Year's Best Science Fiction 01 # 1984 Read online

  FOR

  Bob Walters and Tess Kissinger

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The editor would like to thank the following people for their help and support:

  Michael Swanwick, Susan Casper, Jack Dann, Virginia Kidd, Ellen Datlow, Bob Walters, Shawna McCarthy, Sheila Williams, Edward Ferman, Eileen Gunn, Susan Allison, Beth Meacham, Stanley Schmidt, George Scithers, Pat LoBrutto, Charles L. Grant, Don and Betsy Wollheim, Lou Aronica, Tappan King, Edward Bryant, Leanne Harper, Lewis Shiner, Pat Cadigan, Scott Edelman, Darrell Schweitzer, Joann Hill, and special thanks to my own editor, Jim Frenkel.

  Thanks are also due to Charles N. Brown, whose newszine Locus (P.O. Box 13305, Oakland, California 94661; subscription rate: $28 for 12 issues by First Class Mail) was used as a reference source throughout the Summation, and to Andrew Porter, whose newszine Science Fiction Chronicle (P.O. Box 4175, New York, N.Y. 10163; subscription rate: $18 for one year) was also used as a reference source throughout.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  INTRODUCTION - Summation: 1983

  Cicada Queen

  Beyond the Dead Reef

  Slow Birds

  Vulcan’s Forge

  Man-Mountain Gentian

  Hardfought

  Manifest Destiny

  Full Chicken Richness

  Multiples

  Cryptic

  The Sidon in the Mirror

  Golden Gate

  2

  3

  4

  5

  Blind Shemmy

  In The Islands

  Nunc Dimittis

  Blood Music

  Her Furry Face

  Knight of Shallows

  The Cat

  The Monkey Treatment

  Nearly Departed

  Hearts Do Not In Eyes Shine

  Carrion Comfort

  Gemstone

  Black Air

  BOOKS BY GARDNER DOZOIS

  HONORABLE MENTIONS—

  THE BLUEJAY GUARANTEE

  Copyright Page

  INTRODUCTION

  Summation: 1983

  Industry insiders—including myself—spent a great deal of time a few years back wondering when (or if) the Big SF Boom of the late seventies would come to an end. Conventional wisdom said that the market would become glutted and oversaturated, as happened during the smaller postwar SF boom of the fifties, leading inevitably to a bust, a period of collapse and economic retrenchment, caused by the boom it inevitably followed. SF had experienced such cycles of boom-and-bust before, and at the height of the late seventies boom, circa 1978, industry gurus were predicting another patch of bad times ahead.

  Well, the bust did come—and it didn’t. The boom kept on booming—and it didn’t. Something unexpected happened, something that definitely had not happened at the end of other boom cycles. Instead of a choice of boom or bust, both happened at once, continued wildcat booming and disastrous economic retrenchment coexisting side by side. The work of a few SF writers (Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, Anne McCaffery, Stephen R. Donaldson, Larry Niven, a few others) was selling better than ever before, selling unbelievably well, topping nationwide best-seller lists, while the work of most SF writers was selling poorly or not at all … so that whether it was the best of worlds or the worst of worlds depended on who you were—so much so that the January 1984 issue of the newszine Locus could contain both the headline “1983: Best Year in SF Ever” and agent Richard Curtis’s remark that “in many ways, things have never been worse for writers” and both could be true.

  By the beginning of the eighties, a two-tier system had taken firm hold in SF. It was estimated that 20% of the writers (some said 10%) were making 80% or more of the money earned by SF as a print genre—consequently, 20% of the writers were getting 80% or more of the money spent by publishers on writers, so that one book would sell for a $2,000 advance while another sold for a six-figure (or even seven-figure) sum, and one book would be given an advertising and promotional budget of $150,000, while another (and indeed, most) would be given an advertising budget of—nothing. (At best a mention in one of the “group ads” that mass-market SF lines take out in major fanzines and prozines.) Put another way, I’ve heard it estimated that a core buying audience of about 20,000+ readers is supporting 80% of working SF writers today, and that 80% never taps into the immensely larger audience that has recently become accessible to Big Name Top-20% authors like Clarke and Asimov. And indeed, publishing figures seem to indicate that (until recently, anyway) the average sale of an average SF paperback is somewhere between 15,000-30,000 copies, while a select few books, usually those promoted as “lead titles,” go on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies, if not millions of copies (in fact, in 1982 SF books took six of the top fifteen places in total hardcover sales industry-wide, according to figures in Publishers Weekly). And, of course, bookstores, particularly the big bookstore chains, tend naturally enough to give priority in ordering to books from authors with proven track records as Big Sellers, thus perpetuating the cycle.

