Favourites of 2010

This is the Great Post of Lists! Yes, my lists of my favourite reads, films, and music of 2010! Ordered and ranked, no less!

To the listmaking, then . . . .

Favourite Novels/Books Read in 2010 (Out of 4 Stars)
1. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (David Mitchell, 2010)  *****
2. Blue Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson, 1996)  ****

3. Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005)  ****

4. Redemption Ark (Alastair Reynolds, 2002)  ****

5. Autumn Rain Trilogy (David J. Williams): The Mirrored Heavens (2008), The Burning Skies (2009), The Machinery of Light (2010)  *** 1/2

6. Dreaming in Books: The Making of the Bibliographic Imagination in the Romantic Age (Andrew Piper, 2009)  *** 1/2

7. The Windup Girl (Paolo Bacigalupi, 2009)  *** 1/2

8. Absolution Gap (Alastair Reynolds, 2003)  *** 1/2

9. The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins, 2008)  *** 1/2

10. The City & The City (China Miéville, 2009)  *** 1/2

Honourable Mention: I Am Legend (Richard Matheson, 1954).

Notable Disappointments: Boneshaker (Cherie Priest, 2009); The Quiet War (Paul McAuley, 2009); Wordsworth Translated (John Williams, 2009).

Currently In Progress (i.e., Could Get Finished By the End of the Year and So Might Affect the Above Top 10): Under Heaven (Guy Gavriel Kay, 2010).

Favourite Short Fiction Read in 2010 (Out of 4 Stars)
1. Charles Oberndorf, "Another Life" (2009)  ****
2. Peter Watts, "The Island" (2009)  ****

3. Stephen Baxter, "The Ice Line" (2010)  ****

4. Sarah Genge, "Malick Pan" (2010)  ****

5. Allen M. Steele, "The Jekyll Island Horror" (2010)  ****

6. Geoff Ryman, "Blocked" (2009)  ****

7. John C. Wright, "The Far End of History" (2009)  *** 1/2

8. Mary Robinette Kowal, "The Consciousness Problem" (2009)  *** 1/2

9. Chris Roberson, "Wonder House" (2010)  *** 1/2

10. Carol Emshwiller, "The Wilds" (2010)  *** 1/2

Honourable Mentions: Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, "Boojum" (2008); Stephen Popkes, "Jackie's-Boy" (2010); Michael Swanwick, "Slow Life" (2003); Rachel Swirsky, "Eros, Philia, Agape" (2009); Peter Watts, "The Things" (2010).

Notable Disappointments: Neal Asher, "Shell Game" (2009); Peter M. Ball, "On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the War-Machines of the Merfolk" (2009); Damien Broderick, "Dead Air" (2010); Marissa K. Lingen, "The Calculus Plague" (2009).

Read more . . .

The New Space Opera 2

Editors Gardner Dozois and Jonathan continue their efforts to encapsulate and forward the state of SF space opera today with The New Space Opera 2 (EOS, 2009). Their 2007 collection The New Space Opera provided a very strong selection of stories from top SF authors such as Dan Simmons, Ian McDonald, and Alastair Reynolds. The New Space Opera felt fresh and at times exhilarating, with even the substandard stories tapping into the sense-of-wonder and the vastness of scale (in ideas, actions, settings) at the heart of the subgenre. In the introduction to The New Space Opera 2, Dozois and Strahan observe, "The true heart of science fiction has always been the space-opera story" -- a form they believe is "where much of the cutting-edge work in today's genre is being done" (1). Except for a couple of stories, however, The New Space Opera 2 overall falls short of the fresh, "cutting-edge" feel of the first collection, the sense-of-wonder strangely a bit flat and muted.

        In fact, many of the pieces don't push far in terms of inventiveness and scope, for ideas and aesthetically. Some pieces proved oddly boring for me, such that the collection as a whole was underwhelming. I am not alone in this response: Rich Horton, for The SF Site, writes, "Many of the stories are, truth be told, a bit routine, or a bit too arch in their attitude towards the genre"; Richard Larson, for Strange Horizons, suggests that several stories "suffer from being too long" and so some "monotony," which led him to "wishing I had more of a visceral reaction to what I had just put myself through." This sense of the "routine" and of "monotony" that Horton and Larson identify describe fairly well my experience of the bulk of the collection. I rarely reacted viscerally to many of the stories, whether owing to the ideas or to the writing, or both. Instead, I found myself puzzled at the relative poverty of imaginative reach and aesthetic daring. That said, as a whole the collection supplies more competent and good stories than decent or outright poor stories, and so I rate it at 3 out of 4 stars.

