The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year. Volume Four. (ed Jonathan Strahan, Night Shade Books 2010)
An excellent collection, with that part of the volume covering fantasy stories not leaving me too far adrift
Nir Yaniv. A Painter, a Sheep, and a Boa Constrictor. (The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2010)
An example of good semi-prozine standard, but not, for my money, one for a Year’s Best.
Alexandra Duncan. Swamp City Lament. (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nov/Dec 2010)
An interesting setting, part feudal-fantasy, part SF.
Paul McAuley. Crimes and Glory. (The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2010)
Excellent hard SF from McAuley, in a narrative that gradually reveals more as it progresses
John Kessel. The Closet. (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nov/Dec 2010)
A short piece written as part of a festschrift to Ursula K. Le Guin, which touches on one of the themes in her writing.
Ellen Klages. Echoes of Aurora. (The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Four)
Exquisite love story set over a summer of love, and an autumn of loss.
Michael Alexander. Ware of the Worlds. (F&SF Nov/Dec 2010)
Alien technology arrives on Earth, enabling duplication of whatever what is desired.
Alan Dean Foster. Free Elections : a Mad Amos Malone Story. (F&SF Nov/Dec 2010)
Seems that Mad Amos graced the pages of F&SF during the 1980s and 1990s, and here the ‘mountainous mountain man’ returns, dealing with an awkward customer who has cut off the water supply to a town in the remote Wild West.
Hannu Rajaniemi. Elegy for a Young Elk. (Subterranean, Spring 2010).
Well written, lyrical and elegaic in its own right.
Robert Reed. Cull. (Clarkesworld Magazine #48, September 2010).
Claustrophobic tension in an enclosed domed station, whose inhabitants are kept chemically happy by an AI doctor in human form.
Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear. Mongoose. (The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 4)
Politics and backstory to flesh out the action in a story that lives up to its predecessor.
Jerry Oltion. Planning Ahead. (F&SF Nov/Dec 2010)
A gentle, amusing story warning of the problems of proper prophylactic planning.
Interzone #230, Sep-Oct 2010.
Stories by Tim Lees, Aliette de Bodard, Lavie Tidhar, Patrick Samphire, Nina Allan, but none of them outstanding.
Nina Allan. The Upstairs Window. (Interzone #230, Sep-Oct 2010)
Captures the feeling of constraint and repression and danger, and the streets of central London, but ‘Children of Men’ it ain’t.
Kate Wilhelm. Bloodletting. (The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF)
Understated throughout, and classy.
Jay Lake and Ken Scholes. The Starship Mechanic. (Tor.com, January 2010)
Short in the reading, likely to be long in the memory.
Charlie Jane Anders. The Fermi Paradox Is Our Business Model. (Tor.com, August 2010)
An entertaining, light piece with a nod to Golden Age SF.
Richard Bowes. Venues. (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nov/Dec 2010).
Bowes’ series of autobiographical (up to a point!) stories in F&SF have been a treat for some time now.
Patrick Samphire. Camelot. (Interzone #230, Sep/Oct 2010)
Little is explained, but to compensate, the short relationship between the two protagonists is a vivid physical one.
Robert Reed. Dead Man’s Run. (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nov/Dec 2010)
A very lengthy look at running, but with an sfnal element.
Michaela Roessner. Crumbs. (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nov/Dec 2010)
as delicious as a warm gingerbread cookie…
Bruce Sterling. The Exterminator’s Want Ad. (Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nov/Dec 2010)
A very subtle and sharp look at a near-future where pretty much everything has gone to wrack and ruin.
Alexander Jablokov. Plinth Without Figure. (F&SF Nov/Dec 2010)
A love story featuring a ghost, urban space design and sculpture.
Lavie Tidhar. The Insurance Agent. (Interzone #230, Sep-Oct 2010)
An imaginative piece.
Asimovs. October/November 2010.
A nicely balanced issue.
Rick Wilber. Several Items of Interest. (Asimovs, Oct/Nov 2010)
A fourth story in the ‘S’hudonni’ sequence – the first dating back to 1988 – withthe narrative style and the flashbacks supporting the story to good effect.