  One unfortunate result of all this is that it has become harder and harder for non-Big Name authors, the bottom 80%, to sell their work at all, particularly first novels or short-story collections or work that is considered to be “too offbeat” or “too innovative” or “too literary,” or too difficult to easily classify in an identifiable sub-category. Much work that would have appeared from mainline publishers a few years ago is now coming out from small specialty publishers instead, “small press” publishers such as Arkham House and Corroboree Press. Reading Charles Platt’s excellent book of interviews, Dreammakers II, drove home just how wide the gap between top 20% and bottom 80% has become—some of the authors interviewed are sleek and fat and happy (“it’s a full-time job just trying to decide how to spend all this money!” Arthur C. Clarke says cheerily), while other writers (particularly the younger English writers) are sunk in despair, totally ignored, going broke, and often not even able to get their books into print anymore. As the corporate publishing “bottom-line” mentality took hold increasingly, many publishers decided not to bother with books by “bottom 80%” authors at all—and even when they did, they often lowered novel advances to the $1,500-$2,500 range, which became common again for the first time since 1974.

  As usual, 1983 was a year of ambiguous and sometimes contradictory omens, but for the first time in several years there were also signs that there just might be better times coming even for writers not named Asimov or Donaldson or Clarke.

  Del Rey, DAW, Ace/Berkley, Tor, and Bantam all had record years for sales in 1983. Del Rey had several books on nationwide best-seller lists. Lou Aronica of Bantam was quoted in Locus as saying that “science fiction orders have increased over 40% on the average in the last six months.” DAW Books had record sales. Tor Books president Tom Doherty said that “business was up over 100% in 1983.” Roger Cooper, vice-president of Berkley, said “we just had our best year ever,” and Susan Allison, SF editor-in-chief at Ace/Berkley, confirmed that the sales of both lines had improved “tremendously.” Viking, Doubleday, and Knopf all had hardcover SF books on nationwide best-seller lists, among others. Waldenbooks, the nation’s biggest bookstore chain, started the Waldenbooks’ Otherworlds Club, a retail book-buyers club offering 10-15% discounts on SF and fantasy purchases, and enrolled 50,000 members in its first three months. Waldenbooks SF sales were up 41% in September and 34% in October as compared to last year’s figures, which were already “very good.” (Waldenbooks SF buyer Joe Gonnella is quoted by the newszine Science Fiction Chronicle as saying that “over the past two years,
we have increased our assortment of science fiction and fantasy books by 150%.”)

  A closer look at publishing figures indicates that this upsurge in sales is not solely limited to books by Big Name Top-20% authors, an encouraging sign.

  Other encouraging signs: Bluejay Books started an ambitious program of hardcovers and trade paperbacks under the editorship of Jim Frenkel, and has major books by Jack Dann, Greg Bear, Joan D. Vinge, Connie Willis, Vernor Vinge, and others coming up in 1984. The resurrected Ace Specials line, edited by Terry Carr, is also scheduled to start publication in 1984 and has books by William Gibson, Kim Stanley Robinson, Michael Swanwick, Howard Waldrop, and other hot new writers coming up. Arbor House announced a new SF line, with Robert Silverberg serving in an advisory capacity, but the future of this line was thrown into doubt at year’s end with the firing of Arbor House president Don Fine. Edward Ferman, the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, is preparing a line of hardcover SF books for Scribners. John Douglas took over at Avon, where he will be inaugurating a new SF line. Houghton Mifflin expanded its SF program this year, and St. Martin’s Press also plans to expand its SF line in 1984, adding both mass-market and trade paperback capability.