        Here are the stories and my ratings of them (out of four stars), with the five best stories in bold:

1. Robert Charles Wilson, "Utriusque Cosmi"  ** 1/2

2. Peter Watts, "The Island"  ****

3. John Kessel, "Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance"  ** 1/2

4. Cory Doctorow, "To Go Boldly"  ***

5. John Barnes, "The Lost Princess Man"  ** 1/2

6. Kristine Kathryn Rusch, "Defect"  ** 1/2

7. Jay Lake, "To Raise a Mutiny Betwixt Yourselves"  **

8. Neal Asher, "Shell Game"  **

9. Garth Nix, "Punctuality"  ** 1/2

10. Sean Williams, "Inevitable"  ***

11. Bruce Sterling, "Join the Navy and See the Worlds"  ***

12. Bill Willingham, "Fearless Space Pirates of the Outer Rings"  **

13. John Meaney, "From the Heart"  ***

14. Elizabeth Moon, "Chameleons"  ***

15. Tad Williams, "The Tenth Muse"  ***

16. Justina Robson, "Cracklegrackle"  ***

17. John Scalzi, "The Tale of the Wicked"  ***

18. Mike Resnick, "Catastrophe Baker and a Canticle for Leibowitz"  **

19. John C. Wright, "The Far End of History"  *** 1/2

Read more . . .

Asimov's Science Fiction (Apr./May 2010)

[WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS]

This double issue is overall a rather strong one, offering a variety of themes/subjects and styles, as well as a few real surprises. I count one truly excellent story and three extremely good stories, with the rest being average to quite decent. With nine stories, I won't comment extensively on all of them -- just the ones for which I have something to say. Ratings are out of four stars.

1. Gregory Norman Bossert, "The Union of Soil and Sky" (pg. 10-39)  ** 1/2
This one is an "alien archaeology" story, a subgenre that I tend to like as the archaeologist and/or archaeological dig on an alien planet affords an effective frame through which to present alien cultures and histories. Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "The Spires of Denon" from the April/May 2009 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction and Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space are good examples of this subgenre for me. Here, Bossert creates an intriguing world in Aulis and alien people in the Aulans, who are represented by Henry (on the dig team) and who communicate through metaphor and simile by a series of hand and finger gestures. The revelation of what Winnifred and her team actually discover deep underground proves intriguing, as Bossert has ancient Aulan history literally come alive in a definitely alien way.
        Yet I found myself unsurprised, in the end, for as a whole the narrative feels too familiar and predictable, particularly in the plotting. Also, the writing is noticeably awkward in places, with some odd grammar hiccups at times. For example, "'[...] Like biology. And physics; the varitropes move, and that means a source of energy. [...]'" (15): this is inattentive proofreading and unwieldy grammar, especially the mixing of the sentence fragment "And physics" with the semicolon and then a complete sentence following, this entire clause already coming after a sentence fragment (though an appropriate one in the context of the dialogue). Such moments are distracting and reduce the quality of the story.

2. Molly Gloss, "Unforeseen" (pg. 40-48)  *** 1/2
A wickedly biting satire of the insurance/benefits industry, narrated by Forbes Kipfer, a claims investigator for Remediable Death Insurance -- in a future when people can be revivified/restored after dying, but only if the insurance claim is not denied. Gloss metes out the details of this future carefully, using the case of the recent death of Madison Truesdale's mother as the window into Kipfer's job and so the politics and economics that govern remediable death claims.
        Kipfer's voice and perspective are distinct and consistent throughout: edgy, jaded, expert, intelligent, exhausted, punchy. He equally well rants cuttingly about the foolishness of people in making their claims ("You have to wonder what in hell people are thinking when they file a claim for their eighty-nine year old grandpa with a history of emphysema or congestive heart failure ..." [41]), and reaches moments of existentialist insight ("What you're left with is people minding their own business and the sky falls on their head" [43]). He can also adjust his preconceptions if necessary, as Madison Truesdale consistently does not fit into what he expects of her situation, in that her mother's death truly was an accident.
        What Goss communicates most engagingly through Kipfer is a sort of postmodern ennui and cynicism, a coldness formed by too much experience of a cynical word but with faint hints of a warmth that might make it to the surface if perhaps not for the industry in which Kipfer works. Kipfer appears to be developing not quite a death wish, but certainly an apathy about death: "[...] I began to think of taking up smoking. Smoking plus living in Thousand Oaks under that cloud of dirty air might take some randomness out of the equation. Anyway, that's what I was thinking" (48). In the end, then, this story is fundamentally one of horror. It affords no happy ending or clear resolution, and the consequences of the literal control over life (or, resurrection) by insurance companies take to a logical extreme the situation we see today, particularly with medical insurance in the US.

Read more . . .

Asimov's Science Fiction (Mar. 2010)

[WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS]

Continuing to play catch-up with my reading of Asimov's Science Fiction for 2010, I've now finished with the March issue. This issue proved disappointing in its overall quality, lacking a true standout like the January and February issues, but also lacking a group of at least a few stories that I would consider good to very good. Still, there are two strong pieces and one real gem. Ratings are out of four stars.

