Category: uncategorized

List of the Day

Blatant blog-fodder, but hey: the Guardian is doing a series on 1000 novels everyone must read, and today they reached science fiction and fantasy (and horror). Don’t worry, I’m not going to post the whole list — Martin’s done that, if you’re interested — but here are the links:

I’m not sure to what extent the novels on the sidebar lists count towards the total; I assume Crumey’s list, at least, is separate, given that it overlaps with the main list and other sidebars, and I hope that, say, Susanna Clarke’s picks count towards the total, because they’re rather canonical, though I have no idea whether they’re counting The Chronicles of Narnia as one entry or seven. In a way I wish they’d done the whole thing as individual lists because that would make it easier to track the preferences of the nominators, though there are no real surprises (i.e. the vast majority of the genre-published books are picked by genre-published writers: Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Eric Brown, and Keith Brooke). The other nominators make plenty of interesting (or perhaps challenging) picks — Darkmans; The Blind Assassin; The Unconsoled — and there’s plenty to argue with in the list itself, which presumably is the point of the exercise. As Martin says, the idea that The Years of Rice and Salt is the Kim Stanley Robinson novel that everyone should read before they die is barmy, ditto Greg Bear and Darwin’s Radio; The Einstein Intersection is almost certainly not the essential Delany, ditto Calvino and The Baron in the Trees. And as ever, I’m sure you could come up with another list, just as long, comprised entirely of books omitted from this one. But, all things considered, not bad. I’ve read about a third.

Restate My Assumptions

So, as I mentioned a couple of days ago, one of the things I’m reading at the moment is Beginning Theory by Peter Barry. In the first chapter, he lays out “a series of propositions which I think many traditional critics would, on the whole, subscribe to, if they were in the habit of making their assumptions explicit”, under the banner of “liberal humanism”; and then, later, lays out five core assumptions which describe “the basic frame of mind which theory embodies”. I thought it might be interesting to go through both lists and note down my initial — unexamined, as it were — reactions to each statement, both for my future reference, and perhaps to start being a bit more specific about what “theory”, as used all over the place in that other comment thread, means. (i.e. I’m also interested in other peoples’ reactions to these statements. Heck, turn it into a meme and post it on your blog, if you like.) These are slightly truncated versions of the statements, in most cases — Barry gives some elaboration — but I think they get the gist across.

Liberal humanism, then:

1. Good literature is of timeless significance; it somehow transcends the limitations and peculiarities of the age it was written in, and thereby speaks to what is constant in human nature.

Nah. I know from experience that the older the work I’m reading, the more work I have to do filling in historical context to get even a bare minimum of understanding of what’s going on, but more than that, there’s a part of me which believes that one of the most interesting things about literature is precisely the way in which it engages with the limitations and peculiarities of the age it is written in.

2. The literary text contains its own meaning within itself. It doesn’t require any elaborate process of placing it within a context, whether this be socio-political, literary-historical, or autobiographical.

See above; certainly some texts will resist the need for contextualisation more strongly than others, for a longer period of time than others, but ultimately I don’t think anything endures by itself forever; certain texts that appear to have endured have done so, in part, because the contextualisation they require has become part of the cultural air we breathe (i.e. Shakespeare), not because of anything inherent to the text itself.

3. To understand the text well it must be detached from these contexts and studied in isolation. What is needed is the close verbal analysis of the text without prior ideological assumptions, or political pre-conditions, or, indeed, specific expectations of any kind.

Mmf. Sort of. I do place close verbal analysis at the core of understanding a text, not least because it’s something I enjoy getting better at; and I do prefer to let a text suggest meaning to me than to go to a text looking for an answer to a question. But, of course, that is my prior ideological assumption. (I knew that much before I started reading the book.)

4. Human nature is essentially unchanging. The same passions, emotions, and even situations are seen again and again throughout human history. It follows that continuity in literature is more important and significant than innovation.

Nope. “Human nature”, to the extent that it can be defined at all, isn’t even the same from culture to culture in the present moment; I sincerely doubt it remains the same over centuries or longer. And, of course, as a science fiction reader one of the things I enjoy is imagination of the ways in which humanity can change in the future.

