The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Ellen Datlow

The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Sixteen Original Works by Speculative Fiction’s Finest Voices indeed contains some fine stories by some of the finest voices in speculative fiction. Before discussing the content, however, allow me to air a concern about the title, which in no way reflects upon my opinion of the tales themselves.

In her short but telling introduction, editor Ellen Datlow describes the contents of the anthology as “fantasy, science fiction, a touch of horror—and even a possibly unclassifiable or two.” If the latter two classifications account for, say, four stories, then a quarter of the anthology is not really science fiction or fantasy (though there may be examples of genre cross-pollination, like dark fantasy). How is all this taxonomy relevant? In my opinion, in order for readers to have a good sense of what they might encounter inside the pages of an anthology, it’s a good idea to be as clear as possible with the title. The “Science Fiction and Fantasy” compound label has been used often and is currently aired yearly in Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year anthologies. Using a similar title may invite comparison between these two very different tomes, and readers of one may not be entirely satisfied with the other. The key difference lies in this anthology’s subtitle: “Sixteen Original Works by Speculative Fiction’s Finest Voices.” After pondering the tone, theme, and style of the sixteen stories, I’d like to make the well-intentioned claim that it is really the Del Rey Book of Speculative Fiction.

In ”The Elephant Ironclads,” Jason Stoddard creates an alternate American Indian civilization in which the armored elephants of the title are the stuff of the mythical past. It is up to two boys, Wallace and Niyol, to discover exactly how much is legend and how much is true about the Ironclads after becoming entangled in visiting scientist’s and mafioso’s appraisal of the environs for uranium deposits. Stoddard focuses a lot of his well-crafted tale on the inherent conflict and ambivalence in competing with other nations while attempting to be faithful to one’s own cultural heritage and values. The alternate Navajo society of Diné eloquently allows him to raise these questions in not overly familiar ways, and the characters, particularly Wallace, are captivating. An excellent kickoff to the anthology.

There may be a speculative core to Lucy Sussex’s “Ardent Clouds,” but if so, it lies deep within the strata of the story, submerged in a caldera of fascinating detail, vivid characters, and an intriguing contemporary setting. Bet is a volcanologist, aka powdermonkey, whose endless fascination for geological eruptions leads her to develop a mostly remote working relationship with Spider, or Herr Professor Dr. Sigurrson. Spider is a theorist with an uncanny ability to predict when an eruption will occur, making it possible for Bet to always arrive at the wrong place at the right time, so to speak. Sussex creates a small tour de force in this world of volcanology and effectively builds tension that can only be released through the explosive finale, providing a satisfying resolution on the plot-level which leads to deep, emotional sediments.

In the introduction to Christopher Rowe’s “Gather,” Datlow explains that the author has written “a series of stories that portray a very weird, reconfigured Kentucky,” and that the tale at hand belongs to this group. This is helpful, but even with this explanatory point of departure, I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Gather has thirty-four coins and he spends them on “forty candles, forty pounds of sugar, and forty minute’s worth of a storyteller’s time.” After several incidents, he is guided by Miss Charlie to engage in unusual scientific experimentation which may or may not uncover evidence of God’s existence. The religious questions are posed in a way best described as unique. Rowe often uses italics to emphasize words in sentences, and though in some cases the implications seemed straightforward, in others they escaped me entirely. “Gather” contains interesting elements, but despite re-reading it, they never came together to form a coherent whole for me. I hope other readers will have more positive experiences with this one.

If Elizabeth Bear doesn’t quite deliver a knockout performance in “Sonny Liston Takes the Fall,” she certainly goes strong for several bouts and still comes out as reigning champ, achieving said victory with finesse and poignancy. In real life, Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay fought twice, in 1964 and 1965. Clay won the first by technical knockout, and in the second, Sonny Liston fell to the canvas and stayed there for more than the requisite ten seconds, again ceding victory to Ali. This historical backdrop, in particular the second match and its infamous “phantom punch,” are the grist for Bear’s mill. In her version of events, things may happen a little differently, but the underlying psychological reality is all the more acute for it. In fifteen short scenes, Bear delivers strong combinations of motivation, historical and social commentary, and metaphorical evaluation. She manages to connect almost all of her punches, but the slightly repetitive nature of certain observations and stylistic textures is perhaps not enough to unify the passage of years and the study in suffering at the heart of the fight. Kudos to Bear for providing here something far different from what we might expect and demonstrating such versatility. She makes us care about everyone who ever took a fall.

