The State of the Art
It’s trite to say it these days, but it’s still very true: the world of science fiction (emphasis on “world”) is more diverse than ever in terms of nationality, ethnicity, and gender, reflected not just in the authors but in the characters they write about. Of course, none of that really matters if the stories aren’t excellent as well, and that’s what we see here. Sometimes this diversity is presented as important in that it means a wide variety of voice are given the opportunity to be heard—and that’s important of course. But that’s not the key, I think. The key point is that we readers have the opportunity to hear a wide variety of voices. Isn’t that central to science fiction anyway? Aren’t science fiction and fantasy centrally about difference—a celebration of change, of color, of difference? Of course, even those words are othering—what is different to me is familiar to you. Science fiction and fantasy remind us, then, that the world—the worlds!—are gloriously different.
One source of originality is new voices, and thus I am excited every to see new writers producing excellent work. This year, to see people like SL Huang, Madeline Ray, Ryan Row, Jamie Wahls, J.R. Dawson, Giovanni De Feo, Hanuš Seiner, and Vina Jie-Min Prasad represented with truly original, and profoundly varied, stories is really cool. I hadn’t heard of any of those folks until I read their stories. (They’re not the only writers new to the book here—it’s exciting as well to welcome the great Samuel R. Delany to these pages, and likewise Kathleen Ann Goonan and Nina Kiriki Hoffman, as well as writers whose careers fit somewhere in between those examples: Minsoo Kang, Lettie Prell, and Matthew Kressel.
But one of the reasons I choose stories by some writers over and over again is that they are always fresh. What story this year is stranger than C.S.E. Cooney’s “Though She Be But Little”? Likewise, Robert Reed has appeared in these books more often than any writer, but every story is challenging and thoughtful. I was thrilled to publish exceptional story after exceptional story by Yoon Ha Lee before he produced a novel—and his novels are as exotic and different as his stories, so to be able to feature a remarkable story about one of the main character in Lee’s first two novels is a delight. And so with all the repeat authors this year.
In this space I usually try to sum up the state of the field by looking at changes at the major short fiction outlets, but this year I don’t feel there’s a whole lot of real interest to say—the state of short fiction in both print and online venues stayed pretty stable in 2017. As for novels, we did see a similar mix of new writers and established writers producing excellent work. Annalee Newitz, who has appeared in these pages, published an exceptional first science fiction novel, Autonomous; and Theodora Goss, who has appeared here several times, published a wonderful first fantasy novel, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter. Besides those, I’ll mention three more truly exceptional novels: Spoonbenders, by Daryl Gregory, The Moon and the Other, by John Kessel, and Ka: Dar Oakley in the Land of Ymir, by the great John Crowley.
Finally, in speaking of the state of the field, I must proceed to sadder news. Earlier this year we lost two titans, Ursula K. Le Guin and Gardner Dozois. Le Guin was one of the very greatest writers of our time, in or out of the field. (She was regularly mentioned as a potential Nobel Prize winner.) We were fortunate to be able to reprint her story “Elementals” a few years ago in this series. Gardner Dozois was a first-rate writer as well, particularly at short lengths, and a magnificent editor, best known for his time at Asimov’s Science Fiction, and for the thirty-five volumes of his Year’s Best Science Fiction, a major point of inspiration for me in editing these books.
As I wrote about Le Guin at the time of her death: I can still easily call up in my mind the cover of The Dispossessed, in front of me on the cafeteria table at Naperville Central High School some time in 1975, as I read it during lunch hour. Malafrena was a gift from a friend—I read it eagerly, and loved it—it’s a young person’s book, I think, an ardent book—I understand it was her earliest written novel to see publication, and that shows, but it is still one of my favorites. And her last novel, Lavinia, from 2008, is also one of my favorites, a beautifully written and moving and involving story of the wife of Aeneas.
Her prose was truly elegant, truly lovely. Her speculation was rigorous and honest and fruitful in itself. Even from the earliest she was striking—the story “Semley’s Necklace” (the opening segment of Rocannon’s World, her first published novel) is heartbreaking and powerful. And her first story in an science fiction magazine, “April in Paris”, is sweet and lovely and romantic . . . I don’t know how it was received at the time but to me in retrospect it seems an announcement: “This is special. This is a Writer.”
So many of her short stories are special to me . . . “Winter’s King”, “Nine Lives”, “The Stars Below”, “Another Story”, “Imaginary Countries”, the Yeowe/Werel stories, all the fables of Changing Planes.
I am an emotional reader at times (aren’t most of us?), and one thing Le Guin could do, repeatedly, was bring me to tears—tears of awe and wonder, tears of sadness, tears of love. I leave with some of my favorite quotes:
“Kaph looked at him and saw the thing he had never seen before, saw him: Owen Pugh, the other, the stranger who held his hand out in the dark.” (I tear up just typing this.)
“Stars and gatherings of stars, depth below depth without end, the light.”
“But all this happened a long time ago, nearly forty years ago; I do not know if it happens now, even in imaginary countries.”
And, of course, from The Dispossessed: “True journey is return.”
As for Gardner Dozois, who was closer to me in a personal sense—I was really shaken by the news of his passing. He was one of the greatest editors in the field’s history (an argument can be made—and I’ve made it—that he ranks at the top); and he was also a very significant science fiction writer. His writing should not be forgotten—stories like “Strangers”, “A Special Kind of Morning”, “A Dream at Noonday”, “The Visible Man”, “Horse of Air”, “A Kingdom by the Sea”, “Chains of the Sea”, his Nebula winners “The Peacemaker” and “Morning Child”, his excellent later story “A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows” and many others are exceptionally written, imaginatively powerful, very moving—truly an oeuvre, at shorter lengths, to stand with the best writers of his generation.
In a more personal sense, he was an important influence on me, and indeed something of a mentor. He was generous in treating me as an equal (I was not), and in happily discussing the state of the field with me at the drop of a hat. He was wonderful company, a true bon vivant, as somebody said always ready raise the spirit of a gathering and to lower its tone. He was one of those in the field I could call a friend, and I’m proud to have known him.
We who produce these similar books, the best of the year volumes, never regarded ourselves as rivals. Our books are paragraphs in a long conversation about science fiction. I talked with Gardner about science fiction for years, in different ways—face to face; or on message boards, discussing our different ideas about who should have won the Hugo in 1973 or whenever; month by month in our columns in Locus; or in the tables of contents of these books, each of us proposing lists of the best stories each year. I always looked eagerly for Gardner’s “list”, and his stories for me represented a different and completely interesting angle on what really mattered each year.
I already miss that voice.