5. Individuality is something securely possessed within each of us as our unique “essence”. This transcends our environmental influences, and though individuality can change and develop (as do characters in novels) it can’t be transformed — hence our uneasiness with those scenes (quite common, for instance, in Dickens) which involve a “change of heart” in a character, so that the whole personality is shifted into a new dimension by force of circumstance.

This, on the other hand … “transcends our environmental influences” makes it sound like we’re born being who we are, which is clearly rubbish; but individuality as something that evolves but does not transform sounds right to me. I don’t think I’ve ever transformed in the way the process is described here; I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone to transform in that way, either. Life isn’t that easy.

6. The purpose of literature is essentially the enhancement of life and the propagation of humane values; but not in a programmatic way: if literature, and criticism, become overly and directly political they necessarily tend towards propaganda.

On the one hand, speaking again as a science fiction reader, I’m not supposed to mind a bit of didacticism in my fiction, and I’m sure I mind it less than most of the people Barry has in mind here. On the other hand, to the extent that literature can be said to have a purpose, “propagation of humane values”, in the sense of making, through literary creation, a sincere and compassionate attempt to understand people and the world, and to communicate that understanding to another, doesn’t seem so bad.

7. Form and content in literature must be fused in an organic way, so that the one grows inevitably from the other.

Must be? No. (Are there any “must” statements that could justly be applied to literature?) Can often very productively be? Yes.

8. This point about organic form applies above all to “sincerity”. Sincerity (comprising truth-to-experience, honesty towards the self, and the capacity for human empathy and compassion) is a quality which resides within the language of literature. It isn’t a fact or intention behind the work … sincerity is to be discovered within the text in such matters as the avoidance of cliche, or of over-inflated forms of expression; it shows in the use of first-hand, individualistic description … the truly sincere poet can transcend the sense of distance between language and material, and can make the language seem to “enact” what it depicts, thus apparently abolishing the necessary distance between words and things.

This seems more or less to be an expansion of point 6, which makes me wonder whether I’m misunderstanding one or both of them; but still, it seems largely sound to me.

9. What is valued in literature is the “silent” showing and demonstrating of something, rather than the explaining, or saying, of it. Hence, ideas as such are worthless in literature until given the concrete embodiment of “enactment”.

Sf-reader ping again: I suspect that what satisfies me as being an “enacted” idea wouldn’t necessarily satisfy the people Barry has in mind here; there’s that touch of didacticism to consider. But an idea that is worked through a text is a beautiful thing.

10. The job of criticism is to interpret the text, to mediate between it and the reader. A theoretical account of the nature of reading, or of literature in general, isn’t useful in criticism, and will simply, if attempted, encumber critics with “preconceived ideas” which will get between them and the text.

I have no problems with the first sentence. As to the second sentence … well, that’s why I’m reading the book, isn’t it?

All of this seems to suggest that I am not, actually, a full-on liberal humanist; but there are several points on that list that I wouldn’t want to let go of.

Now, on to Theory:

1. Many of the notions which we would usually regard as the basic “givens” of our existence (including our gender identity, our individual selfhood, and the notion of literature itself) are actually fluid and unstable things, rather than fixed and reliable essences.

Yes … to a point. Newtonian mechanics isn’t actually a wholly accurate description of how the universe works, but it’s a pretty good approximation for a lot of purposes. Cognitive neuroscience may reveal that my selfhood does not exist in the way that I perceive it to exist, but on a day to day basis my perceptions are what I have to work with. And to bring it back to literature, it is not possible to draw a sharp line between, say, science fiction and fantasy, but that doesn’t mean it’s not useful to talk about science fiction and fantasy as distinct types of literature.

2. All thinking and investigation is necessarily affected and largely determined by prior ideological commitment. The notion of disinterested enquiry is therefore untenable: none of us is capable of standing back from the scales and weighing things up dispassionately: rather, all investigators have a thumb on one side or other of the scales.

