There were no particularly good high fantasy anthologies this year, unlike last year, which saw the publication of the excellent Imaginary Lands. Best of the lot was probably Will Shetterly and Emma Bull’s Liavek: The Players of Luck (Ace). Janet Morris’ Heroes in Hell (Baen) had some interesting stuff in it but the contents were wildly uneven. Terry Windling and Mark Arnold’s Borderland (Ace) was simply a failure: a silly concept—punk elves—and mostly indifferent execution.
The big event in the horror anthology market this year was the publication of Dennis Etchison’s enormous original anthology Cutting Edge (Doubleday). This much-ballyhooed collection was hyped as the Dangerous Visions of horror fiction—and to a certain extent lives up to the name. Some of the stuff here is a little too gruesome for my taste—the anthology certainly contains some of the year’s grimmest, most violent, and most despairing stories—but the level of craft is generally pretty high, and the book contains an excellent story by Peter Straub, and good work by Joe Haldeman, Steve Rasnic Tem, Clive Barker, Karl Edward Wagner, Marc Laidlaw, and others; it’s an unrelievedly black and intense anthology, though, so don’t try to read it all in one sitting. Although equally well-crafted, the stories in Charles L. Grant’s Shadows 9 (Doubleday) were considerably less grotesque—the schism between the “quiet” school of horror writing (typified by Shadows) and the gleefully gore-splattered Grand Guignol school widens daily. (On the whole, I prefer the “quiet” stuff myself—and think it is more likely to actually scare people, something both horror writers and splatter-film makers sometimes lose sight of.) Shadows 9 probably has no award-winners on board this time around, but does feature good work by Stephen Gallagher, Kim Antieau, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Steve Rasnic Tem, and others. Also interesting were Night Visions 3 (Dark Harvest), edited by George R. R. Martin, and Halloween Horrors (Doubleday), edited by Alan Ryan.
An intriguingly offbeat item is The Best of the West (Doubleday), the annual Western Writers of America anthology. This year it was edited by Joe R. Lansdale, who’s an SF writer as well as a western writer, and he has included several strange western/SF/fantasy hybrids in this year’s volume, including a brilliant piece of work by Neal Barrett, Jr. (The straight western stories are all pretty good, too, and even the most conventional of them are pretty quirky.) An interesting book.
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According to Locus, there were 294 new SF novels and 263 new fantasy novels released during 1986—and these are only estimates; no doubt there were many books released that didn’t even show up in the count. I’m not sure I understand how anyone could keep up with all of those new titles, let alone anyone with anything else to do. Certainly I can’t keep up with all the new novel releases—busy as I am with the extensive reading at shorter lengths demanded both by this anthology and the editorship of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine—and so, reluctantly, I have given up even trying to read them all. So therefore, as usual, I’m going to limit myself here to commenting that of the novels I did read this year, I was the most impressed by: The Journal of Nicholas the American, Leigh Kennedy (Atlantic Monthly Press); Soldier in the Mist, Gene Wolfe (Tor); Count Zero, William Gibson (Arbor House); A Hidden Place, Robert Charles Wilson (Bantam Spectra); Talking Man, Terry Bisson (Arbor House); The Hercules Text, Jack McDevitt (Ace); The Falling Woman, Pat Murphy (Tor); Free Live Free, Gene Wolfe (Tor); Hardwired, Walter Jon Williams (Tor); and Homunculus, James P. Blaylock (Ace).
Other novels which have gotten a lot of attention this year include: Speaker for the Dead, Orson Scott Card (Tor); Foundation and Earth, Isaac Asimov (Doubleday); The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (Houghton Mifflin); This Is the Way the World Ends, James Morrow (Holt); The Coming of the Quantum Cats, Frederik Pohl (Bantam Spectra); Godbody, Theodore Sturgeon (Donald I. Fine); Wizard of the Pigeons, Megan Lindholm (Ace); The Cross-Time Engineer, Leo Frankowski (Del Rey); Blood of Amber, Roger Zelazny (Arbor House); Radio Free Albemuth, Philip K. Dick (Arbor House); Star of Gypsies, Robert Silverberg (Donald I. Fine); The Serpent Mage, Greg Bear (Berkley); Huysman’s Pets, Kate Wilhelm (Bluejay); Human Error, Paul Preuss (Tor); Dorothea Dreams, Suzy McKee Charnas (Arbor House); A Door into Ocean, Joan Slonczewski (Arbor House); Songs of Distant Earth, Arthur C. Clarke (Del Rey); Marooned in Real Time, Vernor Vinge (Bluejay); Yarrow, Charles de Lint (Ace); It, Stephen King (Viking); Winter in Eden, Harry Harrison (Bantam); Chanur’s Homecoming, C. J. Cherryh (Phantasm Press); and Heart of the Comet, Gregory Benford and David Brin (Bantam Spectra).
