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Best Books of 2000
selected by Jonathan Strahan


 


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Best Short Fiction of 2000

The following is an excerpt from Mark R. Kelly's 2000 short fiction summary from the February 2001 issue of Locus Magazine.

 

I was struck this past year how many notable short works were parts of ongoing series, not so much as sequels to earlier works as further explorations of their authors' fictional universes, in the way Heinlein, Niven, and Varley have done in past decades. A prominent example in 2000 was Alastair Reynolds, who’s been publishing short work at least since 1990 but who finally made a big splash in 2000 with his novel Revelation Space and several short works set in the same future history. The best of these was "Great Wall of Mars" (from the debut issue of Spectrum SF), a tale about a hive society on Mars that provides a bridge from some earlier Reynolds’ stories and those that break out into intergalactic space. Others in the same future history this past year were "Merlin’s Gun" (Asimov’s 5/00) and "Hideaway" (Interzone 7/00).

Stephen Baxter returned to his roots in 2000 with several stories in his Xeelee universe and the aftermath of life on Earth after super-aliens called Qax abandon it. Both "Cadre Siblings" (Interzone 3/00) and Reality Dust (one of four hard SF novella-length books published in 2000 by PS Publishing) are set early on in this Qax aftermath, while two other Xeelee stories concern humanity’s contact with spherical aliens manipulating the laws of physics. These are "Silver Ghost" (Asimov’s 9/00) and Baxter’s best story this year, "On the Orion Line" (Asimov’s 10-11/00), a suspenseful survival-in-space tale that addresses everything from humanity’s expansionist imperative to how changes in the basic physical constants would affect the survivability of human or any other beings.

Peter F. Hamilton is yet another British hard SF writer, and writer of massive novels, who produced admirable short works in 2000. "The Suspect Genome" (Interzone 6/00) and Watching Trees Grow (PS Publishing) are both clever hard SF murder mysteries; the former weaves three plot strands together in a case involving property rights, telepathy, and a device that reconstructs a person’s appearance from a DNA sample, while the latter is set in an alternate history where long-lived families derived from Roman stock have the time to pursue an unsolved murder through centuries of accelerated technological development.

And Paul J. McAuley (yet another Brit!) further explored the aftermath of his "Quiet War" between Earth and the outer satellites in Making History (PS Publishing), a sophisticated tale about a love triangle and the great man theory of history. Other McAuley stories in 2000 included "Interstitial" (Asimov’s 7/00), about cosmological discoveries made in the aftermath of a lunar war, and two stories about exploration, "Reef" (Skylife), a tale about lifeforms inside a distant asteroid that focuses on the varying motivations of scientists and those who sponsor them, and "The Rift" (Vanishing Acts), perhaps McAuley’s best story this year, which brings a similar range of perspectives to a Lost World tale set deep in the Amazon jungle.

Steven Utley (not a Brit!) has for several years been writing stories set in a Paleozoic past accessible via time gate, stories distinctive for their literary focus on character and meaning rather than on spectacle or plot. Four of them appeared in 2000, including "The Real World" (Sci Fiction 9/6/00), about a returned visitor from the Paleozoic attending a Hollywood party; "Chain of Life" (Asimov’s 10-11/00); "Cloud by Van Gogh" (F&SF 12/00); and "The Despoblado" (Sci Fiction 11/22/00), a Heart of Darkness tale about the various reasons people choose to isolate themselves in such a remote, desolate past.

Of course, not all short fiction writers are engaged in writing series. Michael Swanwick has written a lot of short fiction in recent years, with every story distinctly unrelated to every other, and this year’s "The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O" (an original story in his collection Tales of Old Earth) is one of his most unusual, a dazzling blend of fantasy and SF, genre and myth, about two people fleeing through time from those who would control time, and how certain people are archetypes, their existence made necessary through repetition in story and song.

Ursula K. Le Guin’s "The Birthday of the World" (F&SF 6/00) is an exquisite anthropological SF tale about a culture that identifies the union of its leaders with "God" and what happens when this culture’s worldview is shattered by visiting aliens (presumably humans). Two similarly flavored, shorter stories in 2000 by Le Guin were "The Royals of Hegn" (Asimov’s 2/00), about a society in which everyone is royalty and is obsessed with the few who are commoners, and "The Flyers of Gy" (Sci Fiction 11/8/00), about how a society treats its minority who grow wings.

Andy Duncan solidified his status as one of SF and fantasy’s most distinctive voices with three stories this year, two of them originals in his collection Beluthatchie and Other Stories. "Lincoln in Frogmore" evoked the secret presence of President Lincoln in a small southern town, while "Fenneman’s Mouth" was a sly speculation on the near future entertainment industry, about a TV show that recreates urban legend bloopers. Duncan’s best story in 2000 was "The Pottawatomie Giant" (Sci Fiction 11/1/00), a moving tale that uses a simple fantasy device to explore the life of Jess Willard, one-time heavyweight champ of the world.

Another distinctive fantasy voice is Jeffrey Ford, whose "The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant" (F&SF 2/00) is an ingenious variation on the common claim by writers that their characters take on lives of their own.

The fourth novella-length book published by PS Publishing (after the three already mentioned) was Ian McDonald’s Tendeléo’s Story, and of the four it’s the least hard SF but the most evocative and the most emotionally satisfying. Set in McDonald’s Chaga universe, setting for a couple previous novels, it describes how a young girl’s life is affected when alien spores force her family to evacuate their village.

Another moving, beautifully told novella in 2000 was Lucius Shepard’s "Radiant Green Star" (Asimov’s 8/00), set in 21st century Vietnam, a psychological mystery about a boy who grows up with a circus and moves toward an inevitable confrontation with the father who abandoned him in his youth.

John Kessel’s "The Juniper Tree" (SF Age 1/00) is a complex and passionate story set in a utopian lunar society where a father and daughter from Earth try to adjust to a matriarchal society where relationships are open and sex very casual.

In contrast to these stories were several high-concept tales that stress intellect over emotion. Greg Egan’s "Oracle" (Asimov’s 7/00) pits stand-ins for Alan Turing and C.S. Lewis in a debate about faith vs. reality, while Brian Stableford’s "Snowball in Hell" (Analog 12/00) builds a plausible argument that there’s very little difference between humans and other animals. Charles Stross’s "Antibodies" (Interzone 7/00) begins with the solution to an esoteric problem in mathematics and quickly builds to a suspenseful tale about outsiders interfering with humanity’s worldline to avert its self-destruction through the attainment of AI and the resultant "singularity". And Ted Chiang’s "Seventy-two Letters" (Vanishing Acts) is a remarkable alternate history, or more correctly alternate-science-history, set in a 19th century in which various medieval scientific theories - such as the doctrine of preformation, which supposed that fetuses existed fully formed inside the sperm or eggs of their parents - are real.

Since my reading this past year was not as extensive as usual, and that there were therefore surely great stories published that I didn’t read, this year’s final list isn’t a "Top 10 Stories of 2000" but rather…

8 Top Stories of 2000

  • Stephen Baxter, "On the Orion Line" (Asimov’s)
  • Ted Chiang, "Seventy-two Letters" (Vanishing Acts)
  • John Kessel, "The Juniper Tree" (SF Age)
  • Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Birthday of the World" (F&SF)
  • Ian McDonald, Tendeléo’s Story (PS Publishing)
  • Alastair Reynolds, "Great Wall of Mars" (Spectrum SF)
  • Lucius Shepard, "Radiant Green Star" (Asimov’s)
  • Michael Swanwick, "The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O" (Tales of Old Earth)

Mark R. Kelly


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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