Yes, again to a point. Necessarily affected yes, largely determined, not necessarily. Acknowledging thumbs-on-scales is good; investigating the consequences of thumbs-on-scales is good; trying to construct systems of thought which compensate for thumbs-on-scales is also good. It may not be possible to carry out a purely disinterested enquiry, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to approximate it; it means we should be aware of the biases that factor into the attempt.

3. Language itself conditions, limits, and predetermines what we see. Thus, all reality is constructed through language, so that nothing is simply “there” in an unproblematical way — everything is a linguistic/textual construct. Language doesn’t record reality, it shapes and creates it, so that the whole of our universe is textual. Further, meaning is jointly constructed by reader and writer.

Define “reality”. Do I believe a physical universe could exist if no language existed to describe it? (Assuming here that the action of observation counts as a form of language.) Yes, I do. A rock doesn’t need to be called a rock to exist. Do I believe that our social reality, how we think and relate and describe, is constrained by the language we have to think in and relate through and describe with? Also yes. I don’t know what “the whole of our universe is textual” means. As for reader-writer interaction constructing meaning: yes, but with the caveat that this appears to be intended as at least a partial counter to “the job of criticism is to mediate between the reader and the text” above, and the two positions don’t seem exclusive to me. Reframe it as the job of criticism being to mediate the construction of a particular meaning, if you like.

4. Any claim to offer a definitive reading would be futile. The meanings within a literary work are never fixed and reliable but always shifting, multi-faceted and ambiguous.

Yes. I do not think, for instance, that Victoria Hoyle’s reading of Lucius Shepard is inferior to the author’s view of his own work. (But some meanings are more equal than others.)

5. “Totalising” notions are to be distrusted. For instance, the notion of “great” books as an absolute and self-sustaining category is to be distrusted, as books always arise out of a particular socio-political structure, and this situation should not be suppressed, as tends to happen when they are promoted to “greatness”. Likewise, the concept of a “human nature”, as a generalised norm which transcends the idea of a particular race, gender or class, is to be distrusted.

Yes — recognising the obvious paradox inherent in the statement — as long as “distrusted” means “recognise the limitations of” rather than “discard out of hand”.

And that’s the lot. Not quite a theorist yet, then. It occurs to me that the second list is somewhat less interesting to me, at first glance, simply because it says less about reading and interpreting; it talks in generalities, about principles that apply far beyond criticism, whereas what I’m interested in (what I’m reading the book for) is ways to talk about literature specifically. But I suppose that’s what the rest of the chapters will do.

Essential SF Criticism

Matt Cheney, in conversation with Eric Rosenfield, says:

Oh, SF criticism is a … minefield. There are a few problems with it, including that the sorts of people who will be attracted to it are generally not of the same sort of mind that is attracted to literary criticism, and there are only a handful of people who have a good grasp of real literary criticism who are also interested in practicing SF criticism. […] Much of what passes for SF “criticism” is actually just historiography. James Gunn is a good example of that. Useful and often interesting to read, but not what most people are talking about when they’re talking about “criticism”. Which many people would say is a good thing, since academic litcrit doesn’t exactly have the best rep outside the academy.

There are only a few writers of SF criticism worth paying much attention to in addition to Delany: Darko Suvin, Alexei Panshin, Damien Broderick, Frederick Jameson, and Adam Roberts (writers such as John Clute and Gary Wolfe are knowledgeable and thoughtful, but are primarily reviewers and taxonomists — Clute, in fact, has inspired an entire taxonomical industry amongst mostly British SF reviewers, who are bizarrely fixated on defining and categorizing things. Clute’s encyclopedias are invaluable and his reviews are often interesting, but the obsession with taxonomy [beyond its usefulness for creating an encyclopedia] is one I find mystifying). Certainly, there are articles here and there that are worth paying attention to, including some good recent work on SF and colonialism (an important topic, I think), but you’ll get pretty much the full breadth (such as it is) of the critical discussion of SF from reading those writers.

