Saturday, February 13, 2010SF Bests; W.O Mitchell; Drowned Liberty; I.O.U.
If you're a hardcore SF reader you probably know all about the significance of short fiction to the genre. (The Baltimore City Paper recently ran a nice article on short sf, in which I'm quoted along with the much more knowledgeable Elizabeth Bear.) If you're not a hardcore reader -- and even if your interest in science fiction is of the I'm-not-a-fan-I-just-like-a-good-story school -- let me commend to your attention the genre's annual Best of the Year collections. There are four major collections, edited by Gardner Dozois, Rich Horton, Jonathan Strahan, and David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. The books are of varying length and overlapping content: pick the one that seems to suit. This year, I'll be represented in all four (by two different stories).
The point I want to make is not that these books are showcases for contemporary SF (though they are) or that short science fiction is alive and kicking (though it is). The point I want to make is that they're consistently good, solid, entertaining reads: books you read for pleasure, and books in which that pleasure often comes from unexpected directions and in surprising ways.
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Last night I watched the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver Winter Olympics. I'm not a big fan of the IOC -- some of the reasons for that are detailed in an interesting article from the Literary Review of Canada, Laura Robinson's "A Shameful Track Record" -- but that's neither here nor there. Yesterday's opening entertainment included a kind of impressionistic dance-musical tribute to Canadian history and culture, beginning with an Inuit creation myth and ending with Ashley Macisaac in a kilt. Few clichés were left unreferenced; but, you know, they're nice clichés, all in all. Inclusiveness, immigration, the prairies, the mountains, boozy-looking guys with Celtic tattoos . . . Mind you, it would have been cheaper and more authentic just to wheel out Stompin' Tom for a chorus of "Sudbury Saturday Night" and give everybody in the stadium a doughnut.
More to the point, the festivities included a brief reading from W.O. Mitchell's novel Who Has Seen the Wind. The book is groaningly familiar to anyone who attended Grade Nine in Canada: it's a staple of the curriculum, presumably because it's both really, really Canadian and easily digestible. But I have to admit I have a soft spot for that book. I doubt American readers have heard of it, but the prose is evocative and has a sweet fragility reminiscent of the best early Ray Bradbury. If you go to the link you can sample a few pages. You might even be moved to buy a copy.
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A couple of posts ago I referenced the tradition of "ruined Liberties" in science fiction art. Here's another example, from John Bowen's 1958 novel After the Rain. (This may be what the ski runs at Whistler Mt. look like, if the weekend's weather predictions are borne out.) I haven't read Bowen's novel, so this isn't a recommendation, but the cover is easy to love.
One book I have read is John Lanchester's I.O.U: Why Everybody Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay. This is an analysis of the recent economic crisis -- how tedious, right? Well, no, actually. Lanchester's book is funny, lucid, and maybe the most concise and reasonable analysis you're likely to come across. (It will also allow you to sprinkle your conversation with knowing references to Gaussian copula functions.) If you have an interest in the subject, seek it out.
I get an occasional e-mail observing that I don't seem to read much novel-length science fiction these days, judging by what I've posted here. There's some truth in that. I once heard Kim Stanley Robinson remark that we'd all be better writers if we stopped reading each other for a while. He may be right. But I recently ignored Kim Stanley Robinson's advice and picked up Kim Stanley Robinson's Galileo's Dream. You should, too: this is a humane, wonderfully well-written, impeccably researched, and deeply interesting book.