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The Other Half of the Sky, ed. Athena Andreadis, co-edited Kay Holt. (Candlemark & Gleam, 978-1-936460-43-4, $22.95, 460 pages.) Cover art by Eleni Tsami.

We See a Different Frontier: A Postcolonial Speculative Fiction Anthology, ed. Fabio Fernandes and Djibril al-Ayad. (Futurefire.net Publishing, 978-0-9573975-2-1, $14.00, 213 pages). Cover art by Carmen Moran.

METAropolis: Green Space, ed. Jay Lake and Ken Scholes. (Audible—audiobook.)

Snodgrass and Other Illusions: The Best Short Stories of Ian R. MacLeod, by Ian R. MacLeod (Open Road Media, available only in ebook form).

Horse of a Different Color: Stories, by Howard Waldrop. (Small Beer Press, 9781618730732, $24.00, 195 pages; also available in ebook form $14.95.) Cover art by Brian Lei.

Telling Tales: The Clarion West 30th Anniversary Anthology, ed. Ellen Datlow. (Hydra House, 978-0-9848301-6-9, $17.95, 380 pages.) Cover art by Todd Lockwood.

 

One of the best-SF anthologies of the year is out from an ultra-small press, and will probably be seen by almost nobody: The Other Half of the Sky, edited by Athena Andreadis, co-edited by Kay Holt. The title is drawn from the saying that women hold up half the sky, although they’re often under-represented in genre fiction, and this anthology aims to redress that. The editors mention Pamela Sargent’s Women of Wonder anthologies from the ‘70s as an inspiration, and promise stories featuring “heroes who happen to be women, doing whatever they would do in universes where they’re fully human”; all of the protagonists here are women, and most of the stories are by women, although there are also a few from male writers. All the stories are solid core science fiction, and the literary quality overall is quite high. The best stories here are “Finders,” by Melissa Scott, in which a salvage operation to a ruined space station makes a discovery more dangerous, and more surprising, than anything they’d hoped to find, “The Waiting Stars,” by Aliette de Bodard, about a desperate rescue mission to a graveyard of dead spaceships that finds one not quite as dead as it seems, “Bad Day on Boscobel,” by Alexander Jablokov, concerning espionage and intrigue on a world whose inhabitants live in giant trees, and “Sailing the Antarsa,” by Vandana Singh, which details a maiden interstellar flight using a very unusual propulsion system—but there is also good work here by Ken Liu, Nisi Shawl, Joan Slonczewski, C.W. Johnson, Cat Rambo, and others. This will be hard to find in most bookstores, but can be found on Amazon, and also mail-ordered from the publisher at www.candlemarkandgleam.com.

Another good anthology from an ultra-small press that you’re unlikely to find in bookstores is We See a Different Frontier: A Postcolonial Speculative Fiction Anthology, edited by Fabio Fernandes and Djibril al-Ayad. The emphasis here is more political than feminist, insomuch as the two can be separated, the idea being to give a voice to the native races who are usually conquered and subjugated by Earthmen in much science fiction, especially Golden Age SF and the SF of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Not all the stories here are science fiction, there are a few Alternate Histories and fantasy stories as well (in both of which, imperialistic Western nations, often Britain, stand in for the “Earthmen” of the SF stories), and the book is a bit more uneven overall in literary quality than The Other Half of the Sky, but there’s still some excellent stuff here, and little that’s really bad. The best stories are “A Heap of Broken Images,” by new writer Sunny Moraine, a moving, unsettling look at the psychological effects of attempted genocide on those surviving, “Fleet,” by Sandra McDonald, which takes us to a post-Apocalyptic Guam abandoned by the Western powers, for a sly lesson in what it takes to survive when those powers become interested in “colonizing” again, and “Dark Continents,” by Lavie Tidhar, a gonzo, kaleidoscopic look at what Africa might be like in a number of rapidly shifting Alternate Worlds (some more likely than others)—but there is also good work here by Rahul Kanakia, J.V. Yang, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Dinesh Rao, and others. Again, it you want this, you’re probably going to have to get it from Amazon, or mail-order it from the publisher at http://futurefire.net.

