The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Of the long-established fiction semiprozines, your best bets remain the two Australian magazines, Aurealis and Eidolon, and the Canadian magazine On Spec. Eidolon had a particularly strong year in 1996, producing by far the best fiction of the three, including one of the year’s best stories, by Damien Broderick, first-rate work by Jack Dann, Terry Dowling, and Andrew Whitmore, and good work by Lucy Sussex, Simon Brown, Sara Douglass, Sean Williams, Avram Davidson and Ethan Davidson, and others, as well as good reprint material by Harlan Ellison—an impressive performance. We saw three issues of Eidolon this year, out of a scheduled four. Aurealis, the other Australian semiprozine, didn’t quite make it up to the level of Eidolon as far as the overall quality of the fiction was concerned, although they did publish good work by Stephen Dedman, Dirk Strasser, and others; they had better and more evocative covers than Eidolon did, though, and more critical material. We saw two issues of Aurealis. On Spec seemed weaker than usual in terms of overall literary quality this year, perhaps because the average was dragged down by their unfortunate “XF/SF Cross-Genre” Special Theme Issue, which mostly contained pretty weak stuff; their covers this year were inferior to their usually high standard of cover art, too. We saw three issues of On Spec, although one of them, dated Winter 1996, arrived in late February of 1997, and so we’ll save consideration of that issue for next year. Eidolon may be demonstrating itself as the one here most worth keeping your eye on, but all three of these magazines merit your support, they have all been around long enough to be considered fairly established and reliable, and all have good track records for delivering interesting and unusual fiction.

  Of the other fiction semiprozines, there were, as far as I could tell, several issues of the newish Plot Magazine, one issue of Tales of the Unanticipated (which featured professional-level work by L. Timmel Duchamp, Eleanor Amason, and others); one issue of Xizquil; and three issues of a promising new Canadian magazine called TransVersions (which featured professional-level work by Jeff VanderMeer, Derryl Murphy, Michael Payne, and others). There were either fewer semiprozines published this year or they were harder to find, and it’s often difficult to find reliable information about them—I believe that the British semiprozines Back Brain Recluse and REM still exist, for instance, but I don’t really know for sure. I saw no issues of Argonaut Science Fiction, Next Phase, or Space & Time.

  New fiction semiprozines included the promising Terra Incognita (although its self-imposed restriction of publishing only stories that take place on Earth seems somewhat limiting), which had one issue this year, featuring interesting professional-level work by L. Timmel Duchamp, Kandis Elliot, W. Gregory Stewart, and others; Keen Science Fiction, which seems well-intentioned and enthusiastic, producing eight issues this year, although the quality of the fiction in it is not yet reliably up to professional levels; The Thirteenth Moon Magazine, somewhat more literary/metafictional in orientation, which featured hard-to-classify stories this year by Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Bishop, and others; and Adventures of Sword & Sorcery, which, not surprisingly, was mostly pretty pulpish stuff.

  I follow the horror semiprozine market as little as I can these days, but Talebones: Fiction on the Dark Edge seems to be a lively and ambitious little magazine, and the highly respected Cemetery Dance began publishing again after a hiatus caused by the ill health of the editor. Aberrations seemed to be improving somewhat in literary quality as the year progressed, concentrating less on hardcore stuff. There were two issues of The Urbanite, which is well subtitled “Surreal & Lively & Bizarre,” with work perhaps a bit more intellectual than the usual horror semiprozine stuff. There were issues of Grue and Deathrealm, although I didn’t see them. There were probably other horror semiprozines published this year, too, but I didn’t see them either.

