The Best of the Year: 2015

It's that end-of-the-year list-making time.

Over at the Coode Street Podcast there was an interesting discussion of the best science fiction and fantasy books of 2015. Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe were joined by noted critics Paul Kincaid and Adam Roberts. Prompted to give their individual choices for their top five picks:

Adam Roberts:
Top book: Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. In dialog with the backlist of science fiction. Might be Robinson's best novel. Resonant and deep, clever, sophisticated.
Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (the conclusion of a trilogy)
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (which appeared in 2015 in Britain)
Clade by James Bradley
Luna by Ian McDonald
Touch by Claire North
Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson, sequel to Europe in Autumn, one of the best books of 2014

Paul Kincaid:
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson, sequel to Life After Life (which was even better)
Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson
Where by Kit Reed
Luna by Ian McDonald
Slade House by David Mitchell

Gary K. Wolfe:
Wolfe said he didn't want to overlap too much with Roberts and Kincaid
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
Clade by James Bradley
The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard
Three Moments of an Explosion by China Mieville (Roberts seconds this choice)

Jonathan Strahan:
Top book: Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson, most engaged, most timely
Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson
Clade by James Bradley
The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge (Roberts seconds this choice)
The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashanti Wilson
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho
Galapagos Regained by James Morrow

I've left out all the discussion around these lists, which was thought provoking and which I recommend listening to. I could quibble with some of the choices, having read several of these titles, yet on the whole these are strong lists. I agree that Aurora is the standout science fiction novel of 2015. (Listen to the Coode Street podcast here or on iTunes.)

Adam Roberts' sharp best of the year essay, with some additional titles, is on the Guardian website.

For a wider net that encompasses sf and fantasy, weird fiction and mainstream, especially international titles, I recommend Jeff VanderMeer's best books of 2015. His choice for best novel of the year is Animal Money by Michael Cisco. I've read an earlier novel by Cisco and I'm not sure I've recovered yet. I am definitely on board for this one.

For an example of poorly informed (or lazy?) list, there's BuzzFeed's 24 best sf books of 2015. About half of them are relevant and interesting. The other half look like someone randomly grabbed some books off a shelf.

On 'Magical Realism'

“When you say fantasy you’re always bringing up that doppelganger: science fiction. Magical Realism is not a very well-defined term, which is why I like it so much better than either fantasy or science fiction, both of which have strong connotations of dragons, rockets, aliens and so on. You can shove a great deal of fantasy and science fiction into the pockets of Magic Realism and leave the store and no-one will notice you. Magical Realism is like literary fiction running into a store and shoplifting the fantasy and science fiction.”
-- E. Lily Yu, on the Coode Street Podcast, Episode 146.

The previous episode, Episode 145 of the Coode Street Podcast, with guests M. Rickert and Christopher Barzak was pretty great, too.

Locus All-Centuries Poll revisited, or the season of regret

I made my ballot for Locus All-Centuries Poll public a few days ago, and looking around the web I’ve spotted several fine ballots. I knew there would be stories and entire novels I had forgotten to put on my ballot for the Locus All-Centuries Poll. I didn't realize there would be so many.

Niall Harrison’s ballot (continue here) names Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson as the number one best science fiction novel of the 20^th Century. I think it’s an excellent choice. It’s one of my favorite SF novels of the 20^th Century and it didn't cross my mind to put it on my ballot. I think the title on Harrison’s list that left me the most stricken was We Who Are About To ... by Joanna Russ, which made a huge impression on me and I wish I’d remembered it when I was creating my ballot.

Rich Horton’s ballot (follow here) includes The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester, which I did consider and could easily have included on my ballot. I’m not sure how it got crowded off of my list, but it did.

Ian Sales’s ballot (follow here) has Coelestis by Paul Park as his number one choice for best science fiction novel of the 20^th Century, which is a brilliant choice. It is one of my favorite novels of all time and I can’t imagine how I forgot it. It’s very bleak, of course. Not that I would shy away from it for that reason. After all, I have Light by M. John Harrison as my top choice for best 21^st Century SF novel.

Cheryl Morgan’s ballot (follow here) has Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, which is a fine and massive novel. I did consider putting a John Brunner novel on my list. My choice would have been Shockwave Rider, if I could have found more room on the list.

Martin Lewis’s ballot (follow here) for best fantasy novel of the 20^th Century has The Iron Dragon’s Daughter by Michael Swanwick, which is an excellent choice. I’m not sure which title I would have replaced on my ballot, but I’d like to think there would be room for a Swanwick novel.

Nina Allen’s ballot (follow here PDF) lists Roadside Picnic by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky and Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut among many other great choices. They are both particular favorites of mine.

Nina Allen, in her Locus Poll roundup (follow here), saves her highest praise for Matthew Cheney’s ballot (follow here), and deservedly so. It is the most amazing, genre boundary crushing list I've yet seen, filled with Franz Kafka, J.M. Coetzee, Vladimir Nabokov, and many other brilliant choices.

My own ballot (follow here) shares some overlap with each of the varied ballots I've mentioned above, a fact which is oddly wonderful and somehow reassuring. In addition to exact duplicates, in many cases we've chosen to recognize the same author with different and equally valid choices of story or novel.

By now it should be apparent that my lists would be double the size that the Locus Poll allowed and I would still be paralyzed by what I was leaving off. Each one that I left off gives me a pang of regret.

