INTRODUCTION

Summation: 1987

Science Fiction had a good year commercially in 1987, although if you look beyond the best-seller lists, some disturbing trends were in evidence. From the standpoint of sales and book production, 1987 was a record year for the genre. According to the newsmagazine Locus, 177 publishers produced SF or fantasy in 1987, turning out a total of 1,675 books, up 12 percent from 1986. An astonishing 650 of those titles were new science fiction or fantasy novels. SF and fantasy books continued to make their presence strongly felt on nationwide best-seller lists, with writers such as Isaac Asimov, L. Ron Hubbard, Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen King, Stephen Donaldson, Anne McCaffrey, Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven, and others, staying on those lists throughout much of the year. New book lines also continued to appear in 1987. Doubleday, in conjunction with Bantam, has started an upscale new hardcover line called Foundation, edited by Pat LoBrutto. Baen Books started a new fantasy line, Sign of the Dragon, edited by Betsy Mitchell, and will publish two books a month under this imprint. The Ace Fantasy Specials published their first few titles to good response. And Crown Books, in partnership with the huge bookstore chain Waldenbooks, is planning a mass-market line with twelve titles per month, including SF, fantasy, horror, mystery, and romance. (This last news has caused a ripple of disquiet, however, among publishers, who are not particularly happy that one of the nation’s largest book-buying chains is becoming a direct competitor. It remains to be seen exactly how the arrangement will work out.)

There were a few disturbing portents in 1987, though. Perhaps the most ominous of these was the dramatic upsurge of novels by newer writers set in fictional worlds created by famous SF writers, or novels using thematic material created by established writers. This practice of hiring lesser-known authors to create new adventures set “in the world of” some famous SF novel (for instance, a novel set in the world of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, or in the world of Robert Silverberg’s Lord Valentine’s Castle) has been referred to as “sharecropping” and strikes me as a very dangerous trend. Many publishers would love to publish only surefire “brand name” bestsellers and eliminate all uncertainty from the process, and since the “brand names” themselves cannot possibly produce enough material to fulfill this dream, why not hire other people to do it for them? For years now, corporate publishing and corporate marketing specialists have been applying homogenizing pressures to the field, hoping to squash the wild diversity of SF into a rigidly standardized, and therefore easily manageable, “product,” one for which profit is simple to predict; this latest trend is perhaps the most blatant and cynical attempt of all. The recent influx of “sharecropper” novels joins a flood of similar items—choose-your-own-adventure books, “Robotech” books, Star Trek novels, shared-world anthologies, “Dungeons and Dragons” scenarios, “Thieves World” novels, and so on. It is possible to argue that none of these items are pernicious in themselves, perhaps not even the “sharecropper” books. Taken together, however, as part of a rapidly growing publishing trend (Locus reports that there were seventy-four such books this year, up from twenty-two last year, and there will almost certainly be more next year), you begin to wonder how many individually created books of merit by young writers they are keeping out of print by filling an ever-increasing number of slots in publishers’ schedules, and by eating up precious rack-display space in bookstores. In the case of the “sharecroppers,” I also feel, perhaps naively, that young writers ought to be busy developing their own worlds and working out their own ideas and fresh material, rather than reworking ground already broken by older and more successful writers. Taken to an extreme, it is possible to envision a future where young writers can get into print only by hiring themselves out to produce work under one of a dozen or so highly marketable “brand names.” Not only would creativity be stifled (which would probably spell the eventual doom of the genre), but it would become much more difficult for younger writers to get out of the midlist category, where advances are much lower than they need to be for more upwardly mobile authors. A paranoid fantasy? Perhaps. I certainly hope so.

And yet, few observers have noticed that it is already becoming a good deal harder to get out of midlist than it was only a few years ago. Almost every major publisher in SF now has a hardcover-softcover capability, for instance, and insists on buying hard and soft rights simultaneously for many books. Thus, if you have an unaffiliated hardcover, a hardcover for which softcover rights have not already been sold, you are going to find it much more difficult to sell those rights to somebody now than it was a few years back. This also tends to discourage paperback-rights auctions for all but a few of the hottest writers: during the last decade or so, the paperback auction is where most of the really serious money has been made. This will tend to keep advances for novels a lot lower on the whole—thereby making it more difficult to get out of midlist and into the territory where the publishers suddenly start spending a lot more money to promote your book. When publishers have higher expectations for a book and a higher investment to protect (because they had to spend more to get it in the first place), more money goes toward promotion.