1. William Preston, "Helping Them Take the Old Man Down" (pg. 12-33)  ** 1/2
Preston offers a kind of alternate history vision of a pre- and post-9/11 world in which the boundaries of morality have shifted, needing someone such as the old man and his team to keep the world in balance (known as "'the Work'" [12]), mostly covertly. The tone established by Preston alludes to the feel of espionage and secret ops, with elusive identities and classified missions and the sense of the narrator -- Lanagan, anthropology professor and former member of the old man's team -- always looking over his shoulder, never quite free of the suspicion and distrust of others developed while an agent. Before 9/11, the old man took on various missions throughout the world to deal with tyrannies and injustices, and this aspect of Preston's setting is the strongest feature of the story, I think: a mostly "hidden" (18) group, working off the grid, to hold the bad guys at bay "when official action had proven useless or unavailable" (17). Moreover, this aspect of the setting creates the context for the shift of morality after 9/11 occurs, as the National Security Agency desires to find the old man, who went quiet just before the attack on the towers and has remained so. Lanagan gets put in the difficult position of leading the NSA to the old man, gradually feeding on the tenuous reasoning served by his NSA contact: why did the old man let 9/11 happen?
        I see in this sort of question perhaps something of the trauma of 9/11 that remains unresolved, with Preston exploring the need to find a cause on different levels (individual, national, and international), the need to make sense of 9/11 and why the good guys failed. What Preston does well in presenting this question is to suggest the tensions today between what we can and cannot believe about the historical record (of 9/11, certainly): "Much of what the least credulous believed to be untrue about the old man's adventures was, instead, true. . . . And so a quotidian substructure of lies supported an utterly authentic architecture of the fantastic" (17). (I like the hint of genre self-reflexivity here: i.e., how SF&F, as with all fiction, gives readers "lies," yet also asks, if not demands, that the reader approach the "fantastic" as being "authentic," certainly within the world of a specific story.) Yet placing the burden for 9/11 on the old man's shoulders ultimately seems too easy, and the embedded critique of the manipulation of the world that is "seen and unseen" (34), which confuses everyone about the distinctions between heroes and villains, feels too obvious in the end.

Read more . . .

Year's Best SF 15

[WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS]

I just finished reading through Year's Best SF 15, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer (EOS, 2010) and wanted to record my thoughts on the volume, particularly regarding what nuggets about SF short story writing I can glean from it. I'll offer some general comments on the volume overall, and then I'll highlight a few individual stories and discuss what I think makes them especially successful.

        (For my brief post on Year's Best SF 14, see here. I gave that volume as a whole 3 out of 4 stars.)

        First, some details about the volume. Year's Best SF 15 contains twenty-four stories, with nine of those stories written by women (around 38%). Authors included range from veterans such as Bruce Sterling and Nancy Kress, to more recent but established names such as Alastair Reynolds and Peter Watts, to newer/up-and-coming writers such as Mary Robinette Kowal. Stories were published in 2009, and Hartwell and Cramer selected works from a variety of venues/markets: a collection published in India; magazines such as Asimov's Science Fiction, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, and Interzone; anthologies of original stories such as Other Earths (Nick Gevers, ed.), The New Space Opera 2 (Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, eds.), and When It Changed (Geoff Ryman, ed.); online markets such as Strange Horizons. Asimov's wins the race with five stories, while a few venues are tied at three stories (e.g., Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction 3). Only one online market was used for the volume, Strange Horizons, though the editors selected two stories from it. Nearly all subgenres of SF are represented: alternate history, space opera, alien encounters, hard SF, near future SF, parallel/enfolded timelines, artificial intelligence, multicultural/postcolonial, time travel, and so forth. Thus, a good range of authors and subgenres, with perhaps too few women writers and with a decidedly heavy emphasis on print markets.

        Here are the stories and my ratings of them (out of four stars), with the five best stories in bold:

1. Vandana Singh, "Infinities"  ***

2. Robert Charles Wilson, "This Peaceable Land; or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beacher Stowe" *** 1/2

3. Yoon Ha Lee, "The Unstrung Zither"  *** 1/2

4. Bruce Sterling, "Black Swan"  *** 1/2

5. Nancy Kress, "Exegesis"  *** 1/2

6. Ian Creasey, "Erosion"  ** 1/2

7. Gwyneth Jones, "Collision"  ***

8. Gene Wolfe, "Donovan Sent Us"  ***

9. Marissa K. Lingen, "The Calculus Plague"  * 1/2

10. Peter Watts, "The Island"  ****

11. Paul Cornell, "One of Our Bastards Is Missing"  ** 1/2

12. Sarah L. Edwards, "Lady of the White-Spired City"  ***

13. Brian Stableford, "The Highway Code"  ***

14. Peter M. Ball, "On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the War-Machines of the Merfolk"  **

15. Alastair Reynolds, "The Fixation"  ***

16. Brenda Cooper, "In Their Garden"  ***

17. Geoff Ryman, "Blocked"  ****

18. Michael Cassutt, "The Last Apostle"  ***

19. Charles Oberndorf, "Another Life"  ****

20. Mary Robinette Kowal, "The Consciousness Problem"  *** 1/2

21. Stephen Baxter, "Tempest 43"  ***

22. Genevieve Valentine, "Bespoke"  ** 1/2

23. Eric James Stone, "Attitude Adjustment"  ***

24. Chris Roberson, "Edison's Frankenstein"  ***

Read more . . .

