Locus, February 2013

by Locus Publications

2012 by Karen Burnham

  Karen Burnham (2012)

  As always, I come to the end of the year chagrined by just how much I didn’t read. I never got to 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson, or Empty Space by M. John Harrison, or Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin, nor any of the other books that I know I’ll enjoy when I get to them… someday….

  Looking back however, I am very pleased with the anthologies that I was able to read. My favorite for the year was Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction, edited by the young editor Brit Mandelo, now heading up the fiction department at Strange Horizons. This reprint anthology included a wide variety of stories showing many different perspectives on the gender and sexuality spectrums, most written with sensitivity and remarkable emotional punch. I had only encountered a few of the stories when they were previously published in other venues, so I was very glad to have a chance to read stories like Sandra McDonald’s ‘‘Sea of Cortez’’ and Nalo Hopkinson’s ‘‘Fisherman’’, as well as the combination of sexuality and war trauma in Kelley Eskridge’s ‘‘Eye of the Storm’’. Reprint anthologies can be a tricky business, considering the need to balance commercial appeal with depth, with breadth, with stories for which the rights are available. But, I’ve rarely seen one done so well that brings so much illumination to its chosen topic.

  The original anthology that gave Beyond Binary a run for its money as the top spot in my reading list was AfroSF: Science Fiction by African Writers, edited by Ivor W. Hartmann. This anthology includes authors from all over Africa writing a wide variety of science fiction, occasionally tinged with hints of the fantastic. (I appreciate it when editors leave a story in even if it gets a little liminal – it keeps things interesting.) Nnedi Okorafor leads off with a beautiful tale, and I enjoyed the surrealist bent of several of the stories. But the two that really stood out for me are ‘‘Ofe!’’ by Rafeet Aliyu, which tells a story of three women with various powers banding together to stop a mad scientist, and ‘‘Proposition 23’’ by Efe Okogu, which may be my favorite novelette of 2012 – a dystopian story with excellent world building and great emotional impact.

  Continuing on the international theme, I enjoyed The Future is Japanese, edited by Nick Mamatas & Masumi Washington at Haikasoru, a publisher which has been doing excellent work bringing Japanese SF to America through translated editions. This particular anthology includes both translated Japanese stories and stories by American writers writing about Japan. Many of these stories lean towards the impressionistic rather than the tightly plotted side of the spectrum, and there are a good selection of beautiful stories here. I particularly enjoyed the stories by Ken Liu and Rachel Swirsky (both of whom continue to produce fantastic stories in a wide variety of venues), but the one that surprised me the most was ‘‘Autogenic Dreaming: Interview with the Columns of Clouds’’ by TOBI Hirotaka. I had no idea where that story was going, and in the end it was very thoughtful.

  Other anthologies that contributed to my reading pleasure for the year: Diverse Energies, edited by Tobias Buckell & Joe Monti (although the tone of the stories was not as diverse as I’d been hoping) and Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology edited by James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel for Tachyon Press, continuing their streak of insightful themed anthologies. Speaking of the Singularity, I will note that one novel I did get to is The Eternal Flame by Greg Egan, the second volume of his Orthogonal trilogy. In these books he shows significant improvements in his characterization and societal speculation as well as the vast amounts of world-building based on his work in mathematical physics. However, I am afraid that the latter appears to be preventing people from appreciating the former, which is a shame.

  Rounding out my short fiction for the year was Birds and Birthdays, a collection of Chris Barzak’s work from Aqueduct press. It is part of their Conversation Pieces series, which has been unfailingly producing interesting volumes to read. This slim book includes three short stories, each inspired by a piece of art by a different female surrealist artist. It concludes with a long and well-researched essay on the lives of the artists and how much their art and accomplishments were unseen by the art world of their time. Barzak runs the risk here of continuing the problem of men speaking for women instead of allowing them to speak for themselves, but he acknowledges that risk and moves forward thoughtfully. This is story and essay structure is very different than seen in typical collections, but I would be very happy to see more books done along these lines.

  As I said, I read very few 2012 novels. Ghosts by Curdella Forbes was another one of those few, which I read as part of a podcast series that I started with Karen Lord. In it I suggested three recent science fiction authors, and she had me read three Caribbean speculative fiction authors. Ghosts is a fascinating near-future story of a family dealing with tragedy. For most of the story the near-future bits seem somewhat irrelevant, but at the end the narrative takes a big leap and shows why the world-building is important. I found the language challenging, as it’s written with strong dialect based on the Jamaican accent. I had to put it down for a while for other reasons, but when I picked it back up apparently the language centers in my brain had assimilated it, and after that I didn’t have any trouble (having listened to Nalo Hopkinson do readings also helped). As a final novelistic mention, Gail Carriger published Timeless, bringing to a close my guilty pleasure series, The Parasol Protectorate.