At the moment, I think I would find a discussion about whether or not literary taxonomy is a useful practice, never mind whether it is somehow a distinctively British practice, tedious in the extreme, so I’ll skate over that; and because it’s a posted email discussion, I’ll try not to be too judgmental about the “just” in front of “historiography”, though I am mildly offended on behalf of historiographers of my acquaintance. Later in the post there’s a deal of stuff about sf-the-publishing-category, too, which I’ll also avoid, except to say that I don’t think Nick Harkaway is wary of the sf label because he thinks the interesting things are happening outside sf, more that he’s concerned the label will stop people reading his book.

What I do want to talk about is a potential canon of sf criticism, because I’m pretty sure Matt’s list is not it. I’m not devaluing academic sf criticism, here, though I do feel a certain push-pull tension about it; on the one hand, it seems to me only sensible that dedicated training will improve someone’s ability to appreciate and explicate a work, which is one reason I went to the SF Foundation Masterclass last summer [1], and is why I’m currently reading this book [2] . On the other hand, though I don’t consider it a badge of pride to be “outside the academy”, I do somewhat resent the implication that those not trained in the ways of criticism have no useful contributions to make to critical debate, and I would have thought that attracting people with different sorts of mind to literary studies would be all to the good. The SF Masterclass’s principle of drawing its teachers from the ranks of academics, authors and independent critics seems to me a sound one; I have gained useful insights about sf from people in all three groups.

However: the bibliography of sf criticism on the SF Studies website is dauntingly large. For a slightly more focused list, the articles from their history of science fiction criticism issue are all very useful (hey, now Gary Westfahl’s article is online as well! That would have been useful eight months ago), and I know some of the names I’d want to add to Matt’s list — Atheling, Aldiss, Russ, Freedman, Jones, for starters, and something like The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, at least. But I also know there are a number of people reading this better-read than I in sf criticism: what would you put on an essential reading list? (And, perhaps, what non-sf critics would you put on an essential reading list for would-be critics?)

[1] As Liz says, do consider applying for this year’s class; I won’t be there, sadly, because my car’s just had an unexpectedly expensive service and I’m battening down the financial hatches, but I wish I could be.

[2] And I’m sure that once I’ve got past finding the fact that apparently, in English departments, calling someone a “liberal humanist” is an insult, alternately hilarious and really stupid, it will provide me with many useful insights, and possibly even a blog post or two.

Top Five Books Not From 2008

And my second list, the five novels I read in 2008 which weren’t written in 2008:

1. Stay, Nicola Griffith
This is a book so fantastic that not only did I not realise I was reading a sequel without reading the previous installment (The Blue Place), but it didn’t matter that I hadn’t. Aud, the main character, is absolutely fascinating – a broken, grief- and guilt-stricken woman rebuildling herself after the death of a lover, capable of brutal violence but still able to help the two women she comes across while investigating a missing girl. While the strong, intelligent, female character is a big part of the appeal, it’s also gorgeously written, especially when descrbing Aud’s cabin in the woods, and the minor characters are never ciphers or cliches.

2. Look to Windward, Iain M Banks
It’s a little more thoughtful and less violent than some of the other Culture novels, but it’s probably my favourite because of the way it explores the morality of the Culture, and delves into the long-term implications of their decisions. PLus it has megafauna and I am a sucker for those.

3. White Queen, Gwyneth Jones
This makes my list purely on the strength of the thoroughly alien aliens, which may be superficially physically similar to humans, but soon turn out to be as strange as I’ve ever encountered, with different approaches to communication, gender, birth and death, and which affect all the humans they encounter. I usually find Jones’s books a difficult read to follow, but this one was worth it, and I enjoyed the complexity of Braemar and Johnny and their strange relationship.

4. On Stranger Tides, Tim Powers
I didn’t like The Anubis Gates, so James persuaded me I should give Powers another go by giving me a copy of On Stranger Tides. It’s a joyous adventure full of pirates and voodoo and ghosts and the Fountain of Youth and rampaging around the Caribbean, madness and obsession and a severed head in a box. Plus it inspired one of the greatest video games of all time.

