book that starts out like a rejected Star Trek holodeck adventure, but ends up being something much more substantial, interesting, and moving.

  I read fewer fantasy novels in 2012 than I have in any recent year, but the ones I read impressed me. Margo Lanagan’s selkie novel, Sea Hearts (The Brides of Rollrock Island in the US), which takes us to a remote island where selkie and human are affected by the magic of the sea, is a dark, disturbing tale that is Lanagan’s best yet. Tim Powers doesn’t quite return to familiar territory as much as bounce off it in Hide Me Among the Graves, a cousin of his earlier novel The Stress of Her Regard. Given I’d found his previous novel, Three Ways to Never, something of a disappointment, I was delighted to find this rich confection of an adventure to be a real return to form. The other fantasy I enjoyed in 2012 was Daniel Abraham’s latest Dagger and Coin novel, The King’s Blood, an engaging, energetic adventure tale that ably filled my holiday reading hours.

  I also read fewer first novels during the year than I usually would, but the ones I did read were excellent. I was unfamiliar with G. Willow Wilson’s graphic novel work when I picked up her modern-day Arabian fantasy novel, Alif the Unseen, but was immediately pulled by its cyberpunkish opening scenes and captivated through to the last pages. Intelligent, articulate, and moving, Alif the Unseen is the debut of the year. It was challenged, though, by another Arabian fantasy. Taking his cue more from Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar than today’s newspapers, Saladin Ahmed created a charmingly unlikely pair in Dr. Adoulla Makhslood and his assistant Raseed, and ran them an extremely entertaining adventure in Throne of the Crescent Moon. It’s too early to say how the series will play out, but after this book I’ll definitely be eagerly lining up for the next one when it comes out. Finally, Locus’s own Gwenda Bond published a fine and energetic debut in Blackwood. I’m never sure how much we should discuss the work by our colleagues here, but Blackwood is a good book, and established Bond as a writer to watch.

  These are golden days for young-adult/middle-grade fiction, with a remarkable array of terrific books being published each year. While I especially loved Frances Hardinge’s A Face Like Glass, it wasn’t the only book that stood out. Any summary of the year that overlooked truly excellent books like Paolo Bacigalupi’s powerful SF novel, The Drowned Cities, Catherynne M. Valente’s enchanting fantasy The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, or Ian McDonald’s engaging, dimension-hopping Be My Enemy would be incomplete indeed. Libba Bray’s The Diviners was enormous fun, giving us an X-Files meets the days of flappers and Prohibition Era Manhattan that is funny, engaging, and promises a lot for the books to come. James P. Blaylock’s Zeuglodon brings his unique brand of charm and whimsy to YA in a book as likely to delight his longtime readers as younger newcomers, while Garth Nix took on space opera in the thoroughly entertaining A Confusion of Princes. I also greatly enjoyed Holly Black’s Black Heart, final in her ‘Curse Worker’ series, and Terry Pratchett’s Dodger, a non-Discworld novel for a change.

  And then there are the collections! So many excellent collections! I’m tempted to simply refer you to the main list and recommend them all, but that hardly seems fair. Andy Dunca
n’s second collection in a decade, The Pottawottamie Giant and Other Stories, collects ten years of tall tales and backwoods adventures in one of the top collections of recent years. As good, though completely different, is Karin Tidbeck’s Jagganath: Stories, which brings together a handful of charming, odd, unique Nordic-influenced fantasies that immediately made her the talk of the field as the year ended. Australia’s Twelfth Planet Press published two excellent short collections mid-year. Margo Lanagan’s Cracklescape and Kaaron Warren’s Through Splintered Walls collect four stories apiece, but have more heart and head than many longer books, and feature several of the very best stories of the year. The other two collections that deserve special mention are Crackpot Palace, the latest collection from the versatile and wonderful Jeffrey Ford, and The Dragon Griaule by Lucius Shepard, the long-awaited book of Griaule stories that adds a new novel-length tale to the cycle.

  It was also a strong year for career retrospective collections, with Subterranean Press again doing remarkable service to the field with definitive books of stories from Kage Baker (The Best of Kage Baker), Neal Barrett, Jr. (Other Seasons), Michael Bishop (The Door Gunner and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy), and Jonathan Carroll (The Woman Who Married a Cloud), while also delivering the latest instalment in the Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg (We Are For the Dark). All are highly recommended. Perhaps, though, the longest awaited career retrospective snuck out at the end of the year from Small Beer Press. The Unreal and the Real gives us a personal selection of the ‘‘best’’of Ursula K. Le Guin that quietly reaffirms her place as one of the great writers of our time.