The Best SF, Fantasy, and Horror of 2006
by Claude Lalumière
special to Locus Online
2006 was a year in which many (but not all!) of the best works of imaginative fiction looked to the past, including antiquity, the mythic history of Great Britain, the eighteenth century, and the late Victorian / pre-First World War era. But most of all it was the year when pulp, in all its gaudy glory, returned with a vengeance, bringing with it hardboiled adventurers, weird menaces, outlandish monsters, and an unabashed sense of fun.
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FANTASY
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COMICS
honorable mention
Flight 3 (Ballantine), edited by Kazu Kibuishi
The Flight anthology series is a breath of fresh air. This volume contains nearly 350 pages of imaginative, genre-busting comics that shimmer with the joys of storytelling and the wonders of imagination. These young cartoonists don't show allegiance to any particular school of comics, they simply delight in sharing the fruits of their work, and they do it with charm, flair, and talent. In these days when the comics world seems split between the three poles of fandom-pandering commercial superheroes, elitist genre-snubbing "graphic novels", and the hermetic world of manga, Flight provides a great, non-sectarian, and much-needed (not to mention unpretentious) showcase for new voices and new stories.
best of the year
Lost Girls (Top Shelf), by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie
More than a decade in the making, Lost Girls is a politically engaged and brashly pornographic tale that deconstructs and explores the sexual subtext not only of some of Western culture's most beloved children's literary fairy tales but also of the era that spawned them. The heroines of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, now grown up, meet in an Austrian hotel just before the outbreak of the First World War; together they revisit their childhood fantasies, embarking on an erotic adventure that will leave each of them forever transformed.
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NOVELS
honorable mention
A Dirty Job (Morrow), by Christopher Moore
Satirist and fantasist Christopher Moore delivers one of his funniest works to date in this novel about a meek beta-male who unknowingly becomes a grim reaper. Moore's reflections on gender are side-splittingly hilarious, and, as ever, his cast of oddball characters is terrifically intriguing and entertaining.
best of the year
Soldier of Sidon (Tor), by Gene Wolfe
Finally! Seventeen years after the previous volume, Gene Wolfe returns to the world of the amnesiac mercenary Latro/Lucius. Soldier of Sidon is easily the best novel of the year, showing off many of Wolfe's greatest talents, including his deft and unique portrayal of gods and other supernatural creatures when they interact with humans and his strange yet utterly convincing evocation of antiquity. Although, once again, I'm eager for more. Perhaps the next volume won't be so long in coming...
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HORROR
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COMICS
honorable mention
Sloth (Vertigo), by Gilbert Hernandez
Gilbert Hernandez, of Love & Rockets fame, has created one of his densest, most powerful works in this Lynchian tale of horror, teenagers, folklore, lust, rock & roll, and alternate realities. Film buffs will no doubt feel the echoes of not only Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive but also Donnie Darko and The Blair Witch Project; Hernandez's creation, though, surpasses mere pastiche to achieve an evocative zeitgeist.
best of the year
B.P.R.D.: The Black Flame (Dark Horse), by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, and Guy Davis
The fifth volume of this spin-off series from Hellboy continues to surprise and entertain. The creative team has by now attained a powerful synergy. Combining Mignola's penchant for arcane folklore, Arcudi's deft characterization of the oddball monsters who make up the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense special talents unit, and Guy Davis's disquieting demonic designs, the B.P.R.D. series is a significant addition to the Hellboy mythos. The Black Flame is replete with gruesome pulp action and infused with chilling tragedy. Think Weird Tales meets Doc Savage meets The X-Files, but stranger and more sublime.
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NOVELS
honorable mention
Monster Island (Thunder's Mouth Press), by David Wellington
In recent years zombies have inexplicably become the new hot thing, invading many entertainment media. Among the hordes of current zombie novels, David Wellington's Monster Island stands as one of the most original, gripping, and intelligent entries. In this near future overrun with zombies, a motley group of humans from Africa try to reach UN headquarters in New York, in search of AIDS medication. Mixing politics and pulp, Wellington concocts a potent and mysterious brew. (A prequel, Monster Nation, was published later the same year but didn't coalesce as convincingly as this initial volume.)
best of the year
The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril (Simon & Schuster), by Paul Malmont
If I'd been asked to guess who wrote The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, I would have immediately said Philip José Farmer, although the lack of an ape-man archetype might have given me pause. Paul Malmont's macabre genre-bending adventure novel features several real-life pulp writers, most prominently Lester Dent and Walter Gibson, the creators of Doc Savage and The Shadow. Also joining in the thrills are L. Ron Hubbard, Chester Himes, H.P. Lovecraft, and several surprise guest stars. In many ways, The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril reads like a collaboration between Dent and Gibson — both of whom are as outstanding as pulp heroes as they were as pulp writers — after having ingested a hefty dose of Weird Tales and terror pulps. This gripping yarn is a heartfelt and deft homage to the pulp era, with a special affection for the hero pulps.