My subjective impression is that 1986 was not as strong a year for novels overall as last year or the year before, although several excellent individual novels did appear—and the reviews seem to bear this out, for the most part. First novels continued to make their presence felt—Locus lists twenty-seven of them, and there probably were more—but they didn’t seem to have as much impact this year as they’ve had in the past couple of years (particularly in 1984, when first novels dominated the awards lists, and one of them, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, won both the Nebula and the Hugo); of the first novels, only the Kennedy, the McDevitt, the Wilson, and the Frankowski seemed to generate much critical excitement.
It’s interesting to note that although 1986 saw the publication of a number of heavily advertised novels by some of the biggest names in the genre—Clarke, Asimov, Pohl, Silverberg, Donaldson, Harrison—none of them came even close to making it onto the final Nebula ballot. All were passed over in favor of novels by middle-level writers such as Wolfe and Card, and by new writers such as Gibson, Kennedy, Morrow, and Atwood. The same thing happened to a certain extent in 1985 and 1984. Does this indicate a shift in the demographics of the Nebula electorate? Or just a shift in which portion of the electorate still bothers to vote?
There were few important small-press novels this year. One worthwhile project was announced by Chris Drumm, who intends to publish R. A. Lafferty’s tetralogy In a Green Tree as a series of mimeographed booklets, starting with Chris Drumm booklet, No. 24: My Heart Leaps Up, Part 1. It will take twenty booklets to complete the project, each booklet containing two chapters. Let’s hope that they can manage to actually complete this enormous project, because the first part of the first novel, contained in the first booklet, is quirky and interesting, sure to appeal to Lafferty fans, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s the strong strain of offbeat but powerfully devout Catholicism here that has kept this novel off the trade market for all these years. (Chris Drumm’s address: P.O. Box 445, Polk City, Iowa, 50226. Regular edition $2.75, signed edition, $6.)
If 1986 was only a so-so year for novels, it was a terrific one for short story collections. The year saw the publication of several landmark collections, all of which belong on everyone’s basic bookshelf. The year’s best short story collections were Howard Who?, Howard Waldrop (Doubleday); Burning Chrome, William Gibson (Arbor House); The Planet on the Table, Kim Stanley Robinson (Tor); Dreams of Dark and Light, Tanith Lee (Arkham House); Artificial Things, Karen Joy Fowler (Bantam Spectra); Close Encounters with the Deity, Michael Bishop (Peachtree); and Tales of the Quintana Roo, James Tiptree, Jr. (Arkham House). If you absolutely have to choose among these, the Waldrop, the Gibson, the Lee, and the Robinson are probably the most essential, and the Waldrop in particular contains fine material from obscure places that the average reader is unlikely to have already seen.
Also outstanding this year were: Beyond the Safe Zone, Robert Silverberg (Donald I. Fine); In Alien Flesh, Gregory Benford; Robot Dreams, Isaac Asimov (Berkley); Blue Champagne, John Varley (Dark Harvest); Merlin’s Booke, Jane Yolen (Ace); The Complete Nebula Award-Winning Fiction, Samuel R. Delany (Bantam Spectra); The Starry Rift, James Tiptree, Jr. (Tor); The Curious Quests of Brigadier Ffellows, Sterling E. Lanier (Donald M. Grant); and Tuf Voyaging, George R. R. Martin (Baen).
Small presses played an important role here, as you can see—Peachtree, Dark Harvest, Donald M. Grant, and especially Arkham House, which is becoming one of the most important sources for quality short story collection
s. It’s good to see small presses taking up some of the slack here, since trade publishers still issue fewer short story collections than they should—although things have improved a bit in this regard over the last few years. Still, even though 1986 was a good year for collections, I’d like to see even more collections issued in coming years—there’ve been too few of them, for too long.
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The reprint anthology market was a bit more solid this year than it was last year. As usual, your best bet in the reprint market were the various “Best of the Year” collections—there are three covering science fiction, one for fantasy, one for horror, plus the annual Nebula Award anthology. This year also saw the publication of The Hugo Winners, Vol. 5 (Doubleday), edited by Isaac Asimov, and The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Vol. IV (Avon), edited by Terry Carr, valuable reference anthologies. The best reprint anthology of the year, though, is Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology (Arbor House), edited by Bruce Sterling. Sterling muddies the already confusingly roiled critical water on this subject a bit more by including in this supposedly canonical anthology several stories (like Rudy Rucker’s excellent “Tales of Houdini”) that are clearly not cyberpunk by any reasonable definition; I also question the wisdom of using William Gibson’s least characteristic story but of not including any of Sterling’s own brilliant Shaper/Mechanist stories, definitive hardcore cyberpunk. Nevertheless, in spite of these quibbles, this is not only a historically important anthology, but a very good one; all the stories are worthwhile, whether cyberpunk or not, and a few of them—notably the Cadigan and the Kelly—are as good as short SF has gotten in the eighties. Also worthwhile this year were: Tales from the Spaceport Bar (Avon), edited by George H. Scithers and Darrell Schweitzer; Alternative Histories (Garland), edited by Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg; Strange Maine (Lance Tapley), edited by Charles G. Waugh, Martin H. Greenberg and Frank D. McSherry, Jr.; Hitler Victorious (Garland) edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg; and Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF stories: 15 (DAW), edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg. Two interesting reprint horror anthologies were Masters of Darkness (Tor), edited by Dennis Etchison, and After Midnight (Tor) edited by Charles L. Grant. Noted without comment are Mermaids! (Ace) and Sorcerers! (Ace), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.
