Fantastic Metropolis

7. Chutes Too Narrow, The Shins

Pop-rock-whatever, The Shin’s second CD has a range that seems to encompass everyone from Martin Newell to Pavement. Shiny happy music with a melancholy edge in places. Standout track: 5, Saint Simon.

8. 12 Memories, Travis

A band that’s been trashed by some reviewers as shallow comes out with a beautiful, low-key, sometimes sad CD of songs that manages to be both somber and poppy at the same time. More depth than their past releases. Standout track: 6, Paperclips.

9. Royal Academy of Reality, The Swimming Pool Q’s

Eclectic rock from a band that hadn’t had a CD out in almost 10 years. Over 20 songs, in many different modes. It’s almost too eclectic a CD for its own coherence, but somehow it manages to hold together. Standout track: 9, Everybody Knows Tomorrow.

10. Keep on Truckin, Caustic Resin

Spazzed-out, psychedelic rock that’s sometimes too sludgy but that attains an amazing power in the latter half of the CD. Standout track: 6, Keep On Truckin.

Fiction I Enjoyed that I Couldn’t Consider for My Top Picks Due to Conflict of Interest

• IN&OZ, by Steve Tomasula
• The Etched City, by K.J. Bishop
• The Boats of the “Glen Carrig” and Other Nautical Adventures, by William Hope Hodgson, edited by Jeremy Lassen
• The Ghosts of Yesterday, by Jack Cady
• Things That Never Happen, by M. John Harrison
• Steps Through the Mist, by Zoran Zivkovic
• Tales from the Crypto-System, by Geoffrey Maloney
• Monterra’s Deliciosa & Other Tales, by Anna Tambour

Other Noteworthy Fiction

• Greetings from Lake Wu, by Jay Lake
• The Fourth Hand, by John Irving
• Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson
• Letters from Hades, by Jeffrey Thomas
• Anything by Henning Mankell

Fiction I Didn’t Have Time To Read But Wish I Had

• Polyphony 3, edited by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake
• Fortress of Solitude, by Jonathan Lethem
• The Salt Roads, by Nalo Hopkinson
• Bibliomancy, by Elizabeth Hand
• Mortal Engines, by Philip Reeve
• The Dark, edited by Ellen Datlow (half-finished; loving it)
• Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
• Weirdmonger, by D. F. Lewis

Fiction I Found Interesting But Overrated in 2003

• McSweeney’s Mammoth Anthology of Thrilling Stories, edited by Michael Chabon
• Quicksilver, by Neil Stephenson
• Ilium, by Dan Simmons
• Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, by Cory Doctorow
• The City Trilogy, by Chang Hsi-Kuo
• Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix, by J.K. Rowling
• The Monsters of St. Helena, by Brooks Hansen

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Jeff VanderMeer is the author of City of Saints and Madmen and Veniss Underground, and co-editor (with Forrest Aguirre) of Leviathan Three, winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology in 2003. Secret Life, a new collection of short fiction from Golden Gryphon is forthcoming in 2004.