Year's Best Science Fiction 01 # 1984 Read online

  Amazing’s new editor, George Scithers, has been doing a pretty good job of renovating the magazine and turning it into a major market again, but the effort may have been in vain. In spite of the large amounts of money TSR Hobbies, Amazing’s new owner, has been pumping into the magazine, its circulation still remains disastrously low: in the 12,000-15,000 copy range, by far the lowest circulation of all the digest-sized SF magazines. Amazing has been particularly hurt by its failure to attract subscribers; the subscription rate has risen, but only very slightly (from about 1,000 subscribers to about 1,600), and, in Scithers’ words, “the failure of the subscriptions to come up is of extreme concern to me.” The magazine is still very difficult to find on most newsstands, and the smart money in the SF publishing world seems to be betting that Amazing will not make it. (On the other hand, they were saying the same thing last year about The Twilight Zone Magazine, which now seems to be recovering. The key to survival in both cases is the subscription list. Amazing could survive if it could bring its subscription rate up, but it would have to come up dramatically.) TSR Hobbies itself went through financial upheavals in 1983, necessitating the layoff of many of its employees, and speculation is rife about how long a financially-ailing TSR will be willing to carry Amazing as a money-losing proposition. Scithers’ Amazing has reputedly been guaranteed three years of sponsorship by TSR, but such guarantees mean little when enough money is being lost. Even if Scithers is granted a full three years of grace, it may well prove that Amazing’s long prior reputation as a minor, poor-selling magazine is too great a chunk of inertia to overcome with the 12 issues (Amazing is bi-monthly) he has left to work with. If so, I, for one, will be sorry to see Amazing go. SF needs all the short-fiction markets it can get, and, while I didn’t like everything Scithers published this year by any means, he has made some of the right moves, publishing first-rate stuff this year by Avram Davidson, Rand B. Lee, Poul Anderson, Pat Murphy, Robert Silverberg, Tanith Lee, R.A. Lafferty, and others. (Since Amazing is also hard to find on most newsstands, I’ll give their subscription address as well: Dragon Publishing, P.O. Box 110, Lake Geneva, WI. 53147; $9 for 6 issues—one year—or $16 for 12 issues—two years.)

  As alluded to above, The Twilight Zone Magazine, which was compelled to go bi-monthly last year and was widely believed to be tottering on the brink of extinction, seems (knock wood) to be on the road to recovery instead. According to editor T.E.D. Klein, the circulation of recent issues has shown a steady increase, with the January/February, March/April, and May/June issues all selling more strongly than preceding issues. TZ is now reportedly selling about 50,000 copies per issue on the newsstands, and—much more dramatically—has increased its subscription list to the 100,000-copy range. (As a note of caution, it should be pointed out that most of these new subscriptions are Publishers Clearing House subscriptions, offered at a discount as part of a promotional package, and, as Klein admits, “the trick is getting them to renew" those subscriptions, something that must be done at full price. Next year should see how high a successful conversion rate TZ will have.) There were rumors at the end of the year that TZ would go back to “at least” 8 issues per year in 1984 if sales continue to improve, an encouraging sign. TZ’s publisher reportedly ascribes part of the increase in circulation to their recent policy of using movie stills on the cover, and he may be right. TZ’s painted covers have usually been mediocre at best (the magazine still suffers from some of the worst interior illustrations I’ve ever seen), and they may well be better off looking like a movie magazine instead. The overall quality of the fiction in TZ seemed somewhat down this year—perhaps because there were only half as many issues as usual—but good stories by Jack McDevitt, John Kessel, Charles L. Grant, Paul Darcy Boles, John Skipp, and others did appear here in 1983, and things may well look up for this magazine in 1984.

  Not surprisingly for a magazine with seven editors (one left late in 1983, but, as they themselves commented, “never fear: there are plenty of editors left!”), the British SF magazine Interzone is somewhat uneven. Some of the material here has a strangely dated “period” smell to it—being nearly indistinguishable from some of the fictional experiments published in New Worlds magazine during the revolutionary “New Wave” days of the late sixties—but other stories are fresh and interesting, and Interzone should be particularly commended for providing refuge for many good but unconventional stories that might otherwise have had difficulty finding a home. (For instance, it is hard to imagine where else something like M. John Harrison’s “Strange Great Sins” or Barrington Bayley’s “The Ur-Plant” could have been published commercially, unless it was in The Last Wave, an American semiprozine modeled to some extent on Interzone itself). First-rate (and often very strange) stuff by Malcolm Edwards, Richard Cowper, M. John Harrison, John Crowley, Alex Stewart, and Barrington Bayley appeared in Interzone this year. (Interzone is flatout impossible to find on newsstands in this country unless you happen to live within striking distance of a very well-stocked SF specialty bookstore, but the magazine deserves your support. Subscription address: American subscriptions can be obtained from Scott Bradfield, 145 E. 18 St. Apt. 5, Costa Mesa, California 92627; $13 for a one year subscription, First Class Mail.)

