2005 Science Fiction Magazines in Review

One of the things I did in 2005 was to subscribe to all of the "big three" science fiction magazines. I did this partly to support the magazines, whose readership has been declining for decades as the novel market has supplanted the short fiction market. But I also wanted to read more short fiction and discover some new authors.

As I often note (and you're probably sick of hearing about it), I'm a slow reader. So I made a deal with myself: I don't try to read every story of every issue of each magazine. Instead I read stories that look interesting, and which are by authors I'm already interested in. So, for instance, I tend to skip most pure fantasy stories, since I'm not much of a fan of fantasy; I prefer hard science fiction. By the same token, contemporary-set or near-future SF also doesn't interest me. These aren't hard-and-fast rules, but they're general guidelines. Usually I will give a story 2-to-4 pages to give me something to make me want to read it. Stories that don't really go anywhere in that time, or clearly shape up to be one that's not my cup of tea, I stop there and move on to the next story.

Probably I miss a few good stories, and certainly I read some that aren't really worth it. But even taking this approach takes a bunch of time, which is why my reading of novels fell dramatically in 2005. (The other reason is that I had a vast quantity of comic-book-related material to read last year.) So far, it's working for me.

Back in 2001 I read every story of every issue of Analog published that year, and then wrote a summary of what I thought the best story in each issue was. I'm going to take a different tack this time around, and mention the stories that stand out in my mind now, as I thumb through the issues from the past year. These aren't reviews as such, just some mentions, synopses, and the occasional opinion. But overall these are stories I enjoyed in the magazines this past year.

Caveat: I started this project early in 2005, so I missed a few issues early in the year.

Analog:

"Letters of Transit" by Brian Plante (April) uses the old "letters between separated lovers" schtick, but involves relativity, time paradoxes, and foiling those pesky government censors.

"The Inn at Mount Either" by James Van Pelt (May) is one of those stories involving very subtle shifts between parallel realities. It's creepy. It felt like it could have been more visceral and concrete than it was, but it was still a good read.

Wil McCarthy always writes clear, solid prose. His subject matter doesn't always thrill me, however. But "The Policeman's Daughter" (June) is a pretty cool story about a society in which people can create copies of themselves, as they were at any past point in their lives, and the legal and interpersonal ramifications of such a world.

John G. Hemry's "Working on Borrowed Time" (June) is one of those changing-the-past stories in which our heroes have to fix an error in the timeline which ends up creating the world we actually live in today. Not a new idea, but Hemry's story was engaging and exciting enough that it remained memorable despite this. Well, that and I'm a sucker for time travel/changing history stories.

Joe Schembrie's "The Keeper's Riddle" (July/August) is a good old-fashioned word puzzle story. But I do enjoy those.

Stephen Baxter has been writing a series of short stories called "Tales of Old Earth", where in the far future Earth (or something like it) has the characteristic that the higher altitude you reach, the slower time moves. This has some interesting ramifications. I've clearly come in in the middle. But "Climbing the Blue" (July/August) and "The Time Pit" (October) are both engaging yarns, and I look forward to more (and to a collection, if ever there is one).

Editor Stanley Schmidt and I have somewhat divergent tastes, I think. For instance, he loved Robert J. Sawyer's novel Hominids, which Analog serialized a few years back, whereas I found it to be rather old hat, feeling it was almost a page out of 1950s SF. This year's serial, though, is quite good: Vernor Vinge mentioned at the 2002 Worldcon that he'd enjoyed Karl Schroeder's novel Permanence, which made Schroeder an author for me to watch. So here we have his novel Sun of Suns (November-to-March). It takes place inside what seems to be a small Dyson sphere, but rather than planets the sphere contains a myriad of colonies on rotating cylinders, slowly drifting throughout the sphere. Larger colonies build their own suns - sources of light and heat - but the central star, Candesce, is something of a mystery. Our hero, Hayden Griffin, was a boy when his home community of Aerie attempted to build its own sun. The nearby world of Slipstream came in and destroyed the sun, killing Hayden's mother along the way. Hayden grows up to become a guard in the Slipstream army, bent on revenge against Chaison Fanning, who led the attack. But that's just how we get into the story: The four-parter (which I've finished) is a lively adventure, part tour of the Candesce system, and part suspense story. I found the denouement to be a little disappointing ("And then what happens?"), but overall it was quite good.

