Gardner Dozois, ed., The 22nd Annual
Year’s Best Science Fiction, 2005

reviewed by Danielle L. Parker

Having reviewed the previous annual edition of Dozois's massive collection as well, I approached the latest with a sense of expectation. Whatever else you can say about it, 600-plus pages of reading is a smorgasbord guaranteed to stuff any sci-fi reader to satiation. So what to say about this collection, other than the obvious advice to read it, if you're any fan of the genre at all?

First, as always, Dozois's annual summary of the state of the sci-fi union is a must-read. It doesn't sound like 2004 was a good year for the paper short-story market. A lot of magazines bit the dust or are gasping like dying mayflies. (This I had already guessed: during the past year I submitted a number of my own short stories to markets listed in the 2004 Novel and Short Story Writer's Market which are apparently defunct, because not even a refusal has come my way after lo these many, many moons). Web-based zines seem to have held on more successfully (Bewildering Stories is mentioned in the list for the first time). It looks like it was a good year for novels, especially re-prints, from both small press and major publishers. Aspiring writers might take note of the list of publishers that are actually publishing novels; I can attest from my own wasted stamps, no-such-address returns and general frustration that such a list is probably much more useful than that provided by the Writer's Market guide or the heroic but almost too-inclusive Spicy Green Iguana web site.

Now on to the stories, which, unlike last year, contain no particular heads-above-the-rest stars this year, at least as far as this reader is concerned. This year we seem to have a greater number of longish novellas that build their own detailed “worlds,” whether future, past, or alternate: the enjoyable “Investments” by Walter Jon Williams and from-the-eyes-of-the-alien “The Garden” by Eleanor Arnason being among them.

Alternate history made a brief appearance in Paul Di Filippo's “Sisyphus and the Stranger” — if you can accept the unsparingly self-critical Albert Camus, author of the “The Fall,” as a realpolitik Grey Eminence who gets caught up in a Hamlet-like paralysis of choices. (I confess I had trouble with that concept). “Sitka” is another alternate history story using familiar characters... featuring a wandering Lenin in this case. Paul Melko comes up with an entirely different spin on the theme with his “Ten Sigmas.”

There's the usual collection of “bad future” stories, many of them semi-horror: “The People of Sand and Slag,” “Men are Trouble,” “Falling Star,” “Start the Clock,” “Leviathan Wept,” and “Riding the White Bull” among them. The most intriguing of these, though not outstandingly so, to me, was “The Voluntary State,” by Christopher Rowe. A few, like “The People of Sand and Slag,” are just depressing and ugly, like suffering through the rape scenes of “A Clockwork Orange” all over again. Others, like “Riding the White Bull” and “Start the Clock,” either manage to have some hope in them or are just powerfully written enough to make them intriguing. I confess that after reading so many future-hell stories over the years, I get more than a little testy with those stories that depict the future us in only ugly monochrome s--- brown: I can feel bad by just pinching myself, thank you. (There was not a lot of humor in this year's collection, unfortunately).

First Contact stories — some of the “Contacts” in this case being ourselves — are always a common theme. Arnason's “Garden” falls in this category too, as does the semi-horror “Riding the White Bull,” “The Clapping Hand of God,” “The Ocean of the Blind,” “Scout's Honor,” “The Tribes of Bela” and “The Third Party.” “The Ocean of the Blind” was one of the few in the collection to have a certain sly sense of fun in it... why is humor, whether belly-variety or subtle, so hard to pull off in pure science fiction? Name me some consistent practitioners who make it work: Paul Di Filippo can do it for one, but the list is too short.

Traditional hard science stories didn't make much of an appearance in this collection. Kress's “Shiva in Shadow,” while a science story, is more importantly a character study, and a good one. Vernor Vinge's “Synthetic Serendipity” might depict a high-tech future, but there's something old-fashioned and sweet about its message: real flesh-and-blood teachers can still make a difference for a kid. (For the second year in a row, Vinge has written one of the stories I plain-out enjoyed most).

Then we have the oddities of the collection: the fable-like “Mother Aegypt,” which is probably the most atypical story in the collection, for Dozois; “Mayflower II,” a story of grand scope which poses its own intriguing moral and ethical issues for the thoughtful reader; “The Defenders,” which also presents the reader with a moral question to ponder. The again atypical fantasy story, “The Dragons of Summer Gulch,” leaves the reader, rather slyly, to deduce just how the apparently defeated protagonist is going to come out on top after all.

Picking the best of the collection this year is hard, because no one story stands out head-and-shoulders above the rest this year. But I think I'll nominate Vandana Singh's “Delhi” for the top spot, for its atmospheric, moody writing. Crowding close on its heels is “The Voluntary State.” I also enjoyed “Synthetic Serendipity” and “Investments,” the latter for no particular ideological brilliance on its part, I admit: it was one of the novellas, and its detail and good characterization helped make it a fun read.

Dozois tends to select stories that meet the science fiction objective of ideas, and while that is one of the defining and best characteristics of the genre, that high-concept focus also has its drawbacks. I'd like to see more stories that successfully present mood and atmosphere make it into the collection in the future. Would anything by H. P. Lovecraft or C. L. Moore have ever made it into the collection? I doubt it, and not just because they are dismissed as “pulp” or fantasy writers nowadays. When we, the editors of Bewildering Stories, were discussing among ourselves which of our stories we'd like to bring to Dozois's attention, the comment was made of our favorites that they were “not the kind of story Dozois picks.” They were not, indeed, though I think a few of the stories in our Third Anniversary Anthology were as good as or better than many in this collection, and that's not just sour grapes. It points out a weakness in the collection, or possibly in the collection process, to me. We need more stories like John C. Wright's “Awake in the Night” or Singh's “Delhi” in future collections. These were literary stories to a depth greater than their peers, and maybe that's what I really mean.

But this is a minor chastisement of an editor we love. Who but Dozois manages to summarize and, at least in part, collect for our pleasure, the great science fiction genre for us each year? What a job the man does. If the collection represents a little too clearly certain idiosyncratic editorial goals and preferences, well, that's an editor's privilege. No one else does anything like it in the business. See you next year, Mr. Dozois!

Copyright © 2005 by Danielle L. Parker