• Full Title: The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year (Volume 6)
• Author: [various]
• Editor: Jonathan Strahan
• Year: 2012
• Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy
• Publisher: Night Shade Books
• ISBN 978-1-59780-345-8
• Editor’s Wikipedia page

 

Summary

Winner of the 2012 Aurealis award for best anthology, this 589-page book includes 31 short stories, averaging about 19 pages apiece (though the longest is 62 pages).

 

What I Liked Least About It

As I began this book, my immediate reaction was that I didn’t like it. I haven’t read a lot of modern science fiction, so apparently I wasn’t prepared for what the genre has become. I alternated between feeling very, very smart and incredibly stupid. Either I was too thick-headed to grasp the hidden concepts in the stories, or there simply were no interesting concepts in the stories. I got that weird feeling of trying to grasp something tangible and always missing it.

There were also several stories (see below) that didn’t seem to fit in the anthology at all — they were neither science fiction nor fantasy; simply stories.

 

What I Liked Most About It

As with most anthologies, my primary pleasures were that of experiencing new authors, unfamiliar styles, and concepts I typically don’t consider. Also, what I like about short stories is the ability to read and absorb them in a single sitting (which I can no longer do with full-length novels.)

 

One Story At A Time

• The Case Of Death And Honey, by Neil Gaiman

For most of this one, I couldn’t tell what was going on. It switches from third-person to first-person narrative (and changes font size when this happens). I think it’s about Sherlock Holmes discovering immortality in Chinese honey.

• The Cartographer Wasps And The Anarchist Bees, by E. Lily Yu

Some map-making wasps subjugate some bees, a few of which become anarchists. But you got that from the title, didn’t you? Unless I missed something, that’s actually all that happens in this story.

• Tidal Forces, by Caitlín Kiernan

Told in a disconcerting back-and-forth chronological order via stream-of-consciousness and run-on sentences with oft-elusive import, this one is (I think) about two lesbians, one of which has a black hole growing in her abdomen. The hole gets larger over the course of a few days, but then just as mysteriously closes up.

• Younger Women, by Karen Joy Fowler

A single mother of a teenage girl meets the girl’s boyfriend. Who turns out to be a polite vampire. Again, there is probably something to this story that I’m missing, but...

• White Lines On A Green Field, by Catherynne M. Valente

Someone named “Coyote” was a football player and also got everyone pregnant. Then he left.

• All That Touches The Air, by An Owomoyela

This is the first story in the book I actually enjoyed. Colonists on a planet named Predonia made contact with a sentient mass of parasites called the Vosth, with whom they have an uneasy truce in sharing the world. The main character and first-person narrator reasons with the Vosth, despite being terrified of them, and comes to an agreement over ownership of the planet.

• What We Found, by Geoff Ryman

I greatly enjoyed this story, but couldn’t figure out why/how it was included in this anthology. It’s a poignant, haunting tale of a Nigerian family working through bouts of mental illness, sibling rivalry, and what I took to be cultural issues. But I couldn’t find a single facet about the story that fit either “science fiction” or “fantasy”. I asked my wife to read it; she disliked the story strongly, but agreed that there was nothing science fiction or fantasy about it.

• The Server And The Dragon, by Hannu Rajaniemi

This brief (nine pages) but brilliant story was thick with unwasted words and concepts, some of it flying over my head. It might be the best short science fiction I’ve ever read, easily rivaling Asimov and Heinlein in creativity.

• The Choice, by Paul McAuley

Set in a dystopian near-future Earth, this story follows two adolescent friends, one dealing with an overpowering father and the other dealing with a sick mother. And everyone is dealing with aliens who had visited years earlier. It was an interesting story, but not spectacular.

• Malak, by Peter Watts

Written from the perspective of a “smart” unmanned attack aircraft named Azrael, this short (12-page) account is powerful. Carefully written without emotion, it is still cynical yet hopeful. Painful but healing. I came away with a sense of hope.

• Old Habits, by Nalo Hopkinson

At only 10 pages, Old Habits is a curious look at the lives of several ghosts.

• A Small Price To Pay For Birdsong, by K.J. Parker

Set either in the past or an alternate world, this story was intriguing and interesting, but contained zero sci-fi or fantasy elements.

• Valley Of The Girls, by Kelly Link

I got nothing useful from this chronologically painful story, and not only because all the verbs are in present tense or because the author used square brackets, [like this], for all the characters’ names.

• The Brave Little Toaster, by Cory Doctorow

A cute little (4-page) story about the (possible) dangers of “smart” (connected) devices.

• The Dala Horse, by Michael Swanwick

It wasn’t long, but it seemed longer. Most of the time, I had no idea what was going on, or why. If I understand correctly, a tiny wooden toy horse saved everyone. Or maybe killed everyone. I lost track.

• The Corpse Painter’s Masterpiece, by M. Rickert

Frustratingly, this story never says what a “corpse painter” is or does, never names any characters, and never explains what happens — though the characters seem to know what happened.

• The Paper Menagerie, by Ken Liu

Heartachingly sad, this short (12-page) story reads like an autobiography — it doesn’t seem like Liu is making this up, it seems like he’s writing about real events — despite the magic that gives it away as fantasy.