Another sequence of linked stories in Analog is by John Barnes. "The Diversification of Its Fancy" (November) may be the first installment - I'm not sure; there are two more installments so far in the 2006 issues, though. It focuses on Giraut Leones, a composer and government agent at some point far in the future when humans can be reborn, are served by "aintellects" (what a great name!), and which has spread and created a loose-knit collection of cultures in the stars. I'm of two minds about the series: The characters are likeable and there's a lot of good science-fictional material here (Giraut is the subject of ongoing assassination attempts, for example), but I have yet to be fully sucked in. I think I find the stories a little too long and wordy, not quite lively enough. I start reading them and find myself skipping ahead to find "the good stuff". Your mileage may vary, however.

Asimov's Science Fiction:

"City of Reason" by Matthew Jarpe (January) is an entertaining high-tech suspense yarn involving small colonies dotting the solar system in the medium-term future. Our hero is a sort of ad-hoc policeman on what amounts to the frontier, and gets involved in a spat between two such communities when he boards a ship whose two young crewmembers are heading out to destroy the colony they're at war with. Except of course it's all more complicated than that. I found the narrative to be a little muddled, but overall an enjoyable story.

"Angel Kills" by William Sanders (February) is a freaky story about a cadre of airmen who guard commercial airliners against the other-dimensional creatures who appear out of nowhere trying to eat them.

"Shadow Twin" by Gardner Dozois, George R. R. Martin and Daniel Abraham (April/May) is already out as a standalone book. It's a pretty good read about a man who has an unfortunate encounter with aliens and ends up with more of himself than he expected. It hearkens back to Martin's 1970s science fiction, of which I'm a big fan.

I'm not usually a fan of loosly-plotted stories which take place in a dreamlike backdrop, but James Patrick Kelly's "The Edge of Nowhere" (June) worked for me. I guess it's open to interpretation, but I see it as a light-yet-melancholy take on posthumans living in a virtualized world at some point in the future.

Stephen Baxter's "The Children of Time" (July) has a generational story structure, which always sucks me in. It's a just-at-the-edge-of-the-end-of-the-world story, in the sense that the climate has changed to the point that things are just about over for humanity. One imagines that the tail end of H. Beam Piper's First Cycle went something like this, had it been stretched out further.

Robert Reed's "Finished" (September) explores an interesting take on achieving immortality, and what you give up to get it.

"Back to Moab" by Philip C. Jennings (October/November) is a pretty cool "exploring a parallel universe" story: Taking on an assignment to do something incredibly dangerous, seeing just how dangerous is really is, but also getting hooked on the excitement of being part of it. Charles Stross' The Atrocity Archives has some of this feeling as well.

Damian Kilby's "Earthtime" (December) fills in that gap I'm sure we've all wondered about: When you're a normal human who's been elevated to become a galactic savior, what do you do between missions? I mean, Green Lantern's social life always seemed like something of a disaster, didn't it? When your usual line of work involves Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, maybe it's better if on your off days you actually don't know.

Fantasy & Science Fiction:

As you might imagine, I haven't been as aggressive about reading everything in F&SF, since I'm not a big fan of fantasy. There's still some good stuff in here, though.

For instance, Laird Barron's "The Imago Sequence" (May), a creepy Lovecraftian story about the hunt for a set of spooky paintings, and the bad things that have happened to previous owners.

Richard Mueller's "Age of Miracles" (September) is a neat little what-if story where computers are developed at the height of the power of the Roman Catholic Church. Trying to navigate the labyrinth of dogma when you're an engineer was even harder then than it is now.

Then there's David Gerrold's "A Quantum Bit Exists In Two States Simultaneously: On" and "A Quantum Bit Exists In Two States Simultaneously: Off" (the bookend stories for September). I didn't really get this one. The best I can figure is that the first one is about how you can give a little of yourself and get something in return because of it, and the second one is about having to sacrifice something for the good of everyone. But they both take meandering, pseudo-autobiographical routes to get there. Maybe the point was just too subtle for me.

Joe Haldeman's "Foreclosure" (October/November) is a witty little story about property rights. I was amused.

Jeffrey Ford's "Boatman's Holiday" combines classic mythology with modern sensibilities (or at least a modern work ethic) and is an amusing yarn as well.

Geoff Ryman's "The Last Ten Years in the Life of Hero Kai" (December) is my pick for best story in F&SF of 2005. It's a fantasy, but with just a touch of science fiction. It's both a "how the days of the ancients passed into history and our modern world came to be" story, and an exploration of heroism. Fans of Barry Hughart's stories of a mythical China might also enjoy this one: It's got a similar narrative style which combines deep understanding with a sometimes-didactic but sometimes-winsome tone. Fun stuff.

Wow, quite a few good stories. And a lot of reading along the way. Let's see if I can do it again in 2006!