Another of the year’s good SF anthologies definitely won’t be available at the bookstore; in fact, it’s not even available in print at all, because it’s an audiobook: METAtropolis: Green Space, edited by Jay Lake and Ken Scholes. This is the third of three volumes in the METAtropolis series of audiobook anthologies, dealing with intrigue and conspiracies in a 22nd Century world that has suffered a disastrous ecological crash and been rebuilt to adhere to strict Green principles, producing a relatively stable worldwide society—but one threatened by radical ecoterrorists who will not be satisfied until the Earth is rid of its human population altogether. You may lose a little nuance if you start with this volume rather than listening to the other two audiobook anthologies first, but most of the backstory you can pick up interstitially, on the fly, without having it diminish your enjoyment of the seven novellas here. All of the stories are entertaining and well worth listening to, but the best of them are “Rock of Ages,” by Jay Lake, probably the story here that stands best on its own feet without reference to earlier material, in which a deep-cover agent must surface to try to prevent an asteroid strike on Seattle, “Green and Dying,” by Elizabeth Bear, in which a team of con artists carrying out an elaborate scam against a floating city discover something more profound and disturbing than they’d bargained for, and “The Desire Lines”, by Karl Schroeder, in which a hacker searches desperately for a hidden cache of genetic information that could be used to save a dying rain forest. There’s nothing really bad here or less than entertaining, though, and the anthology also contains novellas by Mary Robinette Kowal, Seanan McGuire, Tobias S. Buckell, and Ken Scholes. If you want METAtropolis: Green Space, you’ll have to order it at www.audible.com.

Another desirable book that’s not available in print form is Snodgrass and Other Illusions: The Best Short Fiction of Ian R. MacLeod, only available, as far as I can tell, as an ebook from Open Road Media (www.openroadmedia.com), or in a Kindle edition from Amazon, where it currently costs $6.15. It’s a real shame that this isn’t also available in a print edition, and seems to have been issued with minimal publicity or promotion even as an ebook, with almost nobody taking notice of it, because it’s one of the best short-story collections of the year, by one of SF’s very best writers, and contains some of the best stories of the past few decades, including “New Light on the Drake Equation,” “The Chop Girl,” “Grownups,” “Nevermore,” “Isabel of the Fall,” the brilliant and subtle Alternate History title story “Snodgrass,” and a number of others. Buy it, if you have the capacity to read ebooks; at six bucks, or even at a higher price, it’s one of the best reading bargains you’re going to find this year.

Another must-buy is Horse of a Different Color: Stories, the most recent collection by Howard Waldrop. Nobody sees the world like Waldrop, who is one of SF’s great Eccentrics, comparable only to writers like R.A. Lafferty, Avram Davidson, and Andy Duncan, who also follow different drummers to destinations only they would think of going to, and that only they could reach. He’s been called “the resident Weird Mind of our generation” and an author “who writes like a honkytonk angel,” and the rich, quirky, and eccentric stories gathered here, including “The King of Where-I-Go,” “Why Then Ile Fit You,” “The Horse of a Different Color (That You Rode in On),” and “Ninieslando,” stories that nobody else would have thought to write, and that nobody else could have written, will demonstrate why. This may be findable in some specialty bookstores, but you can also mail-order it from Small Beer Press at smallbeerpress.com; an ebook version is also available from them.

The Clarion West Writers Workshop has been grooming new writers with an intensive six-week training seminar in Seattle, Washington for over thirty years now, and to honor Clarion West’s 30th Anniversary, editor Ellen Datlow has collected some of the best stories that were criticized and run through the workshop process there in a strong reprint anthology, Telling Tales: The Clarion West 30th Anniversary Anthology. The literary quality here is high, and all of the stories are worth reading, so it’s hard to pick out favorites, but among the best stories here are “Beluthahatchie,” by Andy Duncan (a classic, perhaps the single best story in the anthology), “Start the Clock,” by Benjamin Rosenbaum, “A Boy in Cathyland,” by David Marusek, “My She,” by Mary Rosenblum, “The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change,” by Kij Johnson, and “The Lineaments of Gratified Desire,” by Ysabeau S. Wilce, although there’s also good work by Kathleen Ann Goonan, Louise Marley, Margo Lanagan, Susan Palwick, Ian McHugh, Daniel Abraham, David D. Levine, Christopher Rowe, Rachel Swirsky, and Nisi Shawl. There are also essays here about the authors and the workshop process itself by Vonda N. McIntyre, Greg Bear, Pat Murphy, Howard Waldrop, Samuel R. Delany, Maureen F. McHugh, Lucy Sussex, Connie Willis, Geoff Ryman, Elizabeth Hand, Terry Bisson, Andy Duncan, Pat Cadigan, Nancy Kress, Ursula K. Le Guin, Paul Park, and editor Ellen Datlow herself, all of whom have either been instructors at Clarion West, or, in some cases, students there themselves, once upon a time. This is probably available in some bookstores, and can also be ordered through Amazon and Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers.