Грег Иган: The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

I don’t read much nonfiction about the SF field. That said, four books did grab my attention and are recommended. I am more than a little tired of talking about Robert A. Heinlein and didn’t think there was much more to be said on the subject, but Farah Mendlesohn’s outstanding The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein (Unbound) held my attention throughout as the author found new things to say about this greatest of SF writers. Gwyneth Jones’s provocative and engaging book, Joanna Russ (University of Illinois Press), stands as one of the few overviews of this critically important writer and really does belong on your bookshelf. It also stands as an urgent call for more of Russ’s work to be returned to print. Joanna Russ and Mendlesohn’s book on Heinlein are my front-runners for the Hugo, though John Crowley’s Reading Backwards: Essays and Reviews, 2005–2018 and Peter Watts’s wonderful and argumentative Peter Watts Is An Angry Sentient Tumor: Revenge Fantasies and Essays are also outstanding.

The 77th World Science Fiction Convention (aka DublinCon 2019) was held in Dublin, Ireland, August 15–19, and drew an attendance of 4,190, down a little from recent years. The 2019 Hugo Awards winners were: Best Novel, The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal; Best Novella, Artificial Condition by Martha Wells; Best Novelette, “If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again” by Zen Cho; Best Short Story, “A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies” by Alix E. Harrow; the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi; Best Related Work, Archive of Our Own; Best Art Book, The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition by Ursula K. Le Guin and illustrated by Charles Vess; Best Graphic Story, Monstress Volume 3: Haven by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda; Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse ; Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form, The Good Place: Janet(s) ; Best Editor (Short Form), Gardner Dozois ; Best Editor (Long Form), Navah Wolfe; Best Professional Artist, Charles Vess; Best Semiprozine, Uncanny Magazine; Best Fanzine, Lady Business ; Best Fan Writer, Foz Meadows; Best Fan Artist, Likhain (Mia Sereno); Best Fancast, Our Opinions Are Correct by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders; and Best Series, Wayfarers by Becky Chambers.

The 2019 Nebula Awards winners, presented in Woodland Hills, California, on May 18 were: Best Novel, The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal; Best Novella, The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard; Best Novelette, The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander; Best Short Story, “The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington” by P. Djèlí Clark; and Best Game Writing, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch by Charlie Brooker. Also presented were the Andre Norton Award to Tomi Adeyemi for Children of Blood and Bone ; and the Ray Bradbury Award to Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman for the screenplay Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse . The SFWA Damon Knight Grand Master was William Gibson.

The World Fantasy Awards, presented at the 45th World Fantasy Convention in Los Angeles October 31–November 3 were: Best Novel, Witchmark by C. L. Polk; Best Novella, “The Privilege of the Happy Ending” by Kij Johnson; Best Short Fiction (tie), “Ten Deals with the Indigo Snake” by Mel Kassel and “Like a River Loves the Sky” by Emma Törzs; Best Anthology, Worlds Seen in Passing edited by Irene Gallo; Best Collection, The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell; Best Artist, Rovina Cai; Special Award—Professional, Huw Lewis-Jones for The Writer’s Map: An Atlas of Imaginary Land s; Special Award—Non-professional, Scott H. Andrews for Beneath Ceaseless Skies . The Life Achievement recipients were Jack Zipes and Hayao Miyazaki.

The 2019 Campbell Memorial Award winner was Sam J. Miller for Blackfish City ; the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winner was Annalee Newitz for “When Robot and Crew Saved East St. Louis”; and the 2019 Arthur C. Clarke Award winner was Rosewater by Tade Thompson. For more information on these and other awards, see the excellent Science Fiction Awards Database (www.sfadb.com).

