Year’s Best SF 14: Summation

Those who’ve followed this blog know that I’ve been discussing the anthology Year’s Best SF 14, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, posting about every story as I read it. Now, it’s time to look back:

The cream of the crop were:
“Pump Six” by Paolo Bacigalupi (SF Strangelove’s mini-review).
“Exhalation” by Ted Chiang (SF Strangelove’s mini-review).
“The Scarecrow’s Boy” by Michael Swanwick (SF Strangelove’s mini-review).

The next-best tier of stories were:
“Memory Dog” by Kathleen Ann Goonan (SF Strangelove’s mini-review).
“Oblivion: A Journey” by Vandana Singh (SF Strangelove’s mini-review).
“Fixing Hanover” by Jeff VanderMeer (SF Strangelove’s mini-review).

The remaining stories had their impact reduced due to flaws or overly familiar treatments. See links to the discussion of each story below.

As the editors made clear in their introduction, Year’s Best SF 14 is not just a compilation of the best stories of the year (2008) in the genre, it is also a survey of different kinds of science fiction. To give some sense of the range of stories, here are a few general categories:

Near future: “Orange,” “The House Left Empty,” “Glass,” “Cheats,” “Mitigation.”
Far future: “Oblivion: A Journey,” “Fury.”

On Earth: “The Egg Man,” “Mitigation,” “Pump Six”
Off Earth: “Arkfall,” “Boojum,” “Spiders”

Utopian: “Fury”
Dystopian: “The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away”

There are a variety of modes -- humor: “Message Found in a Gravity Wave,” planetary romance: “Arkfall,” thriller: “Mitigation,” revenge: “Oblivion: A Journey,” feverishly emotional: “Memory Dog,” and coolly intellectual: “Exhalation.”

Several scientific fields are invoked -- neuroscience: “Glass” and “Memory Dog,” astrophysics: “Message Found in a Gravity Wave,” biology and botany: “Spiders” and “Arkfall,” and computer science: “The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away” and “Cheats.”

Eight of the 21 stories are by women authors. There are nine women authors, since two share the byline for “Boojum.”

Two stories reference cultures outside of the usual Western Culture -- Hindu: “Oblivion: A Journey,” and Japanese: “Arkfall.”

One weakness I feel it is important to point out: There is little here to represent fiction from international sources. I would like to see more.

Here again is the Year’s Best SF 14 table of contents with links to each SF Strangelove mini-review:

• Introduction by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer
• Arkfall by Carolyn Ives Gilman
• Orange by Neil Gaiman
• Memory Dog by Kathleen Ann Goonan
• Pump Six by Paolo Bacigalupi
• Boojum by Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette
• Exhalation by Ted Chiang
• Traitor by M. Rickert
• The Things that Make Me Weak and Stange Get Engineered Away by Cory Doctorow
• Oblivion: A Journey by Vandana Singh
• The House Left Empty by Robert Reed
• The Scarecrow’s Boy by Michael Swanwick
• N-Words by Ted Kosmatka
• Fury by Alastair Reynolds
• Cheats by Gwyneth Jones writing as Ann Halam
• The Ships Like Clouds, Risen By Their Rain by Jason Sanford
• The Egg Man by Mary Rosenblum
• Glass by Daryl Gregory
• Fixing Hanover by Jeff VanderMeer
• Message Found in a Gravity Wave by Rudy Rucker
• Mitigation by Tobias Buckell & Karl Schroeder
• Spiders by Sue Burke

Spiders by Sue Burke

A father and his five-year-old son take a tour of alien flora and fauna in a forest on another planet. The parents have split and the father is interested in helping the boy learn about the world outside of the settlement where he lives with his mother. The story is sure-handed and perceptive on parenting issues. The variety and mystery of the flora and fauna is quite effective.

It’s unlikely that this story can be read now without reference to the movie Avatar (directed by James Cameron, 2009), a comparison the author can’t have intended. The plant life depicted in Avatar is beautifully done (one of the few strengths of the film according to SF Strangelove), yet this brief story surpasses it with ease, engaging special effects more powerful than any at James Cameron’s disposal: the reader’s imagination.

“Spiders” by Sue Burke first appeared in Asimov’s, March 2008.
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

Mitigation by Karl Schroeder and Tobias S. Buckell

A rather ordinary caper story, it’s made distinctive by a post-global-warming setting. The objective of the caper is a seed vault in Svalbard, which contains extinct DNA. Along the way the reader observers a variety of efforts to reduce global warming.