As Nathan Ballingrud convincingly shows us, “North American Lake Monsters” come in many varieties. The introductory quote by G. K. Chesterton alerts us to seek out that which amazes in “normal man.” We quickly find it in recently released convict Grady, who gets to spend a less-than-idyllic two weeks with his adolescent daughter, Sarah, and alcoholic wife, Tina, at a lakeside cabin, where a strange creature has washed ashore. Grady is a viciously cruel, sadistic, psychologically perturbed sociopath, and though Ballingrud portrays his quicksilver, amoral temper and his predisposition towards suffering and violence with insights that must be right on the money, choosing him as the protagonist makes for some uneasy reading. The decomposition of the rotting, unnameable creature is paralleled by the disintegration of Grady’s millimeter-deep relationships with his daughter and wife. All of this fermenting, escalating putrefaction leads to a finale of sorts, and while I was happy that Ballingrud sidestepped the obvious gory ending, I was slightly confused by his chosen route. Despite some astute character portrayals and rich descriptive writing, I’m not sure I felt fulfilled by this tale.

Carol Emshwiller’s “All Washed Up While Looking for a Better World” presents us with a protagonist who has wished herself onto the shores of a remote island in search of something different from her quotidian reality. She certainly finds it, starting with the apparent transformation of her own body into a pet, to the delight of the island’s natives. The arrival of a “male” complicates things, in part because it’s clearly not the male she had envisioned. While the exchanges between the central character and the male were interesting, I found much of this story dramatically flat. The prose is finely crafted, and Emshwiller’s skill with dialogue and swift action are apparent, but I didn’t feel like she put them to best use here. Her technique seems to consist, in part, of withholding too much information from the reader. By the time I reached the end, I felt like I was still learning something new but didn’t particularly care what it was.

Maureen F. McHugh devises a system of “Special Economics” in her elegant story about the teenager Jieling and her experiences with forced labor under the guise of capitalism in the Chinese city of Shenzhen. This entry is one of the most easily classifiable as science fiction, and it delivers on multiple levels. The economics of New Life, the biotech corporation that hires Jieling, consists of providing all of its workers’ meals and accommodations; however, since the costs of these services exceed their paid wages, workers start out with a negative balance, receiving checks which state how much they owe rather than how much they’ve made. The crushing debt thus turns the contractual indenture into slavery, and most workers are unable to escape this trap. Not so for the resourceful, spunky Jieling, who convinces one of her friends to dance hip-hop in the market with her, using this independently generated income to pay off their job-incurred debt. McHugh’s bio-tech setting is clever, and the devices which extract energy from bacteria double as a plot driver and metaphor for an oppressive society that seeks only to extract. The ending is eloquent and ironic, bringing the relativism of capitalist ethics to the forefront while never losing touch with the protagonist’s journey. One of my favorites.

Richard Bowes takes us, on the surface of it, to a place that exists on Eighth Street, between Third Avenue and Tompkins Square City, “Aka Saint Marks Place,” and starts in 1965. This setting of downtown Greenwich Village and the East Village is central to the story because of its evocative and historically rich significance, but much of the three sections seem to inhabit another plane altogether. A character initially referred to simply as BD works for an organization that helps find and “kidnap” youngsters who’ve escaped from home, delivering them back to their native habitats. Such is the case with Ray Light from Cincinnati, and as a result, his romantic relationship with one Judy Finch is abruptly severed. Bowes follows the paths of the various characters as they transmute not only their names and aesthetics, but their very personalities, and the cultural backdrop, thriving with references, is so vividly depicted it almost becomes a character of its own. The tragic aftermath of BD’s decision and the fates of Judy and Ray are examined unsentimentally through transparent, almost journalistic prose. This heightens the sense of historical truth and keeps us enmeshed in the happenings. Readers of speculative fiction may wonder where the speculative premise lies; surely it can be found somewhere in the shifting reality of Saint Marks Place.

