Ellen Datlow has gathered the 43rd volume of Nebula Winners, runners-up, Rhysling Award winning poems and articles on the state of the field in one essential volume (Roc Trade, 448pp, April 2009), providing a vast improvement on the previous year's selection.
Ted Chiang
Datlow chooses a traditional anthology structure by opening with two of her three strongest stories, starting with the winning novelette, "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" by Ted Chiang. This hard-SF time travel tale typifies the rigour of Chiang's fiction, utilizing a time travel device mooted by American theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, yet choosing the baroque setting of an Arabian Nights-type tale. Outstanding.
Very different, but no less effective is the winning short story. "Always" by Karen Joy Fowler, in which a strange commune find immortality, if they so choose. The very joylessness and drabness of their life should deter anyone with such dreams.
"Titanium Mike Saves the Day" by David D. Levine features a superhero's deconstruction, and is one of the lesser stories on the ballot, but kudos to Datlow for cramming as many of the stories on the ballot as possible.
Better is Geoff Ryman's novelette, "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter (Fantasy)" which, despite it's title, takes the reader to a contemporary or near future alternate timeline in which the eponymous heroine is haunted by the ghosts of her father's time in power. It's the only nominee to have appeared in one of the other Year's Best SF, but it's so good that that's forgiveable. Outstanding.
Michael Chabon
Winning novel The Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon is excerpted. Read the novel. It's Highly Recommended.
Unusually, one of the novella nominees, "Stars Seen Through Stone" by Lucius Shepard is included, which is a welcome bonus. Shepherd has always been one of the field's great writers, and in this story of an explosion of creativity amid a heavily polluted industrial town in Pennsylvania, he shows that he has lost none of his spark, while the savagery that characterized some of his great early fiction has been leavened with with a more recent compassion. Highly Recommended.
"The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change" by Kij Johnson tells of the fate of dogs and other animals when they become able to talk. It's heart-breaking for any dog-owner in its unflinching regard. Highly Recommended.
Kim Newman
Kim Newman wries an appreciation of this year's Damon Knight Grand Master Award winner, Michael Moorcock, which is followed by Moorcock's 1965 "The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius" in which Moorcock mixes genres in a way that was years ahead of its time. Highly Recommended.
Jennifer Pelland's short story "Captive Girl," like many recent stories, builds on a classic text, in this case James Tiptree's "The Girl Who Was Plugged In," but by setting the story on a colony world that's survived an attack, brings a fresh perspective. Similarly Andy Duncan's short story "Unique Chicken Goes In Reverse" reads like a reworking of Howard Waldrop's 'The Ugly Chickens,' but doesn't add much that's new.
The volume ends with the Nebula Award-winning Novella, "The Fountain of Age" by Nancy Kress. One of the world's richest men loses the one momento of his lost love that keeps him going, so decides to seek the woman who gave it to him. He's eighty-six, and she's a quasi-immortal recluse who's survived dozens of attacks from a world that both adores and hates her. One of the author's finest stories, it richly deserves its place of honour. Outstanding.
Rounding off the volume are articles from Ellen Asher, Gwenda Bond, Barry Malzberg, Howard Waldrop, Kathleen Ann Goonan on Why I write Science Fiction, Tim Lucas pays tribute to Pan’s Labyrinth . Also included are the selection are the Rhysling Award winning poems, with contributions from Mike Allen, Rich Ristow and Jane Yolen, while Joe R. Lansdale pays tribute to Ardath Mayhar, the latest Author Emeritus.
Colin Harvey - Author six novels, and editor of four anthologies; professional reviewer since 2003, including six years at Strange Horizons. Member of ...