“Mitigation” by Karl Schroeder and Tobias S. Buckell originally appeared in the anthology Fast Forward 2 (Pyr, 2008) edited by Lou Anders.
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

Message Found in a Gravity Wave by Rudy Rucker

The shortest story in the anthology, it strives for wry humor in how non-scientists think about science. Our underwhelming hero builds a gravity wave detector out of green gelatin in his bathtub and learns that our universe is doomed. There is more than a whiff of condescension, undoing the effort at humor.

“Message Found in a Gravity Wave” by Rudy Rucker, originally published in Nature.

Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

Fixing Hanover by Jeff VanderMeer

The chief engineer of the Empire has sent himself into exile, uncomfortable that his inventions have been used to commit atrocities. He lives simply, incognito, repairing mechanical things at a seaside village. A broken mechanical man washes up on the beach and the village council leader demands that it be fixed.

The jealous triangle over a woman between the council leader and the engineer is convincing. The steampunk setting is sketched in quick strokes. The engineer’s own skills and effort are what lead to his downfall in a satisfying resolution.

“Fixing Hanover” by Jeff VanderMeer first appeared in the anthology Extraordinary Engines (Solaris, 2008) edited by Nick Gevers.
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

Glass by Daryl Gregory

A chilling portrayal of psycho-pharmacological experimentation on prisoners, an attempt to alter the brain function of psychopaths so that they experience bad things that happen to others as if it were happening to themselves. Merely thinking about doing something bad is enough to trigger the effect, dramatically changing psychopathic behavior. Such a powerful tool is easily abused.

The story is very brief. It’s strong as far as it goes.

“Glass” by Daryl Gregory was first published in MIT Technology Review
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

The Egg Man by Mary Rosenblum

Zipakna travels with genetically altered chickens that produce medicinal eggs that treat diabetes and a variety of other health problems. He comes from a wealthy Mexico to help the impoverished southwest of the United States, with the hope of finding his missing former wife.

Returning to the Paloma settlement Zipakna finds new members who grow illegal “pharma” sunflowers. What exactly the crop is intended to do, or why it is not sanctioned, is never explained. He meets a boy who looks surprisingly like his former wife.

The social entanglements are well done and it’s successful in evoking a sense of place. Neither of the important women in Zipakna’s life appears in the story, suggesting that this is part of a longer work.

“The Egg Man” by Mary Rosenblum first appeared in Asimov’s, February 2008
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

The Ships Like Clouds, Risen by Their Rain by Jason Sanford

Here the atmospheric imagery predominates. On a mud-ball world, wracked by storms of water and mud dumped by passing ships, a weather forecaster must warn her townsfolk of impending disaster. Torrential storms, mud flows, and sink holes threaten their survival. The homes are built vertically as they sink into ever increasing layers of mud. Excavating downward reveals childhood living spaces, and going further, homes of previous generations. The weather forecaster must cope with a wayward apprentice, and deal with small-minded town leaders and rules.

The story is more akin to a fable or a dreamscape. The rational explanations, when they arrive at the end, are paper-thin -- more intimations than fleshed out explanations. Still, the weather inducing ships, floods and flows, and sinking homes make for an involving story.

“The Ships Like Clouds, Risen by Their Rain” by Jason Sanford originally appeared in Interzone, August 2008.
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

Cheats by Ann Halam

A young brother and sister within a virtual reality environment encounter people who are violating the rules. It’s well done, with a couple of good revelations toward the end. The story stops short of exploring the ideas that it raises. It merely opens the door and leaves the rest for the reader to imagine.

"Cheats" by Gwyneth Jones, writing as Ann Halam, first published in the anthology Starry Rift (Viking, 2008) edited by Jonathan Strahan
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

Fury by Alastair Reynolds

“Fury” has the epic sweep of old-school space opera, a galaxy-wide canvas and 30,000 years of history. Since this is short fiction, it’s mostly suggested rather than detailed, and well done. An assassination is attempted on the galactic emperor. Clues are discovered. The head of security must travel across the stars to solve the mystery. The solution to the mystery is mostly handed over effortlessly, still it’s an interesting revelation, and it includes a surprisingly grotesque tidbit.

The sticking point is the ending, which doesn’t quite sit right. The security chief takes it upon himself to implement punishment for murder, yet that punishment amounts to a schoolboy prank -- poisoning the headmaster’s favorite pet.

