From richard.horton@sff.net Mon Mar 15 23:43:56 2004 Date: Mon, 05 Jan 2004 22:06:29 -0600 From: Rich Horton Newsgroups: sff.people.richard-horton, sff.discuss.short-fiction Subject: Re: Summary: Anthologies, 2003 On Mon, 05 Jan 2004 21:07:37 -0600, Rich Horton wrote: >1. DAW > >This includes 6 mass market paperbacks in what is sometimes called >DAW's "monthly magazine", plus one big hardcover (the latter being the >Resnick/Ian anthology Stars). I assume I missed 6 more of DAW's >monthly "issues", except that these may include the three Steven >Silver/Martin Greenberg anthologies reprinting authors' first sales >(Wondrous Beginnings et. al.): these of course were not original >anthologies. > >The books: Future Wars, Sword and Sorceress XX, Stars, Women Writing >Science Fiction as Men, Men Writing Science Fiction as Women, Space, >Inc., New Voices in Science Fiction > >Subtotals: 7 books, 125 new stories (1 novella, 22 novelettes, 102 >short stories), about 706,000 words. The DAW mass market anthologies are a steady source of short fiction, usually written to themes, unfortunately rarely much better than OK. Still, I will say that this year's crop seemed a bit better than last year's. Mike Resnick seems to have returned to editing in a big way -- four of these anthologies were co-edited by him (or edited solely, though still, I'm pretty sure, in association with Martin Greenberg's Tekno Books organization, as indicated by the copyright notices). On the whole, he seemed to do a good job -- his anthologies are generally pretty fair. The paired anthologies featuring writers trying to capture the viewpoint of the opposite sex were of mixed success -- a number of clumsy and cliché stories, hitting the most expected notes, but a couple pretty impressive stories in each. New Voices in Science Fiction is a collection of stories by "new" writers (a definition that encompasses writers who I consider not quite new such as Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross, Susan Matthews, and a couple more -- but close enough, I guess) -- on the whole I thought the stories mostly quite promising but rarely if ever delivering on the promise. Stars is a collection of stories based on Janis Ian songs, by some pretty highpowered writers, but taken as a whole I found it a bit disappointing (though not dreadful). The Sword and Sorceress book is the last to be edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and she apparently did select at least most of the stories. While it shares the flaws of all those books (MZB's ideas about story structure seemed strict and inflexible, much to the harm of the stories), it did seem an improvement over the last couple of S&S anthologies. Both Space, Inc. and Future Wars are fairly weak anthologies, in my estimation. Space, Inc. is notable for being edited by a Canadian and consisting of almost exactly half Canadian content -- not really to its detriment (i.e the Canadian writers did just as well as the others (all Americans, I believe)). The problem with both is what I consider the main issue with most of these DAW anthologies: the story mix ranges from mostly inoffensive to poor, as opposed to mostly inoffensive to very good, which latter describes what I think one might reasonably hope for. Of these stories, the one novella (Robin Wayne Bailey's "Toy Soldiers", from Future Wars) was OK stuff, not great but solid. Of the novelettes, Kage Baker's "Nightmare Mountain", from Stars, and Robert Sheckley's "A Tale of the Oroi", from Men Writing Science Fiction as Women, were the best. The former is about an impoverished Old South family, moved to California, and their daughter's arranged marriage to the reclusive son of a local rich woman. The story reads like one of Grimm's darker fairy tales, but set in a purely American historical milieu. The latter combines Greek myths and time travel quite effectively. Nancy Kress's "EJ-ES", an SF biological mystery, is another fairly effective novelette from Stars. I also liked the lone novelette from Sword and Sorceress XX, Charles M. Saplak's "Swords for Teeth, Mirrors for Eyes", about three old warriors seeking a Dragon's Tooth, which will give them the right to rule their riven kingdom. Their young apprentices get involved as well, with perhaps predictable but nicely presented results. Of the short stories I particularly liked Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross's "Flowers from Alice", a cute posthuman story about a very different marriage, from New Voices in Science Fiction. (From that same volume I particularly liked also David D. Levine's "Nucleon", but that is a reprint from Interzone in 2001.) From Women Writing Science Fiction as Men I liked Terry McGarry's "Diving After Reflected Woman", a powerful rape revenge story; and Serena Park's "Call for Submissions", a nice conflation of a version of the Shaver mystery with the story of a 40s woman trying to fit into male-dominated subcultures such as SF fandom and undergraduate Physics studies. Gregory Benford's "On the Edge", from Stars, is solid too, placing various figures from both the Russian and American Revolutions in a gritty near future -- but it too is basically a reprint, with mild revisions, of "Brink", from Sci Fiction in 2001.