The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection (9 page)

The 2008 Bram Stoker Awards, presented by the Horror Writers of America during a banquet at the Burbank Marriott Hotel near Los Angeles, California on 13 June 2009, were: Best Novel,
Duma Key
, by Stephen King; Best First Novel,
The Gentling Box
, by Lisa Mannetti; Best Long Fiction,
Miranda
, by John R. Little; Best Short Fiction, “The Lost,” by Sarah Langan; Best Fiction Collection,
Just After Sunset
, by Stephen King; Best Anthology,
Unspeakable Horror
, edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Chad Helder; Best Nonfiction,
A Hallowe’en Anthology
, by Lisa Morton; Best Poetry Collection,
The Nightmare Collection
, by Bruce Boston; plus Lifetime Achievement Awards to F. Paul Wilson and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.

The 2009 John W. Campbell Memorial Award was awarded to
Little Brother
, by Cory Doctorow, and
Songs of Time
, by Ian R. MacLeod (tie).

The 2009 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for Best Short Story was won by “The Ray-Gun: A Love Story,” by James Alan Gardner.

The 2009 Philip K. Dick Award went to
Emissaries from the Dead
, by Adam-Troy Castro, and
Terminal Mind
, by David Walton (tie).

The 2009 Arthur C. Clarke award was won by
Song of Time
, by Ian R. Mac Leod.

The 2009 James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award was won by
The Knife of Never Letting Go
, by Patrick Ness, and
Filter House
, by Nisi Shawl (tie).

The 2009 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award went to A. Merritt.

Dead in 2009 or early 2010 were:

