Best of 2007: Anthologies and Story Collections

I made it my goal this year to read more anthologies and short story collections by particular authors. Although I still have a few stories here and there to finish in some of these, I have read enough of the following to justify splitting this into two separate categories, one for anthologies and one for collections by one or two authors. I'll announce my Top 3 picks in each category on Monday in my Best of 2007 writeup.

Anthologies:

Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (eds.), Best American Fantasy

George Mann (ed.), The Solaris Book of New Fantasy

Delia Sherman and Theodora Goss (eds.), Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing

John Klima (ed.), Logorrhea

Keith Brooke and Nick Gevers (eds.), Infinity Plus: The Anthology

Kelly Link and Gavin Grant (eds.), The Best of Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet

Peter Wild (ed.), The Flash


Story Collections:

Margo Lanagan, Red Spikes

Sarah Monette, The Bone Key

Richard Parks, Worshipping Small Gods

Michael Cisco, Secret Hours

Cat Rambo and Jeff VanderMeer, The Surgeon's Tale and Other Tales

Tim Pratt, Hart & Boot & Other Stories

I have some very tough decisions ahead. Oh, and in the coming days, do expect some reviews of some of those works above that I have yet to review here.

Best of 2007 Countdown: Michael Cisco, The Traitor

I will write down now who I am and some of my story, not so that you who read this, if there is anyone there, may understand me, since, in any case, you can't understand me; there is no way my story could make you understand me. I'm writing my story to prove that I understand it, and I can't help repeating it over and over to myself simply because that is all there is left of me. I favor it more for the useless details that remind me of how I used to be, not that I miss anything. Now I am nothing at all like I was, although I believe I am now what I had originally intended to be.

I write this first so I may arrive at my testament through these memories, as I arrived at where I am now through these times I'm remembering. If I don't write beautifully, it's because I'm trying to be honest, and because the taste of blood in my mouth reminds me how little time remains for me, how litle time there is to polish words.

Nophtha, the first-person narrator of Michael Cisco's The Traitor, is a spirit eater, charged with bringing spirits into himself, preventing malady and madness while allowing people to let go of the spirits of the past. He was commissioned by his government to hunt down a soul burner (one who consumed the spirits for personal aggrandizement rather than for the social good) named Wite. However, as Nophtha's fevered and deranged journal will show, Nophtha ends up betraying his commission, instead seeking to become like Wite (now like a force of nature), but failing rather miserably at the end.

While the paragraph above gives a skeleton outline of the novel, one has to read this with a mindset similar to what one would need for reading and appreciating Dostoyevsky's Notes from the Underground. Like Dostoyevsky's nameless narrator, Nophtha is a spirit being consumed from within. The passages contained within this short 149 page novel are full of sentiments such as the one I quoted above and this one:

I will die and die and die but I am ready, I'm going stronger than I came, I will die spitting the saliva of my outrage at them, moreover coughing the bloody pieces of my testament at them, my gentle guards and the soldiers down below, the city all around and the palace out of my sight and their brainless music-box of a King. I won't die cowering I have my Wite and Tzdze Tamt and "blunder" Illan and Voy, Xchte and uncle Heckler and tired dying imaginary Nophtha on the floor writing in his cell and seizing you at the last moment, I'm rising for the last time to seize you for one more moment, the gleam of Wite's spectacles is hovering over your shoulder! No one will be spared, whatever so-called good deeds you've done, your tepidity and every so-called evil soul in the world will be devastated all the same.

In the end, this "traitor" has performed so many acts of betrayal on so many levels, that a close reading of this fevered narrative will almost certainly inspire reactions ranging from empathy to outright disgust in the reader. The Traitor stands out among the 2007 releases that I have read due to its vivid imagery and the masterful way that Cisco uses the deranged first-person narrative to create a world that is full of shadows (light as well as darkness), hinting at a profoundness that goes deeper than the narrator's own twisted pathway to a personal hell of his own making.

Four Fictions

Occasionally, I read a handful of books in rapid succession that while I believe they merit a consideration from readers, I just do not know if I can say much more than "Book X is one of those you had to experience it stories that you really ought to read!" The first two of the four I want to discuss today are the third and fourth volumes in the Leviathan series that Jeff VanderMeer (and continued later by Forrest Aguirre) began as a way of collecting stories that had a bit of this and a dash of that, making it in the end neither the fish of "mainstream" nor the fowl of "traditional" fantasy. Those who have read much of the "modern surrealistic fantasy" or "New Weird" styles of storytelling will recognize authors such as K.J. Bishop, Jay Lake, Michael Moorcock, Zoran Živković, and many others whose commonalities are not as much an inner congruence of motifs between their works as much as a shared sense of wonder and exploration that has led to an increasing estrangement from the prior models for fantasy and "mainstream" short fiction.

Leviathan Three is the larger (almost 500 pages) of the two and its stories are not as thematically obvious as the fourth (which deals with cities of various forms). This collection of tales of madness and of the seeking of other experiences has as its cornerstone the various "library" stories of Živković that comprise his WFA-winning novella, "The Library." Although I shall not explore the ways in which these stories interact to form a larger and very imaginative whole, suffice to say that I consider this anthology to be one of the "must read" books of the past generation. The stories are impressive and the contributors' list will serve curious readers as a touch stone for the more surrealistic (or "New Weird") stories being lauded today by many readers.

Leviathan 4, on the other hand, is not quite nearly as sprawling or attention-grabbing as its immediate predecessor. However, there are quite a few stories contained within (Lake's story makes up the germ of his latter 2006 release, Trial of Flowers, if I'm not mistaken) that ought to appeal to fans of authors such as Lake and Bishop, not to mention newer and more obscure authors such as Ben Peek. There is a greater sense of story unity, as an urban setting is the central theme of the collection and most of the stories use this setting in various ways to drive their stories forward. In many cases, the authors here manage to imbue their urban surroundings with a sense of alienness that makes the cities as much of a "living" character as the sentient beings transversing them.

One author from this series that I purposely neglected to mention until now is Michael Cisco. In the past month, I have read two 2007 releases of his, the short story collection Secret Hours and the just-released novel called The Traitor. In each of them, Cisco displays a fascination with using words to create a stunning visual image, depending upon often-fragile 1st person narrators to capture the reader's attention and to force them to confront the odd and sometimes terrifying world in which his stories take place. Secret Hours contains 14 stories that purportedly were written as an homage of sorts to H.P. Lovecraft and in some of them, this influence (especially in the establishment of a spooky atmospheric setting) is quite evident. While I personally enjoyed many of these stories, I don't know if they would be straightforward enough for many readers who might prefer a more gradual amping of the action than Cisco's stutter-step approach here.

Cisco's recent novel, The Traitor, however is not only more "accessible," but it also contains one of the most powerful stories I've read of the 2007 releases. The title references quite a few layers of possible "betrayals," and the main character (again a 1st person narrator whose reliability can be called into question) seems to have as much in common with a sort of "criminal" associate of his as he does with those around him. While not strictly an allegory, the way that Cisco constructs the story lends itself to being viewed in that way as much as being taken in for a story of struggle, of human identity, and a whole host of other issues that I shall not discuss here due to the nature of this posting. However, those who do consider reading this work are in for an experience that I believe will move many much more than what they might expect when confronted with a 150 page paperback.

So here they are: four fictions, two of them related anthologies, two of them recent releases by a single author who appears in one of the prior anthologies. Each contains at least traces of surrealist influence on how setting is warped, each contains stories that deal with the fractured natures of that pesky thing called "identity." Each are well worth the effort involved in reading them.