Asimov's Science Fiction (Feb. 2010)

[WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS]

Time to get back on track with my reading and study of Asimov's Science Fiction for 2010. This will be a single entry, with shorter comments on the individual stories than previously. Ratings are out of four stars.

1. Caroline M. Yoachim, "Stone Wall Truth" (pg. 10-22)  ***
The most attractive aspect of this story, for me, is the setting. In a world of tribal warfare, the king can sentence people to the wall, a strange artifact of the past with the seemingly magical power to expose the true colours of a person's soul, particularly the blackness of sin. Njeri, the main character, is the surgeon who cuts such people open on the wall, sews them back together, and returns them to life. This is a world in which morality is made manifest: the wall is the place of judgement; the sewing permanently marks individuals, making them outcasts. Yet, as Njeri discovers, the wall's function has changed drastically from its original purpose, when the Ancients actually used it for "love," exposing "their shadows" to each other and taking "knowledge from the wall" (21). Yoachim closes the story effectively, at the point of Njeri awakening (literally and figuratively) in order to change her society, her world. Overall, a good, well focussed, and engaging story: a kind of allegory about the marring of original intentions, about moral conflict and readjustment; a dextrous slipping from the impression of fantasy to the realisation of SF.

2. Damien Broderick, "Dead Air" (pg. 24-33)  * 1/2
An unsuccessful piece on many levels, even after two careful readings. I see how the story works as a dystopian vision of our contemporary world -- racism, television, a consumerist culture that forgets its past for the immediacy of now, environmental breakdown, distrust of scientific authority, and so forth. I see that Broderick provides a basically unlikeable main character and focalizer, Jive Bolen, to express the frantic and disintegrating nature of this nearish future, and to hone in on the disbeliever who eventually has his convictions challenged. I understand these things; I am aware of the satirical tone. What proves unsuccessful is the execution. Jive is distinctly unlikeable, offering little reason for identification or sympathy, and little context is provided for why he is so unseemly as a person. Where I get stuck, however, is the prose. Along with the odd new terms that feel odd solely for the sake of being clever ("pape" for newspaper, "truckee," "petacomp," "thays," "waitron," and more), and with the discordant German phrases, the prose is . . . obfuscating, choppy, crusty, deliberately difficult. Moreover, the central conflict for Jive -- whether the dead appearing on television are truly the dead or an elaborate propaganda hoax -- remains effectively unresolved. The editors' introduction calls the story "a decidedly Dickian meditation" (24), but I see the story as more Van Vogtian than Dickian, such as the Van Vogt of "The Weapon Shop," just without a payoff for the crusty and difficult prose.

Read more . . .

Reading Asimov's Science Fiction (Jan. 2010), Part IV

• See Part I.

• See Part II.

• See Part III.

6. Carol Emswhiller, "Wilds" (pg. 76-82) *** 1/2

Read 2 Feb. 2010. This story is a strange one to find in Asimov's: not clearly either SF or fantasy. Yet it is wholly engrossing and superbly executed. I'm going to call it a fantasy of sorts (maybe even a fable), as its unnamed first-person narrator lives out the fantasy of escaping from and leaving behind the everyday world of rental cars, jobs, neighbours, and so forth, by discovering and then surviving in "the wilds" (77). The world rejected by the narrator is our world, now -- not an SF near-future or alternate past, but now. Emshwiller thus constructs a fantasy of the reconnection with nature and the primal and the physical, wholly unmediated by technology or other modern conveniences: a fantasy of awakening to one's deepest and true desires ("But even as I swallow little snakes, I'm singing" [77]), and so to one's essential self, the world be damned ("I look at my reflection and I see exactly who I am" [82]). For the narrator, such rejection and reconnection relies upon "hiding" as his "way of life" (77): finding the highest, most inaccessible place "away from everybody" (76); building a tower of stones to give himself a better view, but making it look like a "natural formation" (77); eventually, he dresses "in mud" and smells of "ferns" (82), invisible to campers and hikers. Even the woman who shows up at his mountain with a Gucci purse filled with $50,000 worth of $100 bills is escaping and hiding. She's running from the law, certainly, having "'just picked ... up'" (81) an unguarded bag containing the money, then buying herself the Gucci purse, dinner at a "'fancy French restaurant'" (81), and a car -- as she says, "'Stuff I've never had before'" (81). She acted in defiance, then, of a world that alienates her (economically, materially), a world to which she was hidden. However, her motives for coming to "the wilds" are not as pure as the narrator's, for she remains tied to the material(ist) desires of the world, wanting to retrieve the bills scattered about the narrator's mountain, instead of, like the narrator, truly confronting her self and becoming "part of the wilds" (79). All of this is told by Emshwiller with a sharply focussed and consistent voice, the narrator's short and constrained sentences feeling decisive and practical, offering only as much communication as is necessary, but everywhere hinting at loss and nostalgia. What sort of world, we might ask, causes a man to cast it off utterly, to the point of real nakedness and drinking water "as an animal would" (82)? What is so alienating about such a world that a man's true self is concealed from him. The narrator does something I suspect many of us have contemplated or fantasised about doing. Yet the cost of his victory suggests caution at the end, for he achieves a wholly solitary life, hidden from campers and hikers,  secretively leaving $100 bills in their shoes and pockets and hats while they sleep, playing "mysterious" (82) songs on his flute at night. I am sympathetic to his desires and choices, even jealous of them. I don't know that I would have the courage to realise them.

