From richard.horton@sff.net Mon Mar 15 23:40:44 2004 Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003 23:11:43 -0600 From: Rich Horton Newsgroups: sff.people.richard-horton, sff.discuss.short-fiction Subject: Summary: Sci Fiction, 2003 Sci Fiction, 2003 Sci Fiction, still clearly the leading online source of SF, published about 361,000 words of new fiction in their regular series, plus about 17,000 words in Michael Swanwick's series of Periodic Table short-shorts. In addition, one of the reprints was significantly revised from its original publication: this is Chan Davis's "It Walks in Beauty", about 9000 words. So, a total of nearly 400,000 words of new fiction -- just slightly less than last year. There were 5 novellas, 17 novelettes (including "It Walks in Beauty"), and 16 short stories, plus 43 short-shorts in Swanwick's series (which has just reached its conclusion). Novellas I liked all 5 novellas. I think I would rank them 1) Terry Bisson, "Greetings"; 2) William Barton, "The Man Who Counts"; 3) Lucius Shepard, "Jailwise"; 4) J. R. Dunn, "For Keeps; 5) Shepard, "Liar's House". "Greetings" is a sharp story of forced euthanasia; "The Man Who Counts" is a brutal story of ugly future punishment and a rapist/murderer who helps a political convict escape; "Jailwise" is a strange fantasia of a very weird jail, its curious inmates, and the hope of redemption through art; "For Keeps" is a wrenching story of a past act of heroism on a space habitat; and "Liar's House" is a new Dragon Griaule story, about a female dragon who becomes a woman and takes up with the thuggish local. Novelettes Oddly, I had only one new novelette singled out in my notes, Jeffrey Ford's "The Empire of Ice Cream", a striking and moving story of a man with synesthesia who forms a curious relationship with a woman from a sort of parallel world, also with synesthesia. I also think very highly of the revised reprint I mentioned, "It Walks in Beauty" by Chan Davis, which I found in the January 1958 issue of Star Science Fiction, the ill fated attempt to turn Fred Pohl's great anthology series into a magazine. The revision restores Davis' original manuscript, and it's definitely different, and something of an improvement. The story is a interesting and wrenching look at a man and a woman in a future in which gender roles are rigidly adhered to, and in which "career" women are not considered women but rather "it". Of the other novelettes, my favorites were Paul McAuley's "The Child of the Stones", another of his stories about the ghost finder Mr. Carlyle, this time set in the present, with Carlyle befriending a damaged young woman who shares his talent. Also, Geoffrey A. Landis's "The Eyes of America" is a nice story about a Presidential contest between Thomas Edison and William Jennings Bryan, with the involvement as well of Samuel Clemens and Nikola Tesla; and John Kessel's "It's All True" is a good piece about a man from the future trying to convince Orson Welles to come forward to the future and make more movies. And finally, Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "Nutball Season", coming for Christmas at the site, is a fluffy and sentimental but quite enjoyable Christmas story about a cop protecting a single mother from Santa. Short Stories The best short stories this year were by Maureen F. McHugh ("Ancestor Money") and Gene Wolfe ("Castaway"). The McHugh is a first-rate afterlife fantasy about a Southern woman, long dead, who receives a gift of money from a descendant, and who doesn't know quite what to make of it. The Wolfe is a spookily evocative far future tale of a man rescued from a desolate planet, and the woman he leaves behind. Other good ones: Leslie What's "Death Penalty", a timely, moving, thoughtful, and, thankfully, not shrill look at a prison functionary in the near future, and a rather "enhanced" death penalty; Carol Emshwiller's "Boys", another gender-relations story, this one set in a fantasy landscape in which men and women live apart, the men always fighting each other; McHugh's "Frankenstein's Daughter", a wrenching story of cloning gone wrong; Robert Reed's "Like, Need, Deserve", about an AI creating other AI's; Gardner Dozois's cynical Cinderella retelling, "Fairy Tale"; and Howard Waldrop's "D=RxT", not SF but enjoyable, about a match race in the 50s (far as I can tell) between pedal cars. I should also mention my favorite of Swanwick's Periodic Table stories, "Einsteinium: The Dark Lady of the Equations", a lovely fantasia about an inspiration for Albert Einstein. And finally, I thought it worth mentioning that Datlow featured quite a few stories by fairly new writers: two pieces by Ilsa J. Bick, and stories by Greg Beatty, M. K. Hobson, David Prill, and Nathan Ballingrud -- all interesting work (especially the Prill and Ballingrud stories).