The Year's Best SF 09 # 1991 Read online

  The British magazine Interzone completed its first full year as a monthly publication, although two of those issues featured the contents of other magazines (the swap issue with Aboriginal SF I mentioned last year, and an issue of a new nonfiction magazine called Million) instead of the regular Interzone contents—something that I can’t help but think is a mistake. (Angry letters from irate Interzone subscribers in subsequent issues seem to support the idea that it may have been one.) I hope that they resist the temptation to do this kind of thing again. Other than that, Interzone seems stronger than ever as a monthly magazine, and, in fact, leaving my own IAsfm out of the competition, may well be one of the best SF magazines being published today.

  Last year I expressed doubts about the feasibility of the concept of a weekly magazine, discussing the proposed launch of Pulphouse: A Weekly Magazine. As it turned out, I was right. Market forces quickly defeated the idea, with distributors balking at the prospect of handling a weekly magazine, and it was first changed to a biweekly, and then to a magazine published every four weeks—in other words, fairly close to the traditional monthly magazine format the entire magazine industry is geared to accept. Under the editorship of Dean Wesley Smith, the magazine, now called simply Pulphouse: A Fiction Magazine, has published some pretty interesting fiction (although not much actual science fiction, leaning heavily toward mild horror and unclassifiable Weird Stuff instead), including the serialization of a bizarre and brilliant novel by S. P. Somtow. I do think that they should increase the number of pages per issue, since the original rationale for such a slender magazine was that it was going to come out much more frequently; now that it’s nearly on a monthly schedule, it would be a better buy if they’d fatten it up some. I also think that they ought to publish considerably less nonfiction and publish more fiction per issue instead, especially as many of the ever-proliferating columns are page-wasters and space-fillers that aren’t really needed anymore, now that the magazine is no longer a weekly. They’re still running late at the moment—I received their December Christmas issue in late February, for instance—but I hope that they can shake down and get it together, since they have the potential to be an interesting and worthwhile addition to the SF magazine scene.

  An ironic note: There’s been a lot of talk this year about the kind of job Kristine Kathryn Rusch is doing as the new editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, with some people saying that the magazine is much better since she took over, and other people saying that the magazine has gone right down the tubes since Ed Ferman left … when, in fact, the truth is, of course, that very little that appeared in F&SF in 1991 was bought by Kris at all, since, like every new magazine editor, she has mostly been engaged with working through the inventory bought by her predecessor. Having been through this process myself, I’d like to say, Hey, everybody, back off and give her some breathing room! Next year we’ll begin to be able to judge, a little bit anyway, what kind of job she’s doing. Myself, I think she’s going to do just fine.

  As most of you probably know, I, Gardner Dozois, am also editor of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. And that, as I’ve mentioned before, does pose a problem for me in compiling this summation, particularly the magazine-by-magazine review that follows. As IAsfm editor, I could be said to have a vested interest in the magazine’s success, so that anything negative I said about another SF magazine (particularly another digest-sized magazine, my direct competition), could be perceived as an attempt to make my own magazine look good by tearing down the competition. Aware of this constraint, I’ve decided that nobody can complain if I only say positive things about the competition.… And so, once again, I’ve limited myself to a listing of some of the worthwhile authors published by each.

  Omni published first-rate fiction this year by William Gibson, Jack Dann, PatCadigan, Pat Murphy, J. R. Dunn, Robert Silverberg, and others. Omni’s fiction editor is Ellen Datlow.

  The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction featured good fiction by Karen Joy Fowler, Robert Reed, Kathe Koja, Lois Tilton, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mike Resnick, Ellen Kushner, Joe Haldeman, and others. F&SF’s new editor is Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

  Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine featured critically acclaimed work by Nancy Kress, Connie Willis, Kim Stanley Robinson, James Patrick Kelly, Pat Cadigan, Mary Rosenblum, Greg Egan, Tony Daniel, Ian R. MacLeod, Robert Silverberg, Alexander Jablokov, Mike Resnick, Jonathan Lethem, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, R. Garcia y Robertson, and others. IAsfm’s editor is Gardner Dozois.

  Analog featured good work by Rick Shelley, John Barnes, Isaac Asimov, Lois McMaster Bujold, Amy Bechtel, Orson Scott Card, Jack C. Haldeman II, A. J. Austin, and others. Analog’s longtime editor is Stanley Schmidt.

  Amazing featured good work by Robert Silverberg, Phillip C. Jennings, N. Lee Wood, Paul Di Filippo, Ian R. MacLeod, Brian Stableford, Gregory Benford, Martha Soukup, and others. Amazing’s new editor is Kim Mohan.

