Of the print magazines, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine had the best year producing terrific work by established regulars like Robert Reed, James Patrick Kelly, Geoffrey A. Landis and Kij Johnson, alongside newer writers like Sara Genge and Felicity Shoulders. Editor Sheila Williams doesn’t really get enough credit for the efforts she’s put in over recent years to broaden and re-define Asimov’s but it definitely showed this year. Gordon Van Gelder’s Fantasy & Science Fiction had another solid year, with strong stories by Bruce Sterling, Paul Park, John Kessel, Steven Popkes, Ian R. Macleod and newcomer Alexandra Duncan. It remains a reliable source of good fiction. Interzone also had a good year, producing two excellent stories by Jim Hawkins, who returned to the magazine with his second and third sales after a thirty-year hiatus. There were many other print magazines published, but these were the ones that struck me as the best.
If anthologies weren’t quite as dominant in 2010, that’s not to say there wasn’t a lot of them and that they didn’t contain a lot of fine fiction. I should probably note the caveat here that I edited several anthologies in 2010 myself, so I offer without comment SF anthology Godlike Machines , fantasy anthologies Swords and Dark Magic (edited with Lou Anders), Legends of Australian Fantasy (edited with Jack Dann) and Wings of Fire (edited with Marianne S. Jablon). All contain work I think deserves your attention. The best original fantasy anthology of the year was Justine Larbalestier and Holly Black’s immensely enjoyable Zombies vs. Unicorns , which featured excellent work by Diana Peterfreund, Sarah Rees Brennan, Scott Westerfeld, Meg Cabot, Alaya Dawn Johnson and others. If you buy only one original fantasy anthology of the year, this should be it. I was frankly surprised at the quality of Full Moon City, a werewolf anthology that featured terrific stories from the likes of Holly Black, Peter S. Beagle and Gene Wolfe. Well worth your attention was the latest from Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, The Beastly Bride , which included strong work from Christopher Barzak, Ellen Kushner and Peter S. Beagle. More tangential to this book, Datlow also edited a strong anthology of ghost stories, Haunted Legends , with Nick Mamatas, which featured good work by Jeffrey Ford, Caitlín R. Kiernan and Joe R. Lansdale. Also worth mention is John Joseph Adams’s The Way of the Wizard , which includes good work by Nnedi Okorafor, Genevieve Valentine and others.
There were, frankly, very few SF anthologies published this year. After my own Godlike Machines , the best of these was Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern’s Is Anybody Out There? , which had an excellent story from Pat Cadigan and very good work from Alexander Irvine and others. 2010 also seemed to have more high profile “bestseller” anthologies than we’ve seen for a while. Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio delivered Stories , while Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin edited Warriors and Songs of Love and Death . All three were mixed genre, and often the non-genre stories were the highlights. Although it was somewhat uneven, the best of these anthologies was Stories, which had outstanding stories by Elizabeth Hand and editor Gaiman, alongside fine work from Joe R. Lansdale, Jeffrey Ford and Tim Powers. Warriors featured strong work from Joe Haldeman, Howard Waldrop and both editors Dozois and Martin, while Songs of Love and Death had good work from Carrie Vaughn, Neil Gaiman and others. 2010 saw the World Science Fiction Convention travel to Australia and a number of strong anthologies were published by Australian small presses to coincide with the event. Easily the best of these was Alisa Krasnostein’s Sprawl , a suburban fantasy anthology from Twelfth Planet Press which featured excellent work by Peter M. Ball, Angela Slatter, Thoraiya Dyer and others. Also of interest were Tehani Wesseley’s Worlds Next Door and Liz Grzyb’s Scary Kisses .
I could go on and talk about reprint anthologies, collections and such but I’m running long as it is, so instead I’ll simply say it was another fine year and let you get to reading the wonderful stories that feature in this year’s book. As always, I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I’ve enjoyed compiling them. See you next year!
ELEGY FOR A YOUNG ELK
HANNU RAJANIEMI
Hannu Rajaniemi was born in Ylivieska, Finland, and read his first science fiction novel at the age of six—Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea . At the age of eight he approached European Space Agency with a fusion-powered spaceship design, which was received with a polite “thank you” note. He studied mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Oulu and completed a B.Sc. thesis on transcendental numbers. Rajaniemi went on to complete Part III of the Mathematical Tripos at Cambridge University and a Ph.D. in string theory at the University of Edinburgh. After completing his Ph.D., he joined three partners to co-found ThinkTank Maths (TTM). The company provides mathematics-based technologies in the defense, space, and energy sectors. Rajaniemi is a member of an Edinburgh-based writers group which includes Alan Campbell, Jack Deighton, Caroline Dunford, and Charles Stross. His first fiction sale was the short story “Shibuya no Love” to Futurismic.com , and his first novel, The Quantum Thief , was published by Gollancz in 2010.
The night after Kosonen shot the young elk, he tried to write a poem by the campfire.
It was late April and there was still snow on the ground. He had already taken to sitting outside in the evening, on a log by the fire, in the small clearing where his cabin stood. Otso was more comfortable outside, and he preferred the bear’s company to being alone. It snored loudly atop its pile of fir branches.
A wet smell that had traces of elk shit drifted from its drying fur.