Edge of Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan

I've had the discussion around Paul Kincaid's 'The Widening Gyre' essay in the back of my mind since its publication, in September of 2012. In that essay -- actually a review of three SF anthologies --  Kincaid argued that there is a sense of exhaustion in the genre. "No longer sure of the future," he wrote, "an SF writer's options seem to be to present a future that is magical or incomprehensible ... or revert to older, more familiar futures". The essay prompted a great deal of discussion in the SF community; for helpful summaries, as well as refinements on his original position, check out Paul Kincaid's follow-up essays.

I'm really not sure what I think about Kincaid's argument, and that's a big part of why I've been silent here for the last few months. My gut reaction is to agree that science fiction has lost faith in the future, but to see this as less of a failing of the genre than as a simple reflection of our time. And isn't that all that science fiction ultimately does: reflect the fears, preoccupations and (occasionally) hopes of the generation in which it is written?

And yet, I miss starships. Since the cancellation of Stargate: Universe in 2011, there haven't been any on television, and I feel like I see fewer and fewer of them in SF short stories and novels. The end of the space shuttle programme, for all its failings, seems strongly symbolic of our turning away from space. I suspect many would argue that this is right and proper -- the starship is an artefact of old-fashioned SF, no longer plausible, and no longer worthy of our imagination.

But, honestly, I don't think I'm ready to let starships go.

So this is how I came to Jonathan Strahan's Edge of Infinity, an anthology of solar system SF. Strahan's introduction to Edge of Infinity is not dated, and so I can't tell if it was written prior to Kincaid's article (Edge of Infinity was released in late November 2012). Nevertheless, Strahan appears to reference the discussion when he talks about SF turning away from the romance of interstellar travel, in favour of a more practical, Earth-bound future.

I read Strahan's introduction as a reaction against the idea that SF has given up on the future. Okay, sure, the stars are beyond our reach. But perhaps the solar system isn't, and that's where an anthology like Edge of Infinity comes in. It's about "stories set firmly in an industrialised, colonised Solar System" -- unashamedly science fictional, rejecting a purely Earth-bound future, but striving to be thoroughly plausible (although by no means predictive).

In a sense, Edge of Infinity does exactly what it says on the tin. It is filled with believable, solar system-based futures. Many of the stories are blue-collar, focussed on engineering rather than cutting-edge science. That can make them feel somewhat old-fashioned, like updated versions of science fiction classics. Very few of the stories seem digital -- perhaps only three of the thirteen ("Swift as a Dream and Fleeting as a Sigh" by John Barnes, "Bricks, Sticks, Straw" by Gwyneth Jones, "Tyche and the Ants" by Hannu Rajaniemi).

As I was reading, though, I couldn't shake the sense that the stories were largely undermining the optimistic, forward-looking premise that Strahan laid out in his introduction. They were doing this, I felt, from two different directions. I'm going to call them the 'it's too hard' school, and the 'dream bigger' school.

The poster-child for 'it's too hard' must surely be "The Road to NPS" by Sandra McDonald and Stephen D. Covey. In it, a Samoan wage-slave undertakes a dangerous drive across Europa, in the desperate hope that he can raise enough cash to buy out his contract and return to his wife on Earth. It's not the only such story, though: Kristine Kathryn Rusch's grimly comic "Safety Tests" is all about how tremendously dangerous flying a spaceship is, and An Owomoyela's "Water Rights" makes the point that exporting water into space only exacerbates already challenging water scarcity issues.

On the other hand, Hannu Rajaniemi's "Tyche and the Ants" seems to be a metaphor for resisting a mundane future, and striving for something larger and less practical than the other stories in Edge of Infinity. Gwyneth Jones' "Bricks, Sticks, Straw" -- a real standout -- seems to exemplify this conflict in the anthology. It concerns software avatars, trapped in the outer solar system when their probe is damaged by a solar flare. They fight to re-establish contact with Earth, with all the tenacity one would expect of optimistic SF. And yet the story ends with the melancholy sense that ordinary, Earth-bound human concerns will ultimately trump adventure.

That isn't to suggest that there are no stories that enthusiastically embrace humanity's future in the solar system. The ending to An Owomoyela's aforementioned "Water Rights" manages to be both hopeful and charming.  True to form, Alastair Reynolds' "Vainglory" amply demonstrates that solar system stories can be just as epic as any galaxy-spanning space opera.

But the true heart of the anthology is Paul McAuley's "Macy Minnot's Last Christmas on Dione, Ring Racing, Fiddler's Green, the Potter's Garden". Set in the solar system of his Quiet War series, it is beautiful and human and gentle. It has a sense of comfort and inevitability to it that many of the other stories in the anthology, striving and conflicted, lack.