“Fury” by Alastair Reynolds originally appeared in the anthology Eclipse 2 (Night Shade Books, 2008) edited by Jonathan Strahan.
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

N-Words by Ted Kosmatka

The “N” is for Neanderthal. In the future Neanderthals are brought back into existence using fossil genetic material. The narrator is the human wife of a Neanderthal man. As the title suggests, they encounter prejudice similar to African Americans and other people of color. It’s a theme that resonates strongly -- “anti-miscegenation” laws were still enforced in 16 states until they were ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in 1967. I suspect that the same sense of appalling injustice that those racist laws now evoke will soon be turned toward today’s unjust laws banning gay marriage. I digress.

The story is set at a high emotional pitch throughout, as the wife grieves for her Neanderthal husband who has been killed in front of her. The author makes his case too airtight by making Neanderthals superior in every way: physically, mentally, and morally. This undercuts what should have been a strong ending where the wife’s frozen grief thaws into anger.

“N-Words” by Ted Kosmatka first appeared in the anthology Seeds of Change (Prime Books, 2008) edited by John Joseph Adams.
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

The Scarecrow’s Boy by Michael Swanwick

Michael Swanwick is one of the best short fiction writers in the science fiction genre and this story does not disappoint. The main character is the scarecrow, an obsolete household robot, left outside to keep the birds away. The reference, of course, is to The Wizard of Oz. Here Swanwick subverts the idealized version of childhood, especially prominent in the film version, with a gritty, troubling future.

Two childhoods are examined: the boy running for his life who the scarecrow decides to help, and the boyhood of the scarecrow’s actual owner. The scarecrow has watched his owner grow from a fun-loving innocent youth to a depraved, ruthless adult. The scarecrow must decide to which boy he owes his loyalty.

As with many Swanwick stories it can be read on more than one level, here both as a tightly wound suspenseful thrill ride and as a darkly humorous tale. When the scarecrow utters the line, “We are as God and Sony made us,” it lifts the story to a mordantly funny tone that won me over completely.

“The Scarecrow’s Boy” by Michael Swanwick first appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, October/November 2008
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

The House Left Empty by Robert Reed

In a future of Self-Governing Districts where central government has withered away to powerlessness, two old friends deceive a delivery man into leaving a package at an empty house. The relationship and dialog between the old friends is well observed and it’s the best part of the story. The contents of the package turn out to be meaningful, symbolic of interstellar space program that no longer exists.

Telling science fiction readers to get misty-eyed about the lost opportunity of a government space program is preaching to the choir. The story is well done, sure, but it’s a little too obvious, a bit too on the nose.

“The House Left Empty” by Robert Reed first appeared in Asimov’s, April/May 2008
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

Oblivion: A Journey by Vandana Singh

The structure of “Oblivion: A Journey” is a fairly routine revenge story. What lifts it out of the ordinary is fine writing and an interesting Hindu background.

Vikram, seeking revenge for the deaths of his family and his world, chases the mass-murderer Hirasor across a far flung series of decadent or barely habitable planets. Along the way Vikram sacrifices everything that was once important: his gender, his sexuality, his relationships -- nearly everything that made him who he or she was -- as he turns himself into a single-minded killer. The ending offers just enough resolution to the story to be quite satisfying.

“Oblivion: A Journey” by Vandana Singh was first published in the anthology Clockwork Phoenix (Norilana Books, 2008) edited by Mike Allen
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away by Cory Doctorow

In a dystopian future police state there are so many rules that everyone is guilty of something. Isolated from the rest of society by a wall, a group of techno-monks, the Order of Reflective Analytics, live a near utopian existence. The story draws on sources including Anathem by Neal Stephenson and George Orwell’s 1984. It is darker than Doctorow’s recent novel Little Brother. “The Things That Make Me Weak ...” presents a future that has descended so far into paranoia that it is perhaps irredeemable. No new ground is covered. It’s a skilled example of its kind.

“The Things That Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away” by Cory Doctorow originally appeared at Tor.com
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

Traitor by M. Rickert

This story is like a piece of broken glass. It’s beautiful, it’s written with great clarity, and it has an edge to it. Still, it is a fragment.

The focus of the story is a mother and daughter. (Spoilers ahead.) The mother, we learn, has used the daughter to deliver bombs, and now the mother has prepared her to be a suicide bomber. The focus is so tight on the mother and daughter it’s like a photograph with no depth of field. The background of the story is completely fuzzy. There is no context, no moral judgment. The story has power, yet I find myself expecting something more.

"Traitor" by M. Rickert originally appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 2008
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

Like the previous story, this one is compressed -- very compressed. Here it is successful.

