The Year's Best Science Fiction, Thirty-Second Annual Collection

by Gardner Dozois

  The 2014 John W. Campbell Memorial Award was won by Strange Bodies, by Marcel Theroux.

  The 2014 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for Best Short Story was won by “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind,” by Sarah Pinsker.

  The 2014 Philip K. Dick Award went to Countdown City, by Ben H. Winters.

  The 2014 Arthur C. Clarke award was won by Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie.

  The 2014 James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award was won by Rupetta, by N. A. Sulway.

  The 2013 Sidewise Award for Alternate History went to (Long Form): Surrounded by Enemies: What If Kennedy Survived Dallas? by Bryce Zabel and The Windsor Faction, by D. J. Taylor (tie); and (Short Form): “The Weight of the Sunrise,” by Vylar Kaftan.

  * * *

  Death struck the SF field heavily once again this year. Dead in 2014 or early 2015 were:

  DANIEL KEYES, 86, Hugo and Edgar award winner, author of the classic story “Flowers for Algernon,” which later was expanded into a novel and made into the popular movie Charly, as well as novels The Touch and The Fifth Sally, author also of nonfiction books such as The Minds of Billy Milligan; LUCIUS SHEPARD, 70, renowned SF, fantasy, horror, and mainstream author, reviewer, and essayist, winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and Sturgeon awards, author of novels such as Life During Wartime, Green Eyes, Colonel Rutherford’s Colt, and A Handbook of American Prayer, as well as large amounts of acclaimed short fiction assembled in collections such as The Jaguar Hunter, The Ends of the Earth, The Best of Lucius Shepard, and Five Autobiographies and a Fiction, a personal friend; JOSEPH E. LAKE, JR., 49, who wrote as JAY LAKE, winner of the John W. Campbell Award as Best New Writer in 2004, a hugely prolific author who in his tragically short life wrote acclaimed novels such as Green, Endurance, Kalimpura, Trial of Flowers, Madness of Flowers, and others, as well as many shorter stories that were collected in The Sky That Wraps, American Sorrows, Dogs in the Moonlight, and others, a personal friend; FRANK M. ROBINSON, 87, author, editor, scholar of the pulp magazine era, author of The Glass Inferno, with Thomas N. Scortia, which was later made into the movie The Towering Inferno, as well as other novels such as The Power and The Dark Beyond the Stars, and pop culture books such as Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines; MARY STEWART, 97, best known in the field as the author of the Merlin series, Arthurian novels which included The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment, and others, who also wrote many suspenseful romance novels such as Madam, Will You Talk?, Touch Not the Cat, and The Moon-Spinners; GRAHAM JOYCE, 59, acclaimed dark fantasist, twice winner of the World Fantasy Award, author of such novels as The Tooth Fairy, The Facts of Life, Some Kind of Fairy Tale, The Stormwatcher, House of Lost Dreams, and many others; GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, 87, Colombian author, a leading figure in magic realism and world literature, best known for his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, as well as books such as A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings; THOMAS BERGER, 89, writer best known for the eccentric Western Little Big Man, later made into a film, who also wrote genre-related novels such as Vital Parts and Adventures of the Artificial Woman; P. D. JAMES, 94, celebrated mystery writer, author of the long-running Adam Dalgliesh novels, whose one SF novel, The Children of Men, was made into a major motion picture; NADINE GORDIMER, 90, Nobel Prize–winning South African author and fierce critic of apartheid, whose many works include one SF novel, July’s People; Mind Parasites and The Space Vampires; MICHAEL SHEA, 67, horror and fantasy writer, winner of the World Fantasy Award, best known for the novel Nifft the Lean, whose many stories were collected in Polyphemus, The Autopsy and Other Tales, and others; ANDY ROBERTSON, 58, British editor and author, former assistant editor of Interzone, a leading expert on the works of fantasist William Hope Hodgson; ALAN RODGERS, 54, writer and editor, winner of the Bram Stoker Award, former editor of horror magazine Night Cry; HILBERT SCHENCK, 87, author of much nautically themed SF, including the novels At the Eye of the Ocean and A Rose for Armageddon, and stories collected in Wave Rider and Steam Bird; HAYDEN HOWARD, 89, SF author who published many stories in SF magazines as well as one novel, The Eskimo Invasion; MICHEL PARRY, 67, anthologist, horror/supernatural novelist; C. J. HENDERSON, 62, prolific author of fantasy, crime novels, and comics, including Patiently Waiting and Brooklyn Knight; STEPAN CHAPMAN, 63, best known for his Philip K. Dick Award–winning novel The Troika; MARK E. ROGERS, 61, writer, artist, and fan, best known for The Adventures of Samurai Cat graphic novel series; Australian SF writer PHILIPPA MADDERN, 61, scholar of late medieval English history and Australian medieval and early modern history, head of the School of Humanities at the University of Western Australia; DONALD MOFFITT, 83, author of SF novels such as The Jupiter Theft, Genesis