Taken as a whole, I think Edge of Infinity is a really interesting snapshot of the difficulty science fiction is having in coming to grasp with the future. On the surface, it's all about mankind successfully inhabiting our solar system. But it seems to me that it is also filled with longing for something larger, with fear that it all might be too hard, and with a lack of conviction that we're actually up to the challenge. 

As with all anthologies, the quality of the individual stories varies, but there were a number of standouts -- particularly the Barnes, Jones, Reynolds, and McAuley. Strahan has done a commendable job sequencing the stories, too; I encourage you to read it in the order in which it is presented.

Lots to think about, and yet it doesn't leave me any clearer on how I feel about the current state of the field.

Best books I read in 2011

Right. Time for me to tell you about the best books that I read in 2011. No point mucking around -- let's get to it, hey?

Science Fiction: The Dervish House, by Ian McDonald

This was an insanely difficult choice, and that makes me happy. Both of my honourable mentions would have made worthy picks -- Anathem by Neal Stephenson is the sort of experience that'll stay with me for a long time, and Elizabeth Bear's Jacob's Ladder series (Dust, Chill, and Grail) is some of the best space opera I've ever read.

In the end, though, I'm going with The Dervish House by Ian McDonald (my review here). That's mostly because I think it's more accessible than Anathem. Either you've already read Anathem (or you're planning to), or you'll never consider it; I doubt my recommendation will change that. But I might just be able to convince you to give The Dervish House a look.

Honourable mentions: Anathem by Neal Stephenson, the Jacob's Ladder series by Elizabeth Bear.

Fantasy: Mechanique, by Genevieve Valentine

Calling Mechanique a fantasy novel feels like a gross oversimplification -- it's more like a horror-tinged post-apocalyptic science-fiction-ish fantasy. With a hint of steampunk. Or something. Whatever you want to call it, it's great. 

The Mechanical Circus Tresaulti is a last bit of magic in a world ground down by endless war. But the magic has a sinister edge, and the Circus fights constantly to hold itself together, against the world and against a simmering internal conflict between two of its performers. 

The characters here are rich and complex, but the writing is sparse and sharp-edged. The story is grim, but really compelling. It's Genevieve Valentine's first novel, and I can't really recommend it enough. I'm really hoping it pops up when awards season rolls around in 2012. 

Honourable mentions: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin, Zoo City by Lauren Beukes.

Other Thing: the Eclipse anthologies, edited by Jonathan Strahan

I didn't read enough literary fiction in 2011 to call it out separately, but I did read a bunch of comics and games and short story collections, so I've decided to go with Other Thing as my last category. I want to recommend to you the Eclipse anthologies, edited by Jonathan Strahan -- I read Eclipse One and the better part of Eclipse Three in 2011, and Eclipse Two a few years back.

They are a series of non-themed genre anthologies, and I think they're a really great way to expose yourself to a wide variety of unusual, interesting stuff. I've discovered a number of new favourite authors in the Eclipse anthologies, as well as read some really great stories. The absence of strict genre boundaries is really refreshing -- it makes starting each new story a small adventure. A great way to broaden your reading, I reckon.

Honourable mentions: Ghostopolis, a graphic novel by Doug TenNapel, and Do: Pilgrims of the Flying Temple, a storytelling game by Daniel Solis.

So that's it! Time to think about which books I'm going to nominate for the Hugo Awards in 2012...

Back (and Engineering Infinity)

Alright. I'm in the new city, and I've started the new job. Haven't found a place to live yet, but that'll come. I've had lots of opportunity for reading (and lots of relaxing time away from the computer), so it's time to get back to it.

I'm going to say a few words about Engineering Infinity, the anthology by Jonathan Strahan that I mentioned earlier. I found this one to be a bit patchy. There were some stories in it that I really enjoyed, but just as many that didn't really grab me.
 
It's billed as hard science fiction, but Strahan notes in the introduction that the anthology "moved away from pure hard SF to something a little broader." I actually think this is perhaps its biggest weakness. It isn't laser-focussed, so I couldn't really read it as a bunch of different authors poking around the same ideas. Conversely, it wasn't really broad enough to entertain me with variety. This kind of thing works fine in best-of-the-year collections, where each story is a gem, but I think I prefer more (or less) focus in my general anthologies.

As I say, though, it did have some stories in it that I really enjoyed:

-- "The Invasion of Venus", by Stephen Baxter. What happens when aliens rock up in our solar system, but they're only here to exchange fire with other aliens living on Venus? I think I liked the sheer size of the conflict in this one, coupled with the way it was told from the very personal perspective of two old friends on Earth. Interesting also because I'm not usually a huge fan of Stephen Baxter.