  The Horror Boom of the middle and late seventies seems to be ending, with sales of horror fiction reported down throughout the industry (Locus reports that one of the biggest American independant distributors is thinking of selling less horror and romances to make room for more SF—ironically, wholesalers had cut down on SF a year ago to make room for more romances and horror), but a High Fantasy Boom seems to be beginning: Tor Books will inaugurate a new fantasy line, Tempo plans a new line of children’s fantasy, and Signet will launch two new fantasy lines, one for adults and one for children.

  The most controversial event of the year was undoubtedly the Great Timescape Fiasco, a convoluted affair of almost Byzantine complexity. To simplify: David Hartwell, director of science fiction at Pocket Books’ Timescape line (and probably the premier SF book editor of the seventies), was terminated by Pocket Books in June. (Pocket Books president Ron Busch claimed that the Timescape line was failing to make money; Hartwell denied the charge, citing instead “creative methods of accounting,” according to Science Fiction Chronicle.) But instead of replacing Hartwell with another in-house SF editor, as expected, Pocket Books announced that editorial control of SF at Pocket would be turned over to the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, which would package a new SF line called Starscope Books for them. The reaction from the SF world—and the publishing industry in general—was immediate and almost universally negative; intensely negative, in fact. Phrases like “conflict of interest” and “in restraint of trade” were bandied about, lawsuits threatened by the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) and by several prominent literary agents, and articles discussing the controversy appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, and elsewhere. Ultimately, the plan failed, with the Scott Meredith Agency backing out of it in late June, although representatives of both Pocket Books and the Meredith Agency denied that the widespread protest and media pressure—primarily orchestrated by SFWA—had anything to do with the disintegration of the plan. Later in the year, Jim Baen left the editorship of Tor Books to form a company of his own, Baen Enterprises, Inc., and Pocket Books announced that Baen Enterprises would package a new SF line for them, tentatively named Baen Books. Later details showed that all editorial work would be done by Baen Enterprises, who would also control cover art, cover copy, advertising and promotion, limiting Pocket Books’ role to that of distributor. At year’s end, the contract for this deal had not yet been signed, but Baen Enterprises has announced plans to publish as Baen Books a total of 48 to 60 mass-market SF and fantasy titles per year, plus 20 trade paperback/hardcover SF and fantasy titles, and a line of computer book titles.

  As an ironic coda, David Hartwell—in addition to Terry Carr and Ben Bova—has begun acting as a “freelance acquisitions editor” for Tor Books.

  As usual, there was also some good news and some bad news about the state of the magazine market, but this year at least, unlike last year, the encouraging news seemed to outweigh the discouraging stuff. In fact, 1983 seemed to be a pretty good year in general for many of the SF magazines, with most of them reporting gains in circulation, some of those gains substantial. (I couldn’t help but wonder if at least some of this gain in readership doesn’t reflect the near-total disappearance of the original anthology market—with only a few exceptions, if you want to read original short SF these days, you have to read the magazines, and so they may be picking up readers who a few years ago would have spent their money on Orbit or New Dimensions instead.) Another encouraging sign was that offbeat and literarily-innovative stories seemed to be having a slightly easier time getting into print this year, in large part due to a considerable loosening up and liberalization of the formula for an acceptable “Asimov’s story” at Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, which now joins Omni and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction as one of the genre magazines the most responsive to literary innovation. There is still too much editorial timidity, bland formalization, and outmoded censorship current in the American genre magazine market, but at least 1983 saw several welcome steps taken in the right direction.

  It’s hard to compare Omni to the rest of the SF magazines—for one thing, it’s not really an SF magazine per se, but rather a slick science-popularization magazine that regularly publishes SF stories as a small but significant proportion of its editorial mix. Unlike regular SF magazines, which sometimes publish ten stories per issue, Omni usually publishes no more than thirty or so SF stories per year; nevertheless, for the last couple of years, under the direction of fiction editor Ellen Datlow, Omni has managed to publish a disproportionate share of the year’s first-rate stories. Datlow also seems to have an uncanny talent for spotting hot new writers as they emerge, and was among the first to spotlight major new talents like William Gibson, Michael Swanwick, and Pat Cadigan. This year Omni published excellent stories by Jack Dann, Howard Waldrop, Robert Silverberg, Dan Simmons, Pat Cadigan, Bruce Sterling, and William Gibson, as well as good stuff by Larry Niven, Kate Wilhelm, Nancy Kress, Jeff Dunteman, Scott Baker, Cherry Wilder, and others.

