Sense of Wonder

by Gardner Dozois

  Peter Friend’s “Voyage to the Moon” is a steampunk vision of, well, voyaging to the moon, much like Brian Stableford’s “A Plurality of Worlds” and the other Victorian steampunk stories he’s been writing recently—except that all the characters are aliens, not humans, and the universe the intrepid aeronauts are exploring is a bizarre one, reminiscent of the cosmology in Karl Schroeder’s “Virga” novels or in Jay Lake’s “Clockwork Earth” sequence. Some very nice stuff here, but the story ends much too abruptly, just stopping without really resolving anything at all; I assume that there’ll be Sequels. The fantastic element in Benjamin Crowell’s “Petopia” is a bit thin, but the Third World setting in which the characters scramble to get by on less than Western civilization routinely throws away, is very nicely done, as are the complex and sympathetically portrayed characters themselves. I found both the motivations of the characters and the situation itself in Anna Tambour’s “Dreadnought Neptune” very unconvincing (would have served them right if the “spaceship” turned out to be the human equivalent of a roach motel, which is where I thought she was going at first), and Kit Reed’s satirical “Monkey Do” (the possible fantasy in the issue, since no technical explanation for the monkey’s intelligence is ever offered) tries too hard to be funny.

  June will see the launch of a very promising new online magazine, Lightspeed, edited by John Joseph Adams, the former associate editor of F&SF and an experienced anthologist in his own right. The best story in the June issue of Lightspeed is Carrie Vaughn’s “Amarylliss,” a quiet but powerful tale of multi-generational family relations and personal redemption against the odds. This pulls off the difficult trick of managing to show a diminished, ecologically distressed near-future without being bleak or despairing—people are adapting and getting by, and, more importantly, they have each other. It may not always be easy to cope, but life goes on. If you lose your family, you can, with luck, make another one for yourself. Jack McDevitt’s “The Cassandra Project” is a Fermi Project Where-Is-Everybody? story with a powerful sting in its tail that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Analog—although the logical but bleak conclusion the story reaches may have been too dark for them. Vylar Kaftan’s “I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno” covers some fairly familiar time-dilation territory, but does it in a pleasing manner, and the human interactions are interesting. The only one here I didn’t warm to was David Barr Kirtley’s “Cats in Victory,” a kind of prose magna, with catmen fighting dogmen in a Post-Apocalyptic wasteland.

  With Jim Baen’s Universe dying, I’m particularly pleased to see a new online magazine starting up and attracting professional talent, with a canny editor at the helm; let’s hope it does well, as the genre can use all the short-fiction markets it can get, particularly those oriented toward SF, as Lightspeed seems to be (the default setting for most ezines and websites seems to be slipstream, fantasy, and soft horror). The only thing I found a bit disappointing here is that the stories are all quite short. As pixels are cheap, I hope they end up using some longer stuff in future issues, especially as many writers I know are complaining that there aren’t many markets left to sell their novellas to anymore. Running long stories is something the internet—where you don’t have the stringent length-restrictions that you do in the print world—seems ideally suited for to me.

  Ultra-small British publisher NewCon Press has been active in the anthology market in the last couple of years, publishing books of surprising quality considering that editorial budgets must be small, and they’ve just come out with another one, Conflicts, edited by Ian Whates. Unlike their previous anthologies, which mixed fantasy and science fiction, this is their first all-SF anthology, a parfait offering up stripes of different-flavored SF: some Military SF, some Alternate History, some Space Opera, some Post-Cyberpunk, some Steampunk. Almost everything here is solidly enjoyable—although nothing, I think, is really exceptional. The best stories are “War Without End,” by Una McCormack, a story about an old solider refusing to fade away without telling his side of the story, “One Land,” by Chris Beckett, an Alternate History tale that doubles as sharp political allegory, “Proper Little Soldier,” by Martin McGrath, which more or less re-envisions The War of the Worlds, and “Sussed,” by Keith Brooke, about a fugitive pressed into reluctant service as a soldier during an interstellar war, but there is also good work here by Eric Brown, Neal Asher, Gareth L. Powell, David L. Clements, and others. This is going to be hard enough to find on the American side of the Atlantic that I’d recommend going directly to the NewCon Press website, www.newconpress.co.uk, and mail-ordering it.

