The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2013

I have had a long, torturous relationship with science fiction literature. I want to like it--I like at the covers of those pulp novels, so lurid, so exciting--and then I am inevitably disappointed by the preachy, pretentious tone of the writing. Over the years my favorite sci-fi has been by writers who aren't really considered sci-fi authors, like Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams, where though they are serious writers they take a light-hearted approach.

So I was a little annoyed by many of the stories in The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2013, edited by Rich Horton. For one thing, that "fantasy" is a big deal, because many of the stories are not remotely classified as science fiction. "Sunshine," a very good story by Nina Allan, is a vampire story (or, excuse me, a hirudin story). "A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight," by Xia Jia, is about, you guessed it, ghosts. "Swift, Brutal Retaliation" by Meghan McCarron is also about a ghost, but it is a top-notch story.

But there's plenty to love here for space travel fans. There are two murder mysteries set in space: "Nahiku West," by Linda Nagata, and "In the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal Burns," by Elizabeth Bear, which involves the ability to occupy another's body. The longest story, full of technical jargon that is head-scratchingly confusing, is "The Weight of History, the Lightness of the Future," by Jay Lake.

I sometimes think writers of space adventures just like making up words, and having the reader guess their meaning from context. I think of this passage from "The Bernoulli War," by Gord Sellar: "!oblong~fku6hPr0sPec7--a near cousin in terms of metaforks, but distant in terms of metathread--soared past, shattering the reinforced walls with its shoulders of corrugated buckymeat, belching torrents of flame from a dozen evenly spaced apertures visible in the armor plating of its killskin as it crashed past the brink of entry." Huh?

Fantasy writers are also guilty of this. Consider this from "Fireborn," by Robert Charles Wilson: "As a child on a pew in Buttercup County's Church of True Things, Onyx had learned now Jesu Rinpoche had saved wisdom from the Hemoclysm and planted the Four Doors to the Moon at the corners of the Earth." I'm sorry, I can't read that without rolling my eyes.

But there are some very good stories here that didn't roll my eyes or make my head hurt. "The Black Feminist's Guide to Science Fiction Film Editing," by Sandra McDonald, is about, well, let her describe it: "That's our job, you see: film reconstruction. Correcting the cinematic injustices of the past with modern, thoughtful, gender-balanced versions." The villain in the piece has another tack: "His version of Kill Bill has a PMS-crazed assassin trying to kill a peaceful monk played by David Carradine. He remade The Hunger Games so that Peeta wins instead of Katniss. His Twilight is about a vampire stalked by a sulky teenager who will stop at nothing to bear his demon spawn. Actually, that one was much better than the original."

I also loved "Scrap Dragon," by Naomi Kritzer. It's a dialogue between mother and daughter, with the former trying to make up a fairy tale on the fly to her very dubious listener, who is given to asking questions like, "Does she have to be a princess? Couldn't she be the daughter of a merchant, or a scholar, or an accountant?" I read this story while eating lunch at a Sonic somewhere in Missouri. It's one of those stories that are so good that it immediately reminds of where you were when you were reading it.

So, this collection is a mixed bag. I suppose sci-fi literature and I will just have to agree to disagree.