  Somewhat confusingly, The Best of Omni Science Fiction, edited by Don Myrus, ostensibly a reprint anthology in magazine form, has also begun publishing original fiction, stories that did not first appear in Omni proper. Two issues of this sporadically scheduled magazine, numbers 5 and 6, appeared in 1983. Myrus’ original selections have not so far been consistently up to the level of the best stories from Omni itself, but he did publish first-rate material this year by Robert Silverberg and Michael Cassutt, and good stuff by Harlan Ellison, Michael Kurland, and Gregory Benford.

  If there was an award for most dramatically-improved magazine of the year, it would have to go to Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and the credit for that sea change seems to belong almost entirely to new editor Shawna McCarthy. As mentioned before, McCarthy has considerably widened the literary range and depth of the magazine, leaning consistently toward literary excellence and away from formular-ization, and the readership seems to be responding with enthusiasm—IASFM’s circulation is reportedly in the 130,000-copy range now, up 38% this year, and up 53% from the year before. Although F&SF maintained, as usual, a slight edge in overall literary consistency, there were several individual issues of IASFM this year that actually contained a higher percentage of first-rate stories than the competing issues of F&SF, a rare occurrence in recent years, and IASFM must now be considered—along with F&SF—to be one of the leaders of the digest-sized SF magazines. Major stories by Greg Bear, Leigh Kennedy, Pat Cadigan, John Kessel, Michael Bishop, Connie Willis, Jack McDevitt, Brian Aldiss, Vonda McIntyre, and Richard Kearns appeared in IASFM this year, as well as good work by Rand B. Lee, Nancy Kress, Isaac Asimov, Jack C. Haldeman II, Pamela Sargent, Octavia Butler, Tanith Lee, Norm
an Spinrad, Scott Elliot Marbach, Ian Watson, and others.

  Circulation was also up considerably from last year at Analog, IASFM’s sister magazine—somewhere in the 110,000-copy range now, according to editor Stanley Schmidt—but I still found the magazine a good deal less exciting than IASFM. Excellent stories by Greg Bear and Vernor Vinge did appear in Analog this year, along with good stuff by Charles Harness, Poul Anderson, Joseph Delaney, Chad Oliver, and Timothy Zahn, but often the good stories seemed few and far between, with the rest of the magazine filled with stuff that (to me, at least) seemed overly familiar and somewhat dull. I’d like to see Schmidt loosen up his editorial formula somewhat and get some different kinds of material into Analog. Why, for instance, have state-of-the-art high-tech hard-science stories by people like Bruce Sterling, William Gibson, Michael Swanwick, Pat Cadigan, Kim Stanley Robinson, Greg Bear, and others been appearing in places like Omni, F&SF, IASFM, and Universe instead of in Analog, which would logically seem to be their natural home? I remember people asking similar questions in the late sixties, when exciting new writers like Larry Niven, Roger Zelazny, and the Samuel R. Delany of the Driftglass stories were conspicuously not appearing in Analog. I think that an over rigid definition of an “Analog story” was hurting the magazine then, and I think that it’s hurting it now, too.

  As always, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction was the most consistently excellent of all the SF magazines once again this year. People have come to take this for granted and perhaps don’t fully realize how astonishing it is that Ed Ferman—operating out of his living room on a shoestring budget—somehow continues to maintain the same standards of excellence at F&SF year after year, while other magazines rise and fall and fluctuate around him. F&SF has probably done more to help ensure the survival of quality short fiction in SF over the last couple of decades than any other publication. Excellent stories by Kim Stanley Robinson, James Tiptree, Jr., Ian Watson, Joe Haldeman, George R. R. Martin, Hilbert Schenck, Bruce Sterling, O. Niemand, James Patrick Kelly, Lewis Shiner, Stephen Gallagher, Damon Knight, and many others, appeared in F&SF in 1983. (Also as usual, alas F&SF remains hard to find on most newsstands, so I’ll include their subscription address and urge everyone reading these words to subscribe: Mercury Press, Inc., P.O. Box 56, Cornwall, CT. 06753; annual subscription, 12 issues, $17.50.)