In spite of all this—and the constant worry, not helped by the Stock Market crash, that there is another major recession for the publishing industry waiting just down the road—I remain cautiously optimistic about the health of the genre. This (cautious) optimism is fueled by the fact that there is more good science fiction and fantasy being produced by more good writers today than at any other time in the history of the genre—work of all sorts right across the aesthetic spectrum, from High Fantasy to the hardest of hard SF. And this work is being produced by a multigenerational cross-section of writers that extends from Golden Age giants of the 1940s to the kids making their first sales in 1987. Isn’t there a lot of shit being published? Sure there is—there always is—but there is also a lot of worthwhile work being produced by many writers. And I don’t think that anything short of the death of the publishing industry as we know it is going to be sufficient to keep them all out of print.

But only time will tell.

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It was a year of mixed success in the SF magazine market. On the downhill side, the digest-sized horror magazine Night Cry was killed just as it looked—to me, anyway—as though they might have a shot at establishing a steady audience. Another large-format glossy SF magazine was announced and heavily publicized throughout 1987, SF: New Science Fiction Stories … but, like Imago and L. Ron Hubbard’s to the Stars Science Fiction Magazine before it, it died stillborn. There is definitely a niche for a slick, large-format SF/fantasy magazine, in my opinion, and someday a shrewd someone is going to come along with adequate capital and the proper vision and do it right—and quite likely stand the SF magazine world on its ear. It didn’t happen in 1987, though, and it probably will not happen in 1988, either. But someday, it will: mark my words. The recently resurrected Worlds of If also seems to have vanished from mortal ken, and must be presumed dead.

There was an uphill side, although perhaps not a tremendously steep one. The Twilight Zone Magazine has improved markedly under its new editor Tappan King, and Amazing is showing new signs of vigor under its new editor Patrick L. Price. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction recently underwent a complete internal redesign, the first for the magazine in decades. Interzone survived and prospered (modestly) for yet another year. The folks at Aboriginal SF were smart enough to get rid of their odd tabloid format, which many industry observers had seen as the kiss of death for the magazine, and Aboriginal SF survived to produce five issues in 1988. Although insiders were giving odds against the magazine last year, its chances of survival at this point actually look pretty good. And two new magazines will be entering the ring in 1988: a resurrected Weird Tales, edited by veteran George H. Scithers, and a new semiprozine called Argos Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, edited by Ross Emry.

As most of you probably know, I, Gardner Dozois, am also editor of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. And that, as I have mentioned before, poses a problem for me in compiling this summation, particularly the magazine-by-magazine review that follows. As IAsfm editor, I could be said to have a vested interest in the magazine’s success, so that anything negative I said about another SF magazine (particularly another digest-sized magazine, my direct competition), could be perceived as an attempt to make my own magazine look good. Aware of this constraint, I have decided that nobody can complain if I say only positive things about the competition … and so, once again, I have limited myself to a listing of some of the worthwhile authors published by each.

Omni published first-rate fiction this year by Howard Waldrop, Octavia Butler, Kate Wilhelm, George R. R. Martin, Neal Barrett, Jr., Bruce McAllister, and others. Omni’s fiction editor is Ellen Datlow.

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction featured excellent fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin, Dean Whitlock, Robert Charles Wilson, Paul J. McAuley, Kim Stanley Robinson, Lucius Shepard, Jonathan Carroll, Keith Roberts, Avram Davidson, and others. F & SF’s long-time editor is Edward Ferman.

Issac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine featured critically acclaimed work by Pat Murphy, Walter Jon Williams, James Patrick Kelly, Karen Joy Fowler, Lucius Shepard, Pat Cadigan, Orson Scott Card, Bruce Sterling, Connie Willis, Kim Stanley Robinson, Robert Silverberg, Nancy Kress, Neal Barrett, Jr., and others. IAsfm’s editor is Gardner Dozois.

Analog featured good work by Michael Flynn, Harry Turtledove, Charles Sheffield, Eric Vinicoff, Joseph Manzione, Poul Anderson, D. C. Poyer, Jerry Oltion, and others. Analog’s long-time editor is Stanley Schmidt.

Amazing featured good work by R. Garcia y Robertson, Paul Di Fillipo, Susan Casper, Phillip C. Jennings, Susan Palwick, Robert Frazier, Justin Leiber, and others. Amazing’s editor is Patrick L. Price.

The Twilight Zone Magazine featured good work by Kim Antieau, Pat Murphy, Pat Cadigan, Susan Casper, Michael McDowell, Jane Yolen, Lucius Shepard, Peni Griffin, and others. TZ’s editor is Tappan King.

