The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year-Volume Three Read online

  THE BEST SCIENCE FICTION

  AND FANTASY OF THE YEAR:

  VOLUME THREE

  Jonathan Strahan

  This edition of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Three © 2009 by Night Shade Books

  Cover art © 2009 by Fred Gambino

  Cover design by Eugene Wang

  Interior layout and design by Ross E. Lockhart

  Introduction, story notes and arrangement © 2009 by Jonathan Strahan.

  First Edition

  ISBN: 978-1-59780-149-2

  Night Shade Books

  Please visit us on the web at

  www.nightshadebooks.com

  Copyright Acknowledgments

  "Exhalation," by Ted Chiang. © 2008 Ted Chiang. Originally published in Eclipse Two (Night Shade Books). Reprinted by permission of the author and the Virginia Kidd Agency.

  "Shoggoths in Bloom," by Elizabeth Bear. © 2008 Elizabeth Bear. Originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, March 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel," by Peter S. Beagle. © 2008 Peter S. Beagle. Originally published in Strange Roads (Dreamhaven Books). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Fixing Hanover," by Jeff VanderMeer. © 2008 Jeff VanderMeer. Originally published in Extraordinary Engines (Solaris Books). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The Gambler," by Paolo Bacigalupi. © 2008 Paolo Bacigalupi. Originally published in Fast Forward 2 (Pyr Books). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The Dust Assassin," by Ian McDonald. © 2008 Ian McDonald. Originally published in The Starry Rift (Viking). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Virgin," by Holly Black. © 2008 Holly Black. Originally published in Magic in the Mirrorstone (Mirrorstone). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Pride and Prometheus," by John Kessel. © 2008 John Kessel. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The Thought War," by Paul McAuley. © 2008 Paul McAuley. Originally published in Postscripts 15, September 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Beyond the Sea Gates of the Scholar Pirates of Sarsköe," by Garth Nix. © 2008 Garth Nix. Originally published in Fast Ships, Black Sails (Night Shade Books). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The Small Door," by Holly Phillips. © 2008 Holly Phillips. Originally published in Fantasy Magazine, May 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Turing's Apples," by Stephen Baxter. © 2008 Stephen Baxter. Originally published in Eclipse Two (Night Shade Books). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates," by Stephen King. © 2008 Stephen King. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October/November 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Five Thrillers," by Robert Reed. © 2008 Robert Reed. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The Magician's House," by Meghan McCarron. © 2008 Meghan McCarron. Originally published in Strange Horizons, July 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Goblin Music," by Joan Aiken. © 2008 The Estate of Joan Aiken. Originally published in The Serial Garden. Reprinted by permission of the author's agent.

  "Machine Maid," by Margo Lanagan. © 2008 Margo Lanagan. Originally published in Extraordinary Engines (Solaris Books). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The Art of Alchemy," by Ted Kosmatka. © 2008 Ted Kosmatka. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss," by Kij Johnson. © 2008 Kij Johnson. Originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, July 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Marry the Sun," by Rachel Swirsky. © 2008 Rachel Swirsky. Originally published in Fantasy Magazine, June 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Crystal Nights," by Greg Egan. © 2008 Greg Egan. Originally published in Interzone, April 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "His Master's Voice," by Hannu Rajaniemi. © 2008 Hannu Rajaniemi. Originally published in Interzone, October 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Special Economics," by Maureen F. McHugh. © 2008 Maureen F. McHugh. Originally published in The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy (Del Rey). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment," by M. Rickert. © 2008 M. Rickert. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October/November 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled . . . ," by Michael Swanwick. © 2008 Michael Swanwick. Originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, February 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "If Angels Fight," by Richard Bowes. © 2008 Richard Bowes. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The Doom of Love in Small Spaces," by Ken Scholes. © 2008 Ken Scholes. Originally published in Realms of Fantasy, April 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Pretty Monsters," by Kelly Link. © 2008 Kelly Link. Originally published in Pretty Monsters: Stories (Viking). Reprinted by permission of the author.

  For Robin Pen, a dear and constant friend

  over these many years, with thanks.

  Acknowledgements

  Each year the list of people who need to be thanked for their support in producing this preposterously complicated book grows and grows. This year I'm going to try to keep it as tight as possible. I'd especially like to thank Alicia Krasnostein, Ben Payne, Alex Pierce, and Tansy Rayner Roberts from Not If You Were the Last Short Story on Earth who acted as readers for this book. Their honesty and support contributed inestimably to the book you now hold, and kept me honest when my spirits flagged at the sheer volume of fiction to be read and considered. I'd also like to thank Gary K. Wolfe and Charles N. Brown, for sharing their friendship and wisdom while I was assembling this book; and of course Howard Morhaim; Justin Ackroyd; Jack Dann; Brian Bieniowski; and Gordon Van Gelder. Thanks also to the following good friends and colleagues without whom this book would have been much poorer, and much less fun to do: Lou Anders, Deborah Biancotti, Ellen Datlow, Gardner Dozois, Sean Williams, and all of the book's contributors.

