Science Fiction on the rise

 kw: book reviews, science fiction, collections, short stories

Considering quantity alone, the increasing number of "Best Of" collections indicates that science fiction is getting more popular. I care most about the quality, from two angles. Firstly, when I finish a story, am I glad I read it? Secondly, the quality of the writing, as writing (analogous to the art critic who said, "I can't paint, but I can recognize good painting.") In both ways, it seems the field is improving.

A comparatively new series is represented by The Best Science Fiction of the Year, edited by Neil Clarke. The 2020 volume is the fifth of the series. One could say that my familiarity with no more than a handful of the authors is another indication that the genre is doing well. The new writers, many of them young, have new ideas aplenty. I was happy to see a lot more stories with believable space aliens and fewer of the navel-gazing, introspective sort that was popular for far too long. I did notice that a significant majority (16 of 28 stories) had a dystopian or post-apocalyptic milieu. I think the younger generation or two are being handed a lot of bad news, so that informs their interest; fortunately, they are coming up with very creative means of coping.

I took brief notes on all the stories, but I think I'll focus on just a few:

• The Little Shepherdess by Gwyneth Jones – A novel take on harvesting seabed nodules. The "industrial solution" is to use big trawls to scrape up everything. A creature is found that gathers the nodules into little piles, for her own purposes. The "bottom up" solution is to have many low-impact harvesters gather the piles; a robbed pile prompts the "shepherdess" to rebuild the pile. Ms Jones has been around a while, and has good ideas well presented.
• The River of Blood and Wine by Kali Wallace – Colonizing a planet is like colonizing a continent. If there are inhabitants, tragedy ensues. In this story, the colonizers pull back before genocide results, not without protest, because, of course, whatever choice is made, someone's ox is gored. This author's deft touch keeps a strong subject from getting either explosive or syrupy. The author is new to me, as are both of those who follow.
• On the Shores of Ligeia by Carolyn Ives Gilman – Citizen science comes to the rescue when a remotely-operated "rover" on Titan gets stuck. I find the idea resembles the one in "Little Shepherdess", in that a lot of little things do a better job than one big thing.
• Give the Family my Love by A.T. Greenblatt – Here I wrote one line: "Apotheosis of a bookworm". I really identify with someone who, like Jorge Luis Borges, thinks that heaven must resemble a library, and a near-infinite library certainly resembles heaven.

Some short stories are exploratory, a way of answering, "If such-and-so were different…" One of the stories (Permafrost by Alastair Reynolds, another familiar name), gradually sneaks up on the reader with the idea, "What if all the insects died?" Another (The Work of Wolves by Tegan Moore) posits animal helpers with EI, Enhanced Intelligence. If the enhancements are partly external, how small can such a critter be?

Only Old Media by Annalee Newitz opened on such a gross note that I skipped to the next story after the first paragraph. I knew I wouldn't finish it thinking, "I'm glad I read that."

The volume is a good use of nearly 600 pages.