Sense of Wonder

by Gardner Dozois

  Hard to pick favorites with so many good stories on offer, but my personal selection for best stories in the book would include “Tideline,” by Elizabeth Bear, in which a dying robot in a devastated war-torn future teaches some of the human survivors how to become more human; “Finisterra,” by David Moles, a vivid adventure in which people colonizing huge floating islands, something like living dirigibles, in a layer of Earth-like atmosphere on a Jupiter-sized planet engage in internecine warfare; and “The Island,” by Peter Watts, in which a work-crew building a series of wormhole transport gates across the Galaxy encounters an unexpected obstacle—a living intelligent creature the size of a sun.

  You could quibble with some of these choices. I’d like to have seen something here by Lavie Tidhar, who I consider to be one of the most exciting new SF writers of the last few years, as well as some work by Aliette de Bodard and Kij Johnson, and while the late Kage Baker certainly deserves to be here, I’m not sure I would have picked “Plotters and Shooters,” one of her more minor works, as the story with which to represent her. A few more such quibbles could be made with individual selections, but they are that—quibbles. Twenty-First Century Science Fiction will certainly be recognized as one of the best reprint science fiction anthologies of the year, and belongs in the library of everyone who is interested in the evolution of the genre.

  Twelve Tomorrows, edited by Stephen Cass, is the second volume in a series of original SF anthologies published by the people who also produce MIT’s Technology Review magazine, following the first volume, 2011’s TRSF, The Best New Science Fiction, Inspired by Today’s Emerging Technologies, also edited by Cass. Like the first volume, the twelve stories in Twelve Tomorrows are all solid core SF, most of them near-future stories that deal with the possibilities (and threats) of emerging technologies, most set within the next twenty or thirty years. You won’t find any far future or flamboyant Space Opera stories here, which does give the volume a certain similarity if read all at once, but the literary quality of the individual stories is quite high, and, considered as an anthology, Twelve Tomorrows would certainly have to qualify as one of the year’s best SF anthologies to date, perhaps the best, certainly the most consistent in overall quality. There’s really nothing bad here, and the most minor stories would be major stories in some of the year’s other SF anthologies, but the strongest stories here are probably “Pathways,” by Nancy Kress, about a smart but uneducated woman taking part in an experimental program attempting to find a cure for the degenerative inherited disease that will inevitably kill her, “Transitional Forms,” by Paul McAuley, about a ranger patrolling the borders of a “Hot Zone” in which bizarre forms of artificial life have mutated and run riot, and “Zero for Conduct,” by Greg Egan, in which a young girl in a repressive near-future Iran makes a fundamental scientific discovery which could change the world, but who then must struggle to promulgate it (and use it to earn some desperately needed money) without drawing the dire attention of the authorities. There are also good stories here by Peter Watts, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Ian McDonald, Allen M. Steele, and others—although as I say, nothing here is really bad, and the volume also contains stories by Brian W. Aldiss, David Brin, Cheryl Rydborn, Nancy Fulda, and Justina Robson, as well as an interview with Neal Stephenson and a gallery of cover art by the late Richard Powers. This doesn’t seem to be available in bookstores, so if you want it, you’ll probably have to mail-order it, either from www.technologyreview.com/sf or from Technology Review, Inc., One Main Street, 13th Floor, Cambridge, MA 02142. I have no idea if it’s available in ebook form, but the site may tell you.