5. Only Forward, Michael Marshall Smith
Starts off as a light, funny, crime novel in a weird and fascinating cty (about as close to Douglas Adams as anything I’ve read), but turns into something sad and moving and even more interesting, and somehow the mixture of the two works incredibly well. As a bonus it also features one of the few science fictional cats which I do not hate.

Next year’s reading resolution is to keep a list of all the books I read so these best-of posts aren’t quite so difficult to write.

Top Five Books of 2008

There’s still a few books I hope to get through before award nomination time (notably The Quiet War and Half a Crown), but this is my list of the top five of books I read in 2008 which were actually published in 2008.

1. The Gone-Away World, Nick Harkaway
It’s not the most polished novel I read this year, or the most tightly plotted, but it was the most exuberant, enthralling, joyous novel I read this year. Niall said the “meandering, tangential narrative is apparently almost Stephensonian in its excess”, and I loved nearly every wandering digression it takes. Some chapters are more engrossing than others, and the ending feels a little anti-climatic, but the main reason why this and not Anathem is sitting atop my list is that unlike Jonathan’s experience, it pulled me in emotionally and I didn’t realise it until one twisty chapter two-thirds of the way through.

2. Anathem, Neal Stephenson
I covered it in more detail here, but I liked the way that Stephenson has taken his love of meandering digression and found a way to work it into a science fiction plot. Much like Cryptonomicon the female characters are not much cop (although the unreliable narrator can be blamed for some of that), and the first hundred pages are a hard slog, but once it all clicks into place it is magical.

3. The Steel Remains, Richard Morgan
Richard Morgan takes his love for writing (and subverting) extremely manly novels into the fantasy genre, and it’s not surprising that what we get is a brutal, bloody, swear-filled, angry novel with lots of fucking. when I read I hadn’t read any Moorcock, and now I’ve read a little Elric I can see the debt it owes, but it feels like a modern take on the idea. The three characters are a little unbalnaced, and I would have liked to see more of Archeth, but I enjoyed it a hell of a lot, especially the take on homosexuality.

4. Song of Time, Ian R MacLeod
It doesn’t have the exuberance of the previous three books, nor is it as filled with wonderful ideas, but Song of Time has its own charm. The alternating narrative, between an old woman looking back on her life and the experiences she had, is elegantly written, and reminded me of McAuley’s Fairyland in the descriptions of a near-future Europe in turmoil. I was impressed with the ending, which manages to pull off something which would in less capable hands feel like an unsatisfying revelation.

5. Matter, Iain M Banks
I’ll be honest – I read this book very early in the year, and I can’t remember so much of the detail. But I remember thinking it was a fine return to the Culture, and as you may have guessed from my top three books of the year I am a sucker for anything which has enthusiasm and humour and great big SF ideas, and Matter has all three. I’m pretty sure that you could have cut 200 pages or so without problem, but I enjoyed reading them anyway.

Miscellany

I’ve posted my additional thoughts about “Divining Light“; thanks to everyone else who read the story and commented. Hopefully discussion will continue …

What’s interesting to me about Clute’s review of Half a Crown, and the reason it has made sure what was already pretty likely beforehand, that I will read the Small Change trilogy, is that it seems to me to contain or imply an interesting set of ideas about what dystopian fiction is and does, and how it works. For starters, there’s the implied question of whether you can write a dystopia with a happy, or even relatively happy, ending. A friend of mine observed recently (in a separate discussion) that there’s a reason most dystopias end with a boot stamping on the face of humanity, forever; it’s because dystopias are almost always intended to warn in some way, and if they end with a boot stamping on the face of humanity, for a while, the force of that warning inevitably gets dissipated in some way. Is that the case? How might a story get around it? What might be gained that might compensate for that lack of force, if it does occur? There are also the arguments Clute advances about formula and technique. It’s Clute’s argument (as I read it) that, however effective the narrow perspective is in the first two books, by the time you get to the third book it starts to look like avoidance. This seems plausible; it also seems like something that might vary from reader to reader. (Indeed, based on the fact that Clute’s is the only reaction to Small Change even remotely this negative, it seems that it certainly dose vary from reader to reader.) Why? Similarly, Clute argues that Small Change’s adherence to a formal structure makes its ending — however historically grounded it may be — unconvincing as fiction because it makes the fall of a fascist government look like “a plot twist”; in other words, makes it look in some sense unearned, or trivial, which retroactively diminishes the achievement of the trilogy. This may just be a potential pitfall of fiction that wishes to adhere to a formula, even in homage; or it may be something that particularly afflicts dystopian fiction. I find it more interesting to think about, at any rate, than Benjamin Kunkel’s article about dystopianism. (See also.)

