Customer Reviews

The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2009 Edition

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Many good and very good science fiction and fantasy stories find publication each year, and in much larger numbers than would fit in a single 500-page volume. Fantastic, life-changing, game-changing pieces of short fiction are quite a bit rarer, however, so it would be overly optimistic to expect even one in a collection like Rich Horton's "The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2009". Although I wasn't blown away by any of the 37 stories in this volume, most of them impressed me with their wit, inventiveness, and/or craftsmanship ... and none left me wondering "how in the world did this get in here?"

With respect to wit, the most impressive pieces were two fantasy stories about young women entering adulthood: "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" [1,3] by Kij Johnson, and "The Magician's House" [1] by Meghan McCarron. The former is an unconventionally structured story about an aimless young woman who somehow falls into running a traveling carnival magic show with 26 monkey assistants, while the latter concerns the bizarre apprenticeship rites a magician inflicts on a teenager who yearns to learn the craft.

The most finely crafted story was unquestionably Ian McDonald's far-future novella "The Tear" [2,3]. In a world where the transition to adulthood means developing multiple personalities, the rare "Lonely" people with single personalities are shunned. McDonald follows the emerging rivalry between two boyhood friends, one of them Lonely, against an ominous backdrop of social upheaval. I haven't always been thrilled with McDonald's writing, but it's hard not to marvel at the talent, skill, and depth his recent work displays.

One of the notable quirks of this collection was an apparent affinity for very short, single-minded "issue" or "idea" stories, like "Glass" by Daryl Gregory, about what happens when a drug that activates conscience in psychopaths works too well, or "The Eyes of God" by Peter Watts, about the consequences of a surveillance technology that recognizes and tags people with socially undesirable psychological tendencies. While I wouldn't say that I liked Karen Heuler's "The Difficulties of Evolution," about a suburban woman distressed by the prospect of her child's permanent transformation (NOT evolution) into an ordinary animal, like a turtle or a dog, I did find it to be the most powerful of this bunch.

Of the remaining stories, the ones I found most enjoyable included: "Araminta, or, the Wreck of the Amphidrake," about a young woman on a steampunk/fantasy earth who magically disguises herself as a man in order to survive her kidnapping by pirates; "The Art of Alchemy" by Ted Kosmatka [1], a Gibson-esque near-future story about memory metals, fullerene tubes, workplace romance, and corporate greed; "A Water Matter" by Jay Lake, a vivid and poignant fantasy concerning a group of catlike people negotiating a moment of crisis; and "The Road to Levinshir" by Patrick Rothfuss, in which a clever troubadour attempts to redeem the name of his gypsy-like tribe by bringing bandits to justice.

One note on the book's structure: Horton wrote a brief introduction for the volume that attempts (not very effectively) to define the differences between fantasy and science fiction, and discusses (in a limited fashion) how the selected stories fall into these genres and some of their sub-genres. Author biographies, which appear to be written by the authors or their agents and not by Horton, appear in the back of the book, and there are no story-by-story introductions in the style of, say, Gardner Dozois' annual collections. This structure is perfectly fine, and I appreciated the introductory essay despite its shortcomings -- it is a lot more accessible to the general reader than the dense publishing industry reports with which Dozois begins his collections.

Readers who have already read other collections of sci-fi and fantasy from 2008 may be concerned about possible duplications. This collection includes five stories that also appear in Gardner Dozois' The Year's Best Science Fiction, 26th Annual Collection", seven of those appearing in Jonathan Strahan's "Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 3", three of those included in David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer's "Year's Best SF 14", and five of those selected for Mary Robinette Kowal's "The Hugo Award Showcase: 2010 Volume". (Only one of the pieces won a Hugo -- "Shoggoths in Bloom" by Elizabeth Bear, for best novelette, while "26 Monkeys", for what it's worth, won a 2008 World Fantasy Award.)

The bottom line is that this is a worthwhile collection of good and very good stories that may not leave you thoroughly dazzled but should still prove both enjoyable and thought-provoking. The overlap between this and other collections for the year is limited enough to make the books good complements for each other. Readers who strongly prefer sci-fi over fantasy will probably be happier with the Dozois collection or the Hartwell and Cramer volume, however.

---

[1] Also appears in Jonathan Strahan's "Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, 3rd Annual Collection"

[2] Also appears in Gardner Dozois' The Year's Best Science Fiction, 26th Annual Collection"

[3] Also appears in Mary Robinette Kowal's "The Hugo Award Showcase: 2010 Volume"