  Interzone featured excellent work by Greg Egan, Ian R. MacLeod, Stephen Baxter, Robert Holdstock, Chris Beckett, Diane Mapes, Brian Stableford, Paul J. McAuley, John Christopher, and others. Interzone’s editor is David Pringle.

  Aboriginal Science Fiction featured interesting work by Terry McGarry, Phillip C. Jennings, Lois Tilton, Harlan Ellison, Rick Wilber, A. J. Austin, Howard V. Hendrix, and others. The editor of Aboriginal Science Fiction is Charles C. Ryan.

  Weird Tales published good work by Tanith Lee, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Keith Taylor, Robert Bloch, and others. Weird Tales’ editors are George H. Scithers and Darrell Schweitzer.

  Pulphouse: A Fiction Magazine published good work by S. P. Somtow, Arthur Byron Cover, Susan Palwick, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, John Dalmas, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Robert J. Howe, George Alec Effinger, and others. Pulphouse: A Fiction Magazine’s editor is Dean Wesley Smith.

  Short SF continued to appear in many magazines outside genre boundaries. Playboy in particular continues to run a good deal of SF, under fiction editor Alice K. Turner.

  (Subscription addresses follow for those magazines hardest to find on the newsstands: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mercury Press, Inc., Box 56, Cornwall, CT 06753, annual subscription—twelve issues—$26.00 in U.S.; Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Dell Magazines Fiction Group, P.O. Box 7058, Red Oak, IA 51566, $34.95 for thirteen issues; Interzone, 217 Preston Drove, Brighton BN1 6FL, United Kingdom, $52.00 for an airmail one year—twelve issues—subscription; Analog, Dell Magazines Fiction Group, P.O. Box 7061, Red Oak, IA 51591, $34.95 for thirteen issues; Pulphouse: A Fiction Magazine, P.O. Box 1227, Eugene, OR 97440, $26.00 per year [13 issues] in U.S.; Aboriginal Science Fiction, P.O. Box 2449, Woburn, MA 01888-0849, $18.00 for 6 issues in U.S.; Weird Tales, Terminus Publishing Company, P.O. Box 13418, Philadelphia, PA 19101-3418, $16.00 for 4 issues in U.S.)

  This was not a particularly good year in the semiprozine market, with several magazines dying, others clearly in economic difficulties, and others publishing sporadically. The criticalzine Short Form seems to have died (although there are rumors that one final issue may still be forthcoming), which is a pity, since that leaves Mark R. Kelly’s recently reinstated column in Locus as the only place in the entire SF industry where short fiction is reviewed on a regular basis. Mark V. Ziesing and Andy Watson’s Journal Wired has also died, as has the British horror semiprozine Fear. Michael G. Adkisson’s New Pathways, probably the best of the eclectic mixed fiction/ review magazines that became popular in the eighties, was clearly having economic difficulties this year, with issue 19 published almost invisibly, sent only to a core group of subscribers, and issue 20 delayed so long that rumors that New Pathways had died were beginning to circulate again (as they had last year) when it finally did arrive in my mailbox, several months late, but containing interesting stuff by Brian W. Aldiss, Don Webb, and others. Adkisson vows that he will continue to publish his magazine, in spite of money problems, and I hope that he succeeds, since New Pathways at its best is one of the most intriguing of all
the semiprozines. There was only one issue of Nova Express—edited by Michael Sumbera, with help by Glen Cox and Dwight Brown—out this year as far as I could tell, and I hope that this magazine isn’t running out of steam as its editors become busy with other things, because at its best it’s an eclectic and highly enjoyable magazine full of reviews, meaty interviews, weird features, and mostly forgettable fiction (so far, anyway). The quality level of the fiction has been a good deal higher to date in Strange Plasma, a (mostly) all-fiction semiprozine edited by Steve Pasechnick. They only published one issue this year, but it contained interesting work by R. A. Lafferty, Kathleen Ann Goonan, and Yoshio Aramaki. Another (mostly) all-fiction semiprozine with something of the weirdly eclectic feel of New Pathways or Strange Plasma to it is the British magazine BBR (which stands for Back Brain Recluse, their former title—although they seem to use the acronym officially for their title now), edited by Chris Reed; the fiction here is uneven, and they are a little too shrill about claiming that only they are publishing Cutting Edge work and everyone else sucks (a fault shared by several of these little magazines, including New Pathways on occasion), but they do publish some interesting work sometimes, including worthwhile pieces this year by Richard Kadrey, David Hast, and others. (Two or three more science fiction semiprozines are reported to be starting up in Britain this year, and I’ll report more fully on them when I know more—if they actually materialize.) Another interesting and even more obscure little semiprozine is an Australian magazine called Aurealis, The Australian Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, a quarterly edited by Dirk Strasser and Stephen Higgins. The fiction here is also uneven, but they did publish some good work, including a story by Greg Egan good enough to make it into this anthology.