Margo Lanagan revisits the Bavarian forests of the “Hänsel und Gretel” fairy tale in “The Goosle.” Lanagan takes an already dark story and elevates the darkness tenfold. Let’s just say that the title is not as innocent as it may appear. While in the original, Hänsel held out a bone from the cage in which he was trapped when the witch asked him to hold out his finger, the request and the response in this version are of a more adult nature. Not only do we have murder and attempted cannibalism, but also sexual slavery and bubonic plague to go along with it. Datlow uses the word “vicious” in reference to this story in the introduction; I couldn’t agree more. How deep into depravity the rabbit hole goes I’ll leave the reader to find out. Though I appreciated the creativity and inventiveness on display, I’m not sure the viciousness created a disturbing experience rather than an off-putting one.

Lavie Tidhar brings us a story wrapped up in an alternate history in “Shira,” the title of the capsule narration. Protagonist Nur is researching the writings of poet Lior Tirosh, who in this parallax evolution of Middle Eastern events predicted the nuclear cataclysm that eventually allowed Jerusalem to discover a peace of sorts, the euphemistic Small Holocaust. Nur’s search for more of Tirosh’s writings leads her to a discovery of an unknown facet of the poet’s career, one that will intersect singularly with her own path and set her on a new one. Tidhar provides fascinating glimpses of life after the Small Holocaust, starting with Nur’s arrival at Damascus station by train, and sprinkles the text with numerous quotes of Tirosh’s fictional poems, as well as more familiar references. These not only add realism but set the stage for the recursive nature of the tale, which can at once describe the writings and interact with them through Nur. The story’s revelation is handled adroitly, and the Hebrew and other cultural allusions make it an unusually fresh, non Western-centric story, on a par, for example, with Ian McDonald’s future India and Brazil works.

Barry N. Malzberg is in top form in “The Passion of Azazel.” Much of Malzberg’s short fiction over the decades has provided penetrating insight into states of psychological dysfunction and has delved into the psyches of obsessive personalities. Here the sense of inner claustrophobia is somewhat lifted and replaced by more explicitly mordant and satirical humor. Is the humor intrinsically brought about by the subject matter, Judaic religion, or is it Malzberg’s take on something very serious? In either case, it works. Schmuel’s “hypnotherapist” believes he occupied a previous life as a scapegoat, and using Kabbalistic principles of construction, he is subsequently able to assemble a golem in the shape of a live, talking goat, the titular Azazel. The trip to the rabbinical school and everything else that ensues is described by means of skeptical juxtapositions and an emphasis on the absurd, to great effect. Malzberg’s writing is typically dense and breathless, but his natural sense of pacing and well-timed shifts in perspective serve to illuminate the characters and thematic concerns, and entertain us through their sincere foibles. This may not be everyone’s cup of Kabbalistic tea, but it’s one of the anthology’s highlights.

Laird Barron creates a horrific tragedy by the third paragraph of the nebulous, morose, but ultimately rewarding “The Lagerstätte.” The tragedy is the death of entomologist Danni’s husband and son in a plane crash, and the remainder of the work explores her attempts to cope with this loss and how its apparently insurmountable nature forces her brain into more extreme realms. Choosing a narrative structure based on a character’s failing attempts to adapt to loss is a risky move; it could have come across as meandering, indulgent, melodramatic, or simply self-serving. Barron has the required technique to make it work. Part of the trick is in making Danni’s inner life and her experiences beyond the realm of everyday events just as exciting and suspenseful as anything that could happen to her in the outside world. She and her friend, Merrill, undergo an odyssey into the Lagerstätte, or “resting places,” that avoids cop-out endings like multiple personality disorder or the revelation of purgatory. Barron consistently uses details to build dread; the violence that occurs is emotionally significant, the nightmarish visions appropriate. He also generates momentum by alternating timeframes from present to past and interspersing events in Danni’s life with sessions between her and her therapist, Dr. Green. Despite all of this fine control, the story at times verges on the opaque, and some readers’ patience might be tried as they attempt to decipher what it all means. There may not be one unique moment of resounding epiphany, but there are more than enough partial ones to make it worthwhile.

In the quirky and slightly macabre “Gladiolus Exposed,” Anna Tambour presents the story of a couple who visit Thoreau’s Retreat to get away from it all. While there, the husband/protagonist discovers a gladiolus bone that unearths deeper truths lurking in his marriage to the pregnant Katie. The story proceeds swiftly and delivers a plethora of clever and offbeat observations and situations. But I found it difficult to empathize with the protagonist and therefore witnessed the emotional climax at a remove. Also, I’m not sure there was sufficient causal explanation for the brokenness of the central relationship, though thematically it occupies a pivotal role. A well-written but somewhat affectless exploration of alienation and obsession, this gladiolus was never completely exposed for me.