  A large-format slick fantasy magazine called Imago, edited by Richard Monaco and Adele Leone, was promised for 1983, but although the magazine was widely advertised and talked about, with stills of the first-issue’s cover appearing in all the newszines, the first issue kept being postponed and pushed back throughout 1983, and early in 1984 it was announced that the magazine had died stillborn.

  It should also be mentioned that short SF is now popping up in many publications way outside genre boundaries. Penthouse and Playboy are using SF with increasing frequency these days (thanks to fiction editors Kathy Green and Alice K. Turner, respectively). SF has also turned up with fair regularity in places like Gallery, Oui and Cavalier; in many computer magazines and war-gaming magazines; in associational magazines like Heavy Metal; in “women’s” magazines (Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon will be excerpted in Cosmopolitan in 1984, for instance, and Kate Wilhelm’s “The Winter Beach” was in Redbook a couple of years back); in mystery magazines like Ellery Queen’s and Alfred Hitchcock’s; in miscellaneous small magazines like Yankee, Games, and Pulpsmith; in many “literary” magazines like The Yale Review, The Seattle Review, and Antaeus (The Missouri Review is planning a special SF edition in 1984, for instance; an SF edition of Triquarterly appeared in 1980); and even in bastions of High Literary Culture like Esquire and The New Yorker.

  While the professional SF magazines were enjoying a prosperous year for a change, the semiprozines were enduring a disastrous one. Shayol, edited by Pat Cadigan and Arnie Fenner, and considered by many to be the best of the semiprozines, will put out one more issue and then fold. Rigel, edited by Eric Vinicoff, has already folded, as has Eternity, edited by Stephen Gregg. Starship, edited by Andrew Porter, will put out one more issue and then fold as an independent publication, some of its columns and features being merged into Porter’s Science Fiction Chronicle. The much-ballyhooed Spectrum Stories seems to have fallen into a black hole and probably will not appear at all. Of the long-established semiprozines, that leaves Stuart David Schiff’s excellent Whispers as one of the few survivors, but at least it is one of the best of them all, rivaling Shayol in its professionalism and the quality of its fiction (subscription address: 70 Highland Avenue, Binghamton, N.Y. 13905; two double-issues for $8.75). Of the newer semiprozines or what’s left of them, Fantasy Book seems to be still in business, but although this is a well-intentioned magazine with lots of promise, it has yet to reliably come up to the level of fictional quality to be found in Whispers and Shayol. The only other bright spot in the dismal 1983 semiprozine scene was the debut of The Last Wave magazine, edited by Scott Edelman. In spite of a lot of somewhat frenetic pre-publicity about how much taboo-breaking the magazine was going to do, the first issue of The Last Wave doesn’t c
ontain anything particularly “dangerous” or controversial (in fact, IASFM has this year published stories with rougher stuff in them—for instance Leigh Kennedy’s controversial “Her Furry Face” or Norman Spinrad’s “Street Meat”); instead, we are treated to a solid and thoroughly professional magazine that, while it doesn’t do much taboo-breaking of the nose-thumbing bear-baiting Dangerous Visions sort, does feature (much to its credit) unconventional, intelligent, and literarily-innovative material that would probably have been rejected as “uncommercial” or “marginal” or “too literary” by most of the genre markets and much of this stuff is quite good. This issue, for instance, features a first-rate story by Avram Davidson and good material by John Sladek, Steve Rasnic Tem, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, and others. Upcoming is some more odd stuff, including an operetta by Tom Disch. A promising debut. (Subscription address: P.O. Box 3206, Grand Central Station, New York, N.Y. 10163; four quarterly issues for $8.) Also interesting are Modern Stories, edited by Lewis Shiner (3305 Duval, Austin, Texas 78705; no subscription information given), which so far seems to be mostly a good-natured fanzine featuring trunk stories from the Austin-area writers—although the first issue did contain an amusing professional-level story by William Gibson—and Mile High Futures, edited by Leanne Harper, half fanzine and half promotional magazine, distributed free to a readership of 100,000, which occasionally runs fiction, such as Edward Bryant’s recent—and professional quality—“The Overly Familiar” (Subscription address: Mile High Comics, 1717 Pearl, Boulder, Col. 80302; $5 for one year).