Quest, A Gathering of Stars, and others; J. F. GONZALEZ, 50, author or coauthor of more than fifteen novels, most of them supernatural horror; WALTER DEAN MYERS, 76, YA and children’s author, author of Fallen Angels, Shadow of the Red Moon, and others; JANRAE FRANK, 59, writer and editor; ROBERT CONROY, 76, winner of the Sidewise Award, author of Alternate History works such as 1942, 1862, Red Inferno, and Castro’s Bomb; AARON ALLSTON, 53, SF writer also known for Star Wars and gaming novels; JOEL LANE, 50, British author and editor; ANA MARÍA MATUTE, 88, noted Spanish author whose work sometimes contained fantastic elements; GEORGE C. WILLICK, 76, SF writer and fanzine editor; T. R. FEHRENBACH, 88, Texas historian and occasional SF writer; KIRBY McCAULEY, 72, at one time perhaps the most prominent agent in the SF/fantasy/horror fields, one of the founders of the World Fantasy Convention, editor of acclaimed horror anthologies Frights and Dark Forces, brother of SF agent Kay McCauley, a personal friend; ALICE K. TURNER, 75, longtime fiction editor of Playboy magazine, editor of the anthologies The Playboy Book of Science Fiction and Playboy Stories: The Best of Forty Years of Short Fiction, as well as the author of nonfiction book The History of Hell and coauthor, with Michael Andre-Driussi, of the critical study, Snake’s Hands: The Fiction of John Crowley, a friend; MICHAEL ROY BURGESS, 65, who wrote as ROBERT REGINALD, author, editor, bibliographer, and publisher, author of such bibliographical studies as Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature; A Checklist, 1700–1974, with Contemporary Science Fiction Authors II; WILLIAM H. PATTERSON, JR., 62, writer, critic, and expert on the works of Robert A. Heinlein, author of the two-part Heinlein biography Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume 1, 1907–1948: Learning Curve and Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century, Volume Two, 1948–1988: The Man Who Learned Better; GEORGE SLUSSER, 75, critic and scholar, cofounder and longtime curator of the Eaton Collection of SF books and manuscripts, author of critical studies such as Robert A. Heinlein: Stranger in His Own Land, The Farthest Shores of Ursula K. Le Guin, and Gregory Benford; STU SHIFFMAN, 60, artist and longtime fan, winner of the Best Fan Artist Hugo in 1990; ROCKY WOOD, 55, Horror Writers Association President and Stephen King scholar; MATTHEW RICHELL, 41, Hachette Australia CEO and Hachette New Zealand chairman; world-famous Swiss artist H. R. GIGER, 74, an inductee into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, best known to genre audiences for his work as a production artist on the movie Alien, as well as for art books such as H. R. Giger N.Y. City and H. R. Giger: Retrospective, 1964–1984; MARGOT ADLER, 68, longtime National Public Radio correspondent and broadcaster, creator of the SF/fantasy reading program Hour of the Wolf; ROBIN WILLIAMS, 63, world-famous comedian and movie and television actor, best known to genre audiences for roles in The Fisher King, Jumanji, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and, of course, as the alien Mork in television’s Mork and Mindy, although he may be best known to generations of children to come as the voice of the Genie in Disney’s Aladdin; JAMES GARNER, 86, movie and television actor whose genre connections are slender, mostly limited to the movies Space Cowboys and Fire in the Sky, but who is known to every boomer for his starring roles in the TV series Maverick and The Rockford Files; LAUREN BACALL, 89, world-famous film and stage actress, star of films such as To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and Key Largo, another person with little direct genre connection, but someone who again will b
e known to every boomer; RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH, 90, film actor, probably best known to genre audiences for his role in Jurassic Park, but also an award-winning director of such films as Gandhi; ROD TAYLOR, 84, film actor best known to genre audience for roles in The Time Machine and The Birds; producer and screenwriter BRIAN CLEMENS, 83, best known to genre audiences for his work on British TV series The Avengers; ELAINE STRITCH, 89, movie and television actor, best known to genre audiences for Cocoon: The Return and the TV show 3rd Rock from the Sun; ARLENE MARTEL, 78, TV actress, best known to genre audiences for her role as T’Pring in the “Amok Time” episode of the original Star Trek; ELIZABETH PEÑA, 55, movie and TV actress best known for her role in Lone Star, but perhaps best known to genre audiences for her voiceover work in The Incredibles, as well as roles in *batteries not included, Jacob’s Ladder, and The Invaders; TV and film art director ROBERT KINOSHITA, 100, who worked on designing Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet, and the robot from TV’s Lost in Space; CATHERINE ALICE LENTA LANGFORD, 89, mother of SF writer and editor David Langford; GEORGE REYNOLDS, 95, father of SF editor and publisher Eric T. Reynolds; CHARLIE ROBINSON, 92, father of SF writer Spider Robinson; TERRI LUANNA da SILVA, 40, daughter of SF writer Spider Robinson; SARAH ELIZABETH WEBSTER, 69, sister of SF writer and anthologist Bud Webster; JOHN McANINLEY, 70, brother of artist and SF radio show host Susan McAninley.