Interzone featured good work by Gregory Benford, Ian Watson, Brian Stable-ford, Geoff Ryman, Richard Kadrey, Michael Swanwick, Ken Wisman, and others. Interzone’s editors are Simon Ounsley and David Pringle.

Short SF continued to appear in many magazines outside genre boundaries, including off-trail markets such as High Times. Playboy in particular continues to run a good deal of SF, under fiction editor Alice K. Turner.

(Subscription addresses follow for those magazines hardest to find on the newsstands: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mercury Press, Inc., Box 56, Cornwall, CT, 06753, annual subscription $19.50 for twelve issues; Amazing, TSR, Inc., P. O. Box 72069, Chicago, IL, 60690, annual subscription $9.00 for six issues; Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Davis Publications, Inc., P.O. Box 1933, Marion, OH 43305, $19.50 for thirteen issues; Interzone, 124 Osborne Road, Brighton, BN1 6LU, England, airmail one-year subscription $13.00 for four issues.)

The semiprozine scene was changing in 1987, with old magazines dying, and new ones either being born or struggling to establish themselves. Among the fiction semiprozines, Fantasy Book and Alphelion have died: Whispers and Fantasy Tales each produced only one issue this year (with the Whispers issue particularly recommended); Aboriginal SF and New Pathways were looking fairly healthy; and two new magazines, as we mentioned before, are waiting in the wings—Weird Tales and Argos F&SF. (Aboriginal SF is still technically a semiprozine, because of its low circulation and its lack of newsstand distribution, but it is being taken seriously as a professional market within the field, and with luck, it will not stay in this category for long. Similarly, Weird Tales is technically a semiprozine, but with an experienced editor like Scithers at the helm, this too may change if the magazine can keep its head above water long enough.) There were also a slew of new horror semiprozines, the most visible of which were probably The Horror Show and Grue Magazine. As ever, Locus and SF Chronicle remain your best bet among the semiprozines if you are looking for an overview of the genre. Among the semiprozines that concentrate primarily on literary criticism, the death of Fantasy Review this year leaves Thrust unchallenged as the best-known and longest-surviving of the criticalzines. Two recent and promising contenders in the criticalzine field are Orson Scott Card’s Short Form and Steve Brown and Dan Steffan’s Science Fiction Eye, although both magazines had a lot of trouble sticking to their announced publishing schedules this year (the second issue of Short Form appeared over eight months late). Perhaps these potentially valuable magazines will work the bugs out and become more reliable in 1988.

(Locus, Locus Publications, Inc., P. O. Box 13305, Oakland, CA 94661, one-year first-class subscription $32.00 for 12 issues; Science Fiction Chronicle, Algol Press, P. O. Box 4175, New York, NY 10163–4157, one-year subscription $23.40 for twelve issues; Thrust, Thrust Publications, 8217 Langport Terrace, Gaithersburg, MD 20877, $8.00 for four issues; Science Fiction Eye, Box 3105, Washington, DC 20010–0105, $7.00 for one year; Short Form, 546 Lindley Road, Greensboro, NC 27410; Aboriginal Science Fiction, P. O. Box 2449, Woburn, MA 01888–0849, $12.00 for six issues, $22.00 for twelve issues; Weird Tales, Box 13418, Philadelphia, PA 19101–3418, $18.00 for six issues [eighteen months]; New Pathways, MGA Services, P. O. Box 863994, Plano, TX 75086–3994, one-year subscription $15.00 for six issues, $25.00 for a two-year subscription; Argos Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine, Penrhyn Publishing Company, Box 2109, Renton, WA 98056, one-year subscription $8.00 for four issues; Whispers, 70 Highland Ave., Binghamton, NY 13905, $13.95 for two double issues; Fantasy Tales, Stephen Jones, 130 Parkview, Wembley, Middlesex, HA9 6JU, England, Great Britain, $11.00 for three issues; The Horror Show, Phantasm Press, 1488 Misty Springs Lane, Oak Run, CA 96069, $14.00 per year; Grue Magazine, Hells Kitchen productions, Box 370, Times Square Sta., New York, NY 10108, $11.00 for three issues.)