  Turning to the critical magazines, Charles N. Brown’s Locus and Andy Porter’s SF Chronicle, as always, remain your best bet among that sub-class of semiprozines known as “newszines,” invaluable if you are looking for news and/or an overview of what’s happening in the genre. (Unusually, SF Chronicle failed to publish several issues this year; let’s hope that this long-running, valuable, and usually reliable magazine gets back on schedule in 1997.) The New York Review of Science Fiction, edited by David G. Hartwell, completed its eighth full year of publication and remains by far the most reliably published and probably the most interesting and accessible of the more scholarly oriented “criticalzines”—its “Read This” lists of recommended books by various authors is a valuable feature, and its letter column is interesting and frequently acerbic. There was one issue of Steve Brown’s SF Eye in 1996, and one issue of Lawrence Person’s Nova Express, both magazines that contain a lot of intriguing and interesting material—when you can find them, which isn’t often. Tangent, edited by David A. Truesdale, has already become something of an institution in the field after only a few years, and performs an invaluable service for the genre by extensively reviewing the year’s short fiction, almost the only source that does, except for Mark Kelly’s Locus column. Tangent occasionally annoys me by running the kind of reviews that criticize Asimov’s for not being Analog and criticize Analog for not being Asimov’s or F&SF, but on the whole the level of the criticism is pretty good here—especially considering that it’s the work of largely unpaid or underpaid volunteers—and seems to have improved since the magazine’s launch a few years back. On the whole, Tangent is doing a good job of filling a nearly vacant ecological niche, and if it disappeared the field would be much the poorer for it. In the last couple of years, Tangent has made itself even more valuable by becoming deeply involved in helping to assemble a recommended reading list for the yearly Sturgeon Award, a list that rivals the Locus Recommended List for usefulness. Speculations is more of a magazine of writing advice for young or would-be authors than a criticalzine, but many will find its extensive section of market reports and market news to be useful. I saw no issues of Non-Stop Magazine this year.

  (Locus, The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field, Locus Publications, Inc., P.O. Box 13305, Oakland, CA 94661, $53 for a one-year first-class subscription, twelve issues; Science Fiction Chronicle, Algol Press, P.O. Box 022730, Brooklyn, NY 11202-0056, $42 for one-year first-class subscription, twelve issues; The New York Review of Science Fiction, Dragon Press, P.O. Box 78, Pleasantville, NY, 10570, $31 per year, twelve issues; SF Eye, P.O. Box 18539, Asheville, NC 28814, $12.50 for one year; Nova Express, P.O. Box 27231, Austin, TX 78755-2231, $10 for a one-year (four issues) subscription; Tangent, 5779 Norfleet, Raytown, MO 64133, $20 for one year, four issues; Speculations, 111 West El Camino Real, Suite 109-400, Sunnyvale, CA 94087-1057, a first-class subscription, six issues, $25; On Spec, the Canadian Magazine of Speculative Writing, P.O. Box 4727, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6E 5G6, $18 for a one-year subscription; Crank!, Broken Mirrors Press, P.O. Box 1110, New York, NY 10159, $12 for four issues; Century, P.O. Box 259270, Madison, WI 53715-0270, $27 for a one-year subscription; Aurealis: the Australian Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Chimaera Publications, P.O. Box 2164, Mt. Waverley, Victoria 3149, Australia, $43 for a four-issue overseas airmail subscription, “all cheques and money orders must be made out to Chimaera Publications in Australian dollars”; Eidolon: the Journal of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy, Eidolon Publications, P.O. Box 225, North Perth, Western Australia 6006, $45 (Australian) for a four-issue overseas airmail subscription, payable to Eidolon Publications; Back Brain Recluse, P.O. Box 625, Sheffield S1 3GY, United Kingdom, $18 for four issues; REM, REM Publications, 19 Sandringham Road, Willesden, London NW2 5EP, United Kingdom, 7.50 pounds sterling for four issues; Xizquil, order from Uncle River/Xizquil, Blue, Arizona, 85922, $11 for a three-issue subscription; Pirate Writings: Tales of Fantasy, Mystery & Science Fiction, Pirate Writings Publishing, Subscriptions, P.O. Box 329, Brightwaters, NY 11718-0329, $15 for one year (four issues), all checks payable to “Pirate Writings Publishing”; Absolute Magnitude: The Magazine of Science Fiction Adventures, P.O Box 13, Greenfield, MA 01302, four
issues for $14, all checks payable to “D.N.A. Publications”; Trans Versions, Island Specialty Reports, 1019 Colville Rd., Victoria, BC, Canada, V9A 4P5, four-issue subscription, $18 Can. or U.S., “make cheques payable to Island Specialty Reports”; Terra Incognita, Terra Incognita, 52 Windermere Avenue #3, Lansdowne, PA 19050-1812, $15 for four issues; Thirteenth Moon Magazine, 1459 18th Street #139, San Francisco, CA 94107, $24 for four issues; PLOT Magazine, Calypso Publishing, P.O. Box 1351, Sugar Land, TX 77487-1351, four issues for $14, “make checks payable to Calypso Publishing”; The Urbanite: Surreal & Lively & Bizarre, Urban Legend Press, P.O. Box 4737, Davenport, IA 52808, $13.50 for three issues, “all checks or money orders payable to Urban Legend Press”; Keen Science Fiction, Teresa Keene, P.O. Box 9067, Spokane, WA 99209-0067, $36 for twelve issues; Talebones: Fiction on the Dark Edge, Fairwood Press, 12205 1st Avenue S., Seattle, WA 98168, $16 for four issues; Cemetery Dance, CD Publications, Box 18433, Baltimore, MD 21237; Grue Magazine, Hell’s Kitchen Productions, Box 370, Times Square Stn., New York, NY 10108, $14 for three issues; Aberrations, P.O. Box 460430, San Francisco, CA 94146, $31 for twelve issues; Deathrealm, 2210 Wilcox Drive, Greensboro, NC 27405, $15.95 for four issues; Adventures of Sword & Sorcery, Double Star Press, P.O. Box 285, Xenia, OH 45385, $15.95 for four issues.)

