End of May book arrivals

Here are the last of the book arrivals for May 2012.

The Dragon Griaule by Lucius Shepard collects all of his stories in the series along with a new 40,000 word story, "The Skull." The jacket illustration by J. K. Potter is beautiful, nearly monochromatic.

Flora's Fury by Ysabeau S. Wilce is concluding volume in her Flora trilogy.

The King's Blood by Daniel Abraham is the second volume in his The Dagger and the Coin series, following The Dragon's Path.

In the Land of Time and Other Fantasy Tales by Lord Dunsany is edited, with an introduction and notes, by S. T. Joshi. A substantial sampler of Dunsany short fiction. Joshi quotes C. L. Moore: "No one can imitate Dunsany, and probably everyone who's ever read him has tried."

The Shadowed Sun by N. K. Jemisin is the second in her Dreamblood series.

The White People and Other Weird Stories by Arthur Machen has a brief forward by Guillermo del Toro. It is edited, with an introduction and notes, by S. T. Joshi. Despite the image of Pan on the cover, this collection omits Machen's story "The Great God Pan."

Year's Best SF 17 edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer is an anthology collecting the best short science fiction from 2011. In addition to the authors mentioned on the back cover, this anthology includes Ken Liu, Nnedi Okorafor, Paul Park, Charlie Jane Anders, Judith Moffett, Robert Reed, Bruce Sterling, Gwyneth Jones, Genevieve Valentine, Carolyn Ives Gilman, and many others.

Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer includes numerous pictures by Maurice Sendak. Singer was one of the greatest fantasists of the 20th Century and the late Maurice Sendak was no slouch either. Their collaboration is a treasure. (Click to enlarge images.)

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

Year’s Best SF 14: Introduction

Editors David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer provide a brief summary of the year 2008 in science fiction. Most of the economic news is predictably grim. Much of the information about print magazines and online magazines is now out of date.

Interestingly, the only novel and single-author collection mentioned in the entire introduction is emphasized here: “High points Daryl Gregory’s first novel, Pandemonium, and Paolo Bacigalupi’s first collection, Pump Six and Other Stories, possibly the two most important first books in our field in 2008.” Gregory’s book is moving up the “to be read” pile and readers of this blog have already seen mention of Bacigalupi.

Overall, Hartwell and Cramer say, 2008 was a fine year for short fiction, pointing to the magazines and original anthologies. They single out The Starry Rift, Eclipse 2, Fast Forward 2, and Clockwork Phoenix, published in the United States. They also cite original anthologies from Australia and Canada, Jack Dann’s Dreaming Again and Claude Lalumière’s Tesseracts 12 respectively.

They present their editorial philosophy, which has appeared in some form in each volume: “This book is full of science fiction -- every story in this book is clearly that and not something else. We try in each volume of this series to represent the varieties of tones and voices and attitudes that keep the genre vigorous and responsive to the changing realities out of which it emerges, in science and daily life.”

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

Year's Best SF 14

I’ll be writing briefly about each story in Year’s Best SF 14 edited by David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer (Eos, 2009). Items on the table of contents below will be updated with links to each post.

• 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