I’m still rather enjoying Isvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr’s The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction. I mentioned the “novum” chapter in this post; the book as a whole is built around discussion of a number of “attractors” that Csicsery-Ronay Jr has identified as characteristic elements of sf, and contains a version of the argument that we are living in inherently science-fictional times that’s a bit more grounded than most I’ve read. Had I been a bit more patient, however, I could have used more of the book with reference to my discussion of Bernadine Evaristo’s Blonde Roots, namely some of the comments made in the discussion on “Future History”. Csicsery-Ronay Jr (yes, I have to check myself every single time I write that name, why do you ask?) is particularly attached to sf as a venue for various kinds of play; so although he identifies several kinds of future history common to sf, including utopian/revolutionary (change brought about by conscious action on the part of humanity) and evolutionary (change brought about as a result of unconscious, adaptive forces), his clear favourite is what he terms “dispersive” histories, in which change is essentially random, or (and this is what made it seem relevant to Blonde Roots) somehow walled off from the real we know.

It is sometimes said that any prophesied future that does not come to pass becomes a divergent reality. […] The more of these a public is exposed to, the less naive they become about projections, and the more comfortable with alternate histories that lack causal connections with the familiar present. Quantity turns to quality: so many predictions have been made, so many fictive prophecies have become uchronias and “fantastic philosophy”, that they rival the number of sincere predictions. Reading sf now incorporates the discounting process of already viewing it as an alternative timeline or retrofuture.
[…]
By disrupting the temporal logic of continuity with the present, alternative histories appear to renounce the ethical seriousness of the revolutionary and evolutionary paradigms. If there is no connection, how can there be responsibility? On the surface, such dispersed worlds lack even the minimal gravity of other kinds of uture history. It makes sense to view this scattering as an example of the flattening of historical consciousness that Jameson considers a defining quality of postmodernism. The sense of the continuity of unidirectional time lived toward death and succeeding generations, which links the experience of individual life with collective history, is replaced by an infinite array. […] The abstract dispersal of realities frees them not only from the burden of an inexorable past, but from the resistance of nature and embodiment altogether. (97-8)

That last sentence, in particular, seems a good way of summing up what I think Evaristo was aiming for — freedom from the burden of an inexorable past — without losing the ability to comment on that past, and on our present.

I’m not happy about this change to the David Gemmell Legend Award rules [pdf]:

After receiving lots of feedback from fans, readers and industry alike, we at the
DGLA have – after much deliberation – come to the decision to make the David
Gemmell Legend Award completely publicly voted.

This means that once the Longlist closes, the top 5 novels will be put forward to the
Shortlist Poll and YOU will be able to have the final say about who should win, by
voting once more on the shortlist! Readers and fans will be involved at every step to
produce our winner.

What was interesting about the Award, to me, was precisely that the final stage was juried; I was looking forward to seeing how the judges evaluated the award’s criteria. While popular vote awards certainly have their place, I can’t muster the enthusiasm for another one right now.

An Experiment in Comparative Interpretation

Earlier this week, I said positive things about Ted Kosmatka’s story “Divining Light“, in particular praising the ending. However, in the wake of that post I’ve been exchanging emails with a couple of other people, and it turns out we all have a different interpretation of the ending; in particular, what the ending means for the narrator of the story, and for his co-worker.