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  Nineteen ninety-six was another mixed year in the original anthology market, a year that saw the reputed death of one of the most prominent anthology series of recent years, but also the launching of a highly promising new anthology series, and a supposed new lease on life granted to two older anthology series that had widely been reported to be dead. There were one or two worthwhile one-shot anthologies this year, although there seemed to be fewer original anthologies overall than there had been in 1995 (the number of reprint anthologies was down as well, so that fewer anthologies of any type saw print this year), and many of them that did appear were, at best, mediocre. There was no anthology easily identifiable as a “hard science” anthology this year, unlike last year, which saw the publication of anthologies such as New Legends and Far Futures; a few of the year’s anthologies did feature core science fiction, but it was usually mixed in with fantasy and literary surrealism of one sort or another. There was a “tribute” anthology and a “regional” anthology, both rather rare and specialized types. The once-torrential tide of shared-world anthologies seems to have mostly dried up, except in the media-related, gaming-related, and comics-related areas. And after an influx of strong fantasy anthologies in 1995, there seemed to be fewer fantasy anthologies, and fewer prominent ones, in 1996. Almost all of the year’s most prominent anthologies were issued in hardback or trade paperback; those few original mass-market paperback anthologies that were issued were mostly rather minor.

  The worse news in this market this year was the reputed death of the Full Spectrum anthology series; this doesn’t really surprise me, since the last member of the editorial team that worked on the series, Tom Dupree, moved this year from Bantam to another publishing house, as all of the series’s founding editors had before him, but it’s a major blow to the original anthology market; Full Spectrum was probably the most widely acclaimed and prominent (and widely promoted) anthology series of the nineties, and if it can’t make it (sales were reputed to be poor), then that could be taken as an indicator that it’ll be difficult for any original anthology series to succeed in the current market.

  Original anthology series are, in fact, something of a literary endangered species these days. At one time, there were at least five or six major SF anthology series, including Orbit, New Dimensions, Nova, Universe, and others, but they have vanished one by one over the years, and none of the newer series created to replace them has survived. The news isn’t entirely negative: Two anthology series formerly rumored to be dead, David Garnett’s New Worlds series and George Zebrowski’s Synergy series, are being revived by White Wolf, and will reportedly have issues in the bookstores in 1997. In 1996, though, original anthology series had almost vanished from the scene—only one was still in the bookstores, the first volume in the newly launched Starlight series … but that was one of the most promising such series to come along in a long while, and we should all keep our fingers crossed that this one manages to survive, because it’s a series that could be very important to the field.