  On a logistical note, I found that 2012 was the year when I started to actively prefer reading on my iPad. I got an iPad2 for Christmas at the end of 2011, and by the end of 2012, I’m hooked. I had already been doing a lot of reading on my iPhone, but the iPad’s screen space makes for a much more relaxed reading experience. I’ve started specifically asking for ARCs in PDF since the iPad displays them so well. I’ve always been comfortable reading from a screen and I was an early adopter of the rather clunky e-book from eBookwise eight or nine years ago. But now I feel like things have come together to make the iPad not just an acceptable reading source, but my preferred reading source. I especially love the fact that it lays flat while I’m eating and the page turns with a light tap – no more trading off between holding a book open and using multiple utensils. At this point the only quibbles I have are the worries about getting it wet and the lack of ability to type notes on a PDF file. I still happily read physical books and ARCs, but my acquisition patterns have shifted significantly towards e-books and e-magazines, and I suspect that will continue next year.

  Overall when looking back at 2012, I am thrilled to see so many different voices in my reading list. Authors from all over the world and all over the gender spectrum feature, both in English and in translation. They’ve all got fascinating stories to tell, stories that make you think differently about the world around us. Whether it’s pure science fiction, pure fantasy, interstitial, or just plain weird, I’ve learned from and been entertained by a wide range of story types and tropes. This is the reason I find myself unable to sympathize with the ‘‘science fiction is a corpse burying itself’’ sentiment among some sectors of our community. When you go looking for them, new voices are getting louder and easier to find. There seem to be even more translations available, labors of love by the publishers willing to invest in them. They may not yet be mainstream, but if this trend continues, they’ll be getting closer to it every year. Not every story will suit every reader, but by bringing so much more breadth to the table small presses and new writers and editors are helping to keep the field vital.

  Recommended Reading:

  Ghosts by Curdella Forbes

  Birds and Birthdays by Chris Barzak

  Beyond Binary, Brit Mandelo, ed.

  AfroSF, Ivor Hartmann, ed.

  The Future Is Japanese, Nick Mamatas & Masumi Washington, eds.

  ‘‘Ofe!’’ by Rafeet Aliyu

  ‘‘Proposition 23’’ by Efe Okogu

  ‘‘Mono No Aware’’ by Ken Liu

  ‘‘The Sea of Trees’’ by Rachel Swirsky

&nb
sp; ‘‘Autogenic Dreaming: Interview with the Columns of Clouds’’ by TOBI Hirotaka

  –Karen Burnham

  2012 IN REVIEW by Gardner Dozois

  Gardner Dozois (2011)

  2012 was a somewhat weak year for anthologies, although electronic magazines continue to pop up all over like popping-up things that suddenly pop-up. How long some of them will last is yet to be seen.

  Late in the year, in one of the more interesting developments of 2012, Jonathan Strahan announced that his critically acclaimed anthology series Eclipse was transforming itself from a print anthology to an online magazine, Eclipse Online, which would release two stories every month throughout the year; three issues appeared in 2012, and the literary quality was very high, with excellent stories by Lavie Tidhar, Eleanor Arnason, Christopher Barzak, K.J. Parker, and others. John Joseph Adams added an online horror magazine, Nightmare, as a companion to his online SF/fantasy magazine, Lightspeed. Following in the footsteps of last year’s TRSF, an all-fiction magazine produced by the publishers of MIT Technology Review, in 2012 the publishers of New Scientist magazine created Arc, edited by Simon Ings & Sumit Paul-Choudhury, described as ‘‘a new digital magazine about the future’’, which features both fiction and a range of eclectic non-fiction, and which exists mainly as various downloadable formats for the Kindle, the iPad, iPhones, Windows PC, and Mac computers. Three issues of Arc appeared in 2012, featuring good work by Paul McAuley, Alastair Reynolds, and others. A new issue of TRSF is promised for 2013. Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds, edited by Roger Gray, debuted, as did Fireside Magazine, edited by Brian White, and International Speculative Fiction, edited by Correio do Fantastico.

  Promised for next year are Galaxy’s Edge, a bimonthly e-zine edited by Mike Resnick; Wayside Magazine, edited by David Rees-Thomas and Darryl Knickrehm; and a relaunch of Amazing Stories, edited by Steve Davidson.

