Read and Appreciated in 2003

A Year’s Best List

By Gabe Chouinard

Originals · Listmania! 2003 · January 12, 2004

2003 was an awesome year for the reader that dared to look beyond the bestseller shelves, who gathered the courage to seek out some of the hidden gems that may have been buried beneath the stacks of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. It was a year chock-a-block full of excellent work that ranged the spectrum of genres, or glimmered in between.

What makes the Fantastic Metropolis’ Read and Appreciated feature my favorite ‘best of’ list, however, is its inclusiveness, its flexibility. In the city that is Like No Place Else, it’s encouraged to bend the rules to include anything that has been Read and Appreciated, whether it’s an advance copy of Richard K. Morgan’s Broken Angels (coming to US shelves in March 2004) or a tattered old Bantam paperback edition of Walter Tevis’ Mockingbird from the mid-Eighties. These lists are more intimate, glimpses of each others’ lives through the course of a year via art, rather than staid ol’ year’s best lists.

Personally, I’ve read and appreciated… well, I think the technical term is “a shitload of great stuff”. This was an intensive reading year, as I tried to keep abreast of an avalanche of new works while simultaneously taking advantage of the bounteous flowering of reprint material that continues to appear almost daily. Not to mention those many, many hours spent combing the shelves at various second-hand stores in search of missed treasures.

Thankfully, though, I’ve discovered a purpose for keeping a weblog online. With so many books and stories clamoring for attention, it was easy to comb the archives of my blog in an effort to jar my memory. Take note—blogs aren’t just meaningless fluffery anymore! They too can have a purpose!

Coincidentally, the web itself, and various weblogs in particular, contributed enormously to my reading and appreciating. In many ways, the internet has revolutionized the very act of my reading, whether as a source of material alone or as a constant pointer to works I would have missed without fervent recommendation. So I would be remiss if I did not include some of my daily or weekly reads here, in no particular order of favoritism:

And a host of others!

But though the net provides essential reading material, there’s still nothing quite like the feel and smell of a good book.

Once again, PS Publishing tops my list of favorite publishers. Always elegant, always high quality, PS Publishing is one of the best presses around. Their stable of authors is unsurpassed for pure skill and talent, and I have yet to find a PS Publishing offering that I did not like.

There were standouts, however. In particular, Adam Roberts’ excellent novella Jupiter Magnified has been seared in my memory as one of the best tales of the year. Combining poetics and science fiction in a way that is simultaneously experimental yet accessible, Roberts has honed his skill to new levels with Jupiter Magnified. It’s intriguing, and if you can find a copy you should snap it up immediately. Likewise affecting were Paul Di Filippo’s uproarious Fuzzy Dice, Robert Freeman Wexler’s haunting In Springdale Town (which flat out gave me the creeps), and Elizabeth Hand’s excellent collection of four novellas, Bibliomancy. Also of note is Floater by Lucius Shepard, a freaky voodoo-laced thriller that skirts the edges of reality with a scalpel’s precision.

I was slightly surprised to find that Neil Gaiman was my particular ‘author to watch’ this year. Gaiman has really hit his stride this year, producing a large body of work that was just phenomenal. In particular, his story “A Study in Emerald” for the anthology Shadows Over Baker Street struck me as a perfect, elegant twisting tale that ought to be included in everyone’s Year’s Best collections. Gaiman also contributed the novella “The Monarch of the Glen” for the otherwise humdrum Legends II anthology. Set in the mythic universe of American Gods, “Monarch” is a riveting tale that brings John Shadow to Scotland and a world of ‘monsters’. And of course, I absolutely adored The Wolves in the Walls, a terse graphic novel illustrated by Dave McKean. Another highlight was the beautiful Endless Nights, done in collaboration with a host of superb artists.

Gaiman also contributed to the much-vaunted and much-appreciated Conjunctions 39, edited by Peter Straub. This literary ‘magazine’ was actually one of the best slipstream-y anthologies I read this year, grouped with Leviathan 3, Polyphony and McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales (which also contained a Gaiman story). All were a mish-mash of stories that danced around the edges of genre, and all were somewhat uneven in quality, with Leviathan 3 edging closest to pure excellence and McSweeney’s spiralling closest to dismal failure.

Much of what I read and appreciated this year skirted an edge of one sort or another. William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition is a near future net culture thriller barely distinguishable as science fiction, yet still stands out as an excellent addition to the author’s oeuvre. Meanwhile, Brooks Hansen’s The Chess Garden is a lovely fantasy that should appeal to anyone willing to cross over to the “L”iterary side of the fence, in the way that Mark Helprin’s A Winter’s Tale would appeal. I also read C.S. Godshalk’s awesome Kalimantaan, which provided more sense of wonder and alien mystique than any Epic Fantasy series. Give me Kalimantaan over Terry Goodkind any day!

Also skating the literary/genre lines were Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem, an ambitious boyhood examination of power and identity and coming of age. The Sensualist by graphic designer Barbara Hodgson is a surreal, intelligent tale that is illustrated throughout with Hodgson’s groovy artwork, a sort of commingling of Kafka and Nick Bantock. Of course, there was also Graham Joyce’s superb The Facts of Life, a family-centered tale set in post-war Coventry that showcases Joyce at his ghostly best; I say again that Graham Joyce is one of the best authors around.

Meanwhile, there were excellent pure-strain genre works coming out all over the place. I couldn’t possibly list every genre book that I enjoyed this year, but there were definite stand-outs. Foremost, and one of my favorite books of the year, was Kage Baker’s quirky high fantasy novel, The Anvil of the World. Like Kalimantaan, The Anvil of the World packs more power and brilliance into a small package than any multi-volume fat fantasy epic out there. The setting is unique, the characters well-drawn and realistic, and there’s more swashbuckling action than all but a handful of novels I’ve read. Best of all, though, is the pure love for genre that spills from every word in Baker’s novel, which you just don’t find in the average fantasy knockoff.