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Overall, 1987 was a pretty good year for original anthologies. The best original anthology of the year, and one of the best in a number of years, was undoubtedly In The Field of Fire (Tor), edited by Jeanne Van Buren Dann and Jack Dann. This anthology, the first ever of SF stories about the war in Vietnam, was recognized immediately as a landmark anthology. The New York Times Book Review went so far as to call it “a significant contribution to the literature of the 1980s.” There are no really bad stories here, but the best, which are among the year’s best, include stories by Bruce McAllister, Lucius Shepard, Susan Casper, Dave Smeds, and a very affecting poem by Joe Haldeman. The book also contains good stories by John Kessel, Richard Paul Russo, Karen Joy Fowler, Robert Frazier, Charles L. Grant, and others, as well as classic reprints by Kate Wilhelm, Harlan Ellison, and others. Another good anthology, and an excellent value for your money, is The Universe (Bantam Spectra), edited by Byron Preiss (fiction editor, David Harris). The fiction here is uneven, although there is some very good stuff by Michael Bishop, Gene Wolfe, Connie Willis, Robert Silverberg, Rudy Rucker, and others. The anthology also contains a wide array of interesting nonfiction articles, featuring a lot of fascinating upto-the-minute cosmological speculation and some good color artwork by SF and astronomical artists. Great Britain also produced two good original anthologies this year: Other Edens (Unwin), edited by Christopher Evans and Robert Holdstock, and Tales from the Forbidden Planet (Titan), edited by Roz Kaveny. Other Edens featured good work by Ian Watson, M. John Harrison, Garry Kilworth, Keith Roberts, and others. Tales from the Forbidden Planet featured good work by Keith Roberts, Gwyneth Jones, Iain Banks, Tanith Lee, and others. Also interesting was Mathenauts (Arbor House), edited by Rudy Rucker, a mixed reprint-and-original anthology of SF stories about mathematics, especially notable for bringing back into print two neglected classics by Norman Kagan.

Among the series anthologies, the late Terry Carr’s last Universe volume, Universe 17 (Doubleday), was unfortunately rather weak—some good work here, but nothing outstanding. Universe is the longest-running original SF anthology, and its loss would be a blow to the field. Fortunately, it looks as though this anthology series will survive the tragic death of its founding editor—Universe will be taken over by Robert Silverberg and Karen Haber and will appear every other year instead of annually. Far Frontiers, the Baen anthology series, edited by Jim Baen and Jerry Pournelle, also underwent a transformation in 1987—Jerry Pournelle stepped down as co-editor, and the name of the series became New Destinies. Aesthetically, however, little has changed; it still remains a good solid anthology, but one that, to date, has published nothing of really first-rank quality. Another Writers of the Future anthology appeared in 1987. L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume III (Bridge), edited by Algis Budrys. As with previous volumes, it may well be true that some of the writers herein will someday be the big-name professionals of the future—you will definitely be seeing a lot more from M. Shayne Bell, R. V. Branham, Martha Soukup, and Dave Wolverton, for instance—but the stories they have produced for this particular anthology are novice work. A new SF original anthology series started this year, with Synergy: New Science Fiction, Volume 1 (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), edited by George Zebrowski. This shows every sign of being a promising series, and it will be interesting to see it develop. The first volume, however, contains good work by Frederik Pohl, Ian Watson, Charles Harness, and Rudy Rucker, but does not have any really exceptional material. Another new original SF anthology series, Full Spectrum, edited by Shawna McCarthy and Lou Aronica, is forthcoming next year from Bantam Spectra.

There were no really good high fantasy anthologies this year, unfortunately. With high fantasy booming as a genre, I do not know why original anthologies of the stuff are so rare. I personally like well-executed high fantasy anthologies, and would like to see more of them. As usual, though, there were a lot of horror anthologies published. Shadows 10 (Doubleday), edited by Charles L. Grant, and Whispers VI (Doubleday), edited by Stuart David Schiff were the best of them—both solid volumes of their respective series. (Shadows and Whispers are usually the best bets in the original horror anthology field and have been so for years.) There was an interesting one-shot original horror anthology this year, The Architecture of Fear (Arbor House), edited by Kathryn Cramer and Peter D. Pautz. Less interesting were Masques II (Maclay), edited by J. N. Williamson, and Doom City (Tor), edited by Charles L. Grant. Night Visions 4 (Dark Harvest) was very uneven (as this series almost unavoidably is), but did feature some good work.