PHILIP JOSÉ FARMER
, 91, multiple Hugo winner, a SFWA Grand Master, and a winner of the World Fantasy Award: Life Achievement, the author of a huge number of books, including the
Riverworld, World of Tiers
, and
Dayworld
series, and many others, whose best-known book was probably the Hugo-winning
To Your Scattered Bodies Go;
J.G. BALLARD
, 78, widely acclaimed outside the genre for his autobiographical World War II novel,
Empire of the Sun
, which was filmed by Stephen Spielberg, best known inside the genre as one of the ancestral figures in the British New Wave of the sixties, author of many groundbreaking short stories, some of the best of which were collected in
Vermilion Sands
and
The Voices of Time
, as well as novels such as
The Drowned World, The Crystal World, Concrete Island
, and many others;
CHARLES N. BROWN
, 72, a longtime fan and one-time nuclear engineer who was one of the co-founders of
Locus
, which under his multi-decade direction as editor and publisher became the most important and prominent news magazine in the history of SF, and earned the magazine twenty-nine Hugo Awards, also a tireless promoter of SF from thousands of convention panels, and a personal friend;
DAVID EDDINGS
, 77, prominent fantasy author best known for the novels of the
Belgariad
series, as well as for books in the
Malloreon
series, the
Dreamers
series, and others;
ROBERT HOLDSTOCK
, 61, acclaimed British fantasy writer, author of
Mythago Wood
, thought to be one of the classic post-Tolkein fantasy novels by many critics, as well as six sequels and a number of stand-alone novels;
PHILIP KLASS
, 89, who wrote SF as
WILLIAM TENN
, and whose classic stories, most published in the fifties, included “Bernie the Faust,” “Venus and the Seven Sexes,” “The Liberation of Earth,” and many others, as well as the novel
Of Men and Monsters;
KAGE BAKER
, 57, prolific author of the extensive linked series of novels and stories about the time-travelling agents of the Company, one of the most popular series in recent SF, just as Baker may have been one of the most significant talents to enter the field during the last ten years, a friend;
PHYLLIS GOTLIEB
, 83, pioneering Canadian SF author, sometimes known as “the mother of Canadian science fiction,” Aurora Award-winning author of many stories collected in
Son of the Morning and Other Stories
and
Blue Apes
as well as novels such as
Sunburst;
HARRY C. CROSBY, Jr.
, 84, who wrote more than a hundred SF stories, mostly for
Astounding/Analog
, and several novels, under the name
CHRISTOPHER ANVIL
;
LOUISE COOPER
, 57, SF/fantasy writer, author of the
Time Master
trilogy,
The Shadow Star
trilogy,
The King’s Demon
, and others;
THOMAS DEITZ
, 57, author of sixteen fantasy novels, including
Windmaster’s Bane
and
Bloodwinter;
KEN RAND
, 62, author of
Phoenix, The Golems of Laramie County, A Cold Day in Hell
, and other novels;
RICHARD GORDON
, 62, Scottish author who wrote SF novels as
STUART GORDON
author of books such as
One-Eye, Two-Eyes, Three-Eyes
, and
Time Story;
JOHN KENNEDY
, 63, SF writer, ex-husband of SF writer Leigh Kennedy;
JENNIFER SWIFT
, 54, SF writer whose work appeared in
Asimov’s, Amazing, F&SF, Interzone
, and elsewhere;
JANET FOX
, 68, writer and editor, who also edited the monthly market report,
Scavenger’s Newsletter;
TAKUMI SHIBANO
, 83, translator and novelist, longtime Japanese fan, sometimes spoken of as “the father of Japanese fandom”;
KAORU KURIMOTO
, 56, Japanese fantasy and anime author;
EDWARD UPWARD
, 105, distinguished British author whose works included the fantasy stories collected in
The Mortmere Stories;
JOHN ATKINS
, 92, British author who occasionally wrote fantasy and SF;
JOHN A. KEEL
, 79, paranormal author and UFOologist best known for
The Mothman Prophecies;
MILORAD PAVIC
, 80, Serbian novelist, many of whose novels had surreal fantastic elements;
ED VALIGURSKY
, 82, famous SF cover artist, whose covers graced many of the classics of the field;
DEAN ELLIS
, 89, another famous and pioneering SF cover artist;
DON IVAN PUNCHATZ
, 73, prominent artist and illustrator;
ILENE MEYER
, 69, SF/ fantasy artist who did covers for books by Jack Vance, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, and others;
DAVE SIMONS
, 54, comics artist;
KNOX BURGER
, 87, editor and agent, who published early works by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Ray Bradbury, and John Wyndham as fiction editor of
Collier’s
magazine, edited SF for Dell and Fawcett, and later became a prominent literary agent;
ALFRED A. KNOPF
, 90, publisher and co-founder of Atheneum;
ROBERT A. COLLINS
, 80, scholar, founder of the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, editor of
Fantasy Review
, and co-editor of
Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Review Annual;
MARK OWINGS
, 64, bibliographer and longtime fan, a founder of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, who worked with the late Jack Chalker to produce
The Index to the Science-Fantasy Publishers;
I.F. CLARKE
, 91, British bibliographer and literary scholar, compiler of the classic study of future-war fiction,
Voices Prophesying War;
DONALD M. GRANT
, 82, winner of three World Fantasy Awards, including the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award, founder of Donald M. Grant Publisher, Inc;
BARBARA BOVA
, literary agent, wife of SF writer Ben Bova;
DON CONGDON
, 91, agent and anthologist, longtime agent for writers such as Ray Bradbury and Henry Kuttner;
ROBERT LOUIT
, 64, French SF editor, critic, and translator;
DAVE ARNESON
, 61, co-creator of the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons;
WALTER CRONKITE
, 92, perhaps the best-known television broadcaster and anchor man of the twentieth century, who had no direct genre connection, but was known to every genre fan, if for nothing else, for his coverage of the Moon landing in 1969;
ANDY HALLETT
, 33, actor, best known to genre audiences for his role as the singing green demon Lorne on the television vampire show
Angel;
DAVID CARRADINE
, 72, actor, best known to genre audiences for his role as wandering monk and martial arts expert Cain in the sixties’ TV show,
Kung Fu
, also known for the title role in the
Kill Bill
movies and as the ghoulishly jovial host of
Wild West Tech;
MICHAEL JACKSON
, 50, worldwide celebrity and performer, best known to genre audiences for his role in
The Wiz
, the seventies’ remake of The Wizard of Oz, and for the song “Thriller,” which referenced horror movie clichés and featured a voiceover cameo by Vincent Price;
FARRAH FAWCETT
, 62, actor, best known to genre audience for roles in
Logan’s Run
and
Saturn 3
, and as one of tele vi sion’s original
Charlie’s Angels;
NATASHA RICHARDSON
, 46, actor, best known to genre audiences as the star of the movie version
of The Handmaid’s Tale;
MARY TRAVERS
, 72, member of the famous folk-music trio Peter, Paul, and Mary, whose closest approach to genre was probably their fantasy song about “Puff, the Magic Dragon”;
HENRY GIBSON
, 73, movie and television actor;
PERNELL ROBERTS
, 81, television actor, best known for his roles in
Bonanza
and
Trapper John, M.D.
, but who had genre-related roles in
The Wild Wild West, Night Gallery
, and
The Six Million Dollar Man;
RON SILVER
, 62, actor, best known to genre audiences for his role in
Timecop;
MICKEY CARROLL
, 89, whose role as a Munchkin in the Judy Garland version
of The Wizard of Oz
generated an entire subsequent career for him;
KARL MALDEN
, 97, a film actor for whom it’s hard to think of a really prominent genre connection (although he did do a few low-budget disaster movies like
Beyond the Poseidon Adventure
and
Meteor)
, but whose name and face will be familiar to most readers, and whose most famous movies included
On the Waterfront
and
A Streetcar Named Desire;
GALE STORM
, 87, television actress with even less of a genre connection than Karl Malden, but who will be familiar to those of us old enough to have watched TV in the fifties from shows such as
My Little Margie
and
The Gale Storm Show;
ELEANOR FRAZETTA
, 74, wife of fantasy artist Frank Frazetta;
DAVID GAIMAN
, 75, father of SF writer Neil Gaiman;
MARIAN BAILEY
, 84, mother of SF writer Robin Bailey;
JOHN IAN REYNOLDS
, 66, father of SF writer Alastair Reynolds; and
EMILY KATE BETHKE
, 28, daughter of SF writer Bruce Bethke.

UTRIUSQUE COSMI

Robert Charles Wilson

Robert Charles Wilson made his first sale in 1974, to Analog, but little more was heard from him until the late 1980s, when he began to publish a string of ingenious and well-crafted novels and stories that have since established him among the top ranks of the writers who came to prominence in the last two de cades of the twentieth century. His first novel,
A Hidden Place
, appeared in 1986. He won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for his novel
The Chronoliths
, the Philip K. Dick Award for his novel
Mysterium
, and the Aurora Award for his story “The Perseids.” In 2006, he won the Hugo Award for his acclaimed novel Spin. His other books include the novels
Memory Wire, Gypsies, The Divide, The Harvest, A Bridge of Years, Darwinia, Blind Lake, Bios
, and
Axis
, and a collection of his short work,
The Perseids and Other Stories.
His most recent book is a new novel,
Julian.
He lives in Toronto, Canada.

Here he tells the compelling story of a young woman faced with the most significant choice she will ever make in her life – after which, nothing will ever be the same.

D
IVING BACK INTO
the universe (now that the universe is a finished object, boxed and ribboned from bang to bounce), Carlotta calculates ever-finer loci on the frozen ordinates of spacetime until at last she reaches a trailer park outside the town of Commanche Drop, Arizona. Bodiless, no more than a breath of imprecision in the Feynman geography of certain virtual particles, thus powerless to affect the material world, she passes unimpeded through a sheet-aluminum wall and hovers over a mattress on which a young woman sleeps uneasily.

The young woman is her own ancient self, the primordial Carlotta Boudaine, dewed with sweat in the hot night air, her legs caught up in a spindled cotton sheet. The bedroom’s small window is cranked open, and in the breezeless distance a coyote wails.

Well, look at me, Carlotta marvels: skinny girl in panties and a halter, sixteen years old – no older than a gnat’s breath – taking shallow little sleep-breaths in the moonlit dark. Poor child can’t even see her own ghost. Ah, but she will, Carlotta thinks – she must.

The familiar words echo in her mind as she inspects her dreaming body, buried in its tomb of years, eons, kalpas. When it’s time to leave, leave. Don’t be afraid. Don’t wait. Don’t get caught. Just go. Go fast.

Her ancient beloved poem. Her perennial mantra. The words, in fact, that saved her life.

She needs to share those words with herself, to make the circle complete. Everything she knows about nature of the physical universe suggests that the task is impossible. Maybe so . . . but it won’t be for lack of trying.

Patiently, slowly, soundlessly, Carlotta begins to speak.

Here’s the story of the Fleet, girl, and how I got raptured up into it. It’s all about the future – a bigger one than you believe in – so brace yourself.

It has a thousand names and more, but we’ll just call it the Fleet. When I first encountered it, the Fleet was scattered from the core of the galaxy all through its spiraled tentacles of suns, and it had been there for millions of years, going about its business, though nobody on this planet knew anything about it. I guess every now and then a Fleet ship must have fallen to Earth, but it would have been indistinguishable from any common meteorite by the time it passed through the atmosphere: a chunk of carbonaceous chondrite smaller than a human fist, from which all evidence of ordered matter had been erased by fire – and such losses, which happened everywhere and often, made no discernable difference to the Fleet as a whole. All Fleet data (that is to say, all mind) was shared, distributed, fractal. Vessels were born and vessels were destroyed, but the Fleet persisted down countless eons, confident of its own immortality.

Oh, I know you don’t understand the big words, child! It’s not important for you to hear them – not these words – it’s only important for me to say them. Why? Because a few billion years ago tomorrow, I carried your ignorance out of this very trailer, carried it down to the Interstate and hitched west with nothing in my backpack but a bottle of water, a half-dozen Tootsie Rolls, and a wad of twenty-dollar bills stolen out of Dan-O’s old ditty bag. That night (tomorrow night: mark it) I slept under an overpass all by myself, woke up cold and hungry long before dawn, and looked up past a concrete arch crusted with bird shit into a sky so thick with falling stars it made me think of a dark skin bee-stung with fire. Some of the Fleet vectored too close to the atmosphere that night, no doubt, but I didn’t understand that (any more than you do, girl) – I just thought it was a big flock of shooting stars, pretty but meaningless. And, after a while, I slept some more. And come sunrise, I waited for the morning traffic so I could catch another ride . . . but the only cars that came by were all weaving or speeding, as if the whole world was driving home from a drunken party.

“They won’t stop,” a voice behind me said. “Those folks already made their decisions, Carlotta. Whether they want to live or die, I mean. Same decision you have to make.”

I whirled around, sick-startled, and that was when I first laid eyes on dear Erasmus.

Let me tell you right off that Erasmus wasn’t a human being. Erasmus just then was a knot of shiny metal angles about the size of a microwave oven, hovering in mid-air, with a pair of eyes like the polished tourmaline they sell at those roadside souvenir shops. He didn’t have to look that way – it was some old avatar he used because he figured that it would impress me. But I didn’t know that then. I was only surprised, if that’s not too mild a word, and too shocked to be truly frightened.

“The world won’t last much longer,” Erasmus said in a low and mournful voice. “You can stay here, or you can come with me. But choose quick, Carlotta, because the mantle’s come unstable and the continents are starting to slip.”

I half believed that I was still asleep and dreaming. I didn’t know what that meant, about the mantle, though I guessed he was talking about the end of the world. Some quality of his voice (which reminded me of that actor Morgan Freeman) made me trust him despite how weird and impossible the whole conversation was. Plus, I had a confirming sense that something was going bad somewhere, partly because of the scant traffic (a Toyota zoomed past, clocking speeds it had never been built for, the driver a hunched blur behind the wheel), partly because of the ugly green cloud that just then billowed up over a row of rat-toothed mountains on the horizon. Also the sudden hot breeze. And the smell of distant burning. And the sound of what might have been thunder, or something worse.

“Go with you where?”

“To the stars, Carlotta! But you’ll have to leave your body behind.”

I didn’t like the part about leaving my body behind. But what choice did I have, except the one he’d offered me? Stay or go. Simple as that.

It was a ride – just not the kind I’d been expecting.

There was a tremor in the earth, like the devil knocking at the soles of my shoes. “Okay,” I said, “what ever,” as white dust bloomed up from the desert and was taken by the frantic wind.

Don’t be afraid. Don’t wait. Don’t get caught. Just go. Go fast.

Without those words in my head, I swear, girl, I would have died that day. Billions did.

She slows down the passage of time so she can fit this odd but somehow necessary monologue into the space between one or two of the younger Carlotta’s breaths. Of course, she has no real voice in which to speak. The past is static, imperturbable in its endless sleep; molecules of air on their fixed trajectories can’t be manipulated from the shadowy place where she now exists. Wake up with the dawn, girl, she says, steal the money you’ll never spend – it doesn’t matter; the important thing is to leave. It’s time.

When it’s time to leave, leave. Of all the memories she carried out of her earthly life, this is the most vivid: waking to discover a ghostly presence in her darkened room, a white-robed woman giving her the advice she needs at the moment she needs it. Suddenly Carlotta wants to scream the words: When it’s time to leave –

But she can’t vibrate even a single mote of the ancient air, and the younger Carlotta sleeps on.

