The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 18

by Gardner Dozois

  The Hollywood machine continued to flail and judder and fart, emitting a loud, discordant grinding noise and puffs of black smoke, in its attempt to churn out successful genre movies, but many of them didn’t go over even at the box office, let alone with the critics. Critically, the best-received movies of the year, especially in science fiction, were mostly products from smaller studios and production companies – not surprisingly, I suppose.

  The best science fiction movie of the year, and one of the best in a number of years, was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; it was not without flaws (it’s slow in places, and rumor has it that the somewhat out-of-left-field happy ending was tagged on at the studio’s insistence), but the performances were all excellent (Jim Carrey proving once again that he can act without mugging if the director sits on him), and it’s refreshing to see an intelligent SF movie being aimed at an audience of intelligent adults who are expected to actually think about the ideas being presented, instead of a vehicle jammed with the standard action movie tropes and big special effects as a substitute for idea content. The best fantasy movie of the year was undoubtedly Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by far the best directed to date of all the Harry Potter movies, and the only one, in my opinion, that the adults are likely to enjoy as much as the kids. Another of the year’s best movies, although it’s hard to know where to categorize it (it’s not exactly a comic-book movie, since it wasn’t based on an existent comic book, but is more of an ironic postmodern comment on comic-book heroes in general), was The Incredibles, which received almost unbelievably respectful reviews for an animated film about superheroes, even from intellectual critics, and which many people felt should have been on the Oscar shortlist for year’s best movie, period, instead of being relegated to the Best Animated Feature category. It’s perhaps a stretch to categorize Finding Neverland, a partial biopic of Peter Pan creator J. M. Barrie, as a genre movie, although many critics seem to be doing so (perhaps because of the internal fantasy/dream sequences), but although it’s nowhere near as historically accurate as it pretends to be, it deserves its slot on the Oscar ballot, and a mention here, if only for Johnny Depp’s wonderfully nuanced performance – and because the Peter Pan connection does make it of at least marginal genre interest.

  Below this point, though, things go downhill fast.

  Nobody will ever know for sure, unless we consult the lady from the new TV show Medium, but I suspect that Isaac Asimov would have hated the big-budget movie “version” of his famous short-story collection I, Robot (I hesitate to call it a version, as it really has little to do with the book other than a shared title and a few character names). Isaac was a pacifist, after all, and (rightly or wrongly) felt that violence never really settled anything and was the last resort of the incompetent – so I doubt that he would have been happy with his robot stories being turned into a standard Will Smith adventure, with all the gun battles, explosions, car chases, and physically impossible action scenes that seem to be required by law to be put into a movie these days once the budget climbs past a certain point, especially if it’s a sci-fi movie. For all the thud and blunder, I, Robot only performed lukewarmly at the box office, although it wasn’t a complete dog. Another case of more being less was The Chronicles of Riddick, the sequel to an actually pretty good small movie called Pitch Black, which was good because it was small, and cleverly exploited the virtues of being so. Given a lot more money to work with, though, due to the success of Pitch Black, the producers threw out of the window everything that had made the earlier movie worthwhile, and produced a bloated and overblown standard action movie that threw everything it could into the mix, including the kitchen sink, and which sank out of sight at the box office. The Day After Tomorrow was another big special-effects movie, but it did extremely good business, one of the few such movies that did this year; I must admit that the special effects were extremely well done, especially the gigantic storm surge that drowns Manhattan, but the movie had little else to recommend it, being silly in the extreme. Van Helsing was almost as bad as last year’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which puts it in the running for the exclusive title “worst movie ever made,” and was a box-office bomb, as was Alien vs. Predator, although I suspect that the later movie (and perhaps even Van Helsing, alas) will make it up later in video rentals. The Village featured a “surprise” ending that most experienced genre fans had figured out within the first ten minutes of the movie, and struck most as a long way to go for very little result; movie after movie, director M. Night Shyamalan has been steadily losing (with me, anyway) all the credit he’d earned with The Sixth Sense, until now I’m at the point where I’m reluctant to watch his movies at all. Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (with Jim Carrey back in his mugging mode) did well enough, although I get the feeling that it didn’t perform quite up to expectations.

  Comic-book movies had an uneven year as well. Spider-Man 2 was pretty successful, both critically and commercially, as was, to a lesser degree, Hellboy, but in spite of featuring Halle Berry in a skintight leather cat suit (which you would have thought would have been enough to insure a lot of ticket sales right there), Catwoman was one of the biggest bombs (notice the restraint I demonstrate by refusing to say that Catwoman “dogged-out”) of the year, and perhaps the most critically savaged movie of the year as well. Segueing into animated movies, Shrek 2, the year’s other big sequel, seemed to do pretty well (although the critics didn’t handle it as respectfully as they had Shrek) and is enjoyable enough, but it’s nowhere near as good as the first movie had been. Shark Tale also made money, but it wasn’t as good as its obvious model, last year’s Finding Nemo, or Shrek 2, let alone The Incredibles. The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie did okay. Team America: World Police and Thunderbirds, two movies using a deliberately retro and campy style of puppet animation, did less well.