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It was a pretty good year overall for novels, although there was no single novel that dominated 1987 the way that, say, Frederik Pohl’s Gateway or Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness dominated their respective years. Once again, I must admit that I was unable to read all the new novels released this year, or even the majority of them. Locus estimates that there were 298 new SF novels, 256 new fantasy novels, and 96 new horror novels released—and their estimates are probably low. It is difficult to understand how anyone could keep up with 650 new novels, let alone anyone with anything else to do. Certainly I can’t. Therefore, as usual, I am going to limit myself here to comments on novels I did read. I was most impressed by Lincoln’s Dreams, Connie Willis (Bantam Spectra); Mindplayers, Pat Cadigan (Bantam); Vacuum Flowers, Michael Swanwick (Arbor House); Life During Wartime, Lucius Shepard (Bantam); The Urth of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe (Tor); When Gravity Fails, George Alec Effinger (Arbor House); The Forge of God, Greg Bear (Tor); Great Sky River, Gregory Benford (Bantam Spectra); Land of Dreams, James P. Blaylock (Arbor House); and A Mask for the General, Lisa Goldstein (Bantam Spectra).

Other novels that have gotten a lot of attention this year include: 2061: Odyssey Three, Arthur C. Clarke (Del Rey); The Secret Ascension, Michael Bishop (Tor); Seventh Son, Orson Scott Card (Tor); The Annals of the Heechee, Frederik Pohl (Del Rey); Voice of the Whirlwind, Walter Jon Williams (Tor); On Stranger Tides, Tim Powers (Ace); Aegypt, John Crowley (Bantam Spectra); Little Heroes, Norman Spinrad (Bantam Spectra); Bones of the Moon, Jonathan Carroll (Arbor House); War for the Oaks, Emma Bull (Ace); To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Robert A. Heinlein (Ace Putnam); Dover Beach, Richard Bowker (Bantam Spectra); Dawn, Octavia E. Butler (Warner); The Smoke Ring, Larry Niven (Del Rey); Memories, Mike McQuay (Bantam Spectra); Way of the Pilgrim, Gordon R. Dickson (Ace); Rumors of Spring, Richard Grant (Bantam Spectra); Sign of Chaos, Roger Zelazny (Arbor House); The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three, Stephen King (Donald M. Grant); Still River, Hal Clement (Del Rey); Swordspoint, Ellen Kushner (Arbor House); Infernal Devices, K. W. Jeter (St. Martin’s Press); Soldiers of Paradise, Paul Park (Arbor House); and Araminta Station, Jack Vance (Underwood-Miller).

(I should set off mention here of books I bought and edited myself for the Isaac Asimov Presents line for Congdon & Weed, so that you can make the proper allowances for bias: The Man Who Pulled down the Sky, John Barnes; Pennterra, Judith Moffett; Agent of Byzantium, Harry Turtledove; Through Darkest America, Neal Barrett, Jr.; Station Gehenna, Andrew Weiner; and Caliban Landing, Steve Popkes.)

It is interesting to note that, once again, the Nebula electorate ignored works by some of the biggest names in the field—Heinlein, Clarke, Niven, Dickson, Clement, King—in favor of placing novels by middle-level writers such as Wolfe and newer writers such as Murphy and Bear on this year’s final Nebula Ballot. What does this mean? I don’t know, but in a field like SF, where name-recognition is supposed to be the most important factor, it must mean something. Perhaps it is an early indication that somewhere down the line there is going to be a big shift in just whom the audience recognizes as big-name authors.

It is also encouraging to note that there was a steady stream of first novels once again this year. Locus listed about thirty of them—no doubt there were actually more. None of them had as much of an impact on the field as a few first novels have had in recent years—there are no first novels on the final Nebula Ballot this time around, for instance, although they dominated it in 1984. Many fine first novels did appear in 1987, though; particularly strong were the Cadigan, the Moffett, the Barnes, the Park, the Bull, and the Kushner.

As you can see from looking over the lists, Tor, Arbor House, and Bantam had particularly strong years in 1987.

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Nineteen eighty-seven was not as strong a year overall for short-story collections as 1986, although several excellent volumes did appear. The best of the year’s collections were The Jaguar Hunter, Lucius Shepard (Arkham House) and All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past: Neat Stories by Howard Waldrop, Howard Waldrop (Ursus Press), both landmark collections. If you can afford them (which few people will be able to, alas), the monumental five-volume The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Philip K. Dick (Underwood-Miller) and The Essential Ellison, Harlan Ellison (The Nemo Press), also belong on everyone’s bookshelf. Evil Water, Ian Watson (Gollancz); Cardography, Orson Scott Card (Hypatia); Faces, Leigh Kennedy (Atlantic Monthly Press); Portraits of His Children, George R. R. Martin (Dark Harvest); and the posthumous collection The Valley So Low: Southern Mountain Stories, Manly Wade Wellman (Doubleday) were also first rate.