• Steam Girl, by Dylan Horrocks

Though told from the point of view of a male first-person narrator, this story is essentially about a girl. It brought me back vividly to my high school days. Some of it was soul-crushingly sad, but other parts were fun and cute. It ended on a high note, something I value in a good fiction story.

• After The Apocalypse, by Maureen F. McHugh

From the title you can guess the story’s setting. A single mother and her pre-teen daughter are moving north along with other refugees. Parts seem incredibly realistic. I was deeply sympathizing with with the main character until the final moments of the story, which startled, saddened, and angered me.

• Underbridge, by Peter S. Beagle

It started slowly and took its time before anything interesting happened, but I liked this story by the end. The story is built around the real-life Fremont Troll in Seattle.

• Relic, by Jeffrey Ford

I’m still uncertain, but I think this story is about a mentally ill former war criminal who set up a church to worship a woman’s decaying severed foot, and tries to get other people to worship it too.

• The Invasion Of Venus, by Stephen Baxter

I got off to a bad start in this one; the protagonist is “repelled by modern atheists” (no explanation as to why; and this phrase was gratuitous — not relevant to the plot). It didn’t get much better. The story is apparently about an old lady working to rebuild a dilapidated English church while aliens fly past the Earth toward Venus.

• Woman Leaves Room, by Robert Reed

Apparently told by a sentient data file, this story uses all present-tense verbs, which I always find off-putting and sometimes confusing. The data file misses his mother (I know; it doesn’t make any sense) who is long dead. Fortunately, time is infinite and he meets her again.

• Restoration, by Robert Shearman

I never understood what this story was about. It tells of two people in a giant empty art museum, possibly in Heaven or in Hell, run by an invisible “Curator” who is never described. The two people restore giant paintings. The author seems to be trying to say something about either art, or history, or religion, or the economy, but I can never tell what he’s trying to say.

• The Onset Of A Paranormal Romance, by Bruce Sterling

The first half tells of Gavin, who is attending a “futurist” convention in Capri, and who has confusing conversations with the younger sister he’s brought along. The second half tells of a woman who’s supposed to be a translator at the same futurist convention; we get some of her backstory as she waits for the convention to begin. That’s it. I was stunned at how much never happened in this story.

• Catastrophic Disruption Of The Head, by Margo Lanagan

It seems to start off lamenting the horrors of war, but then there’s a magic Bic lighter that summons shapeshifting magic dogs. Italicized interruptions that don’t make sense. The first-person narrator gets the magic dogs to make him wealthy, but then he runs out of money. I think he marries a princess at the end, but everything is unclear. If there is a real story, it is hidden behind the poor writing.

• The Last Ride Of The Glory Girls, by Libba Bray

I assume this story is set on another planet in a sort of steam punk universe. Some women rob trains using a time-stopping device. At the end, all of them are caught except the first-person narrator who considers going back in time to escape — but it’s not clear at the end whether she does. Also woven through the story is a weird religious cult. It wasn’t the worst story in the book, but it left me unsatisfied.

★★ The Book Of Phoenix, by Nnedi Okorafor

A group called the “Big Eye” performs experiments on humans with various superpowers, all of them imprisoned in numbered buildings. The first-person narrator is in Building 7. Her “powers” are aging quickly and having a very high body temperature. I know, ridiculous, right? She attempts an escape but apparently only succeeds in creating so much heat that Building 7 is destroyed. I think she is killed at the end, but it is difficult to tell.

• Digging, by Ian McDonald

I required several pages to get into this story, to feel it, but then I was fully engaged and invested in the characters. The female protagonist is part of a small community on Mars engaged in a “Big Dig” on Mars — the idea is to create a giant surface depression, into which enough atmosphere will sink to create enough air pressure to sustain life. The project is massive and consumes the lives of all who live there. Somewhere near the end, the financiers from Earth pull the funding and all has ended. The storytelling was enjoyable and the scenes of peril were believable, keeping me on the edge of my seat.

• The Man Who Bridged The Mist, by Kij Johnson

The longest story in the book at 62 pages, this one was among the most enjoyable. Set either on a faraway planet where technology has reverted to Middle Age levels or in some alternate universe, it tells of the attempt to build a bridge over a river of acidic mist and how this project affects the various people (and towns) involved. It felt like the James A. Michener version of a sci-fi short story.

• Goodnight Moons, by Ellen Klages

This is a short, fast-moving (almost harried) story about a woman who came to be on the first human mission to Mars. Despite precautions and prohibitions, she learned mid-voyage that she was pregnant. She gave birth on Mars and then stayed behind as the others returned home (because her child would be unable to withstand the rigors of blast-off and unable to survive in Earth’s gravity well). I think there was more potential for an evocative story here, but its pace was too frenetic — covering several years in seven pages.

 

Conclusion

As is often the case with anthologies, many stories seem like space-fillers and others then become discoverable gems. There were certainly enjoyable, worthwhile gems here. And I think even some of the space-fillers served to broaden my perspective or wake formerly inactive parts of my brain.

However, for me, this one simply contained too many stories that either weren’t enjoyable, or weren’t sci-fi/fantasy, or didn’t actually say what the author was trying to say. The gems were fewer and further between than I need.

 

Note: A shorter version of this review is available on Goodreads, here.

 

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