  As always, my biggest thanks go to Marianne, Jessica, and Sophie. Every moment spent working on this book was a moment stolen from them. I only hope I can repay them.

  Introduction

  Jonathan Strahan

  The webgnomes who labor hard in the fields of Wikipedia define "genre" as:

  "vague categories with no fixed boundaries, they are formed by sets of conventions, and many works cross into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions."

  The book you are now holding is concerned with two such genres—science fiction and fantasy—and one form, short fiction.

  Readers of science fiction have long argued, rather fruitlessly, over how SF should be defined. Whichever definition you choose, and most definitions have some merit, the important thing is that almost all of those readers would be able to agree on what science fiction is, what its conventions, tropes, etc. are, and how they combine to make a science fiction story. This is arguably less true of fantasy, which is much more of a "fuzzy set" with vaguer boundaries, broader conventions, and more varied tropes and memes. Both genres, however, are inextricably linked. Th
ere's something in the DNA of story that keeps them closely connected to one another, with SF at times appearing to be a subset of fantasy, and at other times appearing to be some kind of close cousin, with its own distinct features.

  When, back in the summer of 2003, I stopped reading short fiction for casual interest and began to actively seek out every story I could find so that I could consider it for inclusion in books like this one, I felt that SF and fantasy were quite distinct, or at least at a point in their ever-evolving relationship where they appeared to be quite distinct from one another. Over the past five years and something like 10,000 or more stories my opinion on this has changed. I've come to feel that the boundaries between SF and fantasy, which have always been permeable, are perhaps as open to cross-pollination as they have ever been.

  I'm very hesitant to make a suggestion as to why this is, and I don't want to oversimplify, but while writers have always borrowed from the many toolkits of genre, they seem even more willing to do so now than they have in the past. You can see this most explicitly in science fiction stories like Ted Chiang's brilliant "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate" from last year, which used the poetry of fantasy to frame his science fictional tale or in Daniel Abraham's "The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics," which similarly used the logical rigor we typically associate with SF to structure his powerful fantasy.

  It's almost impossible to say exactly which factors are at play that are driving this willful borrowing, other than to point out that it's perhaps more complex than it might appear. It is, however, why the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year anthology series exists. It's my intention to plot as best I can in a book of restricted length, and allowing for the practicalities of anthology making, the trends and developments of both science fiction and fantasy, while also carefully attempting to present a selection of stories that transgress boundaries in interesting ways, all the while bearing in mind that these should be the best stories of the year, not simply interesting experiments. I will almost always avoid stories written by mainstream writers and which appear in mainstream venues, not because of snobbery, but because I believe those writers are doing something altogether different, dressing what are essentially mainstream stories in the clothing of genre, without every really attempting to come to grips with what genre is and what it means for the stories they are creating. I think what they're doing is valid and worthwhile, but it's not what this book is about.

  Which brings us to the late fall of 2008, when I'm writing this introduction. Over the past twelve months I have searched for every science fiction and fantasy story that I could find, wherever and however it was published. During that time I have read, or started to read, more than three thousand short stories, novelettes, and novellas. They've appeared in or on magazines, anthologies, short story collections, chapbooks, and websites of almost every stripe. They've been used as advertising, as the main event, and as part of collectible publications. And, for all of that, I've only seen and considered a healthy sampling of the stories published during the year. No one knows exactly how many new stories appear every year, but I'd guess somewhere around six or seven thousand. There's no way one person can find, never mind consider, all of those stories. All any reader can do is to make, as I have, an honest effort to read and consider as many stories as possible. I've also been assisted this year by four readers—Alicia Krasnostein, Ben Payne, Alex Pierce, and Tansy Rayner Roberts who collectively read and blog about short fiction at Not If You Were the Last Short Story on Earth—who were incredibly helpful, and who helped to keep me focused and honest when I temporarily flagged. Even with their help, though, I'd be the first to admit that this book can only be what it was always going to be: a selection of the very best stories published during the year as read and selected by one reader. I can only hope you'll find them as rewarding and worthwhile as I have.