  Ellen Datlow was one of the first major genre editors to specialize in buying short fiction for online-only electronic publication, first at OMNI Online from September 1996 to March 1998, then at Event Horizon from August 1988 to July 1999, and most recently at Scifiction, from May 2000 to December 2005—a stint that won her a Best Editor Hugo. All of these sites are dead now, taking their achieves into electronic limbo, but Prime Books has given Datlow the chance to give some of the stories she bought the (relative) permanence of print, by allowing her to pick her favorites for an anthology called Digital Domains, A Decade of Science Fiction and Fantasy. There are a lot of good stories here. The best-known stories in the book are probably Karen Joy Fowler’s “What I Didn’t See” and Kelly Link’s “The Girl Detective,” but I think my favorites here are James P. Blaylock’s “Thirteen Phantasms,” Severna Park’s “Harbingers,” Simon Ings’s “Russian Vine,” and Andy Duncan’s “The Pottawatomie Giant,” although there’s also good work here by Paul Park, Howard Waldrop, Maureen McHugh, Nathan Ballingrud, and others.

  21

  Godlike Machines, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Science Fiction Book Club, 563 pages).

  Seven Cities of Gold, by David Moles. (PS Publishing, 978-1-848630-83-3, 74 pages). Cover art by Tomislav Tikolin.

  Asimov’s, 07/10.

  Interzone 277.

  Subterranean, Summer 2010.

  I’m on record as saying that the novella may be the perfect length for a science fiction story: long enough to enable you to flesh out the details of a strange alien world or a bizarre future society, to give such a setting some depth, complexity, and heft…and yet, still short enough for the story to pack a real punch, some power and elegance and bite, unblunted and unobscured by padding—unlike many of today’s bloated novels, some of which are hundreds of pages longer than they really need to be. Publishing novellas was becoming a bit problematical at one point, as printing costs rose, length restrictions became more stringent, and magazines dropped pages for economic reasons—although Asimov’s, Analog, and F&SF continue to print many novellas every year, in spite of these challenges—but the last few years have seen (in addition to internet ezines, where length restrictions are less of a problem) a rise in novellas published as individual chapbooks, and in all-novella anthologies.

  There were several good all-novella anthologies last year, and now, after being postponed several times by the publisher, 2010 sees at last the publication of a very good one, Godlike Machines, edited by Jonathan Strahan. This contains six novellas, all SF, all original (sort of. Publication of the book was delayed long enough that Greg Egan’s novella “Hot Rock” came out first in Egan’s collection last year, rather than debuting in Godlike Machines, as it was supposed to). This is SF about as Cutting Edge as SF can get, all unambiguous center-core science fiction, mostly dealing with humanity’s encounters with and relationships to the Godlike Machines of the title, no slipstream, no fantasy, no steampunk; for a science fiction fan, after working through all the slipstream one encounters these days, this is like a shot of whiskey after an afternoon spent drinking fizzy lemonade, and Godlike Machines will certainly be in the running for the title of Best Science Fiction anthology of the year—in fact, at this point, it’s the front-runner by a good margin.

  There’s really nothing here that’s less than first-rate. If pressed to name my favorites, I guess I would name Al
astair Reynolds’s “Troika”—a story about a beleaguered astronaut in a revived Soviet Union who is forever changed by coming in contact with an immensely ancient Matryoska brain that is penetrating the solar system, a brilliant novella that reads like a combination of Gorky Park and Rendezvous With Rama—and the before-mentioned “Hot Rock,” by Greg Egan, in which posthuman explorers struggle to safely investigate a mysterious “orphan planet” that has functioned like a tar-pit for several previous waves of colonizers. But the book also contains a Great Ship story by Robert Reed, “Alone,” which not only reveals a key secret about the Great Ship itself but features an immortal, protean, and totally inhuman protagonist who nevertheless manages to be poignant and affecting; one of Stephen Baxter’s long sequence of stories about astronaut Harry Poole, “Return to Titan,” this one exposing the hero’s feet of clay, including a ruthless willingness to commit genocide if that’s what it takes to meet his goals; an intricate story about the enigmatic, time-spanning construct known as the Structure, “A Glimpse of the Marvellous Structure (and the Threat It Entails),” by Sean Williams; and, perhaps a bit peripheral to the theme of the anthology, but still vivid and exciting, a post-cyberpunk story (reading at times a bit like it’s taking place inside a Video Game world) about society falling apart under the strain of ever-accelerating Future Shock, “There’s a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow/Now is the Best Time of Your Life,” by Cory Doctorow.

