The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Seven: 2013 Book #17
4 of 5 stars
You’d think the year’s best collection would fare a little better than most anthologies, simply because all these stories are supposedly “good.” At the end of the day – it’s still an anthology, all centered around the theme of what the editor thinks is “best.” Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of great writing here, and even the ones that didn’t resonate with me still had beautiful prose. And I did enjoy a lot of the stories here, and the editor, Jonathan Strahan, really packs them in.
Overall, I felt like there was too much urban fantasy, magical realism and dystopian sci-fi. Strahan even comments on this in the prologue, acknowledging that sci-fi is in a state of flux – in the past, sci-fi has always been about what we could achieve, humanity bringing out the best in itself via science.
The future we imagined is here, and there are no jet packs.
What’s to say the next twenty years will be different? The tone of this book is decidedly bleak, and the vast majority of the stories are either dystopian sci-fi or post apocaliptic sci-fi. Thinking back, there are very, very few of these stories that would fall into what I’d call Fantasy, and even those are in the urban fantasy / magical realism sub-genre. All this is very “hot” right now, and the editor may have seen his job as capturing a snapshot of what happened in 2012. If so, he probably did a bang up job. However, I’ve got to believe there’s more sword and sorcery fantasy out there. Stuff that feels more medieval, dream-like and epic in scope. I’d even settle for just plain high or low fantasy, but those sub-genres are largely missing from this book.
My favorite story by far was “Two Houses” by Kelly Link. It had an eerie, bordering on horror-ish vibe to it. This sci-fi fiction about a team of deep space explorers reminded me a ton of Prometheus (which I liked, incidentally.) and a few other horror stories with twist endings that I won’t include here so as not to ruin the ending for you. The story does a phenomenal job capturing the feeling of isolation and grief with the imagery surrounding the characters as they move through the spaceship and deal with the loss of their sister ship is haunting. I also enjoyed how Link explored how even though these two ships have been disconnected by a vacuum for years, when the other ship disappears, it has profound effects on the crew. Even though there was a lack of a physical connection, the implied emotional connection was just as powerful.
Collections like these are a must for any fan of the genres. Just because I wasn’t feeling this year’s as a whole, doesn’t mean there weren’t some phenomenal works of fiction.
Buy The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Seven