  Without a doubt, the best SF original anthology of the year was Edge of Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan, which featured excellent work by Pat Cadigan, Paul McAuley, Hannu Rajaniemi, Gwyneth Jones, Bruce Sterling, and many others. An odd item was Solaris Rising 1.5: An Exclusive ebook of New Science Fiction, edited by Ian Whates, available only in e-book form. An original SF anthology designed to act as a ‘‘bridge’’ between 2010’s Solaris Rising print anthology and 2013’s upcoming Solaris Rising 2 anthology, it contained good fiction by Adam Roberts, Aliette de Bodard, Paul Cornell, Paul Di Filippo, and others. Other good original SF anthologies included Going Interstellar, edited by Les Johnson & Jack McDevitt (which featured an excellent novella by Michael Bishop), Armored, and Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, both edited by John Joseph Adams. There was a slew of good (mostly) reprint SF anthologies, most of which featured one or two original stories apiece: Robots: Recent AI, edited by Rich Horton & Sean Wallace; War and Space, edited by Rich Horton & Sean Wallace; Rock On: The Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy Hits, edited by Paula Guran; Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology, edited by James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel; and Other Worlds Than These, edited by John Joseph Adams. There were two post-apocalyptic anthologies, After: Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic Tales, edited by Ellen Datlow & Terry Windling, and Epilogue, edited by Tehani Wessely. There were two steampunk anthologies, The Mammorth Book of Steampunk, edited by Sean Wallace, and Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution, edited by Ann VanderMeer. Rip-Off! was an audio anthology of SF and fantasy stories edited by Gardner Dozois.

  Jonathan Strahan, who had an excellent year in 2012, also edited the year’s best fantasy anthology, Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron, which featured good work by Peter S. Beagle, Margo Lanagan, Ellen Klages, Holly Black, Jane Yolen, and others. Other notable fantasy anthologies were Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful, edited by Paula Guran; Magic, An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane, edited by Jonathan Oliver; Dark Currents, edited by Ian Whates; and The Weird, edited by Ann & Jeff VanderMeer. Substantial reprint fantasy anthologies included The Sword and Sorcery Anthology, edited by David Hartwell & Jacob Wiseman, and Epic, edited by John Joseph Adams.

  This was a very good year for anthologies that afford a view of what’s happening in fantastic literature in other countries, outside the usual genre boundaries. Anthologies of this sort included The Future Is Japanese, edited by Nick Mamatas & Masumi Washington; Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana, edited by Anil Menon & Vandana Singh; Afro SF: Science Fiction by African Writers, edited by Ivor W. Hartmann; Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic, edited by Eduardo Jimenez Mayo & Chris N. Brown; Lauriat: A Filipino-Chinese Speculative Fiction Anthology, edited by Charles Tan; Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction, edited by Grace L. Dillon; and The Apex Book of World SF 2, edited by Lavie Tidhar.

  Asimov’s Science Fiction had another strong year, publishing excellent fiction by Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Indrapramit Das, Megan Lindholm, Steven Popkes, Robert Reed, Gord Seller, Tom Purdom, and others; their SF was considerably stronger than their fantasy this year, with the exception of a novella by Alan Smale. F&SF was almost exactly the reverse: lots of good fantasy, including work by Ted Kostmatka, Rachel Pollack, Peter S. Beagle, Felicity Shoulders, John McDaid, and Alter S. Reiss, but little really memorable SF, with the exception of stories by Robert Reed and Andy Duncan. Analog published good work by Richard A. Lovett and William Gleason, Michael Alexander and K.C. Ball, Linda Nagata, Michael Flynn, Sean McMullen, Alec Nevala-Lee, and others. Clarkesworld had good stuff by Carrie Vaughn, Aliette de Bodard, Indrapramit Das, Theodora Goss, Yoon Ha Lee, and Xia Jia. Lightspeed featured strong work by Vandana Singh, Linda Nagata, Keith Brook, Marissa Lingen, Ken Liu, Sarah Monette, Sandra McDonald, and others. Subterraean had first-class work by Jay Lake, K.J. Parker, Maria Dahvana Headley, Nnedi Okorafor, and Ian R. Macleod. Tor.com had good work by Elizabeth Bear, Andy Duncan, Michael Swanwick, Brit Mandelo, Paul Cornell, Pat Murphy, and others. Interzone had good work by Aliette de Bodard, Sean McMullen, Lavie Tidhar, Elizabeth Bourne, and others. Strange Horizons had strong work by Molly Gloss, Louise Hughes, Ellen Klages, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Kate Bachus, Samantha Henderson, and others. Apex Magazine had good work by Kij Johnson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Ken Liu, Jay Lake, and more. Beneath Ceaseless Skies ran nice stuff by Richard Parks, Karalynn Lee, Margaret Ronald, and others. Abyss & Apex ran interesting work by Colin P. Davis, Genevieve Valentine, Jay Caselberg, Arkady Martian, and others.