I’m going away for a couple of days, and won’t be back online until Sunday evening, so I thought I might invite you all to do some homework: go and read the story, and then post a comment here about what you think happens at the end. (And about any other aspects of the story that grab your interest.) When I get back, I’ll post what I think it means, and why (even if nobody else has done so).

Another Reading List

Following on from Jonathan Strahan’s year’s best, here’s Rich Horton’s:

Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2009

Elizabeth Bear, “Shoggoths in Bloom” (Asimov’s, March)
Daryl Gregory, “Glass” (MIT Technology Review, November/December)
Ted Kosmatka, “The Art of Alchemy” (F&SF, June)
Margo Lanagan, “The Fifth Star in the Southern Cross” (Dreaming Again)
Robert Reed, “Character Flu” (F&SF, June)
Rivka Galchen, “The Region of Unlikeness” (The New Yorker, March 17)
James Alan Gardner, “The Ray-Gun: A Love Story” (Asimov’s, February)
Will McIntosh, “The Fantasy Jumper” (Black Static, February)
James L. Cambias, “Balancing Accounts” (F&SF, February)
Charlie Anders, “Suicide Drive” (Helix #7, January)
Peter Watts, “The Eyes of God” (The Solaris Book of New SF, Volume 2)
Beth Bernobich, “The Golden Octopus” (Postscripts, Summer)
Jeff VanderMeer, “Fixing Hanover” (Extraordinary Engines)
Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, “Boojum” (Fast Ships, Black Sails)
Paul Cornell, “Catherine Drewe” (Fast Forward 2)
Mary Robinette Kowal, “Evil Robot Monkey” (The Solaris Book of New SF, Volume 2)
Garth Nix, “Infestation” (The Starry Rift)
Ian McDonald, “The Tear” (Galactic Empires)

Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2009

Kij Johnson, “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss” (Asimov’s, July)
Naomi Novik, “Araminta, or, The Wreck of the Amphidrake” (Fast Ships, Black Sails)
Eugene Mirabelli, “Falling Angel” (F&SF, December)
Meghan McCarron, “The Magician’s House” (Strange Horizons, July 14-21)
Karen Heuler, “The Difficulties of Evolution” (Weird Tales, July/August)
Jay Lake, “A Water Matter” (Tor.com)
Liz Williams, “Spiderhorse” (Realms of Fantasy, August)
Alex Jeffers, “Firooz and His Brother” (F&SF, May)
Ann Leckie, “The God of Au” (Helix #8, Spring)
James Maxey, “Silent as Dust” (Intergalactic Medicine Show #7, January)
Erik Amundsen, “Blue Vervain Murder Ballad #2: Jack of Diamonds” (Not One of Us, October)
Delia Sherman, “Gift from a Spring” (Realms of Fantasy, April)
Christopher Golden, “The Hiss of Escaping Air” (PS Publishing)
Peter S. Beagle, “King Pelles the Sure” (Strange Roads)
Alice Sola Kim, “We Love Deena” (Strange Horizons, February 11)
Jeffrey Ford, “Daltharee” (The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy)
Patrick Rothfuss, “The Road to Levinshir” (Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy)
Holly Phillips, “The Small Door” (Fantasy, May)
Richard Bowes, “If Angels Fight” (F&SF, February

Let’s see if I can get my sums right this time: 18 stories in the sf book, 44% of which come from genre magazines; 61% of contributors are male, and there are three overlaps with Strahan (Bear, Kosmatka, VanderMeer). 19 stories in the fantasy book, 74% of which come from genre magazines; 53% of contributors are male, and there are four overlaps with Strahan (Bowes, Johnson, McCarron, Phillips). In terms of first publication sources, F&SF currently leads the pack, accounting for 10 different stories across the three books; Asimov’s is the next nearest with 4, while Realms of Fantasy and Fast Ships, Black Sails account for three each. I have to say that, “The Tear” and Rivka Galchen’s story notwithstanding, of these two books on balance the Fantasy volume looks more interesting to me.