  If the semiprozine market is suffering through hard times, then the original anthology market has become a disaster area—in fact, in a very real sense, there is no SF original anthology market anymore. At one time, during the seventies, there were at least ten annual original SF anthology series, and people were talking about them as the evolutionary replacement of the traditional digest-sized SF magazine. As recently as 1980, there were still seven annual series available on the stands. Now New Dimensions, Orbit, Destinies, and The Berkley Showcase are dead; Chrysalis is dying (the current issue is the last), Stellar has not appeared for a couple of years, New Voices is in hiatus (it will reappear in 1984 as The John W. Campbell Award Anthology), and even the promising new fantasy series Elsewhere, launched in 1981, is doomed (it will publish one more volume in 1984, and then fold). So it becomes almost farcicial to say that Terry Carr’s Universe 13 (Doubleday) was the best annual original SF anthology of the year, since it was very nearly the only annual original SF anthology of the year. Nevertheless, it would have been a good anthology in any year, featuring excellent novellas by Bruce Sterling and Michael Bishop, and interesting stuff by Ian Watson, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Leanne Frahm. The only other annual original SF anthology of 1983, Roy Torgesson’s Chrysalis 10 (Doubleday), was, like most editions in this series, well-intentioned but bland. The single one-shot original SF anthology of the year was Changes (Ace), edited by Ian Watson and Michael Bishop, a mixed reprint and original anthology that features intriguing and innovative material by Rudy Rucker, Ian Watson, Richard Cowper, Gene Wolfe, Michael Bishop, and others. In spite of recent hard times for the horror fiction industry, the original anthology market in the horror/fantasy field was still somewhat healthier than it was in SF, and in 1983 was dominated by Charles L. Grant, probably the premier American horror anthologist. Grant had three anthologies on the stands in 1983: Shadows 6 (Doubleday), the latest volume in his critically-acclaimed, award-winning annual series, an all-original anthology; The Dodd, Mead Gallery of Horror (Dodd, Mead), a huge hardcover anthology, mixed reprint and original; and Fears (Berkley), another mixed reprint and original anthology, in paperback. Shadows 6 is probably the best of the three in overall quality, upholding this series’ reputation as a showcase for quiet, sophisticated, well-written horror stories and featuring first-rate work by Leigh Kennedy, Pat Cadigan, Jack Dann, Lori Allen, Steve Rasnic Tem, David Morrell, and others. The Dodd, Mead Gallery of Horror features good original work by Tanith Lee, John Coyne, Bernard Taylor, Steve Rasnic Tem, and others, as well as some good reprints by Stephen King, Theodore Sturgeon, Jack Dann, T.E.D Klein, and others. Fears features good original material by Susan Casper, Jack Dann, Pat Cadigan, Leanne Frahm, and others, as well as good reprints by George R.R. Martin, Dennis Etchison, William F. Nolan, and others. Also first-rate is Whispers IV (Doubleday), a mixed anthology of originals and reprints from Whispers magazine, edited by Stuart David Schiff. The book is similar in tone and quality to Grant’s Shadows: quiet, well-written contemporary horror, perhaps a bit more gruesome here and there than is Grant’s usual wont. (Schiff also uses “heroic fantasy” and borderline SF, which Grant usually does not.) Whispers IV contains good stuff by Tanith Lee, Karl Edward Wagner, Charles L. Grant, Hugh B. Cave, Stephen Kleinhen, and others, and good reprints by David Drake, Ramsey Campbell, and others. The year’s only other horror anthology, Tales By Moonlight (Robert T. Garcia), edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, was disappointing. There is some good stuff here by Eileen Gunn, Janet Fox, Steve Rasnic Tem, a few others, but Salmonson doesn’t seem to have the feel for contemporary horror that Grant and Schiff do, and much of the rest of the material in Tales By Moonlight is substandard. Much more successful and much more interesting is Salmonson’s Heroic Visions (Ace), the year’s only original heroic fantasy anthology, which features good—and often offbeat—material by Fritz Leiber, Jane Yolen, Robert Silverberg, Michael Bishop, Joanna Russ, F.M. Busby, and others.

