Fantastic Metropolis

I envy the confidence of those who regularly write “best of” articles. Their tone convinces me that they have read everything that could possibly be considered worth reading, and are presenting the rest of us with a list of only the finest, the works truly worth our time. I would completely believe them, too—their confidence is so compelling—if they didn’t always seem to include at least one work I found unreadable or to omit the piece that curled up in a corner of my soul and refused to move out.

So I shall not pretend to that level of confidence. While I am quite sure that everything I mention below is well worth reading, I am also sure that there are many other gems in my ever-growing pile of unread books, not to mention others that I have yet to discover. And it’s just possible that I’ve mislaid a few that I did read.

The books and stories below are the ones that made a lasting impression on me. Since I’m permanently behind in my reading, many of these were published prior to 2003. However, all of them are currently in print. If something listed below does not have a date, it was published prior to 2003.

I found myself obsessed with one anthology and one author in 2003. The anthology is The Poets’ Grimm: 20^th Century Poems from Grimm Fairy Tales, edited by Jeanne Marie Beaumont and Claudia Carlson (2003). I originally bought this book not out of any great desire to read poems based on fairy tales—I read poetry sporadically and have never considered myself to be someone interested in fairy tales—but because it included poems by my friend Anne Sheldon. So of course, my first act was to read her poems, which were quite good, as I already knew.

But then I began reading some of the other works and was completely hooked. Part of the quality is simply good writing; the poets in this book are both highly skilled in their use of words and unafraid to get to the heart of the matter. However, the sheer power of the fairy tales themselves contributes greatly to this work. In particular, the poems by women (and women poets make up about eighty percent of the collection) hit me in the gut; I have begun to theorize that a woman cannot approach a fairy tale without having either a very personal or very feminist reaction. The poems by men tended toward either social commentary or something a bit more romantic—well worth reading, but not as gut-wrenching.

I’ve dragged this book around with me, found an excuse to recommend it to all sorts of people, and figured out that there’s a reason why fairy tales have hung around so long. Don’t make excuses like “I don’t read poetry” or “I don’t like fairy tales.” Just go read it.

My other obsession was the work of Virginia Woolf. This started harmlessly enough: I decided that if I were going to see the movie “The Hours,” I should read the book at its heart. So I picked up Mrs. Dalloway, and it knocked me on my ass. Woolf’s ability to both understand and convey the completely different characters in that book seemed almost uncanny. After that I read Orlando, which is delightful fantasy (and very funny), and some of her essays. And ploughed my way through Hermione Lee’s biography, which is quite dispassionate and useful for putting Woolf’s work in context. I doubt that I am through with this obsession, and in my zeal, I want to bring others along. If you haven’t read Woolf yet, do it soon.

So much for the books that led me into obsession. Here are some others that moved me greatly in the last year, for various reasons.

Novels

Sister Noon, by Karen Joy Fowler. By rendering non-judgmentally the sexism and racism, not to mention the silly opinions and assumptions, of late Victorian San Francisco, Fowler makes their idiocy obvious, and leaves the reader with the uncomfortable feeling that many of the ideas we currently hold dear will look equally foolish in a hundred years.

There and Back Again, Wild Angel, and Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell, by Pat Murphy (with help from Max Merriwell and Mary Maxwell). Just damn good fun, with nods to classics in our genres, odd bits of history, and some interesting physics thrown in. Read them in the above order—they’re great on their own, but the overall effect is even better.

Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett. Everything in this remarkable book was unexpected, including the fact that I was so completely engaged in a literary novel.

Spin State, by Chris Moriarty (2003). This is more typical of my usual reading habits—high adventure and a kick ass heroine with moral dilemmas and fight scenes. Given the complexity and layers in this book, you won’t be surprised to hear that Moriarty admires C.J. Cherryh, and particularly Cyteen. But don’t worry: this book’s not a clone.

Stark’s Crusade, by John Hemry. I finally got around to the third of John Hemry’s Stark books right about the time the U.S. starting sending troops into Iraq. The parallels between the U.S. of Hemry’s book—an arrogant country with corruption at its heart that has overextended itself militarily—and the same country I heard about on the news every day made the book uncomfortable reading rather than something escapist. Even if you don’t think you like military SF, you should probably read the whole series for the underlying political analysis.

Empire of Bones, by Liz Williams. I love Williams’s lush settings, complex plots, political sensibilities, and ability to write science fiction about people who’ve never been part of the canon. The main character in Empire is an Indian woman of the Untouchable caste. And there are aliens. That should be enough to draw you in.

Short Fiction

“The Fluted Girl,” by Paolo Bacigalupi in the June 2003 Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. This haunting story combines a highly sophisticated science of genetic modification with a feudal setting. Surely someone will put it in a year’s best collection.

“The Road Leads Back,” by Michael Bishop in Polyphony 3 (2003). By exaggerating his characters, Bishop always makes them incredibly real and human, and tells a truth that is strengthened by the presence of the fantastic. This is one of his finest examples, though I also liked (for much the same reasons) his completely different story in the October 2003 Realms of Fantasy, “The Door Gunner.”

“Frankenstein’s Daughter,”??]] by Maureen McHugh on SciFiction (2003). This story proves that, in the right hands, good science and complex character development do not have to fight with each other.

Other Cities, by Benjamin Rosenbaum. This is a chapbook collection of very short stories—a person who demands more plot might call them vignettes. I call them the kind of stories that open a door and leave what happens next to the reader’s imagination.

In Springdale Town, by Robert Freeman Wexler (2003). Wexler bends reality in a quiet manner that is just a bit different from work by anyone else.

Nonfiction

Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond. People have been telling me to read this book for years. Now that I’ve done it, I’m doing the same thing. Diamond, a physiologist, has reached beyond the borders of his own discipline and come up with a complex theory on why human civilization has developed as it did. Some years ago I read Edward O. Wilson’s Consilience, which among other things argues for the importance of cross-pollination among academic fields. Diamond has done what Wilson encouraged, and the results give plenty to think about.