  Two movies this year stretched the limits of moviemaking technology, with mixed results. Everything in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow was computer-generated except the actors – sets, backgrounds, props, everything – with the actors performing before blue screens on bare stages (which was all too evident in a couple of places, especially when they were looking the wrong way). It looked great, kind of a big-screen version of an old Fleischer Superman cartoon with live actors plunked into it, and if they had just managed to add a script that made sense and generated some suspense, and found an actor a bit more capable of charismatic swashbuckling than the cold and affectless Jude Law, it might have been a success. As it was, though, it tanked big-time, probably especially painful considering how much it cost to make in the first place. The Polar Express was an all-computer-animated movie, even the actors, using the motion-capture technology that had been developed for Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies; at first, it looked like it was going to tank, too, but it eventually recovered and did pretty well. One widespread criticism, though, was that the computer animation made the characters look “creepy” or “scary,” probably not the effect they were aiming for in a warmhearted children’s movie, but which means that this technology might have a lot of future applications for horror movies.

  There were a lot of ill-advised “remakes” of old movies, most of which failed at the box office, including The Stepford Wives, The Manchurian Candidate, Around the World in 80 Days, and The Flight of the Phoenix. Hollywood has been trying to duplicate the success of Gladiator for some time now, but it was a disastrous year for big-budget “historical” epics, what used to be called “Sword and Sandal” movies, with Alexander the Great (featuring a ludicrously miscast Colin Farrell), Troy, and Arthur all performing well “under expectations,” to put it politely.

  Coming up next year: the new Star Wars movie (some devoted fan is already camping out – literally – in line to wait for tickets, in spite of the movie’s release date being months away, but let’s just say that I won’t be camping out next to him), a new Harry Potter movie (unfortunately not with the same director as the last one),
a Tim Burton remake of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, supposedly taking it back closer to the original Dahl book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, lots more comic-book movies, and no doubt other unexpected delights (I suppose I really should add a glyph of irony here, shouldn’t I?). Also coming up is a new animated movie by Hayao Miyazaki, who did Spirited Away, something I actually am looking forward to. (The film version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy looks promising, too.)

  With the disappearance of many of the most popular SF-and-fantasy television shows in recent years – Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Babylon 5, Farscape – and with other shows like Enterprise and Smallville visibly tottering on the brink throughout the year, there seems to be a feeling in some circles that the golden age of genre TV is behind us and receding fast. On the other hand, new shows such as Lost and Stargate Atlantis are pulling in big new audiences, even as older shows falter and die.

  As Kathy Huddleston and other commentators have pointed out (including me in this space last year), genre shows on television have clearly been hurt by the current rage for “reality TV.” Most of the older, now vanished genre shows, especially the SF shows, were special-effects-heavy, which made them expensive to produce; why pay huge amounts of money producing a genre show that will draw only a relatively small audience, when you can pay comparatively next to nothing to produce a reality show that will draw immense audiences, many times higher than the genre shows ever drew on their best days? This was probably a factor in the death of Angel, Farscape, and a number of other shows. On the other hand, there are new effects-heavy shows, such as Stargate Atlantis and Battlestar Galactica – none on network television, though, you’ll notice. The tendency on network seems to be to run genre shows that have only minimal or tangential fantastic elements, such as Joan of Arcadia or Desperate Housewives, which don’t demand big-effects budgets to do.

  The big news in genre TV this year, announced just at press time, was the cancellation of the last surviving original-run Star Trek series, Enterprise, something that came as a surprise to few, since it has been obviously struggling and sinking in the ratings for the last couple of seasons. With the cancellation of Enterprise, and persistent rumors that there’s not going to be another Star Trek theatrical movie, this may be the end of the once-mighty Star Trek franchise – as far as movies and TV are concerned, anyway; oddly, Star Trek novelizations and computer games, which are doing fine, may continue marching on long after there’s no longer a first-run Star Trek series to be found on the air (old Star Trek shows will still be available in reruns for years – if not decades – to come, of course; your grandchildren may still be watching them). Another genre show that was once a heavy-hitter in the ratings, Smallville, is also making distressed wobbling noises, as if its wheels are about to come off, and probably will be cancelled soon. Charmed, once also a ratings powerhouse, is also suspected to be almost at the end of its rope, and will probably be cancelled either this season, or, at best, the season after that. Already dead are last year’s “lawyers in the future” show, Century City, plus Father of the Pride, Futurama, Wonderwalls, and Tru Calling, which seemed set to make it into its sophomore season before suddenly having the plug pulled on it. (Reputedly killed by the success of a similar “I see dead people” show, Medium, introduced early this year; I guess the suits figured, why have two of them?)