Read more . . .

Reading Asimov's Science Fiction (Jan. 2010), Part III

• See Part I.

• See Part II.

4. Chris Roberson, "Wonder House" (pg. 53-69) *** 1/2
Read 31 Jan. 2010. Alternate history SF, (re)imagining the confluence of events and inspirations that created the comic book. I will admit that I thoroughly enjoy this sort of story, which meditates on not just the origins of a form/media (comics) but also treats with playful reverence the origins and concerns of its own genre (SF) -- and does succinctly, never swerving from its tone or its subject, moving the story (and the reader) inexorably to the moment of revelation that is a joy because it is understood, anticipated right at the last second before it arrives. On the planet "Fire Star" (54), Yacov Leiber and Itzhak Blumenfeld have been running "Wonder House Publications" (53) for twenty years, their fortunes rising adn falling (or plateauing) by their ability to publish "terribles" (54) -- i.e., pulp magazines -- that readers desire. Roberson brings us into their publishing house and lives at a moment of crisis and the need for change, as Wonder House's fortunes are in decline, Yacov and Itzhak's editing a bit out of step with readers' current tastes. They brainstorm different ideas for new or renewed stories and series, such as "'war title'" (55) or a "'gun-slinger title'" (55) or a "'character title, like Doctor Buckingham'" (55) or "relaunching Celestial Bureaucracy'" (56), but find various reasons why such titles would not work in the present climate for terribles. In the process, Roberson crafts a history of Fire Star's terribles, which clearly mirrors Earth's history of the the pulps (especially from the Gernsback era of the late 1920s on, I think), bringing that history to a point of transition, for what Wonder House needs is something truly new, truly innovative if it will reclaim its "readership" (57) and marketshare. That something truly new is the simultaneous arrival of SF and comics, as Segal, a young writer doggedly trying to get "regular work writing for terribles" (58), and Kurtzberg, a young artist, bring their "'thing'" (58) to Yacov and Itzhak: a story about a man from the future sent back in time, depicted by Kurtzberg as a "muscular figure wearing a skin-tight costume" (58) . . . and, yes, think Superman, for this man from the future will have "the Hebrew letter Shin" (58) as a log on his chest, which stands for "'Shaddai,'" or "'The Almighty'" (58). Initially sceptical, Itzhak sees the potential in what Segal and Kurtzberg have brought to Wonder House, having the flash of inspiration to put the focus on Kurtzberg's illustrations as the main narrative, with Segal's text used in "'snippets'" (59) on top of the illustrations. "'This could work'" (59), Itzhak says, and the reader agrees, because the reader knows he's right. So, a story about the very moment of the creation of a new form and a new genre of story, and thus a story that is also about Story itself. Roberson's shifting of the origins of SF and comics to another planet and into another cultural register from the default Anglo-American roots of both SF and comics in our history lends his piece another layer of inspiration, surprise. (I particularly appreciate his use of SF to imagine the beginnings of SF . . . and the publication of his story in a magazine that can be seen as the modern-day evolution and inheritor of the pulps, er terribles.)

Read more . . .

Reading Asimov's Science Fiction (Jan. 2010), Part II

• See Part I.