If you ever encounter a bottled city named “Daltharee” created by the mad scientist Mando Paige, you should have no doubt that you’ve entered the zany and endlessly inventive world of Jeffrey Ford. This wonderfully evocative, chilling, hilarious story explores the origins of Daltharee and its future. One of the story’s many strengths is Ford’s use of the point of view of research scientists investigating the bottled city. By the second page, in droll fashion, we’re explicitly told: “And please, there was no magic involved.” Of course, Ford then proceeds to describe magical things in a nostalgic retro-scientific lingo that evokes the best of the pulps, updated for twenty-first century readers, but doesn’t for a second attempt to persuade us that this is not magical. This technique of negation and wink-anti-negation is perfectly suited to Ford’s dream-logic (in this story, two fundamental breakthroughs are literally gleaned from dreams). Ford excels at upping the speculative stakes. In addition, his characterization of Mando Paige is unforgettable. I can’t praise this one enough. If, as Jorge Luis Borges wrote, “Writing is nothing more than a guided dream,” then Ford is one of our best guided dreamers.

“Jimmy” Streubal is an eleven-year-old boy no-one seems to care for in Pat Cadigan’s delightful, affecting story of youth and strange happenings. Set in 1960s suburbia, the story is framed by the moment of JFK’s assassination, which is an apt metaphor for the shattering of reality; metaphorically, for most characters, literally for a few. The plainspoken young narrator tells us of her friendship with the misfit Jimmy (which started when he attempted to fill the trash can with water using a paper cup in kindergarten) and what really happened the day he went missing. She and Social Services worker Mrs. Beauvais go looking for Jimmy, and what the narrator discovers is not only unsettling but transformative.

Cadigan does a superb job with characterization (for example, at one point, one youngster says “Jeez,” and Jimmy responds “Uz,” since splitting syllables doesn’t count as swearing between kids) and period details. The conversations, rhythm, and thought processes of the kids are perfectly captured, lending the story verisimilitude on multiple levels. The climax provides the real explanation for why no-one in Jimmy’s long list of relatives is willing to take him in, but it’s the denouement that provides a compelling exploration of what this signifies on an emotional level and how it shaped the narrator’s future.

Paul McAuley and Kim Newman combine their narrative gifts to explore what befalls otherworldly “Prisoners of the Action” after contact with extraterrestrials is made. Consider ET’s being held for interrogation instead of terrorists. Imagine that they have shape-shifting abilities and thus are nearly impossible to contain. Imagine that there is a conspiracy, perhaps a cult, inside the military ranks which govern over the facilities, and add to that a strange psychological epidemic which may or may be related to the aforementioned. These are just some of the elements in this amusing, mostly successful story, as told from the perspective of Colonel Franklin Dice. Conceptually, there are plenty of sfnal ideas; on the plot level, there is much action, and some nice twists; and all of this is motivated by character struggle. And yet at times I felt like this novelette could have benefited from some trimming. McAuley and Newman seem to delight so much in the world and Great James Island setting they’ve created that the narrative goes off course with too many info-dumps. Whilst some are quite imaginative and entertaining, others lack sophistication. Too many references to popular culture can be distracting. And I need to vent about the character of Dr. Susal. I’m not sure if he was intended as purely comic relief, but if so, for me the misfire is almost as grave as that of the universally reviled Jar Jar Binks. Actively rooting for the death of Dr. Susal is one way to keep engaged but probably not that which the authors envisioned! On the whole, this novelette is strong, and I imagine in terms of popular entertainment it will be quite successful. It contains some priceless moments of humor and deft plotting. It seemed overlong to me, though, and the writing didn’t sparkle with the same freshness as some of this speculative tiara’s other pearls.

This anthology should appeal to all readers of the fantastic; readers who enjoy the thrills and challenges of speculative fiction that is not comfortably confined by a classicist’s approach to genre; and readers who look forward to being pulled in strange directions and being shown the absurd, horrific, sublime, and other in equal measure. There are at least half a dozen fine voices in speculative fiction not included here, but in the case of this reader, it was a pleasure to get to know newer writers and spend some time with others whose work has rightly already endured the test of time.

Publisher: Del Rey
Price: $10.88
Trade Paperback: 416 pages
ISBN: 0345496329