Lessing and Reviews

The new issue of Vector should be dropping through letterboxes right about now. It looks like this:

And contains the following:

Torque Control — editorial
Letters — from Nic Clarke, Lindsay Jackson and James Bacon
The BSFA Awards — call for nominations by Donna Scott
Doris Lessing and SF — by Adam Roberts
… And The Law Won — by Jonathan McCalmont
On the ‘Art’ of Reviewing — by Frank Ludlow
First Impressions — reviews, edited by Kari Sperring
Particles — books received, compiled by Kari Sperring
Transmission Interrupted: Midnight at the Lost and Found — a TV column by Saxon Bullock
Foundation’s Favourites: Vector 1 — by Andy Sawyer
Resonances — by Stephen Baxter
The New X: Photocopying the Navel of Augustus Caesar — by Graham Sleight

There’s already been a bit of discussion about the issue on the BSFA forum; as ever, all feedback is welcome. I’d particularly like to be able to continue running a print letters column, so send your comments to the usual address.

Although this issue was a bit (cough) delayed, V258 is following close behind, and with any luck should go to the printers next week. And if you’re really lucky, I’ll get around to putting some articles up on the website this weekend.

A Reading List

Jonathan Strahan’s Best SF and Fantasy of the Year, vol 3 (via, annotated for venue of first publication and online availability):

Exhalation – Ted Chiang (Eclipse 2)
Shoggoths in Bloom – Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s, March; online)
Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel – Peter S. Beagle (Strange Roads)
Fixing Hanover – Jeff VanderMeer (Extraordinary Engines)
The Gambler – Paolo Bacigalupi (Fast Forward 2; online)
The Dust Assassin – Ian McDonald (The Starry Rift)
Virgin – Holly Black (Magic in the Mirrorstone)
Pride and Prometheus – John Kessel (F&SF, Jan; online in this collection)
The Thought War – Paul McAuley (Postscripts 15)
Beyond the Sea Gates of the Scholar Pirates of Sarskoe – Garth Nix (Fast Ships, Black Sails)
The Small Door – Holly Phillips (Fantasy Magazine, July; online)
Turing’s Apples – Stephen Baxter (Eclipse 2)
The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates – Stephen King (F&SF Oct-Nov)
Five Thrillers – Robert Reed (F&SF, April)
The Magician’s House – Meghan McCarron (Strange Horizons, July; online)
Goblin Music – Joan Aiken (The Serial Garden)
Machine Maid – Margo Lanagan (Extraordinary Engines)
The Art of Alchemy – Ted Kosmatka (F&SF, June)
26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss – Kij Johnson (Asimov’s, July 2008; online)
Marrying the Sun – Rachel Swirsky (Fantasy Magazine, June; online)
Crystal Nights – Greg Egan (Interzone 215)
His Master’s Voice – Hannu Rajaniemi (Interzone 218)
Special Economics – Maureen McHugh (The Del Rey Book of SFF)
Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment – M Rickert (F&SF Oct-Nov)
From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled… – Michael Swanwick (Asimov’s, Feb)
If Angels Fight – Rick Bowes (F&SF, Feb)
The Doom of Love in Small Spaces – Ken Scholes (Realms of Fantasy, April)
Pretty Monsters – Kelly Link (Pretty Monsters)

So let’s see: that’s 29 28 stories, of which 14 (50%) are from non-magazine sources. Is that the highest proportion yet for a year’s best? Of those that are from magazines, the clear leader is F&SF with 6 — twice as many stories as its nearest rival, Asimov’s, and a fifth of the entire book. Three stories were first published online, and an additional four are already available online. Given that, of the seven stories on this list I’ve read so far, the only one I question the inclusion of is the King (I’m not as bowled over by “His Master’s Voice” as some, but it’s certainly ambitious), and three are already on my planned Hugo ballot, I will be tracking down as many of the others as I can before nomination time rolls around. Two further notes: 10 11 stories are by women, or 34%, about the same as 39%, slightly up from the two other volumes in this series; and I could be wrong, but I don’t think any of these stories are novellas. Is that the case? And if so, has it just been a weak year for novellas? [I am wrong; “Five Thrillers” and “Pretty Monsters” are novellas.]