Best SF of the Year, One That is Okay, & Some Old Favorites

Like many fans, I am torn over which “best science fiction of the year” collection(s) to read.  I find myself enjoying short stories more than the door-stopper novels.  That doesn’t mean the long novels are not good it just means that I prefer reading many different stories in the short fiction (novellas, novelettes, short stories) to reading one long novel.  There are exceptions.  “Dune” is one of my favorites and I have read it many times.  But if you look at the novels I mainly read, they are the length I enjoyed reading in the 70s and 80s when I was getting into science fiction.  Look at the length of the typical works of Isaac Asimov, Roger Zelazny, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Michael Moorcock, Jack Vance, E. C. Tubb, and others of that generation.  Even many of Frank Herbert’s novels are not 600 to 1000 pages long.  Take a look at the majority of the novels I am reviewing.  Most are older ones.  Does this mean I don’t want to read newer authors?  No.  I plan on reading books by Alastair Reynolds, Iain M. Banks, Peter F. Hamilton, Robert Sawyer, Eric Brown and others this year.  In the words of Peter David, “But I Digress…”.

Cover by Jack Gaughan

Getting back to the subject of “best of the year” collections, my favorite in the early days were the ones edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr.  I plan on starting to re-read them with the first one this year.  Last year I took a good look at the current series.  I chose to buy two (the Gardner Dozois collection and the David Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer one).  From what I have read on other sites, the Dozois is generally considered the top series since it started.  Each year he includes a fascinating overview of the field.  So why did I pick up the Hartwell & Cramer book?  A friend of mine loved this series because it is more focused on traditional science fiction.  When I compared the two, there is very little overlap.  Part of my plan is to go back, read and review all of the Hartwell & Cramer collections.  It will take some time because last year’s edition is the seventeenth.  By reading these, it will give me a chance to read many of the newer authors I have not read or have read very little of.  Which leads me to the first story in last year’s collection…

Newton's Wake by Ken MacLeod

Sometimes you pick a book because it looks interesting. The cover is amazing, the storyline sounds exciting, the reviews are good, and you take the plunge and buy it. Until I read this book, MacLeod was an author I had not tried. This looked like the perfect book to start with. Maybe it was me but this book sounded better than it actually was. By the time I was a third of the way through, it lost my interest. Other books were calling and I did not care if I read the rest of this story.

One of my problems was the way the author was sidetracked down other paths. It almost seemed like he was not sure what book he wanted to write. Authors like Jack Vance and Roger Zelazny can take you on side roads and keep my interest. Here, it seemed like MacLeod would obsess with details that did not interest me.

Another problem I had was the characters. In general, the characters were not likeable. I found myself not caring who was right and who was wrong. Usually I find some character to cheer for. That was not the case in Newton’s Wake.

I put MacLeod on my list of authors to try again in the future. For now I have too many other authors I want to try. Add the authors I already enjoy and it will be a while until I return to MacLeod’s books.