Элинор Арнасон: The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection

An ever-expanding area, growing in popularity, are a number of sites where podcasts and SF-oriented radio plays can be accessed: at Audible (www.audible.com), Escape Pod (http://escapepod.org, podcasting mostly SF), The Drabblecast (www.drabblecast.org), Star Ship Sofa (www.starshipsofa.com), Pseudopod (http://pseudopod.org, podcasting mostly fantasy), and PodCastle (http://podcastle.org, podcasting mostly fantasy). There’s also a site that podcasts nonfiction interviews and reviews, Dragon Page—C Cover to Cover (www.dragonpage.com).

It was a somewhat weak year for original anthologies, although there were still a few that were worth your money.

Without a doubt, the best SF original anthology of the year was Edge of Infinity (Solaris), edited by Jonathan Strahan. True, original SF anthologies were light on the ground this year, but Edge of Infinity would be a standout in any year. Unusually, in these days when it seems almost de rigueur for editors to sneak some slipstream or fantasy stories into even ostensibly “All SF” anthologies, everything here actually is pure-quill core SF, some of it hard SF at that, and the literary quality is uniformly excellent across the board. There’s nothing that’s bad here, again unlike most anthologies, which makes it difficult to pick favorites, but among the strongest stories are those by Pat Cadigan, Paul McAuley ,Gwyneth Jones ,Hannu Rajaniemi ,and Bruce Sterling ,although there’s also excellent work here by Elizabeth Bear, James S.A. Corey, Sandra McDonald and Stephen D. Covey, John Barnes, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds, and An Owomoyela, any of which would have been among the standout stories in any other SF anthology of the year.

None of the other original SF anthologies of the year were in this league, but there was some interesting stuff.

An odd item was Solaris Rising 1.5: An Exclusive ebook of New Science Fiction, edited by Ian Whates, and available only in e-book form. An original SF anthology designed to act as a “bridge” between 2010’s Solaris Rising print anthology and 2013’s upcoming Solaris Rising 2 anthology, it features good fiction by Adam Roberts, Aliette de Bodard, Paul Cornell, Paul Di Filippo, and others. Armored (Baen), edited by John Joseph Adams, is an all-original anthology of military SF, stories about armored fighting suits, and wearable tanks, more or less, probably first popularized by Robert A. Heinlein in his novel Starship Troopers, seen subsequently in lots of SF, including movies such as Avatar, and currently hovering right on the edge of becoming an actuality; certainly it won’t be more than ten or fifteen years at most before we have them prowling the battlefields in the real world. The best stories here are by David Klecha and Tobias S. Buckell ,Alastair Reynolds ,Ian Douglas, Simon R. Green, Karin Lowachee, and Sean Williams ,although there’s also solid work here by Carrie Vaughn ,David D. Levine ,Jack McDevitt, Genevieve Valentine, Michael A. Stackpole, Tanya Huff, David Sherman, and others.

Other good original SF anthologies included Going Interstellar (Baen), edited by Les Johnson and Jack McDevitt, which contained an excellent novella by Michael Bishop, as well as solid work by Jack McDevitt, Ben Bova, and others, in addition to nonfiction essays about possible designs for interstellar spaceships by Dr. Gregory Matloff, Dr. Richard Obousy, and Les Johnson himself. (Simon & Schuster), edited by John Joseph Adams, a tribute anthology in which modern writers get to play with Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars and its characters and generate Barsoom stories of their own. There is a noticeable split in approach to the material here. Some authors write straightforward John Carter adventures with lots of swordplay and mayhem, chases, captures, hairsbreadth cliff-hangers, and daring escapes, much as Burroughs himself might have (although all of the authors in the book are much better writers line by line than Burroughs ever was). The best stories in this mode are probably those by S. M. Stirling and Joe R. Lansdale. The best stories here are those that take the other approach, and add a dab of playful postmodernism to the mix, including stories by Peter S. Beagle, Garth Nix, Theodora Goss, Catharynne M. Valente, Tobias S. Buckell, and Genevieve Valentine.

There were two post-Apocalyptic anthologies, After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia (Hyperion Books), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling; and Epilogue (Fablecroft Publishing), edited by Tehani Wessely, and an anthology of dystopian YA stories, Diverse Energies (Tu Books), edited by Tobias S. Buckell and Joe Monti. There were two steampunk anthologies, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk (Running Press), edited by Sean Wallace, and Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution (Tachyon), edited by Ann VanderMeer. There were two shared-world anthologies, Man-Kzin Wars XIII (Baen), edited by Larry Niven, and Grantville Gazette VI (Baen), edited by Eric Flint. Postscripts Anthology No. 26–27: Unfit for Eden (PS Publishing), edited by Nick Gevers and Peter Crowther, was one of two Postscripts editions this year, the other, Postscripts 28–29 , being a special “Gothic Fiction” edition guest edited by Danel Olson. Postscripts 26–27 was a bit weak compared to some of the earlier volumes in this series, but still contained good work by Michael Swanwick, Jessica Reisman, Steven Utley, Michael Bishop, Eric Brown, Michael Bishop, and others.

This was a very good year for anthologies that afford a view of what’s happening in fantastic literature in other countries, outside the usual genre boundaries. Anthologies of this sort included The Future is Japanese (Haikasoru), edited by Nick Mamatas and Maumi Washington; Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana , edited by Anil Menon and Vandana Singh; Afro SF: Science Fiction by African Writers (StoryTime Press), edited by Ivor W. Hartmann; Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic (Small Beer Press), edited by Eduardo Jiménez Mayo and Chris N. Brown; Lauriat: A Filipino-Chinese Speculative Fiction Anthology (Lethe Press), edited by Charles Tan; Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (University of Arizona), edited by Grace L. Dillon; and The Apex Book of World SF 2 (Apex Publications), edited by Lavie Tidhar.

L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XXVIII (Galaxy Press), edited by the late K. D. Wentworth, is the most recent in a long-running series featuring novice work by beginning writers, some of whom may later turn out to be important talents. Wentworth died in 2012, and her replacement has yet to be named.

Noted without comment is Rip-Off! (Audible), an audio anthology of SF and fantasy stories edited by Gardner Dozois.

Jonathan Strahan, who had an excellent year in 2012, also edited the year’s best fantasy anthology, a YA anthology about witches, Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron (Random House Books for Young Readers), which means that Strahan has pulled off, in my own estimation, anyway, the difficult task of editing both the best fantasy anthology and the best science fiction anthology of 2012. Not surprisingly, since it’s aimed at a YA audience, Under My Hat is not as substantial and chewy as Strahan’s Edge of Infinity, but it has a very pleasing wit and lightness of tone about it (for the most part, there are a few darker stories) that ought to appeal to the adult fantasy-reading audience as well. The best stories here include work by Peter S. Beagle ,Margo Lanagan ,Ellen Klages ,Garth Nix ,Jane Yolen, and Holly Black, although there are also good stories here by Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Jim Butcher, M. Rickert, Patricia A. McKillip, Isobelle Carmody, Tim Pratt, Tanith Lee, Charles De Lint, Frances Hardinge, and Diana Peterfreund, as well as a poem by Neil Gaiman. A (mostly) reprint anthology on the same subject was this year’s Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful (Prime Books), edited by Paula Guran.