{"id":2922,"date":"2005-06-12T11:19:59","date_gmt":"2005-06-12T15:19:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2005\/06\/12\/2922.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:50:06","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:50:06","slug":"book-report-the-years-best-sci","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2005\/06\/12\/book-report-the-years-best-sci\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: The Year’s Best Science Fiction 2001"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’m sure Gentle Readers all are in no need of more whinging from YHB about how I’ve just gone right off the short story format. So I’ll try to keep things as specific and positive as I can, when noting that I’ve finally finished slogging my way through The Year's Best Science Fiction 2001: Nineteenth Annual Collection<\/a>. I will, however, admit to wondering if these stories really do represent the year’s best, as they seem, well, pretty crappy on the whole. But enough of that.\n

There are twenty-six stories in the collection. I have no idea how many Hugo-eligible short-stories get published in a year, or whether Mr. Dozois, the editor of the series, extends his reach beyond what is Hugo- or Nebula-eligible. Anyway, my point is that I really don’t know if twenty-six is, say, a twentieth of the five hundred stories for that year, and therefore a pretty good idea of the range of things (allowing for editorial taste), or whether it’s more like a hundredth, or what. I’m mostly curious because although there was a pretty wide variety in quality, style, subject, the hard\/soft business, etc., the overall effect for me was a sort of sameness. I’m finding it hard to identify what the sameness is. Maybe it’s that the stories seem to reject cinematic action as a good narrative tool, leaning more towards a ‘literary’ style, where the conflict is emotional, or ontological if you will, and people are groping, rather than questing. Also, of course, many of the stories are world-presenting, rather than story-telling; the core of the story is an image or two of alien-ness; not necessarily extra-terrestrial but aiming at what we might call the unheimlich<\/I>. I’m a fiend for narrative, myself, of course, so a world-presenting story without a protagonist with an obvious goal has a pretty high bar for me, if I’m going to like it. Oh, and way too many of the stories appear to be attempting to evoke a bittersweet feeling, a feeling of sadness and loss combined with nostalgia or sentiment. I’m not against that altogether, but there are other feelings out there (wonder, fright, joy, and triumph, among others) that might make good stories, too.\n

OK, specifics. “On K2 with Kanakaredes”, by Dan Simmons, was frustrating, as it was a perfectly enjoyable mountain-climbing story with totally irrelevant specfic interludes. OK, not totally<\/I> irrelevant, just mostly. Nancy Kress’ “Computer Virus” was frustrating, as it set itself up as a perfectly good how-do-I-outwit-the-computer story, and not only clutters it up with irrelevancies but makes the main story too obvious and manipulative to be really exciting. “The Days Between” has a lovely set-up (due to a screw-up, the protagonist is revivified partway through a cold-sleep voyage instead of the villain), but settles for a quiet, supposedly disturbing, ending, rather than a big payoff of any kind.\n

“The Dog Said Bow-Wow”, by Michael Swanwick, was probably my favorite, although I found most of the rococo styling annoying, rather than entertaining. James Patrick Kelly’s “Undone” had some very nice bits, although in the end I didn’t really care very much. Simon Ings’ “Russian Vine” had a nice line in evocative world-creation, and somehow I actually liked the sketched-out characters. Brenda Clough’s “May Be Some Time” seemed like a really fine first chapter to a novel, but doesn’t go anywhere in itself. “One-Horse Town”, by Howard Waldrop & Leigh Kennedy has a few lovely Waldropian bits, but overall, eh. Maureen F. McHugh’s “Interview: On Any Given Day” was entertaining in places, and I enjoyed the form, but it didn’t strike very deep.\n

Ian R. Macleod has two stories here, and I’m not sure which is more tedious than the other, as I didn’t manage to finish either. “Have Not Have”, by Geoff Ryman, and “Raven Dream”, by Robert Reed, both struck me as offensive Noble Savage pieces with nothing to sell but their supposed sensitivity. Charles Stoss’ “Lobsters” totally failed to grab me as a story and irritated me with the embedded futurism lecture, although it wasn’t anywhere near as bad in that respect as “The Real Thing”, by Carolyn Ives Gilman. Paul McAuley’s “The Two Dicks” is not so much a short story as an idea for a short story, and essentially I could get more pleasure out of reading the phrase “homage to Philip K. Dick”. Eleanor Arnason’s “Moby Quilt” seemed altogether pointless, and annoyingly so. There were others, too, which I either don’t remember or didn’t finish. \n

Well, that was crabby. I don’t think I’ll pick up another one of these for a while. I can’t help wondering if it’s more than my own crankiness (and, you know, idiosyncratic taste). But how would I know?\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m sure Gentle Readers all are in no need of more whinging from YHB about how I\u2019ve just gone right off the short story format. So I\u2019ll try to keep things as specific and positive as I can, when noting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2922"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2922\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17443,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2922\/revisions\/17443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}