The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  Other reprint SF anthologies this year included Cybersex (Carroll & Graf), edited by Richard Glyn Jones, an anthology of (mostly) reprint erotic SF stories that included good work by writers such as Kathe Koja, Greg Egan, and others; The Way It Wasn’t (Citadel), edited by Martin H. Greenberg; and Monster Brigade 3000 (Ace), edited by Charles Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg. Noted without comment is Hackers (Ace), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.

  Reprint fantasy and horror anthologies this year (which also seemed to be fewer in number) included: The Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century Ghost Stories (Oxford), edited by Michael Cox; Supernatural Detectives (DAW), edited by Charles Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg; and Tarot Tales (Ace), edited by Rachel Pollack and Caitlin Matthews. Noted without comment is Isaac Asimov’s Vampires (Ace), edited by Gardner Dozois and Sheila Williams.

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  It was an unspectacular year in the SF-oriented nonfiction and reference book field, although some solid items did appear, with the most interesting book for the non-specialist probably being L. Sprague de Camp’s literary autobiography Time & Chance, which gives us a fascinating retrospective of de Camp’s almost sixty-year career. There were fewer important reference books this year, and most of them were oriented toward fantasy rather than science fiction—an exception was Outside the Human Aquarium: Masters of Science Fiction, 2nd Edition (Borgo Press), by Brian Stableford—with the best of them probably being the St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers (St. James Press), edited by David Pringle, and The Tough Guide to Fantasyland (Vista), by Diana Wynne Jones; a bit more technical was Fiction and Fantasy (University of Georgia Press), edited by George Slusser, Gary Westfahl, & Eric S. Rabkin. As interesting as these or perhaps even more interesting for the casual reader is a compilation of photographs of famous fantasy writers, The Faces of Fantasy (Tor), photographs by Patti Perret, a follow-up to 1985’s well-known The Faces of Science Fiction. The best of the year’s critical books was undoubtedly Look at the Evidence (Serconia Press), by John Clute, a collection of Clute’s strongly opinionated but literate and intelligent essays about science fiction. There was also Ash of Stars: On the Writing of Samuel R. Delany (University Press of Mississippi), edited by James Sallis; Dreams and Wishes (Simon & Schuster), by Susan Cooper; Shadows of the Future (Syracuse), by Patrick Parrinder; Inventing Wonderland (Free Press), Jackie Wullschläger; and Immortal Engines: Life Extension and Immortality in Science Fiction and Fantasy (University of Georgia Press), edited by George Slussar, Gary Westfahl, & Eric S. Rabkin. Paragons: Twelve Master Science Fiction Writers Ply Their Craft (St. Martin’s Press), edited by Robin Wilson, which I mentioned above for its value as a reprint fiction anthology, should also be mentioned here for its value as a how-to-write book, with excellent essays on one aspect or another of the craft of writing by “Masters” such as Pat Cadigan, John Kessel, Howard Waldrop, Nancy Kress, Joe Haldeman, Kim Stanley Robinson, James Patrick Kelly, Lucius Shepard, Karen Joy Fowler, Greg Bear, Pat Murphy, and Bruce Sterling.

  There were several literary biographies/studies of well-known authors, including H. P. Lovecraft: A Life (Necronomicon Press), S. T. Joshi; James Blish: Author Mirabilis (Galactic Central), Phil Stephensen-Payne; Welcome to the Revolution: the Literary Legacy of Mack Reynolds (Borgo Press), by Curtis C. Smith; Bram Stoker (Knopf), Barbara Belford; and The Jules Verne Encyclopedia (Scarecrow Press), Brian Taves & Stephen Michaluk Jr.