Ferrett Steinmetz. Under the Thumb of the Brain Patrol. (Asimovs Oct/Nov 2010).
Nerdy high school science geeks are the masters of creation, and the jocks are under their thrall.
Kate Wilhelm. Changing the World. (Asimovs Oct/Nov 2010).
Just how gullible are the conspiracy theorists?
Rachel Swirsky. Eros, Philia, Agape. (The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Year Volume Four)
More interpersonal and interspecies dynamics than you get in most sf novels
Kelly Link. The Cinderella Game. (The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Four)
Nicely observed, but short, and not clear to me as to what Strahan saw in it to pick it for the volume.
Will McIntosh. Frankenstein, Frankenstein. (Asimovs, Oct/Nov 2010)
The second best story featuring a Tesla-powered Frankenstein monster at Chicago’s World’s Fair that I have read in the past couple of months.
R. Neube. Dummy Tricks. (Asimovs, Oct/Nov 2010)
A fairly bleak tale with a couple of stylistic issues that don’t help the story.
Felicity Shoulders. The Termite Queen of Tallulah County. (Asimovs Oct/Nov 2010)
A story which asked too much of this reader in terms of suspending disbelief.
Don D’Ammassa. No Distance Too Great. (Asimovs Oct/Nov 2010).
An interesting and affecting look at bereavement, through the lens of hyperspace.
Tanith Lee. Torhec the Sculptor. (Asimovs October/November 2010).
A fairly routine story, below par from an author such as Lee.
Peter S. Beagle. By Moonlight. (The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Three)
A conversation by moonlight and by firelight, as a highwayman listens to a man previously of the cloth, who has spent seven years in the land of the Faery, in the arms of Titania.
Aliette de Bodard. Age of Miracles, Age of Wonders. (Interzone #230, Sept-Oct 2010)
The Gods of the Aztecs have fallen, replaced by an altogether more earthbound regime of metal and cogs.
Mike Resnick. The Incarceration of Captain Nebula. (Asimovs, Oct/Nov 2010).
Wry humour from Resnick.
Kij Johnson. Names for Water. (Asimovs Oct/Nov 2010)
Another effective short from Johnson, a story that gently takes off and gives a glimpse of a future, with a delicate touch.
Tim Lees. Love and War. (Interzone #230, Sep-Oct 2010)
A good political and psychological take on the alien incursion meme. Complements quite nicely the SF film ‘Monsters’ which I saw and enjoyed this weekend (and which I can recommend)
Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Becoming One With The Ghosts. (Asimovs, Oct/Nov 2010)
This entry into the ‘Diving’ canon is a doozy
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. September/October 2010.
Excellent issue with Dale Bailey, Ken Liu, Rick Wilber and Nick DiChario, and Terry Bisson being the picks for me.
Fred Chappell. Uncle Moon and Raintree Hills. (F&SF Sept/Oct 2010).
Suburban Halloween shivers, as two young children have to face up to the death of their grandma, with an evil (or at least emotionally cold) step-mother and her strange brother to content with.
Terry Bisson. About It. (F&SF Sept/Oct 2010).
Surprisingly affecting short.
A.C. Wise. The Children of Main Street. (Clarkesworld Magazine #51, December 2010)
An excellent story from a writer new to me.
Interzone #229 Jul-Aug 2010
A good collection of stories, Evans and Hawkins starting and closing the fiction strongly.
Jim Hawkins. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark Matter. (Interzone #229, Jul-Aug 2010)
One of the strongest stories in IZ over recent issues, and one I can see being atop the Readers’ Poll for 2010.
Rochita Loenen-Ruiz. Alternate Girl’s Expatriate Life. (Interzone #229, Jul-Aug 2010)
Interzone continues to publish stories by new writers and writers from across the globe, and this is from a Filipinan now living in the Netherlands.
Toby Litt. The Melancholy. (Interzone #229, Jul-Aug 2010)
Originally broadcast on BCC Radio 4, the story is in the form of a dictated report, someone addressing his concerns with the behaviour of an AI, now lost to his research agency.