Элинор Арнасон: The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection

The genre-oriented nonfiction was somewhat weak this year. There were a lot of biographies, autobiographies, and critical studies of SF writers, including: A Lit Fuse: The Provocative Life of Harlan Ellison (NESFA Press), by Nat Segaloff; Not So Good a Gay Man: A Memoir (Tor), by Frank M. Robinson; Star-Begotten: A Life Lived in Science Fiction (McFarland), by James Gunn; J. G. Ballard (University of Illinois Press), by D. Harlan Wilson; Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler (Twelfth Planet); edited by Alexandra Pierce and Mimi Mondal; Saving the World Through Science Fiction: James Gunn, Writer, Teacher and Scholar (McFarland), by Michael R. Page; Patricia A. McKillip and the Art of Fantasy World-Building (McFarland), by Audrey Isabel Taylor; Iain M. Banks (University of Illinois Press), by Paul Kincaid; and The Invention of Angela Carter: A Biography (Oxford University Press), by Edmund Gordon.

Of these, by far the most attention, and the most controversy, was generated by A Lit Fuse .

Most of the rest of the year’s genre-oriented nonfiction books were more academically oriented, or else overviews of the field: Science Fiction and the Moral Imagination: Visions, Minds, Ethics (Springer), by Russell Blackford; Gender Identity and Sexuality in Fantasy and Science Fiction (Luna), by Francesca T. Barbini; Sleeping with Monsters: Readings and Reactions in Science Fiction and Fantasy (Aqueduct) by Liz Bourke; Science Fiction Criticism: An Anthology of Essential Writings (Bloomsbury Academic), by Rob Latham; Celestrial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction (Wesleyan University Press), by Nathaniel Isaacson; Science Fiction: A Literary History (British Library), by Roger Luckhurst; and Dis-Orienting Planets: Racial Representations of Asia in Science Fiction (University Press of Mississippi), by Isiah Lavender.

It was also a weak year for art books. As usual, your best bet here is a sort of a best of the year anthology for fantastic art: Spectrum 24: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art (Flesk), edited by John Fleskes. Also out in 2017 were Line of Beauty: The Art of Wendy Pini (Flesk), by Richard and Wendy Peni; The Art of the Pulps: An Illustrated History (IDW), edited by Douglas Ellis, Ed Hulse, and Robert Weinberg; The Movie Art of Syd Mead: Visual Futurist (Titan), by Craig Hodgetts and Syd Mead; Familiars/Flora & Fauna/Viscera (Flesk), by J.A.W. Cooper; Ink & Paint: The Women of Walt Disney’s Animation (Disney Editions), by Mindy Johnson; Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok—The Art of the Movie (Marvel Universe), edited by Jeff Youngquist; Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Imaginarium (Gollancz), by Paul Kidby; Classic Storybook Fables (Artisan), by Scott Gustafson; Norse Myths: Tales of Odin, Thor, and Loki (Candlewick Studio), by Kevin Crossley-Holland and illustrated by Jeffrey Alan Love; Celtic Faeries: The Secret Kingdom (Goblin’s Way), by Jean-Baptiste Monge; Infected by Art, Volume 5 (ArtOrder), edited by Todd Spoor and Bill Cox; David Wiesner and the Art of Wordless Storytelling (Santa Barbara Museum of Art), by Eik Kahng, Ellen Keiter, Katherine Roeder, and David Wiesner; and The Art of Magic: The Gathering—Kaladesh (Viz), by James Wyatt.

According to the Box Office Mojo site ( www.boxofficemojo.com), for the second year in a row, all ten of the year’s ten top-earning movies were genre films of one sort or another (if you’re willing to count animated films and superhero movies as being “genre films”). Not only were all of the top ten movies genre films of one sort or another, but by my count, although I may have missed a few, seventeen out of the top twenty, and forty out of the one hundred top-grossing movies were genre films. In the past eighteen years, genre films have been number one at the box office sixteen out of eighteen times, with the only exceptions being American Sniper in 2014 and Saving Private Ryan in 1998. This year, you have to go down to the twelfth and fourteenth places on the list before you run into any non-genre films, The Fate of the Furious and Dunkirk respectively.

This year’s number one on the list of top ten box-office champs, in spite of a lot of controversy over it in social media, is Star Wars: The Last Jedi , which racked up a worldwide box-office total of $1, 331,832.651 (and that’s before the profits from DVD sales, action figures, lunch boxes, T-shirts, and other kinds of accessories kick in, it’s worth noting).

Disney Studios obviously had a good year, with a stake in many of the year’s other top ten movies. Number two on the top ten list, for instance, is Disney’s live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast.

Superhero movies, which seemed a bit down last year, made a strong resurgence in 2017. Warner Brothers’s Wonder Woman finished in third place, but there were also a number of Marvel movies as well, in which Disney also has a stake— Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 , which finished in fifth place, Spider-Man: Homecoming , which finished in sixth place, and Thor: Ragnarok , which finished in eighth place. Other superhero movies made it on to the top ten list as well: Logan (featuring Marvel character Wolverine, but not made by Marvel Studios) in eleventh place, and Warner Brothers’s Justice League , in tenth place.

Animated film Despicable Me 3 took ninth place on the top ten list, and other animated films showed up in the top twenty list, such as Coco , in thirteenth place, The LEGO Batman Movie , in sixteenth place, and The Boss Baby , in seventeenth place.

Horror movie It , based on the novel by Stephen King, took seventh place on the top ten list.

The most critically acclaimed of 2017’s genre films were probably Logan , an autumnal farewell to the character of Wolverine, Wonder Woman , the highest-earning DC superhero movie to date, which seems to have successfully started a new franchise, and The Shape of Water , an unacknowledged sequel of sorts to the old horror movie The Creature from the Black Lagoon . Critical opinion and fan reaction was sharply split on Blade Runner 2049 , the long-awaited sequel to the original Blade Runner , with some calling it the best genre movie of the year, although it underperformed at the box office, only managing to come in at thirty-fourth place in the top one hundred list.

Other attempts to establish new franchises or reboot old ones also failed, with the ambitious space opera Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets coming in at sixty-sixth place in the top hundred list, the long-anticipated The Dark Tower , drawn from a series of novels by Stephen King, taking fifty-fifth place, a reboot of The Mummy franchise (one of the most critically savaged movies of the year) coming in at fortieth place, and a reboot of Power Rangers finishing at thirty-seventh place.

Coming up in 2018 is another flood of genre movies of one sort or another, including a slew of superhero movies. The most anticipatory buzz is probably being generated by Avengers: Infinity War and Black Panther , although there’s also a movie about the early life of Han Solo, Solo: A Star Wars Story ; a sequel to The Incredibles , The Incredibles 2 ; a sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them , Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald ; a sequel to Pacific Rim , Pacific Rim Uprising ; a reboot of Tomb Raider ; a film version of Madeleine L’Engle’s children’s classic A Wrinkle in Time ; another X-Men movie, X-Men: Dark Phoenix and another Jurassic World movie, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ; a sequel to Ant-Man , Ant-Man and the Wasp ; and a reboot of Mary Poppins , Mary Poppins Returns (I’m kind of hoping that Mary Poppins is played by Yondu from Guardians of the Galaxy , but I wouldn’t count on it). There will also be attempts to establish new franchises with Ready Player One , Mortal Engines , and Annihilation .