"David G. Hartwell - Year's Best SF1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hartwell David G)

The Day the Aliens Came
Joan Slonczewski
Microbe
Gene Wolfe
The Ziggurat
About the Editor
Books Edited by David G. Hartwell
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher


Introduction

SCIENCE FICTION IS
ALIVE AND WELL
This is the first volume of an annual year's best science fiction anthology, to be published each spring in a
widely available mass market edition. In each volume the best science fiction of that year will be
represented. Not fantasy. Not science fantasy. Science fiction: This anthology will contain only stories
that a chronic reader would recognize as SF.
For decades, until recently, there was usually one or more good year's best anthologies available in
paperback in the SF field. The last ones vanished with the deaths of distinguished editors Terry Carr and
Donald A. Wollheim. There has been a notable gap. This book fills that need.
Furthermore, the existence of more than one year's best anthology in the SF genre has been good for
the field. Volumes which differ in taste or in aesthetic criteria clarify and encourage knowledgeable
discourse in the field and about the field. Therefore this book announces itself in opposition to the other
extant anthologies.
Here is the problem. Other books have so blurred the boundaries between science fiction and
everything else that it is possible for an observer to conclude that SF is dead or dying out. This book
declares that science fiction is still alive; is fertile and varied in its excellences. Most important, SF has a
separate and distinct identity within fairly clear boundaries exemplified by the contents of this book.
In the magazine stories and original anthologies this past year there was a fair amount of clunky
hardish SF and a bunch of stuff, sometimes quite talented, that was published as SF, but was only by
courtesy and by association SF. Not, in fact, an unusual year in these regards.
What was unusual was that it was a strong year for science fiction and in particular SF of novella
length. By my casual count there were fifteen or twenty novellas from Analog, Asimov's, Omni Online,
and the original anthologies Far Futures and New Legends, that could justifiably have been included in a
year's best volume alone. Every once in a while the SF field has a “novella renaissance.” 1995 was one
of those years and it looks likely to spill over into 1996. Guess what? You have fallen behind in your
reading if you haven't been reading the novellas. I may be off base but I suspect that there were more
first-rate SF novellas than first-rate SF novels published in 1995.
Overall, the best speculative fiction of all descriptions was published in Interzone, which deservedly
won the Hugo award this year. But all the magazines had high spots and high standards. It was not a year
to skip, for instance, Tomorrow or Science Fiction Age.
Sadly, it was not a notable year for original anthologies (two extraordinary exceptions are mentioned
above, to which Full Spectrum 5 is the third). The general thinking was that the original anthologies
made the magazines look good. Book publishers are at fault for letting so much unedited stuff get through
under usually dazzling covers. How fortunate we are to have the magazines and the magazine editors:
Budrys and Dozois, Schmidt, Rusch, Pringle, Cholfin, Datlow, Edelman, Killheffer and the rest. We had