Next to the bed is a thrift-shop night table scarred with cigarette burns. On the table is a child’s night-light, faded cut-outs of Sponge Bob Square-Pants pasted on the paper shade. Next to that, hidden under a splayed copy of People magazine, is the bottle of barbiturates Carlotta stole from Dan-O’s ditty-bag this afternoon, the same khaki bag in which (she couldn’t help but notice) Dan-O keeps his cash, a change of clothes, a fake driver’s license, and a blue steel automatic pistol.

Young Carlotta detects no ghostly presence . . . nor is her sleep disturbed by the sound of Dan-O’s angry voice and her mother’s sudden gasp, two rooms away. Apparently, Dan-O is awake and sober. Apparently, Dan-O has discovered the theft. That’s a complication.

But Carlotta won’t allow herself to be hurried.

The hardest thing about joining the Fleet was giving up the idea that I had a body, that my body had a real place to be.

But that’s what everybody believed at first, that we were still whole and normal – everybody rescued from Earth, I mean. Everybody who said “Yes” to Erasmus – and Erasmus, in one form or another, had appeared to every human being on the planet in the moments before the end of the world. Two and a half billion of us accepted the offer of rescue. The rest chose to stay put and died when the Earth’s continents dissolved into molten magma.

Of course, that created problems for the survivors. Children without parents, parents without children, lovers separated for eternity. It was as sad and tragic as any other incomplete rescue, except on a planetary scale. When we left the Earth, we all just sort of re-appeared on a grassy plain as flat as Kansas and wider than the horizon, under a blue faux sky, each of us with an Erasmus at his shoulder and all of us wailing or sobbing or demanding explanations.

The plain wasn’t “real,” of course, not the way I was accustomed to things being real. It was a virtual place, and all of us were wearing virtual bodies, though we didn’t understand that fact immediately. We kept on being what we expected ourselves to be – we even wore the clothes we’d worn when we were raptured up. I remember looking down at the pair of greasy secondhand Reeboks I’d found at the Commanche Drop Goodwill store, thinking: in Heaven? Really?

“Is there any place you’d rather be?” Erasmus asked with a maddening and clearly inhuman patience. “Anyone you need to find?”

“Yeah, I’d rather be in New Zealand,” I said, which was really just a hysterical joke. All I knew about New Zealand was that I’d seen a show about it on PBS, the only channel we got since the cable company cut us off.

“Any particular part of New Zealand?”

“What? Well – okay, a beach, I guess.”

I had never been to a real beach, a beach on the ocean.

“Alone, or in the company of others?”

“Seriously?” All around me people were sobbing or gibbering in (mostly) foreign languages. Pretty soon, fights would start to break out. You can’t put a couple of billion human beings so close together under circumstances like that and expect any other result. But the crowd was already thinning, as people accepted similar offers from their own Fleet avatars.

“Alone,” I said. “Except for you.”

And quick as that, there I was: Eve without Adam, standing on a lonesome stretch of white beach.

After a while, the astonishment faded to a tolerable dazzle. I took off my shoes and tested the sand. The sand was pleasantly sun-warm. Saltwater swirled up between my toes as a wave washed in from the coral-blue sea.

Then I felt dizzy and had to sit down.

“Would you like to sleep?” Erasmus asked, hovering over me like a gem-studded party balloon. “I can help you sleep, Carlotta, if you’d like. It might make the transition easier if you get some rest, to begin with.”

“You can answer some fucking questions, is what you can do!” I said.

He settled down on the sand beside me, the mutant offspring of a dragonfly and a beach ball. “Okay, shoot,” he said.

It’s a read-only universe, Carlotta thinks. The Old Ones have said as much, so it must be true. And yet, she knows, she remembers, that the younger Carlotta will surely wake and find her here: a ghostly presence, speaking wisdom.

But how can she make herself perceptible to this sleeping child? The senses are so stubbornly material, electrochemical data cascading into vastly complex neural networks . . . is it possible she could intervene in some way at the borderland of quanta and perception? For a moment, Carlotta chooses to look at her younger self with different eyes, sampling the fine gradients of molecular magnetic fields. The child’s skin and skull grow faint and then transparent, as Carlotta shrinks her point of view and wanders briefly through the carnival of her own animal mind, the buzzing inner-scape where skeins of dream merge and separate like fractal soap bubbles. If she could manipulate even a single boson – influence the charge at some critical synaptic junction, say –