Jonathan Strahan - The Starry Rift

The Starry Rift

Tales of new tomorrows

An original science fiction anthology

edited by Jonathan Strahan

For Marianne, Jessica, and Sophie,

who make every day a joy,

and

For Sharyn,

who understood the adventure that this book could be, and

gave me the chance to take it

by Scott Westerfeld

by Ann Halam

by Neil Gaiman

by Kelly Link

by Stephen Baxter

by Jeffrey Ford

by Cory Doctorow

by Kathleen Ann Goonan

by Ian McDonald

by Alastair Reynolds

by Margo Lanagan

by Greg Egan

by Paul McAuley

by Tricia Sullivan

by Garth Nix

by Walter Jon Williams

INTRODUCTION

Jonathan Strahan

If anyone ever lived a science fictional life, it was the writer Jack Williamson. He was born in Bisbee, Arizona, in April 1908, almost exactly one hundred years ago, and died in Portales, New Mexico, in 2006. During his lifetime, the world changed unimaginably. As a young boy, he and his family traveled in a covered wagon from western Texas to their new homestead in New Mexico in 1915. It was just twelve years after the Wright Brothers first flew at Kitty Hawk; commercial radio broadcasts in the United States were still five years away (and television decades away); and women were still denied the right to vote. The twentieth centurysometimes called the American Century because of its love for technology, and because of Americas growing economic and political dominance of the worlds stagehad hardly begun, and yet in less than twenty years, Williamson would become an active participant in the evolution of modern science fiction. He and his contemporaries spun tales of interstellar adventure where galaxies collided, worlds exploded, brave heroes won out against incredible odds, and beautiful damsels were rescued from the clutches of terrible alienstales of pioneers and far frontiers from a man who had been a pioneer and traveled to at least one frontier himself. By the time his career was over, mankind would have split the atom, walked on the moon, ventured into outer space using robotic probes, invented devices smaller than the eye could see, slowed light itself to a standstill, and created a worldwide web of information and communications that reached into almost every household.

The story of Jack Williamsons life, his particularly science fictional life, is also the story of science fiction itself. Although people think that science fiction is about the future, its not. Like all fiction, its about its own time. Its about the world we live inwhat we think and feel about it, and how we think or fear it might change in the coming years. The stories that Williamson and other writers like him (E. E. Doc Smith, A. E. van Vogt, Isaac Asimov, and L. Sprague de Camp) wrote before 1945 were published in cheap magazines that were garish and brash but very much of their time.

Golden Age science fiction, as it is known, reflected the attitudes of the first half of the American Century. It was forward-looking, confident, ultimately optimistic writing that put its faith in technology and the abilities of practical people to solve problems. It was also unlike other popular fiction of the timeparticularly Westerns and adventure stories, both of which grew out of a similar pulp traditionbecause it made heroes out of thinkers and scientists.

Traditionally, engineers and scientists have always been avid science fiction readers in their youth.

All this changed at the end of World War II. The Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Japanthe first atomic bomb ever used in warfarethus ending the war and inaugurating what became known as the Cold War. Technology and the people who created it became things to be feared, more likely to destroy our world than to save it.

People began to worry that progress might come at a high price. Nuclear power meant cheap electricity, but the threat of massive destruction always loomed. Computers could vastly increase our ability to learn and make decisions, but what if they decided to take over the world? New medical procedures could extend our lives, but what about overpopulation? Even everyday technologies like automobiles and manufacturing plants could provide jobs and prosperity but also lead to global warming.

By the mid-1960s, questions like these began to appear in darker, more pessimistic science fiction stories like John Brunners The Sheep Look Up, Philip K. Dicks The Man in the High Castle, and J. G. Ballards The Drowned World. And by the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher had become the prime minister of England and Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States, science fiction writers also seemed to have become much more aware that the political decisions we make today can radically affect our possible futures.

It was around this time that British writers like M. John Harrison and Iain M. Banks began to rethink the whole genre, retaining its bright, shiny surface while adding depth, complexity, and more critical political and economic themes to the mix. Books like Harrisons 1975 novel The Centauri Device, which was intended to end space opera, and Bankss 1987 novel Consider Phlebas, which reinvigorated it, are prime examples. In the United States, writers like William Gibson, with his classic 1984 novel Neuromancer , and Bruce Sterling, with 1985s Schismatrix and his Shaper/Mechanist stories, were taking a different tack, exploring the dark, gritty world of cyberpunk, where technology was hijacked by the street and the first glimmerings of the Internet were imagined. Science fiction readers, who once showed up at conventions in skinny ties and sport jackets, were now more likely to be outfitted in black leather and mirrored shades.

Today science fiction continues to change. It is, after all, an ongoing conversation about whats happening in the world we live in and where were going. Its often been said that we can choose where we live but not when we livethe future is where were all going to end up together, and its a future that were creating right now, with every decision we make.

If thats true, then its important that we hear the stories science fiction has to tell now. At a time when a major American city was only recently almost destroyed by an enormous hurricane, when international political and religious unrest seems to be spiraling ever more out of control, and when technology is getting stranger and more mysterious, we need to hear tales written today that ask serious questions about the world we are living in and the world we might face.

I turned to a handful of the best writers in the field, asking them to write stories that would offer todays readers the same kind of thrill enjoyed by the pulp readers of over fifty years ago. The futures we imagine today are not the same futures that your grandfathers generation imagined or could have imagined. But some things in science fiction remain the same: the sense of wonder, of adventure, and of fearlessly coming to grips with whatever tomorrow may bring. Some of the stories here are clearly the offspring of those grand old space adventure tales, but others imagine entirely new and unexpected ways of living in the future. The Starry Rift is not a collection of manifestosbut it is both entertainment and the sound of us talking to tomorrow.

Jonathan Strahan

Perth, Western Australia

November 2007

ASS-HAT MAGIC SPIDER

Scott Westerfeld

F our hours before takeoff I was in the gym. Two T-shirts to catch the sweat, a plastic slicker over that, and a hoodie on top of everything. I was the only person in that corner of the gymthe one with floor-to-ceiling windowsand the aircon was hardly denting the sunlight streaming in.

Of course, the sun wasnt hitting my skin, all covered up like that. Direct sunlight keeps you from sweating, which is why desert nomads wear long robes.