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SF
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COMICS
honorable mention
Rocketo: Journey to the Hidden Sea, Volume 1 (Image), by Frank Espinosa
Rocketo is an epic adventure serial that oozes pulp. Set thousands of years in the future, in a post-cataclysm world in which the laws of physics and the topography of the Earth have been radically altered, this series follows the journeys of Rocketo Garrison and his crew, as they explore this strange new world filled with bizarre species, extreme mutations, wondrous lands, and baffling civilizations. Espinosa's minimalist visual style and widescreen storytelling techniques combine to create an adventure that is both cinematic and mythic.
best of the year
Finder: Five Crazy Women (Lightspeed Press), by Carla Speed McNeil
The world of Carla Speed McNeil's Finder is perhaps the most complex and most deeply thought-out speculative future in the history of comics. For this volume, the focus is on Jaeger, the series' titular protagonist and its most charming one. Jaeger is a rogue and a womanizer. Five Crazy Women explores the sexual mores and potential clash of cultures in McNeil's future through the lens of Jaeger's sex life, which is not as successful as it once was, now that his past actions begin to catch up to him. The result is a wry and intimate look at the private lives of a handful of the peculiar denizens of McNeil's future world.
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NOVELS
honorable mention
Kingdom Come (Fourth Estate), by J.G. Ballard
Some might argue that Ballard's Kingdom Come isn't SF. I'll admit that it's borderline. But it certainly is speculative, and Ballard's perspective, as one of SF's most visionary authors, is quintessentially science-fictional, although the sciences at play in this novel fall in the humanities rather than the hard sciences. Kingdom Come is the fourth and final novel in the thematic sequence that began with Cocaine Nights (1996). Richard Pearson, while trying to find the truth behind his father's death, stumbles into and/or precipitates a disturbing social experiment involving fascism, consumerism, and celebrity culture, with a gigantic suburban mall as the focus of the violent energies being unleashed.
best of the year
Passarola Rising (Viking), by Azhar Abidi
For his debut novel, Azhar Abidi combines two archetypal SF subgenres, the alternate history and the fantastic voyage. The premise: what if, in eighteenth-century Portugal, Bartolomeu Lourenço had been permitted to build and fly the airship he had designed? Abidi concocts a rousing adventure novel in which the eighteenth century comes alive as a truly alien world and in which the profound bond between two brothers (Lourenço's brother Alexandre narrates the tale) is explored with depth and sensitivity.
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COLLECTIONS
honorable mentions
The mythology of Great Britain is explored in markedly different ways in two of 2006's most memorable collections. The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories (Bloomsbury), by Susanna Clarke (with illustrations by Charles Vess), mines the same territory as Clarke's wondrous and massively successful debut novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, the world of faery. The stories are not as enthralling as the longer work, but they are nevertheless fascinating, especially because of the author's wry wit and her playful use of language. The title story is especially striking, with its canny exploration of gender and power, and it's the one most reminiscent of the novel. Kim Newman's The Man from the Diogenes Club (MonkeyBrain Books) takes a pulpier approach. This volume collects the adventures of Newman's psychedelic supernatural investigator Richard Jeperson, special agent for the secret British intelligence agency, the Diogenes Club. Characteristically, Newman brews together a potent blend of pop-culture elements and successfully entertains in the process. Fans of Sherlock Holmes, TV's The Avengers, Weird Tales, James Bond, and Jerry Cornelius will all find plenty to marvel at in these multilayered pastiches.
best of the year
Moby Jack and Other Tall Tales (PS Publishing), by Garry Kilworth
Ever since reading Garry Kilworth's collection The Songbirds of Pain in the 1980s, one of my favorite short-story collections ever, I've been a devoted fan of his short fiction. It was with great anticipation that I read the author's first major collection in many years, Moby Jack and Other Tall Tales. I was not disappointed. Kilworth's versatile skill at navigating between genres, his outré imagination, his deft and evocative handling of the exotic, his keen insights into human behavior, his affecting ability to inhabit and communicate an impressive breadth of perspectives across cultural and gender spectrums, and, finally but certainly not least, his deliciously elegant prose, all combine to present a selection of stories whose diversity, originality, and poignancy leave me breathless with awe. Moby Jack and Other Tall Tales stands as my favorite book of 2006.
Claude Lalumière (lostpages.net) is a short-story writer, critic, and editor living in Montreal. His latest book, co-edited with Elise Moser, is Lust for Life: Tales of Sex & Love (Véhicule Press).
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