-- "The Server and the Dragon", by Hannu Rajaniemi. A sentient server in a galaxy-wide network drifts lonely and unused around a star on a very wide orbit, until it is one day visited by a (digital) dragon. I'd call this one a hard space opera story, and that's probably why I liked it. I'm a sucker for that sort of thing.

-- "The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees", by John Barnes. A novel take on the panspermia theory. Cool things here were the central idea -- big and dramatic, and a new take on an old bit of SF -- and the partially-explored background of one of the main characters, an android created for the purpose of solar system exploration. I don't think I've read anything else by John Barnes, so I'll have to see what I can find.

Honorable mentions go to Kristine Kathryn Rusch's "Watching the Music Dance" (a nice bit of anthropological SF), Peter Watts' "Malak" (perhaps the most typical hard SF story of the bunch), and both Karl Schroeder's "Laika's Ghost" and Charles Stross' "Bit Rot" (for the sheer gonzo joy of them).

A bit of variety?

I'm still pondering what it is that I enjoy so much about anthologies edited by Jonathan Strahan, and a thought occurs. Virtually all of the ones I have read contained science fiction and fantasy stories. So perhaps the thing I like best is a bit of genre variety?

This makes Engineering Infinity an even more interesting prospect, since I'm pretty sure it's a pure hard SF anthology.

An ode to Jonathan Strahan

It was Alastair Reynolds and Revelation Space that got me back to seriously reading science fiction. I picked that book up as a present for my mother, who had been complaining to me that she hadn't read any good SF in a long time. Once she'd read -- and enjoyed -- it, I gave it a crack myself, and got hooked. I then tackled all of Reynolds' back catalogue, but after that I stalled. I didn't know anyone who read (modern) SF, and I wasn't sure how to find out what was good. 

I hit on the idea of buying some short story anthologies as a way to sample a bunch of authors quickly. One of the first ones I grabbed was The New Space Opera, edited by -- you guessed it -- Jonathan Strahan (and Gardner Dozois). I loved it. Which was a pretty big deal for me; I'd managed to convince myself somewhere along the line that I didn't particularly like short fiction. Boy was I wrong.

Long story short (heh!), I started hunting out other anthologies edited by Strahan. Through these I discovered many of authors that I'd now rank amongst my favourites: Karl Schroeder, Ted Chiang, Jay Lake, Peter Watts, Sean Williams, and probably more besides. I have consistently enjoyed the anthologies that Strahan edits, and I await the next one eagerly.

Of course, I don't only read anthologies edited by Strahan, but I have found that my tastes seem to align most closely with his -- his are the anthologies I enjoy most consistently. He had help, from Gardner Dozois in particular, but I think Strahan deserves most of the credit for getting me interested in reading (and, by extension, writing) short SF.

The question I now realise I have no answer to is this: what is it about Strahan's particular choices that I so enjoy? "What do you look for in a story" is probably a pretty tricky question for him to answer, but perhaps I'll get a chance to ask him one day anyway? In the meantime, I've got a shiny new copy of his Engineering Infinity to read, and I'm going to see if reading it with that question in mind brings me any enlightenment.

While I do it, I'm also going to dream about one day having a story in something he has edited. Because that would be ace.

Things I like #3: writing for the sheer joy of it.

I just got through reading a short story called "Zeppelin City", by Michael Swanwick and Eileen Gunn*, and it was very timely. I've been thinking about the purpose of genre fiction recently, worrying over questions of worth (if you can't write a worthy story, should you write one at all? What about a clever story?). "Zeppelin City" crossed my path at exactly the right moment because it didn't fret itself over any of that. It was just plain good fun.

It felt to me like the authors were having a grand time writing it. It was full of things that are cliched enough to be dangerous (brains in jars! Rhetoric-spouting revolutionaries! Daring girl pilots and grubby-but-cute engineers!), but written with such affection that you had to forgive them. Or perhaps congratulate them. Because brains in jars are cool, right?

I feel like I don't read this sort of story very often. Probably because it is a tricky thing to pull off successfully. I remember feeling the same way after "The Hero", by Karl Schroeder, and it was enough to send me chasing off after some of his books. I seem to recall it happening during parts of Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series, too. The sense that the author wrote something because they thought it was cool, and that I was having fun reading it for exactly the same reason.

So there you go, another thing I like: writing for the sheer joy of it.

* "Zeppelin City" was originally published on tor.com, where you can still read it. I read it in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Four, edited by Jonathan Strahan.