Also outstanding this year were The Best of Pamela Sargent, Pamela Sargent (Academy Chicago); True Names … and Other Dangers, Vernor Vinge (Baen); Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences, Ursula K. Le Guin (Capra Press); The Hidden Side of the Moon, Joanna Russ (St. Martin’s Press); Our Best: the Best of Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth, Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth (Baen); Night Sorceries, Tanith Lee (Daw); Polyphemus, Michael Shea (Arkham House); And the Gods Laughed, Frederic Brown (Phantasia Press); Why Not You and I?, Karl Edward Wagner (Dark Harvest); Scared Stiff, Tales of Sex and Death, Ramsey Campbell (Scream/Press); and The Bridge of Lost Desire, Samuel R. Delany (Arbor House).

It is interesting to see the extent to which small presses have come to dominate the field of short-story collections. Arkham House, Dark Harvest, Underwood-Miller, Ursus Press, The Nemo Press, Scream/Press, Hypathia, Academy Chicago—these, and other small presses, were the publishers who brought you short-story collections this year, for the most part. Trade publishers mostly avoided the risks involved in publishing collections, and seemed content to let the small presses pick up the slack. Let us hope that more of the regular trade publishers pick up some of that slack next year, and start publishing more collections.

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It was another fairly good year in the reprint anthology market. As is the case almost every year, your best bets in the reprint market were the various “Best of the Year” collections. This year there were three covering science fiction (including this one), one covering fantasy, one covering horror, plus the annual Nebula Award anthology. (Next year there will be one fewer “best” covering science fiction—Terry Carr’s—but an additional one covering both fantasy and horror.) The best nonseries reprint anthology of the year, and one of the best values for your money of any year, is the enormous retrospective horror anthology The Dark Descent (Tor), edited by David G. Hartwell. Hartwell definitely has an aesthetic ax or two to grind here: the extensive section introductions and story notes are designed to put forward a sequence of polemical critical points about the nature of horror fiction and the evolution of the genre; they are deliberately argumentative. You may disagree with some of this critical armature—or not want to be bothered with it at all—but it is hard to find fault with the fiction that Hartwell has selected, or complain about value received for your dollar: the book is 1,011 pages long and contains an amazing 56 stories. The Dark Descent will be a landmark anthology for years to come. Any book eclectic enough to contain neglected masterpieces, such as Fritz Leiber’s “Smoke Ghost,” Gene Wolfe’s “Seven American Nights,” Michael Bishop’s “Within the Walls of Tyre,” and Thomas M. Disch’s “The Asian Shore,” all in one volume, deserves to be on everyone’s bookshelf, whether it is classified as horror, fantasy, or science fiction. Almost equally fascinating, not so much for the quality of the stories reprinted—though all of them are good, and a few of them are excellent—as for the fascinating literary analysis, is Robert Silverberg’s Worlds of Wonder (Warner), edited by Robert Silverberg. Literary analyses, couched in the form of personal reminiscences, surround each story, as Silverberg tries to discern the qualities and techniques that make each story successful. This is another anthology that belongs on every bookshelf, and most particularly on that of the would-be SF writer—it is practically a one-volume writing course and contains a great deal of valuable perspective and analyzed technique for the aspiring author.

Also worthwhile this year were The Fifth Omni Book of Science Fiction (Zebra), edited by Ellen Datlow; Interzone, the Second Anthology (St. Martin’s Press), edited by John Clute, David Pringle, and Simon Ounsley; The Great SF Stories: 16 (Daw), edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg; Neanderthals (NAL), edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh; Christmas Ghosts (Arbor House), edited by Kathryn Cramer and David G. Hartwell; Vampires (Doubleday), edited by Alan Ryan; and Vamp (DAW) edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh. Noted without comment is Demons! (Ace), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.