  The Fifth Dragon

  IAN MCDONALD

  British author Ian McDonald is an ambitious and daring writer with a wide range and an impressive amount of talent. His first story was published in 1982, and since then he has appeared with some frequency in Interzone, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and elsewhere. In 1989 he won the Locus Award for Best First Novel for his novel Desolation Road. He won the Philip K. Dick Award in 1992 for his novel King of Morning, Queen of Day. His other books include the novels Out on Blue Six, Hearts, Hands and Voices, Terminal Café, Sacrifice of Fools, Evolution’s Shore, Kirinya, Ares Express, Brasyl, and The Dervish House, as well as three collections of his short fiction, Empire Dreams, Speaking In Tongues, and Cyberabad Days. His novel River of Gods was a finalist for both the Hugo Award and the Arthur C. Clarke award in 2005, and a novella drawn from it, “The Little Goddess,” was a finalist for the Hugo and the Nebula. He won a Hugo Award in 2007 for his novelette “The Djinn’s Wife,” won the Theodore Sturgeon Award for his story “Tendeleo’s Story,” and in 2011 won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for his novel The Dervish House. His most recent books, Planesrunner, Be My Enemy, and Empress of the Sun, are part of a YA series. Coming up is a new novel, Luna, and two collections, Only the Best of Ian McDonald and Mars Stories. Born in Manchester, England, in 1960, McDonald has spent most of his life in Northern Ireland, and now lives and works in Belfast.

  Here he tells a gripping story of love in the face of the harsh realities of life as immigrant workers on the moon, and presents its characters with a heartbreaking choice.

  The scan was routine. Every moon worker has one every four lunes. Achi was called, she went into the scanner. The machine passed magnetic fields through her body and when she came out the medic said, you have four weeks left.

  * * *

  We met on the Vorontsov Trans-Orbital cycler but didn’t have sex. We talked instead about names.

  “Corta. That’s not a Brazilian name,” Achi said. I didn’t know her well enough then, eight hours out from transfer orbit, to be my truculent self and insist that any name can be a Brazilian name, that we are a true rainbow nation. So I told her that my name had rolled through many peoples and languages like a bottle in a breaker until it was cast up sand-scoured and clouded on the beaches of Barra. And now I was taking it on again, up to the moon.

  Achi Debasso. Another name rolled by tide of history. London born, London raised, M.I.T.educated but she never forgot—had never been let forget—that she was Syrian. Syriac. That one letter was a universe of difference. Her family had fled the civil war, she had been born in exile. Now she was headed into a deeper exile.

  I didn’t mean to be in the centrifuge pod with Achi. There was a guy; he’d looked and I looked back and nodded yes, I will, yes even as the OTV made its distancing burn from the cycler. I took it. I’m no prude. I’ve got the New Year Barra beach bangles. I’m up for a party and more, and everyone’s heard about (here they move in close and mouth the words) freefall sex. I wanted to try it with this guy. And I couldn’t stop throwing up. I was not up for zero gee. It turned everything inside me upside down. Puke poured out of me. That’s not sexy. So I retreated to gravity and the only other person in the centrifuge arm was this caramel-eyed girl, slender hands and long fingers, her face flickering every few moments into an unconscious micro-frown. Inward-gazing, self-loathing, scattering geek references like anti-personnel mines. Up in the hub our co-workers fucked. Down in the centrifuge pod we talked and the stars and the moon arced across the window beneath our feet.

  A Brazilian miner and a London-Syriac ecologist. The centrifuge filled as freefall sex palled but we kept talking. The next day the guy I had puked over caught my eye again but I sought out Achi, on her own in the same spot, looking out at the moon. And the whirling moon was a little bigger in the observation port and we knew each other a little better and by the end of the week the moon filled the whole of the window and we had moved from conversationalists into friends.