  In spite of all the talk about the coming disastrous crash of the horror market, horror semiprozines continue to proliferate on both sides of the Atlantic. Counting Weird Tales as a professional market (I tend to think of Weird Tales more as a fantasy magazine than a horror magazine anyway, since most of the horror they do publish is “quiet” horror, instead of the “Cutting Edge”/Splatterpunk/gooshey stuff that almost all of the other horror magazines feature), the most visible of them during the current year was probably Cemetery Dance, which is now getting some newsstand distribution, won the World Fantasy Award, and is dominating the nominations list for this year’s Bram Stoker Award. It seems to have pulled decisively ahead of Midnight Graffiti, which only published one issue this year. Other horror semiprozines include Grue, 2 AM, Deathrealm, Weirdbook, and the new magazine Iniquities, although most of them only managed to produce one or two issues this year, and once again there was no issue of Whispers at all; there are also many other horror semiprozines other than the ones named, too many to mention, most of them pretty bad—and more of them seem to come along every day. A new critical semiprozine devoted to horror, Necrofile, published two issues, but I haven’t seen a copy yet. There is also a semiprozine aimed at the High Fantasy market, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, but, to date, the fiction published there has yet to reach reliable levels of quality.

  As ever, Charles N. Brown’s Locus and Andy Porter’s Science Fiction Chronicle remain your best bet among the semiprozines if you are looking for news and/or an overview of what’s happening in the genre. The longest-running of those semiprozines that concentrates primarily on literary criticism, and one of the best, is D. Douglas Fratz’s Quantum (formerly Thrust). Steve Brown’s Science Fiction Eye is the weirdest and most eclectic of the criticalzines—where else, for instance, could you find a series of photographs of someone chopping up an Orson Scott Card novel with a chainsaw? (Always assuming you wanted to find such a thing, of course!) Science Fiction Eye is rude, brash, and highly opinionated, and sometimes unnecessarily cruel, but it is seldom dull reading; the wide-ranging Bruce Sterling column alone is probably worth the price of the magazine. The New York Renew of Science Fiction—whose editorial staff includes Kathryn Cramer, L. W. Currey, Samuel R. Delany, David G. Hartwell, Donald G. Keller, Robert Killheffer, and Gordon Van Gelder—has established itself as the most reliable of the criticalzines, producing twelve issues right on time again this year. The magazine produces a wide range of features, some of them shrewd, insightful, and informed, some of them overintellectualized to the point of opaqueness; there is a welcome leavening of humor, and some fascinating but unclassifiable stuff, like Michael Swanwick’s listing of the dreams he’s been having lately. I also like the Reading Lists they solicit from well-known professionals, which are often quite interesting. Science Fiction Review, a continuation by other hands (mostly Elton Elliott’s) of Dick Geis’s famous fanzine of the same name, with some editorial contribution by Geis himself, has gone monthly, and is getting some newsstand distribution. The quality of the reviewing here has been somewhat uneven to date, although they also feature opinion pieces, science articles, and fiction. There were no new issues of the new Damon Knight-edited criticalzine Monad this year.