  Every year there are also a number of novellas published as individual chapbooks, usually by small presses. Last year there were several significant novellas published that way, including Kage Baker’s The Women of Neil Gwynne’s, Dave Hutchinson’s The Push, John Scalzi’s The God Engines, and Jay Lake’s Death of a Starship, and the best one I’ve seen so far this year is The Seven Cities of Gold, by David Moles. This is a masterfully done work of Alternate History, which succeeds in creating a world that seems lived-in and all-too-real, down to the smallest details. It’s a Heart-of-Darkness journey undertaken by a haunted and conflicted woman, down a river that runs right through the middle of a vividly described warzone, with physical details that feel real and yet surreal at the same time, and scenes so grotesquely horrible that they almost rise through it to a hallucinatory beauty. The Seven Cities of Gold is one of the best novellas of the year so far, but be warned—there is stuff here that is almost painful to read, and this is definitely not for the squeamish or faint of heart. “Optimistic SF” it’s not.

  Another really first-rate novella is to be found in the July Asimov’s, the issue’s lead story, Robert Reed’s “A History of Terraforming.” This sprawling, vividly imaginative story follows the protagonist, Simon, from his childhood on a newly-settled Mars hundreds of years into an increasingly strange future. Simon is an “atum,” a terraformer, and each step in his career as he grows in knowledge and abilities showcases the strengths and weaknesses, the ethical as well as physical pros and cons, of terraforming, as the terraformers create new worlds—and sometimes destroy old ones. Simon is an engaging character, who somehow retains an essential humanity no matter how strange his external form and his life become—at one point, he falls in love with a parrot—and always keeps the childlike wonder of a young boy watching a living Mars being created around him. Also excellent in July is Tom Purdom’s “Haggle Chips,” an ingenious and well-thought-out story about a very civilized kidnapping where the victim is treated well and held hostage under the most luxurious conditions imaginable—but captivity, no matter how comfortable, is still captivity, and the protagonist’s attempts to escape demonstrate that there’s a steel fist inside the velvet glove.

  New writer Aliette de Bodard delivers another strong Alternate History story—she’s produced several of them in the last couple of years—in “The Jaguar House, in Shadow,” taking us to a world where the Chinese colonized the New World before Columbus for a tense story of friendships betrayed that tests where the protagonist’s loyalties ultimately lie. Also good is “The Other Graces,” by new writer Alice Sola Kim, in which a beleaguered Asian girl receives much-needed help and encouragement from a very unexpected source. Kristine Kathryn Rusch offers a sly preview of the etiquette guides of the future in “Amelia Pillar’s Etiquette for the Space Traveler,” and new writer D.T. Mitenko spins a funny and inventive story about a peculiar sort of romantic rivalry, in “Eddie’s Ants.” (Although how they “do it,” as one character asks, remains unclear by story’s end.)

  The best story in Interzone 227 is “Chimbwi,” by “new writer” Jim Hawkins, whose previous sale was forty years ago to New Worlds. This takes us to a near-future where, in an ironic twist, the overall fates of Africa and Europe have been reversed, so that it’s Europe that is impoverished and war-torn, riddled with famine and disease, while Africa has grown prosperous and technologically advanced beyond anything known in Europe. The storyline follows a European refugee, a physicist, on his harrowing flight from ruined Europe to Africa, through enslavement and forced labor, and finally to a position of trust in scientific circles in Zambia, the African superpower of the day. This is clearly one of the best stories of the year to date. The only quibble I have with it is that it ends so abruptly that I actually turned the page, expecting the story to continue. Also first-rate in Interzone 227 is “Flying in the Face of God,” by Nina Allan, a poignant and excellently crafted character study of a woman whose best friend/lover (it’s never made explicit which) is being transformed into a strange posthuman creature in order to survive a journey to the stars, a journey from which she’ll never return, from the point of view of the woman left behind.