  The September/October issue of F&SF features three superior stories, two SF and one fantasy. The two first-rate SF stories are “Rosary and Goldenstar,” by Geoff Ryman, an eccentric and lyrical Alternate History concerning a different life-path for William Shakespeare than the path he followed here, and “Hhasalin,” by Susan Palwick, the sad and poignant story of an intelligent alien kept as a household pet by the humans who have conquered her world, told from her perspective as she slowly becomes aware of the true parameters of her existence. The superior fantasy is a novella by Rachel Pollack, “The Queen of Eyes,” a sequel to Pollack’s also-exceptional “Jack Shade in the Forest of Souls,” from the July/August 2012 F&SF. Jack Shade is a Traveler, a man who travels between our world and various eerie afterlife/supernatural worlds to bring messages from the living to the departed. In “The Queen of Eyes,” he becomes reluctantly involved in a desperate and dangerous case, trying to solve the mysterious disappearance of one of the chief Powers of the Earth, the eponymous Queen of Eyes, an event which has thrown reality itself out of balance. This story is perhaps less emotionally involving than the previous story, which concentrated more centrally on Jack Shade’s own personal tragedy, but Pollack’s invented mythology is rich and lush and strange, making creations like The Queen of Eyes seem like mythological figures we’ve been familiar with all along, and the double vision of the world possessed by Jack Shade, so that he sees a taxicab on the Manhattan street as a taxicab but also at the same time as the Piss-Lion that it actually is, is fascinating. This is certainly one of the most vivid and unique fantasy stories published this year, and one of the best, if not the best.

  The rest of the September/October F&SF doesn’t come up to this level of quality, but still contains some good stuff. Eugene Mirabelli tells an entertaining fable about the real difference between mortals and immortals (in addition to that Not Dying thing) in “The Shore at the Edge of the World,” Oliver Buckram gives us a literal—and risible—Space Opera in “Un Opera Nello Spazio,” Rob Chilson takes us to a Vancian far-future in “Half as Old as Time,” Albert E. Cowdrey tells a typically sly Cautionary Tale about the dangers of getting what you want in “The Collectors,” and Daniel Marcus, in a too-rare appearance, lets us eavesdrop on the events that happen “After the Funeral,” another sly story, although one that seems to end just when it’s really becoming interesting.

  All in all, probably the best issue of F&SF to appear so far this year.

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  Asimov’s, August.

  Asimov’s, September.

  Asimov’s, October/November.

  Analog, September.

  F&SF, November/December

  The mid-year issues of Asimov’s, August, September, October/November, are a bit weak overall, although there are good stories scattered across all three issues. The best story in the September Asimov’s, and one of the best stories that Asimov’s has published all year, is “The Discovered Country,” by Ian R. MacLeod, an evocative and emotionally powerful story of someone sent on a mission to a Virtual Utopia reserved only for the superrich who have died on our mundane Earth, a sort-of literal Afterlife, where they exist in unbelievable luxury at the expense of those still living in the flesh back in physical reality, whose resources they gobble to support their own Virtual Paradise. This is a smart, tense, and tricky story where the stakes are high and nothing is what it seems. Also good in September is “A Stranger from a Foreign Ship,” by veteran author Tom Purdom, another tense and tricky story about an actual “identity thief,” one with the ability to leap from body to body, temporarily displacing the person whose body it is; the tension is generated when he comes up against the limits of his peculiar talent in a life-or-death situation, and must figure out ways to use the trick to his best advantage in order to survive. New writer Jay O’Connell tells a rather sweet and refreshingly hopeful story about a human and an alien negotiating about the future of the human race in “That Universe We Both Dreamed Of,” and new writer Benjamin Crowell explores internet anti-piracy measures taken to an outrageous but perversely logical length in “A Hole in the Ether,” a story that reminds me strongly of Gordon R. Dickson’s famous story “Computers Don’t Argue.” Ian Creasey explores many of the same issues of privilege and immortality as MacLeod did in “The Discovered Country” in his own “The Unparrallel’d Death-Defying Feats of Astoundo, Escape Artist Extraordinaire,�
�� but in a less satisfying and more perfervid way. On the whole, the September issue is probably the strongest of the three issues we’re discussing here.

  The lead story in the August Asimov’s is Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s big novella, set in her long-running Diver Universe series, “The Application of Hope.” This is brisk and entertaining, as are all of the Diver stories, and as is Rusch’s work in general, in fact—but the backstory of the Diver Universe has grown so complicated after many stories and novels that the novella probably losses something if you’re not already familiar with that backstory, and it comes across more as a chunk of a novel than as a story that really stands independently on its own feet. (Much the same could be said about Rusch’s other Diver story, “Encounter on Starbase Kappa,” in the October/November issue.) Also in August, Jack Skillingstead turns in a story that would make a pretty good Twilight Zone episode, about a pilot whose life is changed forever by blundering into a Bermuda Triangle-like hole in space over the Cascade Mountains, in “Arlington,” and new writer Leah Thomas’s “The Ex-Corporal” is a compelling but somewhat unpleasant read, one with disturbing undertones of child abuse never brought quite all the way up to the surface.