  (Locus, Locus Publications, Inc., P.O. Box 13305, Oakland, CA 94661, $48.00 for a one-year first class subscription, 12 issues; Science Fiction Chronicle, Algol Press, P.O. Box 2730, Brooklyn, NY 11202-0056, $30.00 for 1 year, 12 issues, $36.00 first class; Quantum—Science Fiction and Fantasy Review [formerly Thrust], Thrust Publications, 8217 Langport Terrace, Gaithersburg, MD 20877, $7.00 for 3 issues [one year]; Science Fiction Eye, P.O. Box 18539, Asheville, NC 28814, $10.00 for three issues; New Pathways, MGA Services, P.O. Box 863994, Piano, TX 75086-3994, $25.00 for 6-issue subscription; Nova Express, White Car Publications, P.O. Box 27231, Austin, TX 78755-2231, $10.00 for a one-year [four issues] subscription Strange Plasma, Edgewood Press, P.O. Box 264, Cambridge, MA 02238, $15.00 for four issues; Aurealis, The Australian Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Chimaera Publications, P.O. Box 538, Mt. Waverley, Victoria 3149, Australia, $24.00 for a four-issue [quarterly] subscription, “all money orders for overseas subscriptions should be in Australian dollars”; BBR, P.O. Box 625, Sheffield S1 3GY, United Kingdom, $18.00 for four issues; The New York Review of Science Fiction, Dragon Press, P.O. Box 78, Pleasantville, NY 10570, $25.00 per year; Science Fiction Review, SFR Publications, P.O. Box 20340, Salem, OR 97307, $35.00 for a 12-issue subscription; Cemetery Dance, P.O. Box858, Edgewood, MD 21040, $15.00 for four issues [one year], $25.00 for eight issues [two years], “checks or money orders should be payable to Richard T. Chizmar only!”; Grue Magazine, Hells Kitchen Productions, Box 370, Times Square Sta., New York, NY 10108, $13.00 for three issues; Necrofile: The Review of Horror Fiction, Necronomicon Press, 101 Lockwood Street, West Warwick, RI 02893, $10.00 for one year [four issues]; Midnight Graffiti, 13101 Sudan Road, Poway, CA 92604, $24.00 for one year; Monad, Pulphouse Publishing, Box 1227, Eugene, OR 97440, $5.00 for single issues or $18.00 for four issues.)

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  An important new anthology series debuted this year, and an already-established series put out an impressive volume. Not too shabby a year, then, even if many of 1991’s other original anthologies were somewhat lackluster.

  The best original anthology of the year undoubtedly was Full Spectrum 3 (Doubleday Foundation), edited by Lou Aronica, Amy Stout, and Betsy Mitchell—although I’d hardly go as far as the Locus quote on the cover that calls it “the best original anthology ever produced.” Still, even if you’re not willing to take it to those extremes, it must be admitted that Full Spectrum 3 is an impressive anthology, containing two of the year’s best stories—a story by Gregory Benford and a novella by Mark L. Van Name and Pat Murphy—as well as good work by Elizabeth Hand, Tony Daniel, Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Bishop, Karen Joy Fowler, Marcos Donnelly, R. V. Branham, Nancy Willard, and others. There’s some so-so filler here, of course, and even a fair number of not-so-hot stories, but considering the huge size of the volume, that’s to be expected. Pound for pound, it’s hard to beat this for a reading value among the original anthologies. Now I’d like to see the publishers issue Full Spectrum every year, in addition to a volume of Robert Si
lverberg and Karen Haber’s Universe series, instead of alternating every other year between Universe and Full Spectrum, the way they do now.

  Nineteen ninety-one also saw the start of a very important new British anthology series, New Worlds, which carries the name of Michael Moorcock’s famous experimental British magazine of the sixties on into the nineties under the able editorship of the indefatigable and apparently undiscourageable David Garnett—who lost two anthology series last year when his Zenith and Science Fiction Yearbook series were cancelled. Undaunted, Garnett has bounced back this year with New Worlds 1 (Gollancz), and a fine anthology it is, too, closely rivaling Full Spectrum 3 for the title of the year’s best anthology, losing out to it as a reading value only because the hefty Full Spectrum is a considerably longer volume; New Worlds 1 may be more consistent in quality from beginning to end, though. New Worlds 1 is certainly worth your money, containing really first-rate work by Brian W. Aldiss, Kim Newman, and J. D. Gresham, along with good work by Ian McDonald, Storm Constantine, Michael Moorcock, Paul Di Filippo, and others. Let’s hope that this Garnett anthology series lasts more than just a volume or two, as it has the potential to become one of the most important anthology series in science fiction.

  There were two issues in the Pulphouse hardcover anthology series, one of them the penultimate volume, as this series winds down toward completion. The Pulphouse anthologies have almost always featured a few good stories per issue, at the very least, and although neither of this year’s volumes were the best the series has had to offer, that remained true of them, too. Pulphouse Eleven was perhaps slightly the better volume, featuring a strong story by Tim Sullivan, and good work by Edward Bryant, William F. Wu, Resa Nelson, Diane Mapes, Mary A. Turzillo, and others, although Pulphouse Ten contained good work by Marina Fitch, Lisa Goldstein, Kara Dalkey, and Nina Kiriki Hoffman, among others. Pulphouse Twelve, the last volume in the series, was scheduled to be published this year, but problems at Pulphouse Publishing, where I suspect they are overextended, delayed it, and it is now scheduled for publication sometime in mid-1992. (For information about the Pulphouse anthology series and other Pulphouse projects, write to: Pulphouse Publishing, Box 1227, Eugene, OR 97440.)