There are some novels and stories on each of the ballots I just mentioned that I haven’t read. I regret those, too, since in many cases I've had them in mind to read for quite a while.

Then there are the stories that I know I've read, yet I simply don’t remember. For instance, the novella “Great Work of Time” by John Crowley, which appears on ballots by Niall Harrison, Rich Horton, Ian Sales, Matthew Cheney, and it was mentioned (with great regret) by Gary K. Wolfe on the most recent Coode Street Podcast (follow here). I’m a great admirer of Crowley’s work and I know I read this novella perhaps 20 years ago, but it has vanished from my memory. I know that I’ll be rereading “Great Work of Time” and that Crowley’s work stands up to rereading in a way that few authors do. (Who was it who said: a first reading is like a first impression, it’s the second reading where the real appreciation begins?)

In the current Coode Street Podcast, just mentioned, Jonathan Strahan patiently compels Gary K. Wolfe to name the single best SF novel of the 20^th Century. Eventually Wolfe names A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. and defends his choice intelligently and articulately. It’s a fine choice, I think, and his reasons are well worth hearing. In turn, Strahan names Neuromancer by William Gibson as his choice for the single best SF novel of the 20^th Century. It's a novel that I don’t think has aged nearly as well. Wolfe nails it with his retort: “You’re confusing ‘game changing’ with ‘best.’”

Single-author collections worth noting

These four single-author collections are among the most interesting and noteworthy collections in the science fiction and fantasy genres to be published in 2012.

At the Mouth of the River of Bees by Kij Johnson is the first collection from an author who has already won a Hugo Award, three Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award, and a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for her short fiction. The Coode Street Podcast had Kij Johnson as a guest for a recent episode, available here.

Jeffrey Ford has been one of the best short fiction writers in the genre for many years. His fourth and newest collection, Crackpot Palace, continues his tradition of excellence. Two of his prior collections won the World Fantasy Award for best single-author collection of the year.

Another first collection, Angels and You Dogs by Kathleen Ann Goonan, is a first-rate selection of short fiction. Goonan was a guest on the Coode Street Podcast, available here.

The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories by Andy Duncan is the author's second collection. Duncan is one of the most highly regarded short fiction authors in the genre. The title story won the World Fantasy Award. His novelette "The Chief Designer," collected here, won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

A trilogy is like playing Angry Birds

An excerpt from The Coode Street Podcast, which touched on The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins:

Gary K. Wolfe: "I think we can agree that Suzanne Collins knew what she was doing putting a story together. Because I did read the first one, but that's all. Sometimes what I do with trilogies is I figure out, okay, I can see the arc. Reading a trilogy is like playing Angry Birds, because once you've figured out the arc you know whether you're going to hit the damn pigs or not."

Ellen Klages: "Oh, that's going to go on a t-shirt."

Related link:
The Coode Street Podcast with guests Ellen Klages, Karen Lord, and Nalo Hopkinson.

The Coode Street Podcast

Hosts Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe have created a relaxed and knowledgeable podcast about books and the science fiction community. They frequently have read and praised the best books of the year before they become available to the public, which is valuable to any reader.

As The Coode Street Podcast has matured, their interviews have improved and become the strength of the podcast. I would go so far as to say that these interviews have become important listening for anyone interested in science fiction, fantasy, and related fiction.

Here’s an overview of interviews so far in 2012 that were remarkable:

Elizabeth Hand
Hand discusses her two new novels, Available Dark (sequel to Generation Loss) and Radiant Days. Gary Wolfe suggests that the arts are central to Hand’s recent work, which frequently deal with struggling artists, photographers, painters, the theatre, and Rimbaud in Radiant Days. Hand finds that novella-length may be her natural story length. (follow here)

Ellen Kushner
Kushner shares the process of adapting her novel Swordpoint into an audio book, available on Audible.com. (follow here)

Barry Malzberg
Malzberg, a grand old man of the science fiction field, whose memories and experiences are a treasure, advances his theory that the 1950s is the Golden Age of science fiction. Kindly overlook the comically maladroit use of Skype. (follow here)

Michael Dirda
Essayist and long-time book reviewer for the Washington Post, Dirda shares his enthusiasm for the fathers of genre fiction: Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. (follow here)

Peter Straub
Straub and his hosts consider the wonders and joys of reading Gene Wolfe (I could listen to listen to them talk about Gene Wolfe all day long). Straub praises the work of Brian Evenson and Caitlín Keirnan. He calls Keirnan’s new book, The Drowning Girl: A Memoir (2012), a masterpiece. They discuss the limitations of genre boundaries and the Library of America’s notions of genre. (follow here)

Older episodes of The Coode Street Podcast have featured many fine guests, including Ursula K. Le Guin. Unfortunately they spent the Le Guin interview discussing the (by all accounts) under-informed book of essays about science fiction by Margaret Atwood, instead of talking about something more interesting, like what writing Le Guin herself is working on, or what books that she has read recently that she is excited about.

A list of prior guests reads like a Who’s Who of the science fiction community: Kim Stanley Robinson, Ian McDonald. Alastair Reynolds, Jo Walton, John Clute, Ellen Klages, Eileen Gunn, Geoff Ryman, Terry Bisson, Greg Bear, Karen Lord, Ellen Datlow, Jeffrey Ford and many others.