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It was a moderately good year for the SF-oriented nonfiction/SF reference book field. 1986 saw the creation of a valuable new reference—Science Fiction in Print: 1985 (Locus Publications), compiled by Charles N. Brown and William G. Contento—and an updated reissue of a valuable old reference—Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers, 2nd Edition (St. James Press), edited by Curtis C. Smith. Also worthwhile were: The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural (Viking), edited by Jack Sullivan; and Science Fiction, Fantasy and Weird Fiction Magazines (Greenwood), edited by Marshall B. Tymn and Mike Ashley. Discounting straight reference books, the best SF-oriented nonfiction book of the year was the huge, highly readable, and highly controversial history of SF by Brian W. Aldiss and David Wingrove, Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (Atheneum), an extensive update of Aldiss’ earlier Billion Year Spree. They’ll be arguing over this one for years to come, just as they argued about its predecessor. There’s plenty to argue about here, too—Aldiss pulls no punches! The section on the last fifteen years in SF is still a bit sketchy, and Aldiss sometimes gets his facts a bit wrong, but it’s all fascinating reading. Just as fascinating, and perhaps even more opinionated, is Aldiss’s second collection of essays,… And the Lurid Glare of the Comet (Serconia Press). Even quirkier reading— and even more fascinating— is Paul Williams’s book-long “interview” with the late Philip K. Dick, Only Apparently Real (Arbor House). Also worthwhile are: The John W. Campbell Letters, Vol. 1 (AC Projects, Inc.), edited by Perry A. Chapdelaine, Sr., Tony Chapdelaine, and George Hay; Inside Outer Space: Science Fiction Professionals Look at Their Craft (Ungar), edited by Sharon Jarvis; Hard Science Fiction (Southern Illinois University Press), edited by George E. Slusser and Eric S. Rabkin; and Galaxy Magazine: The Dark and the Light Years (Advent), edited by David L. Rosheim.
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Reviewing last year’s anthology in Mile High Futures, Ed Bryant took me to task for obviously not knowing anything about film. Well, another year has gone by, and I still don’t know much about film—as the old joke goes, I only know what I like. And there was not a hell of a lot I liked in the SF/fantasy film field in 1986, which, to my eyes at least, seemed like a moderately disappointing year. There were some good films lost among the ruck, though, and let’s start with them.
Brazil was the best film I saw last year, and one of the best I’ve ever seen: funny, sad, brilliant, bizarre, absolutely original—it seems to me that, although it’s not based on anything by Dick, Brazil catches the strange, gentle, and tragic atmosphere of a Philip K. Dick novel better than any film I’ve ever seen, even better than Blade Runner, which merely looks like a Philip K. Dick novel. Aliens was a first rate SF adventure film, though it lacked the mythic overtones of its predecessor, Alien. The Little Shop of Horrors was funny and enjoyably weird. Labyrinth had some interesting touches, as did Peggy Sue Got Married, although the latter had big holes in its plot-logic. Star Trek IV was pleasant but minor.
Everything else—The Golden Child, Poltergeist II, Psycho III, Legend, Howard the Duck, Maximum Overdrive, Vamp, Invaders from Mars, Highlanders, Solarbabies, and King Kong Lives—I didn’t like much. In fact, with a few of those, that’s putting it mildly.
On television, The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock were canceled, and Amazing Stories isn’t looking too good, either. A new version of Star Trek—Star Trek: The Next Generation—is going to be on the tube next season, but somehow I can’t muster up a great deal of enthusiasm for this news; perhaps I’ve grown jaded.