  In fact, Starlight 1 (Tor), edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, was the best original anthology of the year, of any type, with little real competition, and one of the best in some years as well. It wasn’t as firmly centered on SF as last year’s New Legends, featuring a good deal of fantasy as well, in addition to a number of harder-to-classify literary experiments of one sort or another, but it did publish several of the best core-SF stories of the year, as well as a number of other worthwhile ones, and even the fantasy stories here are good examples of that genre. Even the ambitious failures, of which there are several here, are more interesting and valuable to check out than the usual run-of-the-mill stuff; they may not be able to chew everything that they bite off, but they bite off a good deal more than most routine stories do, and so should be admired for their audacity and ambition.

  The best work here, in my opinion (and it’s probably a clear demonstration of my own tastes that most of them are center-SF), are the stories by Michael Swanwick, Maureen F. McHugh, Gregory Feeley, and Robert Reed, with the story by Andy Duncan a half step down only because of some shakiness in his core assumption, and the story by Susan Palwick a full step down because of its unfortunate core assumption. The ambitious failures are John M. Ford’s “Erase/Record/Play” and Carter Scholz’s “Mengele’s Jew.” Everything else in the book ranges itself between those two poles—although nothing here, flawed or not, is really bad, and almost everything in the volume would make a worthwhile addition to an average issue of an average magazine.

  Michael Swanwick’s “The Dead” is so bleak at points as to be almost stylized, but it does paint a creepy and effective picture, with typical Swanwickian inventiveness, of a society where the living are being replaced by reanimated corpses at every level of society and in every possible role. I found it especially appropriate to be reading this story, as it happened that I was, while waiting for a plane at Dallas/Ft. Worth airport; watching crowds of empty-eyed people shuffling by down endless corridors and along “moving sidewalks” under the pitiless glare of airport lighting adding a certain frisson, although I’m sure you’ll find the story sufficiently grim if you’re sitting cozily at home in your favorite armchair. Robert Reed manages to be even more inventive than Swanwick—a difficult task—in his “Killing the Morrow,” which has enough conceptualization packed into it for a much longer story, but which somehow manages to gain impact from being told in a small number of pages rather than feeling fragmented or sketchy. Reed also comes up with an ingenious new twist on the time-travel story, a relentlessly logical viewpoint that makes time-travel seem even more unlikely than it already does—or more unlikely that it could take place without profound effects, anyway; if you thought that Bradbury having everything change because someone steps on a butterfly was something, you’ll find that Reed takes this idea a good deal further! Maureen F. McHugh’s novella “The Cost to Be Wise” is probably the most wrenching, emotionally powerful story in the book, and if it’s clearly reminiscent in tone of Le Guin’s Hanish stories—and it is—McHugh does manage to work in some ingenious gracenotes that are all her own, and some interesting points of view; it’s also somewhat more bleak than Le Guin usually is (the overall tone of the anthology, in fact, is somewhat bleak, with only one or two stories, notably the Duncan, striking more upbeat notes). Gregory Feeley’s “The Weighing of Ayre” could be taken for a straight historical story for most of its length, but it’s actually a sort of stealth hard science fiction, centrally concerned with technology, and by the end has turned into a neat and effective parable, obviously still applicable to our own times, as to the uses and misuses to which any new technology can be put, and the moral choices involved
.

  On the next tier down, Andy Duncan makes a very successful foray into Howard Waldrop/Terry Bisson territory in “Lisa and the Crazy Water Man,” which is wry, funny, sweetly eccentric, and unexpectedly lyrical in places—I’d place it, in fact, in among the anthology’s top stories if the underlying Fantastic Element—which the story doesn’t really need anyway—made more sense, but, alas, it doesn’t: Why does this affliction come to Lisa? And how come her voice can be broadcast over the radio, but can’t be recorded? No real explanation for any of this, or even a hint of one, is given, and I’m not sure that the author has really worked the implications out logically, either. The story is good enough, though, that judging by it and by a few other Duncan stories I’ve seen in manuscript, I think that Duncan could turn out to be a major talent in the making. Susan Palwick’s “GI Jesus” is another fundamentally sweet and moving story, with some very good writing and character stuff, but the core idea is so silly—not only blasphemous, which wouldn’t in itself bother me all that much, but dumb, like something from a bad Saturday Night Live sketch—that it spoiled most of the impact of the story for me; everything here except the core idea itself is brilliant, but that idea trivializes and drags down what could have been a substantial story.