  There seemed to be fewer art books this year than last year, when we saw major art collections from Bob Eggleton, Barclay Shaw, James Gurney, Stephen E. Fabian, and others, probably because of the bankruptcy of Paper Tiger, the imprint that had produced most of them. Among the best values in the art book field this year were Barlowe’s Guide to Fantasy (Harper-Prism), Wayne Barlowe; Even Weirder (Forge), Gahan Wilson; The World of Edward Gorey (Abrams), illustrations by Edward Gorey (who is clearly one of Wilson’s artistic ancestors), text by Clifford Ross & Karen Wilkin; and the latest edition of a sort of “Best of the Year” series that compiles the year’s fantastic art, Spectrum III: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art (Underwood Books), edited by Cathy Burnett, Arnie Fenner, and Jim Loehr. Maxfield Parrish is not technically a genre artist, but a look into Maxfield Parrish: A Retrospective (Pomegranate), edited by Laurence S. Cutler and Judy Goffman Cutler, will clearly demonstrate his strong influence on many of today’s top genre artists; the book is also worth having for its own sake, for Parrish’s lushly imagined and gorgeously colored visualizations of exotic landscapes—obviously Parrish could have made it as a top genre artist if he had been so inclined, and he has left his mark on those who came after him. Also out on the fringes of fantasy art, somewhere on its elusive border with illustrated children’s books, and also well worth owning, are The Voyage of the Basset (Artisan), with quirky and evocative illustrations by James C. Christensen, text by Renwick St. James and Alan Dean Foster, and Ship of Dreams (Abrams) written and magnificently illustrated by Dean Morrissey; Christensen and Morrissey may be two of the most underrated artists in the whole area of fantastic art, never showing up on Hugo ballots, and the Morrissey paintings here in particular are as rich and lush and imaginative and painterly as anything you’re ever going to see, fully the equal of more famous children’s book illustrations by artists such as N. C. Wyeth. Fantasy art fans will probably also like The Wanderings of Odysseus (Delacorte), with text by Rosemary Sutcliff, and painterly illustrations by Alan Lee. Horror fans will probably want to check out Neurotica: The Darkest Art of J. K. Potter (Overlook Press), J. K. Potter, and Species Design (Morpheus International), and H. R. Giger’s Film Design (Morpheus International), both by H. R. Giger, but be warned that these images are disturbing, particularly Giger’s dark and psychologically unsettling work, and not for the faint of heart.

  The best general genre-related nonfiction book of the year was probably the late Carl Sagan’s last book, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark in which Sagan concentrates on one of the areas that obsessed him throughout his life, the war on pseudoscience, here turning a sharp and skeptical eye on psychics, astrology, “channeling,” and a host of other fashionable New Age beliefs—all of which is more welcome, and more appropriate, than ever, as the millennium approaches, with all the attendant supernatural dread that traditionally whips up, and in a time when even SF readers—and even some SF writers—are far more credulous, unquestioning, and non-skeptical than they really ought to be. A handsome reissue of The Realm of Prester John (Ohio University Press), by Robert Silverberg, a nonfiction study of the roots of the legend of Prester John and his fabulous lost kingdom, should also be of interest to many genre readers, especially fantasy fans, who can use this erudite, elegant, and well-researched volume to trace the historical origins of many of the themes, tropes, and images that are being used in fantasy writing to this day. A User’s Guide to the Millennium (Picador USA), by J. G. Ballard, a collection of Ballard’s outspoken and sometimes deliberately provocative reviews and essays, spanning a thirty-year period and a wide variety of subjects, will not be to everyone’s taste (I disagree with almost everything Ballard has to say about contemporary science fiction, for instance), but is wide-ranging and eclectic enough that there’s sure to be something here to interest almost anyone; Ballard’s wartime autobiographical piece is especially fascinating.

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  This seemed to be a halfway-decent year for genre films for a change, with at least one artistically ambitious and successful movie, a couple of solid popular entertainments, and one major box-office blockbuster. The best science fiction movie of the year (it actually opened in a limited number of theaters very late in 1995, but we didn’t catch up with it until 1996) was Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys, a stylish, engrossing, and imaginative film that featured Gilliam’s usual stunningly creative set-dressing and visuals, and some very good performances from actors you don’t usually think of as all that good, such as Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt. It will come as no surprise to anyone who has seen Gilliam’s other films th
at it is a very dark movie, too relentlessly depressing for some viewers, and complex enough that people I know are still arguing months later about what really was supposed to have happened in one scene or another. Still, it’s an ambitious and serious-minded film, a rarity in the genre market these days, and one that I would consider, on balance, a success.