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The 44th World Science Fiction convention, ConFederation, was held in Atlanta, Georgia, over the Labor Day weekend, and drew an estimated attendance of 5,500. The 1986 Hugo Awards, presented at ConFederation, were: Best Novel, Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card; Best Novella, “24 Views of Mount Fuji, by Hokusai,” by Roger Zelazny; Best Novelette, “Paladin of the Lost Hour,” by Harlan Ellison; Best Short Story, “Fermi and Frost” by Frederik Pohl; Best Non-Fiction, Science Made Stupid, by Tom Weller; Best Professional Editor, Judy-Lynn del Rey (refused); Best Professional Artist, Michael Whelan; Best Dramatic Presentation, Back to the Future; Best Semi-Prozine, Locus; Best Fanzine, Lan’s Lantern; Best Fan Writer, Mike Glyer; Best Fan Artist, Joan Hanke-Woods; plus the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer to Melissa Scott.
The 1985 Nebula Awards, presented at a banquet at the Claremont Hotel in Berkeley, California, on April 26, 1986, were: Best Novel, Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card; Best Novella, “Sailing to Byzantium,” by Robert Silverberg; Best Novelette, “Portraits of His Children,” by George R. R. Martin; Best Short Story, “Out of All Them Bright Stars,” by Nancy Kress; plus the Grand Master Award to Arthur C. Clarke.
The World Fantasy Awards, presented at the Twelfth Annual World Fantasy Convention in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 2, 1986, were: Best Novel, Song of Kali, by Dan Simmons; Best Novella, “Nadelman’s God,” by T. E. D. Klein; Best Short Story, “Paper Dragons,” by James Blaylock; Best Anthology/Collection, Imaginary Lands, edited by Robin McKinley; Best Artist (tie), Jeff Jones and Thomas Canty; Special Award (professional), Pat Lo Brutto; Special Award (Non-Professional), Douglas E. Winter; Special Convention Award, Donald A. Wollheim; plus a (long overdue) Life Achievement Award to Avram Davidson.
The 1985 John W. Campbell Memorial Award–winner was The Postman, by David Brin.
The fourth Philip K. Dick Memorial Award–winner was Dinner at Deviant’s Palace, by Tim Powers.
The 1985 Rhysling Awards for the best speculative poetry of 1985 went to Andrew Joron for the long poem, “Shipwrecked on Destiny Five” (IAsfm, May 85) and to Susan Palwick for the short poem “The Ne
ighbor’s Wife”(Amazing, May 85).
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This volume will, alas, contain another long, grim list of obituary notices for those lost in 1986 and early 1987. The dead included: Manly Wade Wellman, 82, one of the masters of the modern fantasy story, author of the landmark collection Who Fears the Devil? as well as a large number of other books and stories (many of them about his best-known character, John), and winner of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement; Robert F. Young, 71, veteran author whose work was published primarily in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and collected in The Worlds of Robert F. Young and A Glass of Stars; Thomas N. Scorita, 59, author, scientist, and editor, co-author (with Frank M. Robinson) of the bestselling novel The Glass Inferno (on which the film The Towering Inferno was based), as well as many other novels, stories, and anthologies; Russel M. Griffin, 42, highly promising new writer, author of four novels, of which the best known is the brilliant black comedy The Blind Men and the Elephant, a friendly acquaintance of mine if not a close personal friend; Jorge Luis Borges, 86, one of the giants of world literature and a dominant figure in South American letters, winner of the 1979 World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement; John D. MacDonald, 70, one of the most prolific and successful writers of our times, author of the SF novels Wine of the Dreamers and Ballroom of the Skies, although he was best known as a mystery writer, particularly for the long-running and best-selling Travis McGee series; Bernard Malamud, 71, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist and winner of the National Book Award, author of the associational novels The Natural and God’s Grace; V. C. Andrews, bestselling author of gothic novels, best known for Flowers in the Attic; Chesley Bonestell, 98, brilliant space and astronomical artist whose paintings, particularly for Life and Colliers in the 1950s, established the “look” of space art for decades of readers and influenced generations of SF and astronomical artists, and much of whose best work is collected in the recent Worlds Beyond: The Art of Chesley Bonestell; Mike Hodel, 46, producer and host of Hour 25 for KPFK-FM in Los Angeles, the longest-running SF radio program in the world; R. Glenn Wright, 54, professor of English at Michigan State University and longtime director of the Clarion Writer’s Workshop; Lee Wright, 82, longtime mystery editor and occasional editor of associational fantasy items; Clyde S. Kilby, 84, noted J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis scholar; William Barrett, 85, veteran author; Marjorie Brunner, 65, wife of author John Brunner; Rhoda Katerinsky, 55, well-known fan under her maiden name of “Ricky” Slavin, long an editor at MS; Jerry Jacks, 39, well-known fan, active in gay-rights circles; Forrest Tucker, star of numerous SF “B” movies such as The Crawling Eye; Keenan Wynn, 70, best known to SF fans for his role in Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove; and Paul Frees, who provided the voice characterizations for dozens of animated fantasy characters such as Boris Badinov and Ludwig Von Drake.
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection Page 2