The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 15

by Gardner Dozois

  2002 seems set to be “The Year Of The Sequels,” with the new Lord of the Rings movie, the new Harry Potter movie, the new Star Wars movie (after the general reaction of disappointment on the part of many Star Wars fans toward the last movie, The Phantom Menace, it’ll be interesting to see how many times Lucas can continue to go to the well after this if the general reaction to this sequel is similar), a new Star Trek movie, a new Matrix movie, and so on.

  It was pretty much a case of same-old, same-old as far as SF and Fantasy on television this year – some formerly successful shows still successful, some shows holding their ground, some losing it.

  The big news here was probably the introduction of the new Star Trek show, a “prequel” to the former shows, called Enterprise, which on the whole seems to be going over fairly well with the fans, although it’s yet to generate any real heat. I myself find it much more watchable than the awful Star Trek: Voyager although it has yet to develop a strong emotional architecture, like the Kirk/Spock/McCoy dynamic of the original Star Trek, on which to hang the plots. Without that, most of the shows I’ve seen seem to lack drama and impact, no matter what sort of foreground action and huggermugger is gong on; still, in it’s early days Star Trek: The Next Generation, for instance, didn’t really begin to improve in quality until it had been on the air for two or three years, and we should probably give Enterprise the benefit of the doubt, and see if it improves as well. The other top SF show of the moment, Farscape, seems to be holding its ground, but still doesn’t seem to have built enough of an audience to qualify it as a cult show phenomenon, as Babylon 5 before it had been.

  In these days of dozens of cable channels, whose availability varies sharply from region to region, and in an age where reruns of current shows run on different channels concurrently with new episodes, it’s sometimes difficult to tell whether a particular show is still “on the air” or not. Star Trek: Voyager, Xena: Warrior Princess, and Third Rock From the Sun finally did die last year, and apparently they’re finally putting The X-Files out of it’s misery in 2002, after a year of messy death-agonies and dropping ratings. The slyly satiric postmodern vampire show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, survived a change of networks and the (temporary) death of its eponymous main character to establish itself firmly on a new network instead, with Buffy safely returned from the grave, and continues to draw a startlingly intellectual, high-end audience; you’d be surprised if you knew the names of some of the erudite postmodern intellectuals who make sure that they rush home every Tuesday night to catch the new Buffy. The Buffy spin Angel also seems to continue to be successful, in spite of the flight of its mother show to a different network. Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and Charmed, similar supernatural-oriented shows, also seem to still be doing well, although they lack Buffy’s sophistication of material, as well as Buffy’s dark edge (which can sometimes get very dark indeed).

  Other shows haven’t been so lucky, and the word is that the plug is being pulled in 2002 on shows such as Stargate: SG-1, Roswell, and Futurama – too bad in the case of Futurama at least, which was funny and sometimes surprisingly sophisticated in the SF concepts it played with. I believe that Gene Roddenbery’s Andromeda is still with us, as are South Park and The Simpsons. Not sure about Lexx, but don’t really care.

  As far as I can tell, the only new genre show that established itself as a solid hit this year was Smallville, a revisionist take on Superman’s boyhood, with the “romance/soap opera” factor cranked way up.

  As was true last year, two special presentations deserve mention: a miniseries version of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, which seemed to delight true Peake fans, while baffling those not familiar with his work, and a sequel to last year’s Walking With Dinosaurs, called Walking With Prehistoric Beasts, which demonstrated again, if any more proof was needed, just how fast computer-generated CGI effects are evolving, as they were considerably better in this year’s show than they were in last year’s.

  The 59th World Science Fiction Convention, the Millennium Philcon, was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from August 30-September 3, 2001, and drew an estimated attendance of 4,600. The 2001 Hugo Awards, presented at the Millennium Philcon, were: Best Novel, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J.K. Rowling; Best Novella, “The Ultimate Earth,” by Jack Williamson; Best Novelette, “Millennium Babies,” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch; Best Short Story, “Different Kinds of Darkness,” by David Langford; Best Related Book, Greetings from Earth: the Art of Bob Eggleton, by Bob Eggleton; Best Professional Editor, Gardner Dozois; Best Professional Artist, Bob Eggleton; Best Dramatic Presentation, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Best Semiprozine, Locus, edited by Charles N. Brown; Best Fanzine, File 770, edited by Mike Glyer; Best Fan Writer, David Langford; Best Fan Artist, Teddy Harvia; plus the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer to Kristine Smith; and the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award to Olaf Stapledon.

