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

These Links are not Baroque

Lord of Light
Here’s a Guardian article by Sam Jordison that finds a connection between a failed attempt to make a feature film out of Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light (1967) and the so-called Canadian Caper that spirited embassy workers out of Iran in 1979-80. By the way, it’s a review of Lord of Light, which asks the question, “Is this book profound, or daft – or both?” SF Strangelove votes for both.

A New Gormenghast novel
Mervyn Peake’s wife and long-time collaborator, Maeve, wrote a fourth book in the Gormenghast series (Titus Groan, Gormenghast, Titus Alone) shortly after his death in 1968, according to the Telegraph. The manuscript was discovered recently by a granddaughter in the attic of her south London home.

John Clute on Galileo’s Dream
In John Clute’s first column at his new venue, Strange Horizons, he essays Kim Stanley Robinson’s new novel Galileo’s Dream. “Galileo is a stunning creation, a histrion utterly real to the eye, a porridge of sensation who turns on a dime into icon.”

Christopher Hitchens on J.G. Ballard
Calling him “our great specialist in catastrophe,” Hitchens, in an Atlantic article, celebrates Ballard’s bleak deadpan humor, his readiness to imagine a future without human survival.

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

Best Movies of 2009 sort of

My proviso is that there are several 2009 domestic movies I would still like to see and don’t get me started about how hard it is to find current foreign films.

Best Movies of the Year: The Hurt Locker and Bright Star (tie)

The Hurt Locker (directed by Kathryn Bigelow) -- If you are looking for a film about the Iraq War or Middle East issues, this is not that film. This is a movie about the psychology of soldiers under stress, focusing on three men in a bomb disposal unit. The amount of tension the story builds is remarkable. It’s a masterful character study that takes its time, peeling back one layer at a time.

Bright Star (directed by Jane Campion) -- (A brief SF Strangelove review). Pictured are Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne and Ben Wishaw as John Keats.

Also recommended: A Serious Man (directed by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen), Fantastic Mr. Fox (directed by Wes Anderson), Up in the Air (directed by Jason Reitman).

Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie of the Year: Moon

Moon (directed by Duncan Jones) -- (A brief SF Strangelove review). Pictured is Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell.

Recommended with reservations:
Star Trek (directed by J.J. Abrams) -- Enjoyable if you can ignore the plot problems.
District 9 (directed by Neill Blomkamp) -- (A brief SF Strangelove review).
Avatar (directed by James Cameron) -- See it for its visuals. (A brief SF Strangelove review).

All four of these supposedly forward-looking science fiction films seem dated: Moon’s concern with cloning, Star Trek’s basis in 1960s television, District 9’s rewrite of Alien Nation (1988), and Avatar’s rewrite of Tarzan (1912).

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