Jettisoned are most of the things a genre reader might expect in a short story: dialog, a cast of characters, action, etc. Instead, it is simply a first-person meditation about life and thought, where the reader is left to piece together a picture of the unusual narrator and his situation.

The miniature world recalls Theodore Sturgeon’s “Microcosmic God” (1941), although in this telling it is an apparently “godless” universe, Sturgeon’s deity being merely a human, manipulating tiny sentient life.

Chiang’s narrator is a scientist who rigorously deduces the danger his world is in and examines his own anatomy in an attempt to confirm his theory. The scene of his dissection of his own brain, and metaphorically his dissection of his own ability to reason, is thrilling.

This story, short as it is, opens out in all directions. It manages to address the nature of consciousness, life, and death. For the scientist narrator this process of investigation and insight is the very purpose of life.

Those who have read Chiang’s other fiction will not be surprised to hear that this is a masterful story, deservedly winning the best short story Hugo a few months ago at the World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal.

“Exhalation” by Ted Chiang originally appeared in the anthology Eclipse 2 (Night Shade Books, 2008) edited by Jonathan Strahan
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

Boojum by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette

This is a future pirate story with a few inversions. Instead of a ruthless man, the captain is a ruthless woman. Instead of a ship, the crew live inside an enslaved void creature called a boojum.

The story and characterizations are overly compressed. In longer form the plot events and people’s relationships could have had room to breathe and time for better development. Still, there are a few good details: swearing the loyalty oath to the captain includes slicing your thumb with a razorblade and dripping blood on the organic deck so that the ship knows the crew. The compactness of the story leads to reading it as pastiche, whether intended or not.

“Boojum” by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette first appeared in the anthology Fast Ships, Black Sails (Night Shade Books, 2008) edited by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

Pump Six by Paolo Bacigalupi

This story is worth the price of the anthology. The wonderful contradiction of “Pump Six” is that it is both apocalyptic and optimistic at the same time.

Travis Alvarez works at a sewage treatment facility in New York City over a hundred years in the future. He and his wife have been trying to have a child for a while without success. They are hoping for a normal baby. “We’ve just got to stay optimistic,” says Alvarez. Normal birthrates are down. More trogs (de-evolved humans) are born every year. At work Pump Six, a sewage treatment pump, isn’t working correctly and Alvarez is the only one who is able to puzzle through the arcane manual.

Details about life in New York gradually accumulate: the skyscrapers are shedding their skins in a constant concrete rain, no cars are on the road, and most water isn’t safe to drink. Everywhere the trogs, the children of men, are found copulating in the alleyways and parks, beckoning Alvarez to join the fun. The future is going to shit, quite literally if the pumps fail.

Alvarez is a can-do character, ready and willing to solve problems, a character typical of optimistic 1940s and ’50s science fiction, which Bacigalupi seeks to subvert. As the enormity of the situation becomes clear both to Alvarez and the reader the story closes. The mix of emotions that the story ends with: optimism, sadness, sympathy, or pity, will depend to a large part on the individual reader.

“Pump Six” by Paolo Bacigalupi originally appeared in the collection Pump Six and Other Stories (Night Shade Books, 2008)
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents

Memory Dog by Kathleen Ann Goonan

Must we become a dog in order to offer unconditional love? Can we only receive unconditional love if we get it from a dog? Those are just some of the issues that “Memory Dog” raises. It’s an overstuffed story, with memory drugs, an unraveled marriage, political and social unrest, and “smacks,” a high impact variety of blog post that floats about looking for receptive people.

Unable to cope with guilt from the death of a child and the end of his marriage, a scientist at the forefront of new memory research transfers a mixture of his own edited memories and those of the family dog into a dog that is then released near his former wife’s home. The memory-enhanced dog forms an attachment with his ex-wife.

An unabashedly sentimental cocktail of regret, loss, love, and fractured memories, the story works despite being overcomplicated.

Is there a subgenre of science fiction stories about dogs? Some leap to mind:
“People of Sand and Slag” by Paolo Bacigalupi. (Dead dog.)
“Sergeant Chip” by Bradley Denton. (Military dog.)
“A Boy and His Dog” by Harlan Ellison. (Answering the old dating joke: Girlfriend asks boyfriend, which do you prefer, me or your dog? Woof!)
I’m sure I’ve overlooked many science fiction dog stories. Please add those that you remember in the comments.

"Memory Dog" by Kathleen Ann Goonan, originally published in Asimov’s, April/May 2008
Link: Year’s Best SF 14 summation and table of contents