Strange Horizons 2009 in Review

There’s a lot to like in the Strange Horizons’ overview of 2009: diverse voices citing a diverse group of science fiction related books and movies. Some of the books predate 2009, reflecting what reviewers read in 2009. Niall Harrison summarizes:

... the most popular fiction books in this year’s Strange Horizons best of the year round-up were, first, The City & The City by China Mieville, second, In Great Waters by Kit Whitfield, and third equal, Ark by Stephen Baxter and Cloud & Ashes by Greer Gilman.

Also receiving repeated mention: nonfiction On Joanna Russ edited by Farah Mendlesohn, young adult novel Gullstruck Island by Frances Hardinge, and feature film Moon.

I have some catching up to do, which I always say about this time of year.

The Strange Horizons overview makes an interesting comparison with Jeff VanderMeer’s Amazon Top Ten Science Fiction and Fantasy for 2009.

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

Top 10 posts from 2009

Below are the most popular entries, by pageviews, for the Strangelove for Science Fiction blog. The blog was started August 6, 2009.

1. Why Best Picture Oscars are like a Broken Clock -- 46
2. The Windup Girl -- 38
3. Toward Better Hugo Award Winners -- 34
4. Anathem -- 32
5. Early Influences -- 27
6. Year’s Best SF 14 -- 22
7. More on Mindfulness -- 21
8. Reno in 2011 -- 16
9. Martian Time-Slip -- 15
10. The Doctor is In -- 14

Having worked at a newspaper (over 100,000 daily circulation) and later having been in charge of several websites (over 100,000 pageviews per day) these blog numbers are thin. Even these numbers are suspect, since it appears that Google Analytics includes the blog owner's pageviews. It filters out numerous web crawlers, which is helpful. Still, it may be an interesting measuring stick for future years, so I offer it here. I invite readers of this blog to join in the discussion by posting comments.

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