  The 2000 Nebula Awards, presented at a banquet at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California on April 28, 2001, were: Best Novel, Darwin’s Radio, by Greg Bear; Best Novella, “Goddesses,” by Linda Nagata; Best Novelette, “Daddy’s World,” by Walter Jon Williams; Best Short Story, “macs,” by Terry Bisson; Best Script, Galaxy Quest, by David Howard and Robert Gordon; plus an Author Emeritus award to Robert Sheckley, the Ray Bradbury Award to radio program 2000x, and the Grand Master Award to Philip Jose Farmer.

  The World Fantasy Awards, presented at the Twenty-Seventh Annual World Fantasy Convention in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on November 1-4, 2001, were: Best Novel, Declare, by Tim Powers and Galveston, by Sean Stewart (tie); Best Novella, “The Man on the Ceiling,” Steve Rasnic Tem & Melanie Tem; Best Short Fiction, “The Pottawatomie Giant,” by Andy Duncan; Best Collection, Beluthahatchie and Other Stories, by Andy Duncan; Best Anthology, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, edited by Sheree R. Thomas; Best Artist, Shaun Tan; Special Award (Professional), to Tom Shippey for J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century; Special Award (Non-Professional), to Bill Sheehan for At the Foot of the Story Tree: An Inquiry into the Fiction of Peter Straub; plus the Life Achievement Award to Philip Jose Farmer and Frank Frazetta.

  The 2001 Bram Stoker Awards, presented by the Horror Writers of America during a banquet in Seattle, Washington on May 26, 2001, were: Best Novel, The Traveling Vampire Show, by Richard Laymon; Best First Novel, The Licking Valley Coon Hunters Club, by Brian A. Hopkins; Best Collection, Magic Terror: Seven Tales, by Peter Straub; Best Long Fiction, “The Man on the Ceiling,” by Steve Rasnic Tem & Melanie Tem; Best Short Story, “Gone,” by Jack Ketchum; Non-On Writing, by Stephen King; Best Anthology, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Thirteenth Annual Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling; Best Screenplay, Shadow of the Vampire, by Steven Katz; Best Work for Young Readers, The Power of Un, by Nancy Etchemendy; Best Illustrated Narrative, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, by Alan Moore; Poetry Collection, A Student of Hell, by Tom Piccirilli; Best Other Media, Chiaroscuro (web-site), a Specialty Press Award to William K. Schafer for Subterranean Press; the Trustees Hammer Award to Nancy Etchemendy; and the Richard Laymon Award to Judi Rohrig & Kathy Ptacek; plus the Lifetime Achievement Award to Nigel Kneale.

  The 2000 John W. Campbell Memorial Award was won by Genesis, by Poul Anderson.

  The 2000 Theodore Sturgeon Award for Best Short Story was won by Tendeleo’s Story, by Ian McDonald.

  The 2000 Philip K. Dick Memorial Award went to Only Forward, by Michael Marshall Smith.

  The 2000 Arthur C. Clarke award was won by Perdido Street Station, by China Mieville.

  The 2000 James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award was won by Wild Life, by Molly Gloss.

