Jonathan Strahan - The best science fiction and fantasy of the year, Vol. 7

THE BEST

SCIENCE FICTION

and FANTASY

OF THE YEAR

volume seven

edited by Jonathan Strahan

Night Shade Books

An Imprint of Start Publishing LLC

New York, New York

Also Edited by Jonathan Strahan

Best Short Novels (2004 through 2007)

Fantasy: The Very Best of 2005

Science Fiction: The Very Best of 2005

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volumes 17

Eclipse: New Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volumes 14

The Starry Rift: Tales of New Tomorrows

Life on Mars: Tales from the New Frontier

Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron

Godlike Machines

Engineering Infinity

Edge of Infinity

Fearsome Journeys (forthcoming)

Reach for Infinity (forthcoming)

With Lou Anders

Swords and Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

With Charles N. Brown

The Locus Awards: Thirty Years of the Best in Fantasy and Science Fiction

With Jeremy G. Byrne

The Years Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volumes 12

Eidolon 1

With Jack Dann

Legends of Australian Fantasy

With Gardner Dozois

The New Space Opera

The New Space Opera 2

With Karen Haber

Science Fiction: Best of 2003

Science Fiction: Best of 2004

Fantasy: Best of 2004

With Marianne S. Jablon

Wings of Fire

THE BEST

SCIENCE FICTION

and FANTASY

OF THE YEAR

volume seven

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven

2013 by Jonathan Strahan

This edition of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven

2013 by Night Shade Books

Cover art 2012 by Sparth

Cover design by Claudia Noble

Interior layout and design by Amy Popovich

Introduction, story notes, and arrangement
2013 by Jonathan Strahan.

Pages 627-630 represent an extension of this copyright page.

First Edition

ISBN: 978-1-59780-460-8

Night Shade Books

www.nightshadebooks.com

This book has been one of the most challenging anthologies Ive had to work on in my career. With ever more work published, and ever more demands on my time, I began to wonder if it would ever be complete. For that reason, Id like to thank my wife and co-editor Marianne S. Jablon for her heroic work in helping me get this manuscript finished. Without her diligent, careful, and tireless efforts, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year would probably not have made it out this year and certainly would not be as good as it is. Id also like to thank Gary K. Wolfe for his help in doing an emergency read and edit of the introduction after it was lost in a computer failure just before the book was due to be delivered. Thanks also to everyone at Not If You Were the Last Short Story on Earth, who helped keep me grounded and focussed in my reading during the year, and to all of the books contributors, who helped me get this years book together at the last. A special thanks, as always, to Liza Groen Trombi and all of my friends and colleagues at Locus, and to Ross E. Lockhart at Night Shade Books, who has been wonderful to work with year after year. And two special sets of thanks. As always, Id like to thank my agent, the dapper and ever-reliable Howard Morhaim, whose annual parties are a highlight of the year. And finally, my extra, extra special thanks to my wife Marianne and my daughters Jessica and Sophie: every moment spent working on this book was stolen from them.

Jonathan Strahan

M ore than anything else 2012 was an interesting year for science fiction and fantasy. While people concerned with the business of the genrepublishers, editors, publicistslooked for ways to innovate and expand, to find new ways to get stories before the eyes of readers, those of us who are interested in the artistic health of the genrewriters, artists, critics, readerswere looking carefully at how things were proceeding as well.

Probably the single most interesting discussion of science fiction and fantasy during the year was prompted by The Widening Gyre, a fascinating and worthwhile review essay by UK critic Paul Kincaid published in the LA Review of Books where he examined a handful of best of the year anthologies like this one. In his essay Kincaid raised the question of whether science fiction had grown exhausted, not in the sense of becoming tired or rundown, but rather of having run short on compelling ideas, possibly having lost faith in or connection to the future.

In the extensive online discussions that followed, this sense of exhaustion seemed to be prompted by a number of recent works that could be said to be nostalgic, hearkening back to the way the future was, rather than attempting to engage meaningfully with the world we live in today, with all of its economic, climatic, and political upheavals and radical scientific discoveries. If a central mission of science fiction is to connect our world to meaningful believable futures, Kincaid and others asked, are too few writers currently addressing that mission? Kincaid also raised the question of whether fantasy might be losing touch with its mission as well. Touching on stories like K. J. Parkers excellent novella A Small Price to Pay for Birdsongwhich went on to win the World Fantasy Award in NovemberKincaid asked in what sense such works, with no overtly fantastical events or beings at all, were in any sense even fantasy. Couldnt such a tale be transplanted into a historical setting with little apparent change?

I do think science fictionat least at the experimental/developmental end of the spectrumis in a period of self-examination. Some of this is just our fields constant navel gazing, but some is a deliberate attempt to find a way to imagine any kind of science fictional future at all. It is certainly imaginatively less innovative to revisit 1940s-style SF adventures, with those bright futures that now seem to have failed us, than to try to envision another kind of future from our own less optimistic age. And yet that is the challenge, surely. Not to imagine the way the future was, but the way the future might be. While I dont think answers to this exist yet, I do think you can see the beginnings of attempts to find them.

The fantasy question vexes me a little more. I am not attracted to litmus tests and lab results for genre, but I do understand and accept the need to be able to meaningfully connect slipstream works to the field, to explain how quasi-historical fiction like that by, say, Guy Gavriel Kay or K. J. Parker belongs in fantasy at all. Discussing his novel Some Kind of Fairy Tale on The Coode Street Podcast recently, Graham Joyce talked about how he used the intrusion of the fantastic into our own world as a tool to interrogate our world, the people and relationships within it. Similarly, Kay has often claimed that placing historical events and people in a secondary world, as he does in major works like Tigana and Under Heaven, allows him to interrogate those events in new and worthwhile ways. I find myself convinced by this and, while I agree with Kincaid that it is valuable to have some idea of what fantasy is and what its mission might be, its equally valuable to be able to use it in the ways it has been by Kay, Parker, Joyce, and many others.

As always is the case each year, I couldnt help but observe a number of interesting and encouraging trends. In 2012 science fiction and fantasy continued to move slowly but hopefully away from the white male Anglo Saxon Mayberry of its youth and towards a more mature, diverse, and inclusive future. This trend was nowhere better evidenced than in the brace of strong original anthologies that focused on fiction from other points of view. The best of these included Nick Mamatas & Matsumi Washingtons