2. Felicity Shoulders, "Conditional Love" (pg. 32-43) ** 1/2

Read 28 Jan. 2010. This is a well-crafted near-future dystopia in which genetic engineering creates enhanced children -- and can go wrong, requiring special medical and social institutions to handle the mistakes, such as the "Gene-Engineered Pediatric In-Patient Center" (32). The main character, Dr. Grace Stellar, has been working for eleven years at GEPIC, treating and dealing with the children dropped off or "dumped" (32) by their parents: such as Minerva, born without arms or legs, but in the process of having her arms grown by a combination of a special gel and operations. Then there is the new kid, John Doe, genetically modified to be "above the mean for cuteness" (33), yet has what amounts to constant short-term memory loss (think Memento): each time he sees someone, he starts all over again with, "'Who are you?'" (33). Shoulders weaves in intriguing aspects of the wider sociocultural consequences of "guppies" (34), as children such as Minerva and John Doe are called by some: i.e., the police detective Bob Kafouri, who is trying to gather enough evidence to bring down not just individual "'opt-docs,'" but the entire "'industry'" (35). The story's setting feels wholly plausible, and unnerving. Also, Grace makes for an effective main character and point-of-view, for we gradually understand that she is reaching (or has already reached) a kind of crossroads, an internal crisis built up after years of treating and caring for discarded, genetically misengineered kids. John Doe, about six years old and named "Danny" by Bob, serves as the catalyst for Grace finally to take drastic action, as she knows the cruelty of his memory loss will make him a difficult case to find the proper care for. The decision Grace makes is revealed expertly by Shoulders, leaving the reader with a mixture of compassion and a bit of horror. Yet I feel about this piece much like I felt about Landis's: I just read the prologue to the real story; I just got the build-up to the truly interesting matter of how Grace deals with her act of resistance and its effects upon Danny (and Minerva). Again, I am asking a writer to give me a different story than what I read, but, again, my sense is of an opportunity missed for a more challenging, provocative, and dynamic story. For instance, Danny and his memory loss defect contains great potential for exploring more of the implications of seeing/not seeing, recognition/not recognizing, in a society that dumps and disowns its failed human experiments: why do parents and doctors and corporations engage in their various blindnesses? what would make them see the moral, ethical, and very material costs of their hubris? would Grace's act of resistance become a flashpoint for wider social change?

Read more . . .

Reading Asimov's Science Fiction (Jan. 2010), Part I

I continue with my project of reading Asimov's Science Fiction to learn what kind of story gets accepted in one of SF&F's top markets. The Dec. 2009 issue was, I thought, fairly decent overall, but lacking at least one story of true excellence/brilliance. I'm intrigued to see what the Jan. 2010 issue holds in store for me.

1. Geoffrey A. Landis, "Marya and the Pirate" (pg. 14-31) ** 1/2
Read 26 Jan. 2010. Something of a space opera, this one, featuring a seemingly vulnerable young woman alone on a spaceship with a valuable cargo and the titular pirate who wants that valuable cargo but who has a healthy sense of compassion and honour. Landis sketches in effectively a setting with an interplanetary economy that has left some (mining) colonies bankrupt, desperate, and engaged in illegal activities such as stealing necessities such as water -- the mission of Domingo Bonaventura, our pirate. Landis also establishes and maintains a steady tension in the relationship between Domingo and his captive, May Hamilton (a.k.a. Marya Hayes): sexual tension, as well as the possibility of the need for violence on Domingo's part ("trust" is something of moving target between Domingo and May). The plotting is sharp, with good momentum, especially in the latter stages of the story as Domingo and May face nearly certain death in a spaceship careening toward Earth's atmosphere with little chance to change course. Also, Landis saves a few surprises and revelations for the end that deepen both characters. However, it's those surprises and new layers to the characters that I feel make for the true story . . . and Marya the character who has the most intriguing choices to make and conflicts to resolve, as well as the background I most want to know about (just how did she end up on a ship by herself with a cargo of valuable water? why would she want to "get in contact with a pirate" [42] later on, besides romance?). I realize that I am asking Landis to write a different story. Yet I feel like there was an opportunity missed here, like I read the prologue to the real story -- although this reaction can also be seen as a testament to the world and characters Landis offers in the story, for I do want more of both.

2. Felicity Shoulders, "Conditional Love" (pg. 32-43)

3. Steve Rasnic Tem, "A Letter from the Emperor" (pg. 44-52)

4. Chris Roberson, "Wonder House" (pg. 53-59)

5. Robert Reed, "The Good Hand" (pg. 60-75)

6. Carol Emshwiller, "Wilds" (pg. 76-82)

7. Allen M. Steele, "The Jekyll Island Horror" (pg. 84-100)

Favourites of 2009

Inspired by SF Signal's recent Mind Meld posts on the "best genre-related books/films/shows consumed in 2009," I thought I might give my Top 10 lists for SF&F novels and short stories read this year (for the first time) -- seeing as most of what I read was originally published before 2009. Then, I'll throw in a list for films.

Favourite SF&F Novels Read in 2009 (Out of 4 Stars)
1. Watchmen (Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, 1986)  *****
2. Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson, 1992)  ****
3. Blindsight (Peter Watts, 2006)  ****
4. Anathem (Neal Stephenson, 2008)  ****
5. Green Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson, 1994)  ****
6. River of Gods (Ian McDonald, 2004)  ****
7. Revelation Space (Alastair Reynolds, 2000)  *** 1/2
8. The Last Unicorn (Peter S. Beagle, 1968)  *** 1/2
9. Chasm City (Alastair Reynolds, 2001)  ***
10. Darwin's Radio (Greg Bear, 1999)  ***

Most Disappointing: Calculating God (Robert J. Sawyer, 2000); Hominids (Robert J. Sawyer, 2003); Consider Phlebas (Iain M. Banks, 1987).

Read more . . .