  The big genre box office success of the year, of course, was Independence Day, whose profits become especially impressive when you realize that it really was not very expensive to produce, by the standards of big effects-heavy lots-of-stuff-blowing-up spectaculars anyway. Many SF fans were very grumpy about Independence Day, considering it an insulting farrago of the dumbest sci-fi cliches, and it’s true that it’s riddled with logical inconsistencies and holes in the plot logic that you could fly a mile-wide Mother Ship through, but it’s all done with such cheerful élan, and so many broad we-know-this-is-a-hoary-cliche-but-isn’t-it-fun? winks into the wings (it may well contain a postmodern wink-wink reference to every other science fiction movie and TV show ever made, or at least to a preponderance of them), that I find it hard to be annoyed by it. I watched it with enjoyment with an audience that was clearly having a great deal of fun, and the serious objections only really sank in on the way home, when the logical part of my mind began to pick holes in what passes here for a plot—at which point the movie unraveled swiftly in retrospect, like the gossamer construction it is. I had fun watching it, though, especially Will Smith’s hugely enjoyable tongue-in-cheek performance as a swaggering macho action hero, a performance that has almost certainly established him as a bankable megastar. The scene in which a cigar-chomping, totally unflappable Smith puts down a menacing, chittering alien by casually punching it in the “nose” is a moment that typifies the whole film: silly, when you stop to think about it, and the more you do think about it the sillier it gets (these aliens are later shown to be physically formidable enough to toss a half dozen men around like paper dolls, and yet Smith can knock one cold with one punch)… and yet this moment was greeted by the audience with a roar of laughter and a spontaneous outbreak of applause that shook the whole theater, and I found myself laughing right along with them. So it’s a film well worth seeing if you can leave your critical faculties at home; if you can’t, as many fannish critics have been unable to, then you’re going to find it an experience far more annoying than entertaining, I fear. Whatever the strengths and weaknesses of Independence Day, I found it more palatable than the year’s other big-budget alien invasion movie, the self-consciously arch, much more obviously played-for-laughs Mars Attacks!, inspired by a series of comic trading cards from the sixties, a one-joke movie in which really dumb-looking and obviously phony aliens (the special effects are clearly intended to be bad, as part of the joke) mow down a horde of Big Hollywood Stars in cameo roles; there are a few good laughs here, but the material can’t really support a full-length movie, and becomes tiresome by the end. The Arrival, which could be considered the year’s third alien invasion movie, leaned heavily on the paranoia key—it’s actually an aliens-are-already-among-us-as-secret-rulers movie as opposed to an alien invasion movie—and played everything very earnestly indeed, probably too earnestly, with none of the redeeming humor of Independence Day or Mars Attacks!.

  After 1994’s muddled and disappointing Star Trek Generations, expectations were low for the new Star Trek movie, the first to feature the Star Trek: The Next Generation cast exclusively. Star Trek: First Contact was much more successful than the previous movie, both artistically and at the box office, and probably has revived the Star Trek franchise yet again, at a point where, after Generations, there had been a lot of talk about it having run out of steam. This time, the moviemakers were smart enough to stick with a straight action film, pitting the TNG crew against their most fearsome enemy, the Borg, and if the time-travel sequences were riddled with temporal paradoxes and didn’t make a whole lot of logical sense, that was at least no more true here than it usually was in similar story lines on Star Trek: The Next Generation itself. Some critics protested that you could only really appreciate the movie if you were already a big Star Trek fan, but people went to see it in large enough numbers to encourage the speculation that its appeal as a fast-moving big screen adventure movie must have outweighed any problems produced by the lack of prior expertise, even among non-Trekkers. Among the Star Trek fans themselves, First Contact seemed to generate widespread acclaim, where the response to Generation had ranged from—at best—lukewarm all the way to downright negative, so First Contact seems to have rekindled the wanning enthusiasm of the franchise’s core fans as well—all of which almost certainly means that there will be more Star Trek movies coming up in years to come.