  Good novella chapbooks in 2012 included On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard, Gods of Risk by James S.A. Corey, The Boolean Gate by Walter Jon Williams, The Yellow Cabochon by Matthew Hughes, After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress, Mare Ultima by Alex Irvine, Starship Winter by Eric Brown, The Thorn and the Blossom by Theodora Goss, From Whence You Came by Laura Ann Gilman, The Pit of Despair by Simon R. Green, and ad eternum and The Book of Iron both by Elizabeth Bear.

  Lavie Tidhar, Aliette de Bodard, Ken Liu, Elizabeth Bear, and (as usual) Robert Reed were all highly prolific this year, publishing good stories all over, in many different markets.

  –Gardner Dozois

  SHORT FICTION SURVEY AND RECOMMENDED READING, 2012 by Rich Horton

  Rich Horton (2012)

  I think we got through 2012 without a major magazine dying, and we even saw a couple of significant debuts: Arc, a British magazine associated with New Scientist, and Nightmare, a horror companion to John Joseph Adams’s Lightspeed. In the print area the remaining ‘‘Big Three’’ US magazines: Analog, Asimov’s, and F&SF continued much as before, with one important change: Stanley Schmidt stepped down as editor of Analog (after a tenure longer than John Campbell’s), with Trevor Quachri taking over as of the April 2013 issue. Over in the UK, TTA Press’s Interzone and Black Static continued in solid shape: each put out six fine issues, both transitioning to a smaller physical size (but similar wordcount) about halfway through the year.

  Online, Tor.com con
tinued to publish fine new fiction in 2012. Long-running sites Strange Horizons (which changed its triad of fiction editors), Lightspeed, Subterranean, and Clarkesworld, each published a great deal of very strong fiction. Other worthwhile sites include Abyss and Apex, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Ideomancer, Apex, Daily Science Fiction, and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. Alas, the enjoyable newish site Redstone Science Fiction ceased publication.

  It seemed perhaps a bit of a down year for original anthologies. One of the best, Gardner Dozois’s Rip-Off!, was ‘‘published’’ in audible form (by Audible.com) towards the end of the year. It featured stories based on opening lines from famous earlier works – particularly good stuff came from James Patrick Kelly and Robert Charles Wilson. Jonathan Strahan’s Edge of Infinity was a very good collection of near future Solar System-based stuff, with fine work from Pat Cadigan, Elizabeth Bear, Paul J. McAuley, Hannu Rajaniemi, and Bruce Sterling. The always-busy John Joseph Adams put out a John Carter-linked book, Under the Moons of Mars, with a number of enjoyable stories set (mostly) in Burroughs’s continuity. Adams also gave us a nice collection of ‘‘Powered Armor’’ stories, Armored, which featured solid stories from Genevieve Valentine and Alastair Reynolds among others. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling offered After, a collection of dystopian and post-apocalyptic YA stories, again very good, the best pieces coming from Genevieve Valentine, N.K. Jemisin, Garth Nix, and Caitlín R. Kiernan. And we should also mention the Ray Bradbury tribute anthology, Shadow Show, which all unknowingly, ended up more as a memorial to the great man (as he died very soon after its appearance). The stories, from a variety of writers both within and (mostly) without the genre, are a good mix and a good capturing of the Bradbury flavor – I liked those by Kelly Link, Dan Chaon, Alice Hoffman, and Audrey Niffenegger best.

  Finally, there were several interesting anthologies focusing on writers from other cultures. Nick Mamatas & Masumi Washington’s The Future is Japanese mixed stories from Japanese writers with Japanese-themed stories from Western writers. Breaking the Bow, edited by Anil Menon & Vandana Singh, features mostly Indian writers with SF based on the Ramayana. Lauriat, edited by Charles Tan, is a collection of fantasies by Filipino-Chinese writers, based mostly on the Filipino-Chinese experience. And Three Messages and a Warning, edited by Eduardo Jiménez Mayo & Chris N. Brown, is an original anthology of Mexican tales of the Fantastic – ironically, given Mexico’s proximity to the US, these stories may be even less familiar in feel to American genre readers than the Indian, Japanese, and Filipino stories in the other books I mentioned.