Reading Asimov's Science Fiction (Dec. 2009), Part V

[Part I; Part II; Part III; Part IV]

7. Mike Resnick, "The Bride of Frankenstein" (pg. 80-87) ***
Read 20 Dec. 2009. I think of this kind of story as a stunt. Not an experiment, but a stunt: like trying to see if you can jump through a burning ring of fire on a motorcycle while, maybe, juggling chainsaws. Mind you, the story is not that absurd, but it's a stunt nonetheless -- one that I enjoyed a great deal, particularly for its cheeky re-imagining of Mary Shelley's characters in a mostly-tidy domestic arrangement, with the creature as a dedicated pacifist who devours tragic romances such as Anna Karenina and Romeo and Juliet. The wife is our narrator, through entries in her journal, and we learn about her daily frustration with the loneliness and strangeness of her domestic life, not to mention her open distaste for Igor, the hunchbacked servant, and her manifest discomfort with the creature. One key is Resnick's revision of the creature: "'I don't kill things. . . . I have been dead, Baroness . . .. It is not an experience I would wish upon anyone or anything else'" (83); "'Therefore, we must be here for a higher purpose -- and what higher purpose can there be than love?'" (86). The other key is the tone of the narrative, which remains steadfastly light, in the sort of knowing, wink-wink, self-conscious lightness that understands the story is playing around with very familiar expectations while ending up basically at the same place as the original, yet shifting the register of the original (i.e., the creature's demand that Victor make him a mate) from tragedy to romance. I like Resnick's inventiveness, perhaps especially because I am so familiar with Mary Shelley's novel: (re)telling the story from the Baroness' point of view nicely resets our impressions of the dynamics between the characters. Yet I can't shake the feeling that the story's a stunt, that it might have done more with a "what if?" revision of that novel's story.

Read more . . .

Reading Asimov's Science Fiction (Dec. 2009), Part IV

[Part I; Part II; Part III]

6. Benjamin Crowell, "A Large Bucket, and Accidental Godlike Mastery of Spacetime" (pg. 66-79) *** 1/2

Read 17 Dec. 2009. Smart, humourous, witty, focussed, sly. Hints of homage to Douglas Adams. A climax and an ending that neatly balance the expected and the slightly ambiguous. This is a fine, fine story, starting with the title and not slowing down until the last word; I wonder if it will appear in some "Best of 2009" collections next year. One thing that Crowell does especially well is maintain what I'll call a consistency of tone, of voice: the writing has energy, confidence, purpose, intelligence, keeping the narration neatly poised between Horatian satire and a kind of honest, wry appraisal of why humanity has all the necessary skills to forge a unity among various alien peoples in spite of itself. Sidibé's simple desire to help a fellow diplomat on board the "GalCiv" spaceship leads her, innocently, to form an intricate network of trading goods and favours, which leads to the importance of the bucket -- not to mention some of the aliens in her "cohort" aboard the spaceship suspecting that she's ultimately after "Complete galactic domination" (74). In the end, this is what she achieves, just not quite in the way we (or she) would expect, for in just going about the daily business of the trade network and wishing for a 15-minute nap between appointments, she cultivates co-operation among all her fellow GalCiv diplomats. "'I was only -- you can't -- I don't really know what I'm doing. They didn't vote for me or anything'" (79): her reward? Why, the godlike mastery of spacetime, of course, bestowed by, well ... perhaps by God himself/herself/itself. In the end, the story is positive, optimistic: humanity as the connector of the Milky Way's races and nations, despite its intentions to the contrary. Sly, indeed.

7. Mike Resnick, "The Bride of Frankenstein"

8. Brian Stableford, "Some Like it Hot"

Reading Asimov's Science Fiction (Dec. 2009), Part III

[Part I; Part II.]

4. Nick Wolven, "Angie's Errand" (pg. 44-54) ***

Read 16 Dec. 2009. A very strong story, from the craft of the words to the strength and complexity of the main character Angie to the plotting and resolution. This is the sort of quality writing I expect to find in a top market such as Asimov's. Wolven presents a distinct voice in the narrator and demonstrates an attentive ear for sound and rhythm: "The sheer waste of it made her stomach knot, but afterward her blonde hair fell in feathery masses that softened the severity of her starved cheeks" (45); "Vestiges of glass in the frames of townhouse windows glistened in the afternoon light like unshed tears" (50). There's crispness in the language, and poetry. Angie encourages the reader's sympathy: the older sister turned single mother to her sisters and brother after the "Crisis" (a deliberately vague recent apocalyptic event); she is at a point of crisis herself, believing she needs a man for help and support; she faces a nearly predictable danger because of this belief, and comes through changed with an inner conviction, "patience," and "confidence" (54) -- a change that develops plausibly, naturally from the story's incidents. Those incidents are measured carefully, generating and never quite fully releasing a tension that infuses everything in the story (characters, setting, events, words). On the cusp of giving in to the cliché consequences of a lone, vulnerable woman in a threatening world of lawless men, Wolven throws a couple of twists at the reader that bring relief but also pathos. This story treats gender roles and stereotypes in a more neutral, thoughtful way than Genge, as people revert to old, primal needs yet also find new sources of strength because of the "Crisis." A few moments of awkwardness set the story back a tad, though ("At the word spoil a sob rose in her throat. She swallowed it hastily, releasing Emily's collar" [44]).