  There are a lot of stories in Asimov’s October/November issue, the Double Issue, and although few of them are really bad, few are really exceptional either—it’s an issue of solid core SF work (with a few fantasy stories thrown in) of good but not first-rate quality, and I think that little here is likely to make it on to next year’s award ballots. The best story here is probably Neal Asher’s “Memories of Earth,” another story in his Owner series, like “The Other Gun” from the April/May issue; the backstory of this series is also complex, but “Memories of Earth,” set towards the end of the Owner’s story, seems to stand up on its own feet as an independent unit better than Rusch’s “The Application of Hope” did. Also good in October/November is Jack Dann’s “Waiting for Medusa,” a clever homage to Harlan Ellison’s famous story “A Boy and His Dog.” Ian McHugh’s “When the Rain Comin” is a nicely done far-future slice-of-life story, although I have some doubts that the ecosystem could really work that way. Joel Richards’s “Deep Diving” is an entertaining murder mystery story, set on an interstellar luxury liner, spoiled to some extent by the unnecessary and unlikely addition of an uncontrollable robot Fury into the plot. Sheila Finch’s “A Very Small Dispensation” is a melancholy but ultimately rather touching fable about a woman’s inevitable encounter with Death. Gregory Frost’s “No Others Are Genuine” pits a small boy against the sinister inhabitants of a boarding house. James Sallis returns to Asimov’s after a 28-year absence (!) with “As Yet Untitled,” a sly metafictional piece about a pulp-story character reluctantly forced to change genres. Ian Creasey’s “Within These Well-Scrubbed Walls” is really only SF by courtesy, since almost exactly the same story could be told without the thin fantastic element of the hologram. Charlie Jane Anders’s “The Time Travel Club” is an odd mixture of a satirical comedy-of-manners about a knockabout group of misfits who seek each other out and form a social club and a time-travel tale, which mix a bit uneasily.

  The September Analog is the strongest issue of Analog of the year to date, featuring three first-rate stories and a couple of “merely” good ones. Martin L. Shoemaker’s novella “Murder on the Aldrin Express” is another murder mystery set on a spaceship, but this one avoids the mistakes that marred Joel Richards’s “Deep Diving,” keeping the focus strongly on believable future technology and not throwing in anomalous elements like telepaths and vengeful killer robots, and giving us an ingenious and classically satisfying mystery to unravel, peopled with vivid characters who are convincing as real people, with all their varying strengths, weakness, and foibles. Alec Nevala-Lee’s “The Whale God” is SF only by the thinnest of margins, depicting the unexpected results of secret military experimentation during the Vietnam War, but is a fascinating and finely crafted study of a historical period and of a clash of widely differing cultures and mindsets as extreme as that between aliens and Earthmen in much core science fiction, and a hopeful one in that with good will and effort on both sides, at least a partial understanding of each other’s view of the world is reached. Lavie Tidhar’s “The Oracle” is another of his Central Station stories, set in a complex, busy, multi-cultural future milieu full of biologically engineered creatures and amalgams of humans and machines of one sort of another, and while it wouldn’t look out-of-place in Asimov’s or Interzone, it sticks out like a sore thumb in Analog, where little like it has ever been published before. (It’s dangerous to attribute new types of material showing up in a magazine to a new editor, in this case, Trevor Quachri; for all we know, these stories might have been bought by previous editor Stanley Schmidt and been sitting in the Analog inventory for some time before he retired. That’s not the way I would bet it, though, particularly with the Tidhar story. If I’m right, it’s good to see Quacrhi making his mark on the magazine, always a difficult thing to do with a long-established title.) Also good in the September issue is Joe Pitkin’s “Full Fathom Five,” a melancholy and surprisingly subtle story about an explorer encountering an unknown alien creature while stranded beneath miles of ice in the oceans of Europa. Liz J. Anderson’s “Creatures from a Blue Lagoon” is a more typical Analog story, but a well-handled one.