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It was another solid year for the SF-oriented nonfiction/SF reference book field, although there were no exceptional items, as there have been in other years. There were several valuable reference volumes: Anatomy of Wonder, 3rd Edition (R. R. Bowker), edited by Neil Barron; Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror 1986 (Locus Press), compiled by Charles N. Brown and William G. Contento; and Science Fiction and Fantasy Reference Index, Vols I & II (Gale), compiled by H. W. Hall. (Some of these, most notably the Hall, may be of more interest to libraries or to scholars than to the average reader.) There was another addition this year to the ever-growing five-foot shelf of critical books about Philip K. Dick—Mind in Motion, the Fiction of Philip K. Dick (Southern Illinois University Press), edited by Patricia S. Warrick. A critical study of a more-ignored author, Imprisoned in a Tesseract: the Life of James Blish (Kent State), by David Ketterer, is the only study of Blish to date. Robert Heinlein (Twayne), by Leon Stover, is billed as a study of this controversial author, but is more of a whitewash job than an impartial critical study, with Stover leaping passionately to Heinlein’s defense against nearly every criticism that has ever been leveled at the Great Man. Surely Heinlein must have some faults as a writer, whatever his merits, and admitting to a few of them might have made this volume less nakedly partisan and of more real critical use. There was also a study of Frank Herbert, The Maker of Dune: Insights of a Maker of Science Fiction (Berkley), edited by Tim O’Reilly, and one of Frederik Pohl, Frederik Pohl (Starmont), by Thomas Clareson. Two historical studies, Foundations of Science Fiction (Greenwood), by J. J. Pierce and Wizardry and Wild Romance: A Study of Epic Fantasy (Gollancz), by Michael Moorcock, are interesting, if for nothing else, for their differing aesthetic viewpoints. Also interesting was Intersections, Fantasy and Science Fiction (Southern Illinois University Press), edited by George E. Slusser and Eric S. Rabin.

For lack of a better place to list it, I am also going to mention in this section Cvltvre Made Stupid (Houghton Mifflin), by Tom Weller. It is a follow-up of sorts to Weller’s very funny Science Made Stupid, which won a Hugo for Best Non-Fiction (!) a couple of years ago, much to the author’s bemusement.

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Overall, 1987 seemed—to me, at least—like another generally lackluster year for science fiction and fantasy films. Among the few bright spots were Robocop and The Princess Bride, probably the two best SF/fantasy films of the year. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Predator had a few interesting touches, although his The Running Man was fairly familiar stuff. Spaceballs was disappointing, and I remain puzzled by the decision to satirize Star Wars ten years after the fact, long after every possible satiric point had been made time and time again. The Golden Child was even more disappointing, with only Eddie Murphy’s manic presence to partially redeem a muddled and ridiculous plot. Speaking of muddled and ridiculous, Angel Heart was a major disappointment, a pompous and incredibly pretentious movie not even remotely redeemed by loving closeups of Mickey Rourke’s heaving buttocks. The Witches of Eastwick was a silly and somewhat lowbrow version of John Updike’s novel. Worse than disappointing were Superman IV, Innerspace, Masters of the Universe, Hello Again, and Harry and the Hendersons. There were a number of moderately upscale horror movies (The Lost Boys, Prince of Darkness, The Gate, Hellraiser), none of which was wholly successful, and seemingly dozens of lower-budget horror/slasher movies—far too many to list here, most of them bad beyond belief. All in all, not much of a year.

For the last couple of years, Edward Bryant has been complaining in Mile High Futures that this particular part of the Summation serves only to demonstrate that I know nothing about film, and that I have been overlooking many of the good ones. So this year, in the interests of completion, I have asked Ed to contribute his own list of the year’s ten best SF/fantasy films. Presented without comment, here is Ed Bryant’s list of the year’s top films: (1) Robocop; (2) Near Dark; (3) The Princess Bride; (4) Hellraiser; (5) Man Facing Southeast; (6) Star Trek IV: the Voyage Home; (7) Wild Thing; (8) Innerspace; (9) Nightflyers; (10) Predator/The Running Man.

Meanwhile—we are back to my opinions again here, not Ed’s—science fiction and fantasy shows had a year of mixed success on television. “Amazing Stories” finally died, as did an eccentric, promising, and intelligent new series “Max Headroom.” On the other hand, “Star Trek: the Next Generation” is one of the most commercially successful new programs on television this year. That is the good news. The bad news is that it is not particularly good; the acting is flat and the plots are simplistic—in fact, this series is already using moronic plot devices (the crew go down to a primitive planet and engage in gladiatorial contests) that the original series did not resort to until the third season. So, good ratings aside, this is a disappointing show so far, and I am not sanguine about it improving substantially in the future. Also a hit show, one of the biggest new hits of the season, in fact, is “Beauty and the Beast.” This is a well-crafted and earnest show, with many intelligent touches, much more impressive than “Star Trek: the Next Generation.” “Beauty and the Beast’s” plots are very repetitive, though, so much so that I found myself losing interest in the show midway through the season. If this turns out to be a common reaction, the show could eventually end up in trouble—so far, however, it has been winning its time slot and is certainly more successful than the much more heavily hyped “Amazing Stories” was. It is certainly more deserving of success than “Alf,” which has become one of those hype-manufactured cult favorites that seem so inexplicable ten years down the road (remember the Fonz?)—let alone “Friday the 13th: the Series” and “Bates Motel” (Psycho as a weekly television sitcom? Give me a break!), let alone “Out of this World” and “Small Wonder”; the less said about these last two shows, the better.