Read more . . .

Reading Asimov's Science Fiction (Dec. 2009), Part II

[Part I.]

2. Sara Genge, "As Women Fight" (pg. 24-33) **

Read 13 Dec. 2009. This story has an inventive idea, and metaphor, at its centre: a somewhat evolved human culture, apparently owing to the influence of long-ago visitors from outer space, is built around the potentially annual exchange of bodies between husbands and wives -- rather, exchange of personalities, or selves -- depending on who wins a "Fight" (actual, ritualized physical combat). Yet the story is too heavy-handed with its biases regarding the implications of this idea/metaphor. People switch bodies in order to inhabit, experience, and understand the minds and desires and proscribed roles of both genders; the women, however, are made to be the more desirable choice (faster, heightened senses, etc.) overall, while the men fit into clichéd behaviours and types, despite the story's admirable attempts to blur and challenge gender constructions/constrictions. The main character, Merthe, is an effective focalizer: ambiguous; confused; at a point of personal and cultural conflict, and so willing to do things differently and accept the consequences; chivalrous, heroic. I wonder, though, if switching bodies and a transferrable consciousness/self/personality aren't becoming overly conventional in SF now? Also, Genge seems to be reaching for the substance of Russ or Tiptree, Jr., but the . . . artistry feels not quite up to the task.

Read more . . .

Reading Asimov's Science Fiction (Dec. 2009)

Certainly, if planning to write stories and get them published, reading and knowing the best markets is a good thing. Hence, I will make an effort to read issues of Asimov's consistently for a few months and try to gauge the kind of story that gets sold to and finds its way into this leading market.

I will give each story a rating (out of four stars) and offer my thoughts on what did and/or did not work.

1. Jeff Carlson, "A Lovely Little Christmas Fire" (pg. 10-22) ** 1/2
Read 12 Dec. 2009. This is a good, serviceable story with a dash of humour and a sprinkle of hardboiled-detective attitude. The point of view of the main character, Julie Beauchain, feels a bit artificial at times: the narrative is too pointed in ensuring that the reader knows she's black and a woman and hot for her man/partner Highsong. Yet the bringing together of current corporate capitalist greed and US defense/military R&D initiatives in genetically engineered and augmented termites allowed to run amok makes for an intriguingly plausible dystopian America. Tightly paced and plotted; entertaining; engaging main character. For me, though, it ultimately lacks a multilayered substance in its meaning(s), and the writing at times is awkward or a little forced (e.g., "If she was worth her weight, she would've jumped Highsong or at least smooched a bit ..." [p. 18]).

2. Sarah Genge, "As Women Fight"

3. John Shirley, "Animus Rights"

4. Nick Wolven, "Angie's Errand"

5. Jim Aikin, "Leaving the Station"

6. Benjamin Crowell, "A Large Bucket, and Accidental Godlike Mastery of Spacetime"

7. Mike Resnick, "The Bride of Frankenstein"

8. Brian Stableford, "Some Like it Hot"

Reading Year's Best SF 14 (Hartwell and Cramer)

I am gradually making my way through Hartwell and Cramer's Year's Best SF 14 (EOS, 2009) and thought I would rate the stories out of four stars as I go, perhaps with some occasional commentary.

1. Carolyn Ives Gilman, "Arkfall" ***

2. Neil Gaiman, "Orange" ** 1/2

3. Kathleen Ann Goonan, "Memory Dog" *** 1/2

4. Paolo Bacigalupi, "Pump Six" ****

5. Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, "Boojum" *** 1/2

6. Ted Chiang, "Exhalation" ****

7. M. Rickert, "Traitor" ** 1/2

8. Cory Doctorow, "The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away" **

9. Vandana Singh, "Oblivion: A Journey" **

10. Robert Reed, "The House Left Empty" ** 1/2

11. Michael Swanwick, "The Scarecrow's Boy" ** 1/2

12. Ted Kosmatka, "N-Words" ***

13. Alastair Reynolds, "Fury" ** 1/2

14. Ann Halam, "Cheats" ** 1/2

15. Jason Sanford, "The Ships Like Clouds, Risen by Their Rain" ** 1/2

16. Mary Rosenblum, "The Egg Man" ***

17. Daryl Gregory, "Glass" ***

18. Jeff VanderMeer, "Fixing Hanover" ***

19. Rudy Rucker, "Message Found in a Gravity Wave" *** 1/2

20. Karl Schroeder and Tobias S. Buckell, "Mitigation" *** 1/2

21. Sue Burke, "Spiders" ***