  The lead story in the October/November issue of F&SF is Michael Blumlein’s big novella, “Success.” This is extremely well-crafted line by line, and paints a compelling portrait of a somewhat distasteful character, but I must admit that I found it almost entirely cryptic, and put the story down at the end with little real understanding of what had happened in it, or why or how it had. If you’re a more subtle reader, you may get more out of it. The story I liked the best in this issue was Brendan DuBois’s “Hard Stars,” a tense look at a disquieting but disturbingly plausible future where the tables have been turned and the United States is being hit daily by hundreds of deadly drone strikes launched by foreign enemies, targeting any sort of electronic signal—which makes our technological civilization almost impossible to maintain. Also good in the October/November issue is Tim Sullivan’s “Through Mud One Picks a Way,” a story about one woman’s struggle to avert the genocide of an alien race, a story which reminds me of Avram Davidson’s “Now Let Us Sleep,” although the situation at the end of the story is less hopeless than it is in the Davidson, with the woman continuing the struggle. In “Stones and Glass,” Matthew Hughes gives us another sly adventure of the thief and con man Raffalon, set in a world very like that of Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth in flavor, M.K Hobson tells us a strange fable of mythological creatures interacting with starving Russian soldiers during World War II in “Baba Makosh,” and this issue’s Albert E. Cowdrey story (it seems like there’s been a Cowdrey story in almost every issue of F&SF this year), “Hell For Company,” lets us eavesdrop on a story being told by Mark Twain about a peculiar case of demonic possession.

  63

  The Other Half of the Sky, ed. Athena Andreadis, co-edited Kay Holt. (Candlemark & Gleam, 978-1-936460-43-4, $22.95, 460 pages.) Cover art by Eleni Tsami.

  We See a Different Frontier: A Postcolonial Speculative Fiction Anthology, ed. Fabio Fernandes and Djibril al-Ayad. (Futurefire.net Publishing, 978-0-9573975-2-1, $14.00, 213 pages). Cover art by Carmen Moran.

  METAropolis: Green Space, ed. Jay Lake and Ken Scholes. (Audible—audiobook.)

  Snodgrass and Other Illusions: The Best Short Stories of Ian R. MacLeod, by Ian R. MacLeod (Open Road Media, available only in ebook form).

  Horse of a Different Color: Stories, by Howard Waldrop. (Small Beer Press, 9781618730732, $24.00, 195 pages; also available in ebook form $14.95.) Cover art by Brian Lei.

  Telling Tales: The Clarion West 30th Anniversary Anthology, ed. Ellen Datlow. (Hydra House, 978-0-9848301-6-9, $17.95, 380 pages.) Cover art by Todd Lockwood.

  One of the best-SF anthologies of the year is out from an ultra-small press, and will probably be seen
by almost nobody: The Other Half of the Sky, edited by Athena Andreadis, co-edited by Kay Holt. The title is drawn from the saying that women hold up half the sky, although they’re often under-represented in genre fiction, and this anthology aims to redress that. The editors mention Pamela Sargent’s Women of Wonder anthologies from the ‘70s as an inspiration, and promise stories featuring “heroes who happen to be women, doing whatever they would do in universes where they’re fully human”; all of the protagonists here are women, and most of the stories are by women, although there are also a few from male writers. All the stories are solid core science fiction, and the literary quality overall is quite high. The best stories here are “Finders,” by Melissa Scott, in which a salvage operation to a ruined space station makes a discovery more dangerous, and more surprising, than anything they’d hoped to find, “The Waiting Stars,” by Aliette de Bodard, about a desperate rescue mission to a graveyard of dead spaceships that finds one not quite as dead as it seems, “Bad Day on Boscobel,” by Alexander Jablokov, concerning espionage and intrigue on a world whose inhabitants live in giant trees, and “Sailing the Antarsa,” by Vandana Singh, which details a maiden interstellar flight using a very unusual propulsion system—but there is also good work here by Ken Liu, Nisi Shawl, Joan Slonczewski, C.W. Johnson, Cat Rambo, and others. This will be hard to find in most bookstores, but can be found on Amazon, and also mail-ordered from the publisher at www.candlemarkandgleam.com.