“Ray Bradbury Theater,” “Tales from the Darkside,” and a new show called “Werewolf” are also phosphor-dot invaders of your living room, but I have not seen any of them. No great loss in most cases, I suspect.

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The 45th World Science Fiction convention, Conspiracy, was held in Brighton, England, August 27–31, 1987, and drew an estimated attendance of 5,000. The 1987 Hugo Awards, presented at Conspiracy, were: Best Novel, Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card; Best Novella, “Gilgamesh in the Outback,” by Robert Silverberg; Best Novelette, “Permafrost,” by Roger Zelazny; Best Short Story, “Tangents,” by Greg Bear; Best Non-Fiction, Trillion Year Spree, by Brian Aldiss and Dave Wingrove; Best Professional Editor, Terry Carr; Best Professional Artist, Jim Burns; Best Dramatic Presentation, Aliens; Best Semi-Prozine, Locus; Best Fanzine, Ansible; Best Fan Writer, David Langford; Best Fan Artist, Brad Foster; plus the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer to Karen Joy Fowler.

The 1986 Nebula Awards, presented at a banquet at the Halloran House Hotel in New York City, on May 2, 1987, were: Best Novel, Speaker for the Dead, by Orson Scott Card; Best Novella, “R & R,” by Lucius Shepard; Best Novelette, “The Girl Who Fell from the Sky,” by Kate Wilhelm; Best Short Story, “Tangents,” by Greg Bear; plus the Grand Master Award to Isaac Asimov.

The World Fantasy Awards, presented at the Thirteenth Annual World Fantasy Convention in Nashville, Tennessee, November 1, 1987, were: Best Novel, Perfume, by Patrick Suskind; Best Novella, “Hatrack River,” by Orson Scott Card; Best Short Story, “Red Light,” by David Schow; Best Anthology/Collection, Tales of the Quintana Roo, James Tiptree, Jr.; Best Artist, Robert Gould; Special Award (Professional), Jane Yolen; Special Award (Non-Professional), (tie) Jeff Conner and W. Paul Ganley; plus a Life Achievement Award to Jack Finney.

The 1986 John W. Campbell Memorial Award winner was A Door into Ocean, by Joan Slonczewski.

The fifth Philip K. Dick Memorial Award winner was Homunculus, by James P. Blaylock.

The first Theodore Sturgeon Award winner was “Surviving,” by Judith Moffett.

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Death took a heavy toll on the science fiction field again in 1987, inflicting several major losses. The dead include: Alfred Bester, 73, SF writer, author of The Demolished Man and the cult classic, The Stars My Destination, which many critics consider to be the best SF novel ever written; Dr. Alice Sheldon, 71, better known to SF audiences by her pseudonyms of James Tiptree, Jr. and Raccoona Sheldon, under which names she established herself as one of the very best short-story writers ever to enter the field, author of several classic collections and the novel Brightness Falls from the Air, a personal friend; Terry Carr, 50, writer and editor, perhaps the most influential SF editor of the last twenty years, creator of both the original and the recently refurbished Ace Special series, as well as the Universe series of original anthologies, the longest-running anthology series in SF, a well-respected Best of the Year series, and dozens of other anthologies, another friend; Theodore R. Cogswell, 68, writer and editor, best known as the author of the collection The Wall around the World; Richard Wilson, 66, writer and Futurian, Nebula winner for the story “Mother to the World”; veteran author Gardner F. Fox, 68; thriller and associational writer Alistair Maclean, 64; writer Erskine Caldwell, 83; veteran writer and publisher Donald Wandrei, 79; Ejler Jakobsson, 75, one-time editor of Galaxy magazine; Richard Delap, 45, SF critic and editor; Bea Mahaffey, 60, veteran editor and long-time fan; E. Nelson Bridwell, 55, comics writer and expert on comics history; Danny Kaye, 74, actor, perhaps best known to the SF audience for his role in The Court Jester; Ray Bolger, 83, actor, perhaps best known to the SF audience for his role as the Scarecrow in the film classic The Wizard of Oz; Polly Freas, 68, wife of SF artist Kelly Freas; Murray I. Dann, 76, father of SF writer Jack Dann; Joseph LoBrutto, 12, son of SF editor Pat LoBrutto; Lawrence Lyle Heinlein, 86, brother of SF writer Robert Heinlein; Maude Dickson, 96, mother of SF writer Gordon R. Dickson; and Hugh McCaffrey, 63, brother of SF writer Anne McCaffrey.