  Dead in 2001 or early 2002 were: Poul Anderson, 74, one of the most acclaimed and prolific of SF writers, and one of the dominant figures in post-War science fiction (along with colleagues Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke), winner of seven Hugo Awards, three Nebula Awards, and SFWA’S Grandmaster Award, author of
over 120 books, including Brain Wave, The Enemy Stars, The High Crusade, Three Hearts and Three Lions, Guardians of Time, The Night Face, Tau Zero, Genesis, and many others; Milton A. Rothman, 81, nuclear physicist, writer, and longtime fan, cofounder of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society; Sir Fred Hoyle, 86, astrophysicist and writer (coiner, ironically enough, of the now universally accepted term “the Big Bang” – in description of a cosmological theory he strongly disagreed with!), author of the SF books The Black Cloud, Ossian’s Ride, and October the First Is Too Late; Jack C. Haldeman II, 60, writer, biological researcher, medical technologist, longtime fan, elder brother of SF writer Joe Haldeman, chairman of the 1974 Worldcon, author of numerous short stories and nine novels, including Vector Analysis, High Steel (with Jack Dann), There Is No Darkness (with Joe Haldeman), and The Fall of Winter – a close personal friend for over thirty years; R. Chetwynd-Hayes, 81, horror and fantasy writer, author of over 200 stories and a dozen books, including the collections The Monster Club and Tales from the Hidden World, and the novels, The Grange, The Haunted Grange, and The Psychic Detective; Evelyn E. Smith, 77, science fiction and mystery writer, author of numerous stories in the ’50s and ’60s as well as mystery novels and the SF novels The Perfect Planet, Unpopular Planet, and The Copy Shop; Robert H. Rimmer, 84, author of the bestselling The Harrad Experiment, as well as the SF novels, The Zolotov Affair, Love Me Tomorrow, and The Resurrection of Ann Hutchinson; Tove Jansson, 86, Finnish fantasy writer and artist, author of the popular and long-running “Moomin” series about a race of troll-like creatures; Keith Allen Daniels, 45, one of the most prominent of science fiction poets, author of the poetry collections What Rough Book, Satan Is a Mathematician, and Shimmarle and Other Poems; Villy Sorensen, 72, Danish fantasy writer and philosopher; Ken Kesey, 66, famous political activist, counterculture guru (founder of “the Merry Pranksters”), and bestselling author whose best-known novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, had a stylistic impact on many developing writers of the ’60s, including science fiction writers, also the author of Sometimes a Great Notion and several children’s fantasy novels; Dorothy Dunnett, 78, historical novelist and mystery writer whose historicals were influential on several later fantasy writers, author of The Game of Kings, Checkmate, Niccolo Rising, King Hereafter, and many others; Dr. John C. Lilly, 86, controversial scientists whose theories about human consciousness and (especially) the possibility of communications between humans and animals inspired much subsequent science fiction, including the movie Altered States and almost all of the “talking dolphin” stories ever written; Gray Morrow, 67, comic-book artist and SF illustrator, longtime artist of the Tarzan comic strip as well as many book covers, some of whose work was collected this year in Gray Morrow: Visionary; Josh Kirby, 72, one of the most prominent of British genre artists, identified in recent years with his long series of covers for Terry Pratchett’s “Discworld” novels; Cele Goldsmith Lalli, 68, former editor of Amazing and Fantastic magazines from 1958 to 1965 (later longtime editor of Modern Brides magazine), where she proved herself one of the most important and influential editors of the pre-new-wave period, coaxing Fritz Leiber back from retirement and buying first stories from later famous new writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, Thomas M. Disch, Norman Spinrad, Neal Barrett, Jr., and Keith Laumer; Cathleen Jordan, 60, longtime editor of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, who worked with many SF writers when they were wearing their mystery-writer hats – a colleague of mine for more than fifteen years; Fred Marcellino, 61, SF cover artist; Ray Walston, 86, film actor, probably best-known to genre audiences for his starring role in the ’50s television SF sitcom My Favorite Martian, and for his brilliant performance as the Devil in Damn Yankees; Theodore Gottlieb, 94, who, as “Brother Theodore,” performed as a dark comedian and horror-show host for many years, as well as editing the anthology Brother Theodore’s Chamber of Horrors with Marvin Kaye; Terry Hughes, 51, longtime fan and fanzine editor; Jack Harness, 67, longtime fan and fan writer; Morton Klass, 73, brother of SF writer Philip Klass; Alfred R. Williams, 73, father of SF editor and anthologist Sheila Williams; and Whitney Louise Rogers, 5, granddaughter of R. Reginald.

  NEW LIGHT ON THE DRAKE EQUATION

  Ian R. MacLeod

  British writer Ian R. MacLeod was one of the hottest new writers of the nineties, and, as we travel into the new century ahead, his work continues to grow in power and deepen in maturity. MacLeod has published a slew of strong stories in Interzone, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Weird Tales, Amazing, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, among other markets. Several of these stories made the cut for one or another of the various “Best of the Year” anthologies. In 1990, in fact, he appeared in three different “Best of the Year” anthologies with three different stories, certainly a rare distinction. His first novel, The Great Wheel, was published to critical acclaim in 1997, followed by a major collection of his short work, Voyages by Starlight. In 1999, he won the World Fantasy Award with his brilliant novella “The Summer Isles,” and followed it up in 2000 by winning another World Fantasy Award for his novelette “The Chop Girl.” MacLeod lives with his wife and young daughter in the West Midlands of England, and is at work on several new novels.