Each year we sadly lose too many beloved creators. This year their number included: SFWA Grand Master, World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement recipient, and Science Fiction Hall of Fame inductee Gene Wolfe, who wrote the groundbreaking The Book of the New Sun, which extended to thirteen volumes, and won the World Fantasy Award four times, the Nebula Award twice, and was nominated for the Hugo Award nine times; World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement recipient Carol Emshwiller, who wrote Carmen Dog, Mister Boots, The Secret City , the Philip K. Dick Award–winning The Mount , and the World Fantasy Award–winning The Start of the End of It All and Other Stories , and was nominated for the Nebula Award four times, winning twice for her short fiction; publisher Betty Ballantine, who cofounded publishing houses Bantam Books and Ballantine Books with her late husband, Ian, and who helped to introduce mass market paperbacks to the US by establishing the US division of Penguin Books; Vonda N. McIntyre, who won Nebula Awards for “Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand,” Dreamsnake, and The Moon and the Sun , cofounded Clarion West, and received the Kevin O’Donnell Service to SFWA Award in 2010; Barry Hughart, the World Fantasy Award–winning author of Bridge of Birds , as well as the sequels The Story of the Stone and Eight Skilled Gentlemen ; publisher Robert S. Friedman, who founded Rainbow Ridge Books and specialty book publisher The Donning Company; Australian author Andrew McGahan, who wrote the Ship Kings series of fantasy novellas, as well as several well-regarded stand-alone novels; two-time Campbell Award finalist Carrie Richerson, who was also nominated for the Gaylactic Spectrum Awards for her short story “Love on a Stick”; Alsatian author and artist Tomi Ungerer, who won the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 1998 for contributions as a children’s illustrator; author W. E. Butterworth, better known as W. E. B. Griffin, who wrote military and detective fiction; Gillian Freeman, who wrote SF novel The Leader about fascism; Janet Asimov, who was a successful psychiatrist and wrote mysteries and SF, including several with her husband, Isaac; anthologist Hugh Lamb, who began with reprint anthology A Tide of Terror, did most of his work in the 1970s, but remained active to the end of the century; Charles Black, who edited the eleven Black Books of Horror , two of which were nominated for the British Fantasy Award; W. H. Pugmire, who wrote horror and Lovecraftian fiction; Allan Cole, who collaborated with Chris Bunch on the Sten series; Tamara Kazavchinskaya, who was editor of the Russian magazine Foreign Literature and translated works from English and Polish, including the work of Stanislaw Lem; Russian author Sergei Pavlov, who wrote Moon Rainbow and founded the Moon Rainbow Award; Walter Harris, who wrote the novels The Day I Died, Saliva , and The Fifth Horseman , as well as novelizations of Creature from the Black Lagoon and Werewolf of London ; Bengali editor Adrish Bardhan, who began editing Ascharya , India’s first SF magazine, and later edited Fantastic magazine, and who received the Sudhindranath Raha Award for his work in Bengali SF; Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement recipient Dennis Etchison, whose novels include The Fog, Darkside , and California Gothic and who won multiple World Fantasy and British Fantasy Awards; Polish author and editor Maciej Parowski, who edited Nowa Fantastyka and was chief editor of Czas Fantastyki ; Milan Asadurov, who founded the Galaxy imprint in Bulgaria that published works by Asimov, Bradbury, the Strugatskys, and Le Guin; J. Neil Schulman, who won the Prometheus Award for Alongside Night and The Rainbow Cadenza and who wrote The Twilight Zone episode “Profile in Silver”; Robert N. Stephenson, who was editor and publisher of Altair magazine, edited several anthologies, and whose short story “Rains of la Strange” won the 2011 Aurealis Award; two-time Prometheus Award winner Brad Linaweaver, who was the author of Moon of Ice, Anarchia , and several TV shows; Melissa C. Michaels, who began publishing fiction in 1979 and wrote five volumes in the Skyrider series, as well as other novels; SFWA Author Emeritus Katherine MacLean, whose first story appeared in 1949 and whose 1972 novella “The Missing Man” won the Nebula Award; Terrance Dicks, who wrote several episodes of Doctor Who, served as script editor on the series from 1968 to 1974, and also worked on The Avengers, Moonbase 3 , and Space: 1999 ; Hal Colebatch, who wrote Return of Heroes , a study of heroic fantasy, contributed to the J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia , and wrote stories in Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars series; John A. Pitts, who began publishing short fiction in 2006 and novels (as J. A. Pitts) beginning with Black Blade Blues in 2010; Michael Blumlein, who wrote The Movement of Mountains, X,Y, The Healer, four collections of short fiction, and who was nominated for World Fantasy, Stoker, and Tiptree Awards; World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement recipient Gahan Wilson, whose cartoon work was epitomized by his mixture of horror, fantasy, and humor, and which appeared in Playboy, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , and other magazines; screenwriter D. C. Fontana, who had a long career as a scriptwriter and story editor for Star Trek and also worked on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Babylon 5, The Six Million Dollar Man, War of the Worlds , and numerous other television series; Andrew Weiner, who immigrated to Canada from Britain and whose first novel was Station Gehenna , which was followed by Getting Near the End and Boulevard des disparus .