  Also in Interzone 227, Jon Ingold gives us a subtler and much less flamboyant version of R.A. Lafferty’s “Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne” in “The History of Poly-V,” a story in which experimenters are unaware of the changes in reality produced by their every experiment with a memory-enhancing drug. Mercurio D. Rivera offers us “Dance of the Kawkawroons,” a clever story in which ruthless Earthmen think that they’re exploiting hapless aliens—but who’s really exploiting whom? Entertaining and enjoyable, although the aliens are a little too much like albatrosses to be really convincing as an alien race. The usually excellent Chris Beckett disappoints somewhat with “Johnny’s New Job,” in which he vents his bitterness over his former job as a social worker with a heavyhanded satire that has “Author’s Message” written all over it in bright neon letters. And Steve Rasnic Tem contributes “The Glare and the Glow,” a story that might have been more comfortable in companion magazine Black Static.

  In what would be further proof that the Millennium was at hand (if the Millennium hadn’t already passed), I liked another zombie story this time out (I liked Steven Popkes’s “The Crocodiles” last month), Maureen McHugh’s “The Naturalist,” from the Summer issue of Subterranean, guest-edited by Jonathan Strahan, that is just beginning to be posted up on the Subterranean online magazine. McHugh’s protagonist, stranded in a “zombie enclave” where condemned prisoners are sent and left to fend for themselves, really does use the scientific method to study the nature and “life”ways (deathways?) of zombies, experimenting with them to the best of his abilities given his limited means, learning what attracts them and repeals them, and how to avoid being noticed by them, although the methods he uses in his experiments are ruthless enough to make him seem almost more cold-blooded than the zombies themselves. Tom Holt is also on hand for the Summer issue of Subterranean that’s been posted so far, offering us a screwball comedy of Quantum Physics in “Brownian Emotion.”

  22

  Gateways, Elizabeth Ann Hull, ed. (Tor, 978-0-7653-2662-1, $24.99, 416 pages.)

  Subterranean, Summer 2010.

  Wings of Fire, Jonathan Strahan and Marianne S. Jablon, eds. (Night Shade Books, 978-1-59780-187-4, $15.95, 512 pages). Cover art by Todd Lockward.

  Clockwork Phoenix 3: New Tales of Beauty and Strangeness, Mike Allen, ed. (Norilana Books, 978-1-60762-062-4, $11.95, 314 pages.) Cover art, “Light of the Harem,” by Sir Frederic Leigh
ton.

  Tor.com.

  Frederik Pohl is a seminal figure in the development of modern science fiction; in the course of his astounding seventy-plus-year career, he’s left an indelible mark on the genre as a writer (he’s produced some of the key works of science fiction, including The Space Merchants with C.M. Kornbluth and Gateway, and has won multiple awards for his writing, including the SFWA Grand Master Award), as an anthologist (he edited the first original anthology series, Star), as an editor (as editor of both Galaxy and Worlds of If magazines, I consider him to be one of the two most important magazine editors in genre history), as one of the field’s first agents, and as one of the founders of the whole basic tradition of SF fandom. Therefore, it’s not at all surprising that Pohl’s wife and fellow professional Elizabeth Anne Hull has been able to persuade thirty of Pohl’s peers—including some whose parents probably weren’t alive yet when Pohl began his professional career—to contribute work of some kind, stories (mostly original, with a few reprints), poems, appreciations, to Gateways, a festschrift (as we intellectuals call it) or tribute anthology (as the rest of you can call it) honoring Pohl’s work. Unlike the Jack Vance tribute anthology from last year, Songs of the Dying Earth, or the Isaac Asimov memorial anthology from a couple of decades back, Foundation’s Friends, Gateways doesn’t let the authors play with the worlds or characters invented by the author being honored—instead, it takes the somewhat more subjective course of encouraging authors to contribute stuff that has been “inspired by” Pohl’s work, which inspiration may on occasion be clearer to the authors themselves than it’s going to be to the reader (the most emotionally moving story here, for instance, Greg Bear’s “Warm Seas,” one of the reprints, reads to me much more like a homage to Arthur C. Clarke than a homage to Pohl, whose influence on the story is not, to me, immediately apparent, although I’m sure it is to Bear).