  * * *

  Achi: left Damascus as a cluster of cells tumbling in her mother’s womb. And that informed her every breath and touch. She felt guilty for escaping. Father was a software engineer, mother was a physiotherapist. London welcomed them.

  Adriana: seven of us: seven Cortas. Little cuts. I was in the middle, loved and adored but told solemnly I was plain and thick in the thighs and would have to be thankful for whatever life granted me.

  Achi: a water girl. Her family home was near the Olympic pool—her mother had dropped her into water days out of the hospital. She had sunk, then she swam. Swimmer and surfer: long British summer evenings on the western beaches. Cold British water. She was small and quiet but feared no wave.

  Adriana: born with the sound of the sea in her room but never learned to swim. I splash, I paddle, I wade. I come from beach people, not ocean people.

  Achi: the atoner. She could not change the place or order of her birth, but she could apologise for it by being useful. Useful Achi. Make things right!

  Adriana: the plain. Mãe and papai thought they were doing me a favour; allowing me no illusions or false hopes that could blight my life. Marry as well as you can; be happy: that will have to do. Not this Corta. I was the kid who shot her hand up at school. The girl who wouldn’t shut up when the boys were talking. Who never got picked for the futsal team—okay, I would find my own sport. I did Brasilian jujitsu. Sport for one. No one messed with plain Adriana.

  Achi: grad at UCL, post-grad at M.I.T. Her need to be useful took her battling desertification, salinisation, eutrophication. She was an -ation warrior. In the end it took her to the moon. No way to be more useful than sheltering and feeding a whole world.

  Adriana: university at São Paulo. And my salvation. Where I learned that plain didn’t matter as much as available, and I was sweet for sex with boys and girls. Fuckfriends. Sweet girls don’t have fuckfriends. And sweet girls don’t study mining engineering. Like jujitsu, like hooking up, that was a thing for me, me alone. Then the economy gave one final, apocalyptic crash at the bottom of a series of drops and hit the ground and broke so badly no one could see how to fix it. And the seaside, be-happy Cortas were in ruins, jobless, investments in ashes. It was plain Adriana who said, I can save you. I’ll go to the Moon.

  All this we knew by the seventh day of the orbit out. On the eighth day, we rendezvoused with the transfer tether and spun down to the new world.

  The freefall sex? Grossly oversold. Everything moves in all the wrong ways. Things get away from you. You have to strap everything down to get purchase. It’s more like mutual bondage.

  * * *
<
br />   I was sintering ten kilometres ahead of Crucible when Achi’s call came. I had requested the transfer from Mackenzie Metals to Vorontsov Rail. The forewoman had been puzzled when I reported to Railhead. You’re a dustbunny not a track-queen. Surface work is surface work, I said and that convinced her. The work was good, easy and physical and satisfying. And it was on the surface. At the end of every up-shift you saw six new lengths of gleaming rail among the boot and track prints, and on the edge of the horizon, the blinding spark of Crucible, brighter than any star, advancing over yesterday’s rails, and you said, I made that. The work had real measure: the inexorable advance of Mackenzie Metals across the Mare Insularum, brighter than the brightest star. Brighter than sunrise, so bright it could burn a hole through your helmet sunscreen if you held it in your eye line too long. Thousands of concave mirrors focusing sunlight on the smelting crucibles. Three years from now the rail lines would circle the globe and the Crucible would follow the sun, bathed in perpetual noon. Me, building a railroad around the moon.

  Then ting ching and it all came apart. Achi’s voice blocking out my work-mix music, Achi’s face superimposed on the dirty grey hills of Rimae Maestlin. Achi telling me her routine medical had given her four weeks.

  I hitched a ride on the construction car back down the rails to Crucible. I waited two hours hunkered down in the hard-vacuum shadows, tons of molten metal and ten thousand Kelvin sunlight above my head, for an expensive ticket on a slow Mackenzie ore train to Meridian. Ten hours clinging onto a maintenance platform, not even room to turn around, let alone sit. Grey dust, black sky … I listened my way through my collection of historical bossanova, from the 1940s to the 1970s. I played Connecto on my helmet hud until every time I blinked I saw tumbling, spinning gold stars. I scanned my family’s social space entries and threw my thoughts and comments and good wishes at the big blue Earth. By the time I got to Meridian I was two degrees off hypothermic. My surface activity suit was rated for a shift and some scramble time, not twelve hours in the open. Should have claimed compensation. But I didn’t want my former employers paying too much attention to me. I couldn’t afford the time it would take to re-pressurise for the train, so I went dirty and fast, on the BALTRAN.