  Not all genre shows are going under, though. Stargate SG-1 is still going strong, and launched a successful spin-off, Stargate Atlantis. Andromeda and Joan of Arcadia still seem to be doing well, as is the other “psychic” show, The Dead Zone. And The Simpsons and South Park, if you consider them to be genre shows in the first place, keep on truckin’ on, as always (joined this year by Drawn Together, the first “animated reality show,” a mind-boggling concept if there ever was one).

  Some of the new shows have done well also. We’ve already mentioned Medium and Stargate Atlantis; ABC scored big with Lost and Desperate Housewives, two of the first successful network genre shows for a long time. Calling Desperate Housewives a genre show is a stretch (although it’s narrated by a dead woman), but Lost fits solidly into a long genre tradition of “lost world” stories, coming across as a mix between Survivor and a much-more-adult Fantasy Island (or perhaps Lord of the Flies), with what I suspect will turn out to be a Forbidden Planet-style monster from the id roaming around and eating somebody every so often to add a pinch of danger and suspense. (That monster seems to be the key to the show’s success to date, with everybody dying to know what it is, and everybody and their brother having a theory, but I wonder if Lost hasn’t painted itself into a corner here – once they tell you what the monster is, many in the audience are going to lose interest in the show . . . but at the same time, if they stretch things out too long without telling you what it is, people are going to get frustrated and stop watching. It’ll be interesting to see how long they can continue to walk this tightrope without falling off.) The new version of Battlestar Galactica (I’m still not at all sure why we needed a new one, but Lord knows, they don’t ask me about these things) seems to be going over with the fans pretty well to date. And as a sop thrown to inconsolable Farscape fans, there was even a new Farscape miniseries this year, Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars.

  The Sci-Fi Channel is turning into a big producer of original shows, and one of the year’s other big events, which unfortunately didn’t live up to the anticipation it had generated, was a miniseries adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s famous fantasy novel A Wizard of Earthsea (mixed with bits of one of its sequels, The Tombs of Atuan). Hopes had been high for this show, but most Le Guin fans were disappointed in it. It seemed more like an attempt to generate a generic fantasy movie, with bits clearly influenced by Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings movies, than a sincere attempt to translate the style and substance of Le Guin’s work to the screen, and Le Guin herself scathingly denounced it in a series of essays on the Internet. In spite of the disenchantment of most Le Guin readers, the miniseries was a big ratings success for the Sci-Fi Channel, so they were probably happy enough with it. Let’s hope they do a better job, though, with upcoming miniseries versions of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars and Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War.

  A case could probably be made for listing some of The Discovery Channel specials such as Chased By Sea Monsters – whose deadpan conceit is that this is just another nature documentary, following scientists who have gone back in time to study the swarming CGI dinosaurs of various prehistoric oceans – as science fiction shows, because the gimmick is played perfectly straight, with little or no breaking of the fourth wall. And considered as science fiction shows, the now rather fake-looking CGI dinosaurs would have been considered to be amazing special effects even as recently as ten or fifteen years ago, which shows you just how fast the whole area of computer-generated animation is evolving.

  The 62nd World Science Fiction Convention, Noreascon 4, was held in Boston, Massachusetts from September 2 to September 6, 2004, and drew an estimated attendance of 5,600. The 2004 Hugo Awards, presented at Noreascon 4, were: Best Novel, Paladin of Souls, by Lois McMaster Bujold; Best Novella, “The Cookie Monster,” by Vernor Vinge; Best Novelette, “Legions in Time,” by Michael Swanwick; Best Short Story, “A Study in Emerald,” by Neil Gaiman; Best Related Book, The Chesley Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy Art: A Retrospective, edited by John Grant and Elizabeth L. Humphrey with Pamela D. Scoville; Best Professional Editor, Gardner Dozois; Best Professional Artist, Bob Eggleton; Best Dramatic Presentation (short form), Gollum’s acceptance speech at the 2003 MTV Movie Awards; Best Dramatic Presentation (long form) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King; Best Semiprozine, Locus, edited by Charles N. Brown, Jennifer A. Hall, and Kirsten Gong-Wong; Best Fanzine, Emerald City, edited by Cheryl Morgan; Best Fan Writer, David Langford; Best Fan Artist, Frank Wu; plus the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer to Jay Lake; and the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award to C. L. Moore.