Also high on excellence were Greg Keyes’ intriguing The Briar King, an epic fantasy grown from the aftermath of the Roanoke disappearances, and John Marco’s The Eyes of God, which seems to be a retelling of the Arthur myth, but twists and turns and evolves into an original and intriguing concept. I’m still hoping to get to the follow-up, The Devil’s Armor before the end of the year.

Vera Nazarian’s The Lords of Rainbow is a bit less conventional than John Marco, but is nonetheless an intriguing fantasy that ought to be discovered by the monkeys that are still shelling out for Robert Jordan’s pap. I also highly recommend Lisa Goldstein’s under appreciated The Alchemist’s Door, a fantastical vision of John Dee written in gorgeous, glittery prose. Goldstein is an excellent stylist that deserves more praise.

2003 was an excellent science fictional year for me, and I read a lot more straight science fiction than usual. That prolific nutter Charlie Stross provided me with many, many hours of thoughtful enjoyment, and his novel Singularity Sky was even better than I’d expected for a first novel. Along with Alastair Reynolds, Stross has firmly entrenched himself as my favorite SF author.

Speaking of Reynolds, both Chasm City and Redemption Ark spilled onto the overlong scale, but offered up more pure ideas and visionary scope than the majority of offerings this year. Reynolds is certainly an author to watch, and I’m curious to see more from him.

Likewise new to American shores was ‘newcomer’ Richard K. Morgan. And I have to wonder where the vats are that are growing these phenomenal UK authors. Morgan’s grimy noir tech thriller Altered Carbon kicks more ass than a SORT team throwing down a prison riot, and Broken Angels is even better. Now if only we could get simultaneous publication for these writers so we can all enjoy them at the same time…

Other notable reads on the SF side of the spectrum include Neal Asher’s Gridlinked, Stephen Baxter’s Evolution, Greg Bear’s Darwin’s Radio, and (of course) M. John Harrison’s groundbreaking space magnum opus, Light. Harrison has single-handedly redefined ‘space opera’ with his awesome novel, which deserves every bit of praise it has received. As usual with Harrison, I stand in awe.

And, of course, one would do well to seek out Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Justina Robson, Peter F. Hamilton and a host of other United Kingdom authors.

This was a good year for single-author collections as well, and as a lover of short fiction, I spent many months basking in sheer bliss, surrounded by excellent stories.

Samuel Delany’s collection Aye, and Gomorrah and Other Stories is a prized addition to my collection, as is The Rediscovery of Man by Cordwainer Smith. I bought and read the excellent The Hard SF Renaissance this year… or at least parts of it; this meaty tome has more fiction-per-pound than any recent collection. I also read and appreciated both the 30th Anniversary edition of Dangerous Visions and its follow-up, Again, Dangerous Visions. Yet this year, those visions just didn’t seem as dangerous as before… perhaps due to the much more dangerous stories read elsewhere.

Cory Doctorow, the boingiest of boing boings, released A Place So Foreign and Eight More via Four Walls Eight Windows, as well as his novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. If any author gets to claim the zeitgeist this year, it’s Doctorow, whose nerdcore Wired crowd tales shimmer and dance in an energetic ballet with the Now. Fittingly, Four Walls Eight Windows also released Michael Moorcock’s The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius, featuring that proto-cyberpunk spiritual brother of Doctorow. I think they even look alike….

2003 was also a year to challenge myself. I immersed myself in critical theory, whether it was the work of Samuel R. Delany or a text on Critical Terms for Literary Study. Days spent pouring over Deconstructions, edited by Nicholas Royle. Honing my genre knowledge with Edward James’ Science Fiction in the 20th Century, Thomas M. Disch’s The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, and the perennial favorites The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. And essays, essays and more essays, peppered through countless texts.

Or how about Alice in Quantumland, or João Magueijo’s excellent Faster Than The Speed of Light? Or A Writer’s Diary, Dostoevsky’s experimental magazine, collected in two hefty volumes? Or that re-read of Dickens’ Bleak House, and the hours spent on Altogether Elsewhere: Writers on Exile, edited by Marc Robinson? All read, all appreciated.

So many excellent texts, a year’s worth of reading all jammed into one head. Mickelsson’s Ghosts by John Gardner, one of my favorite authors of all time, and also October Light, both novels that deserve multiple readings. And pulp, everywhere pulp! From C. L. Moore’s stellar Jirel of Joiry to the collected Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tales of Fritz Leiber, from Del Rey’s reissue of Robert E. Howard’s original Conan tales in The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian to Jack Vance’s collected Dying Earth tales, HP Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, I read everything I could find that even hinted at a pulp sensibility (for entirely selfish reasons).

I’ve read so much this year, I couldn’t possibly scratch the tip of the iceberg. There were so many good stories published this year that I either envy the editors of the Year’s Best collections or pity them for having to choose. There were so many excellent bits of literature floating through the ether between page and brain that I’ve lost more than I’ve retained.

But the important thing to remember is always this: no matter what I read, no matter if it was fiction or non-fiction, genre or mainstream… I appreciated it all.

Gabe Chouinard is the original founder of Fantastic Metropolis, back in October 1999. He is now editor of another webzine, s1ngularity (currently undergoing renovation) and a writer for the collaborative weblog s1ngularity::criticism.

Copyright © 2004 by Gabe Chouinard.