  In amongst all of that reading I've noticed a handful of trends, some of interest, some not. The most obvious one is the sudden rise of original anthologies, themed and unthemed, which seem to be going through a period of remarkable success. Without any real attempt to be rigorous, I easily located close to one hundred original anthologies that were published during 2008. I was surprised to find that most of these anthologies, and certainly the best of them, were science fiction. Setting aside my own The Starry Rift and Eclipse Two, which I leave others to comment on, I thought the best SF anthology of the year was Gardner Dozois's Galactic Empires, a collection of six themed SF novellas dominated by Ian McDonald's superb "The Tear," which sadly was too long for this volume. I was also very impressed by Lou Anders's Fast Forward 2, Nick Gevers's Extraordinary Engines, and George Mann's The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction: Volume Two. A strong competitor for the title of best general anthology of the year was Ellen Datlow's very fine The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, which contained excellent stories by Maureen F. McHugh, Pat Cadigan, and others. In what was a much less interesting year for fantasy anthologies, Marvin Kaye's terrific A Book of Wizards and Steve Berman's Magic in the Mirrorstone were the standouts. While it's far too early to declare this some kind of Golden Age of anthologies, it's clearly a very successful time. I've not heard any convincing argument as to why this is the case—certainly the idea that the increase in success of anthologies is in some way tied to the failure of the professional genre magazine market—doesn't convince. However, having looked at publishing schedules for 2009, it's certainly going to continue for at least another year (and probably several more).

  The other trends that stood out in 2008, beyond the simple dominance of science fiction over fantasy (it seemed this year that there was much more interesting SF published than fantasy at shorter lengths—something that may directly correlate with the dominance of SF in the anthology market), was the fascination with zombies and superheroes. Zombies, it seemed, were everywhere: in John Joseph Adams's fine reprint anthology The Living Dead, and in magazines, novels, films, and almost everywhere else. I suspect this may be related to the impact of broader historical and cultural trends on the field, but who knows? It's enough to say that there were a lot of undead walkers out there with a taste for brains. I saw three original anthologies and a small handful of novels featuring superheroes, many of interest. However, I suspect the reason for these suddenly appearing may have more to do with Hollywood's recent love affair with Marvel Comics, rather than anything else.

  And that's 2008. I could say much more about how the professional magazine market is changing, the rise of semi-professional publishing, the impact of annual trends and so on, but such things really just get in the way of the main event: the stories. This year's annual features more stories than ever before—more than two dozen. There's clearly more SF than fantasy (I track it at about a 60/40 split), but more importantly there's a broad range of terrific stories. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I've enjoyed compiling them. See you next year!

  Jonathan Strahan

  Perth, Australia

  November 2008

  Exhalation

  Ted Chiang

  Ted Chiang published his first short story, "Tower of Babylon", in Omni magazine in 1990. The story won the Nebula Award, and has been followed by just nine more stories in the intervening sixteen years. All but two of those stories, which have won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Sturgeon, and Sidewise awards, are collected in Stories of Your Life and Others.

  It has long been said that air (which others call argon) is the source of life. This is not in fact the case, and I engrave these words to describe how I came to understand the true source of life and, as a corollary, the means by which life will one day end.

  For most of history, the proposition that we drew life from air was so obvious that there was no need to assert it. Every day we consume two lungs heavy with air; every day we remove the empty ones from our chest and replace them with full ones. If a person is careless and lets his air level run too low, he feels the heaviness of his limbs and the growing need for
replenishment. It is exceedingly rare that a person is unable to get at least one replacement lung before his installed pair runs empty; on those unfortunate occasions where this has happened—when a person is trapped and unable to move, with no one nearby to assist him—he dies within seconds of his air running out.

  But in the normal course of life, our need for air is far from our thoughts, and indeed many would say that satisfying that need is the least important part of going to the filling stations. For the filling stations are the primary venue for social conversation, the places from which we draw emotional sustenance as well as physical. We all keep spare sets of full lungs in our homes, but when one is alone, the act of opening one's chest and replacing one's lungs can seem little better than a chore. In the company of others, however, it becomes a communal activity, a shared pleasure.

  If one is exceedingly busy, or feeling unsociable, one might simply pick up a pair of full lungs, install them, and leave one's emptied lungs on the other side of the room. If one has a few minutes to spare, it's simple courtesy to connect the empty lungs to an air dispenser and refill them for the next person. But by far the most common practice is to linger and enjoy the company of others, to discuss the news of the day with friends or acquaintances and, in passing, offer newly filled lungs to one's interlocutor. While this perhaps does not constitute air sharing in the strictest sense, there is camaraderie derived from the awareness that all our air comes from the same source, for the dispensers are but the exposed terminals of pipes extending from the reservoir of air deep underground, the great lung of the world, the source of all our nourishment.