  Of the year’s other box-office successes, Twister—which seems to be accepted by everyone as a genre movie, although the rationalization for that (testing a new invention) is slim—offered a lot of mind-blowing special effects, and little else. The success of Twister has inspired a wave of big disaster movies that’ll be washing over theaters in 1997, including at least two movies about erupting volcanoes and one about catastrophic floods, but, alas, the fact that tornadoes have already been “done” probably means that nobody will film Bruce Sterling’s tornado-chaser SF novel Heavy Weather, although if it were executed correctly, with the same kind of awesome special effects, it would be much more interesting than Twister was. Some people would consider Mission: Impossible, The Rock, Eraser, and Chain Reaction to be genre films as well, but, although each does contain some SF-ish elements, I think that a film has to be able to offer more than just the extreme improbability of its physical action, which borders on Roadrunner cartoon–impossible in some cases—in order to be justified as a science fiction movie. Space Jam, which didn’t seem to generate quite the level of enthusiasm the producers were hoping for (although it was hard to walk into a shopping mall anywhere without seeing tons of merchandising tie-ins for it), is a feature-length animated film that features Bugs Bunny, Michael Jordan, and a team of Toons playing basketball against a team of evil space monsters. The Relic was a predictable Alien clone set in a natural history museum. Phenomenon was a well-meaning “little” film that was a bit too woo-woo and New Age–credulous for my taste. And The Nutty Professor was commercially successful enough to revive Eddie Murphy’s career, something that I would have thought impossible after last year’s A Vampire in Brooklyn.

  Turning to the things that weren’t big box-office smashes, The Island of Dr. Moreau was a heavyhanded remake that added a lot of explosions and physical action to the mix, without adding much of real value. Multiplicity was an amiable one-joke movie that ran out of steam long before it was over. Escape From L.A. was a sequel to 1981’s cult success Escape From New York that did little but recycle all the tropes from the earlier movie, with less energy this time around. The Phantom generated a lot of enthusiasm among fans of the original serial, but never caught on with the wider movie audience. And Jack was sort of a depressing version of Big, with Robin Williams as a kid inhabiting a man’s body, except this time he’s the victim of a disease which makes him age prematurely, not exactly a feel-good concept.

  There’s a movie called The Whole Wide World making the rounds of the small art houses, a film about the life of fantasy writer Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan, but I haven’t been able to catch it; sounds interesting, though.

  There were fewer good fantasy movies this year than there had been in 1995. Best of them may have been the quirky and imaginative animated film James and the Giant Peach (from the same strange crew who brought you The Nightmare Before Christmas, a film with which it shares a similar twisted aesthetic). Other fans would pump for Dragonheart, which brought an extremely sophisticated CGI special-effects dragon (voiced, somewhat improbably, by Sean Connery) and some good-natured humor to a plot that is a simple reversal of an old fairy tale formula, where the knight and the dragon join forces rather than fighting each other, an idea that goes back in the genre at least as far as Gordon
Dickson’s “St. Dragon and the George” (although it occurs to me that The Reluctant Dragon had a similar plotline even before that, come to think of it). There were several angel movies, including Michael and The Preacher’s Wife—a remake of the old movie The Bishop’s Wife—neither of which seemed to do terrific business. The Frighteners also had some intelligent touches, but also seemed unable to find an audience. The Craft was a movie about teenage high-school girls discovering the power of witchcraft. 101 Dalmatians was a live-action remake of the classic 1961 Disney animated feature, something that to me seems so pointless a thing to do that I never bothered to catch it; most critics were underwhelmed, although it seemed to do okay at the box office and in the sale of merchandising rights (which is what many movies today are actually for anyway: generating merchandising rights, which usually earn considerably more than even the most successful movies earn in upfront ticket sales). There was another live-action remake of an animated film, or a live-action version of an old folk story, anyway, The Adventures of Pinocchio, but few people seem to have caught that one. And I refused to see the animated Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the one with the cute singing gargoyles and the cute singing Hunchback, out of a sense of moral indignation. Pfui.