  Here he paints a brilliant and moving portrait of one man’s persistent belief in his vision across the span of an entire lifetime – in the face of mounting odds and a dream that seems to be dying . . .

  AS HE DID ON THE first Wednesday of every month, after first finishing off the bottle of wine he’d fallen asleep with, then drinking three bleary fingers of absinthe, and with an extra slug for good measure, Tom Kelly drove down into St. Hilaire to collect his mail and provisions. The little town was red-brown, shimmering in the depths of the valley, flecked with olive trees, as he slewed the old Citroen around the hairpins from his mountain. Up to the east, where the karst rose in a mighty crag, he could just make out the flyers circling against the sheer white drop if he rubbed his eyes and squinted, and the glint of their wings as they caught the morning thermals. But Tom felt like a flyer of sorts himself, now the absinthe was fully in his bloodstream. He let the Citroen’s piebald tires, the skid of the grit and the pull of the mountain, take him endlessly downwards. Spinning around the bends blind and wrong-side with the old canvas roof flapping, in and out of the shadows, scattering sheep in the sweet hot roar of the antique motor, Tom Kelly drove down from his mountain towards the valley.

  In the bureau de poste, Madame Brissac gave him a smile that seemed even more patronising than usual.

  “Any messages?” he croaked.

  She blinked slowly. “One maybe two.” Bluebottles circled the close air, which smelled of boiled sweets and Gitanes and Madame Brissac. Tom swayed slightly in his boots. He wiped off some of the road grit which had clung to the stubble on his face. He picked a stain from off his tee-shirt, and noticed as he did so that a fresh age spot was developing on the back of his right hand. It would disappoint her, really, if he took a language vial and started speaking fluent French after all these years – or even if he worked at it the old way, using bookplates and audio samples, just as he’d always been promising himself. It would deprive her of their small monthly battle.

  “Then, ah, je voudrais . . .” He tried waving his arms.

  “You would like to have?”

  “Yes please. Oui. Ah – s’il vous plait . . .”

  Still the tepid pause, the droning bluebottles. Or Madame Brissac could acquire English, Tom thought, although she was hardly likely to do it for his sake.

  “You late.” She said eventually.

  “You mean – ”

  Then the door banged open in a crowded slab of shadows and noise and a cluster of flyers, back from their early morning spin on the thermals, bustled up behind Tom with skinsuits squealing, the folded tips of their wings bumping against the brown curls of sticky flypaper which the bluebottles had been scrupulously avoiding. These young people, Tom decided as he glanced back at them, truly were l
ike bright alien insects in their gaudy skinsuits, their thin bodies garishly striped with the twisting logos of sports companies and their wings, a flesh of fine silk stretched between feathery bones, then folded up behind their backs like delicate umbrellas. And they were speaking French, too; speaking it in loud high voices, but overdoing every phrase and gesture and emphasis in the way that people always did when they were new to a language. They thought that just because they could understand each other and talk sensibly to their flying instructor and follow the tour guide and order a drink at the bar that they were jabbering away like natives, but then they hadn’t yet come up against Madame Brissac, who would be bound to devise some bureaucratic twist or incomprehension which would send them away from here without whatever particular form or permission it was that they were expecting. Tom turned back to Madame Brissac and gave her a grin from around the edges of his gathering absinthe headache. She didn’t bother to return it. Instead, she muttered something that sounded like I’m Judy.

  “What? Voulez-vous repeter?”

  “Is Thursday.”

  “Ah. Je comprends. I see . . .” Not that he did quite, but the flyers were getting impatient and crowding closer to him, wings rustling with echoes of the morning air that had recently been filling them and the smell of fresh sweat, clean endeavour. How was it, Tom wondered, that they could look so beautiful from a distance, and so stupid and ugly close up? But Thursday – and he’d imagined it was Wednesday. Of course he’d thought that it was Wednesday, otherwise he wouldn’t be here in St. Hilaire, would he? He was a creature of habit, worn in by the years like the grain of the old wood of Madame Brissac’s counter. So he must have lost track, and/or not bothered to check his calendar back up on the mountain. An easy enough mistake to make, living the way he did. Although . . .