  When last I edited a “Best of the Year” series, I made a conscientious—and horribly debilitating—attempt to read every SF and fantasy novel published during the year and review the most important of them, but I have given up. I admit defeat. I just cannot keep up—there are just too many novels published every year, and it seems like there are more and more of them as time goes by. Just to read all of them would be a full-time job, leaving no time to do the very extensive reading of shorter lengths that editing this anthology demands, let alone time for my own writing. So I have given up the attempt to read everything and will instead limit myself to commenting that of the novels I did read this year, I most enjoyed: The Citadel of the Autarch, Gene Wolfe (Timescape); Against Infinity, Gregory Benford (Timescape); The Armageddon Rag, George R.R. Martin (Poseidon Press); Worlds Apart, Joe Haldeman (Viking); Lyonesse, Jack Vance (Berkley); The Anubis Gates, Tim Powers (Ace); The Annals of Klepsis, R.A. Lafferty (Ace); Starship Rising, David Brin (Bantam); Tea with the Black Dragon, R.A. MacAvoy (Bantam); Superluminal, Vonda McIntyre (Houghton Mifflin), and The Unbeheaded King, L. Sprague De Camp (Del Rey).

  Other novels that have gotten a lot of attention and acclaim this year include: Orion Shall Rise, Poul Anderson (Timescape); The Robots of Dawn, Isaac Asimov (Doubleday) Broken Symmetries, Paul Preuss (Timescape); Welcome, Chaos, Kate Wilhelm (Houghton Mifflin); Valentine Pontifex, Robert Silverberg (Arbor House); Helliconia Summer, Brian W. Aldiss (Atheneum); The Sword of Winter, Marta Randall (Timescape); Neveryona, Samuel R. Delany (Bantam); Hart’s Hope, Orson Scott Card (Berkley); The Alien Upstairs, Pamela Sargent (Doubleday); The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley (Knopf); Wintermind, Marvin Kaye and Parke Godwin (Doubleday); Christine, Stephen King (Viking); Floating Dragon, Peter Straub (Putnam); The Dragon Waiting, John M. Ford (Timescape); The King of the Wood, John Maddox Roberts (Doubleday), and The Floating Gods, M. John Harrison (Timescape).

  The most aggressively hyped bad novel of the year was probably Anvil of the Heart, Bruce T. Holmes (The Haven Corporation).

  The year’s most interesting short-story collections were The Wind from a Burning Woman, Greg Bear (Arkham House); The Zanzibar Cat, Joanna Russ (Arkham House); Golden Gate and Other Stories, R.A. Lafferty (Corroboree Press); Red as Blood, Tanith Lee (DAW), Songs the Dead Men Sing, George R.R. Martin (Dark Harvest); Cugel’s Saga, Jack Vance (Timescape)—and yes, I know this is supposed to be an “eposodic novel,” but nevertheless it is really a short-story collection; Tales of Wonder, Jane Yolen (Schocken);
and Unicorn Variations, Roger Zelazny (Timescape). Also worthwhile were: Changewar, Fritz Leiber (Ace); Time Patrolman, Poul Anderson (Tor); Idle Pleasures, George Alec Effinger (Berkley); The Adventures of Alyx, Joanna Russ (Timescape); The 57th Franz Kafka, Rudy Rucker (Ace); The Winds of Change, Isaac Asimov (Doubleday); Nightmare Seasons, Charles L. Grant (Tor); The Saint-Germain Chronicles, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (Timescape); The McAndrews Chronicles, Charles Sheffield (Tor); Hoka!, Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson (Pocket/Wallaby), and The Sentinel, Arthur C. Clarke (Berkley).

  It is intriguing to notice that many of the year’s best short-story collections come from “small press” publishers, something that is becoming more and more common. As mentioned above, one unfortunate effect of the recession (and of corporate “bottom-line” publishing practices) is that most mainline SF publishers have lost interest in doing short-story collections. Of the mass-market publishers, only Ace/Berkley and Tor still seem enthusiastic about publishing collections, and of the hardcover publishers (now that Timescape is in limbo), only Doubleday and new publisher Bluejay Books still seem interested in collections. The small presses—particularly Arkham House—have been picking up some of the slack, but of necessity their editions are expensive and often hard to find and don’t quite make up for the void left by mainline SF publishing’s wholesale abandonment of collections. The best work in SF is still being done at the shorter lengths, but every year it becomes harder and harder for the average reader to find anything but novels. Another intriguing fact—in a year when I heard at least one SF magazine editor complaining that good short stories were hard to find—is that many of these collections (the Lee, the Yolen, the Rucker, the Vance, the Lafferty) contain heretofore unpublished stories, stories for which—presumably—no first magazine publication could be obtained, and that many of these stories are excellent. Obviously there is a failure of initiative on someone’s part here, either the editors or the agents; there is no reason for magazine editors to be crying about lack of material when good stories by major authors are apparently going begging.