Southern Reach by Jeff VanderMeer is as damn close to perfect as a trilogy can get

The beautiful omnibus edition of Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy.

The beautiful omnibus edition of Area X: The Southern Reach Trilogy.

In my continuing roundup of the year's best stories and novels, it's time to mention the mysterious region dominating this year's fiction: Area X.

This region/wilderness/ecology/creature/entity is the star of Jeff VanderMeer's amazing Southern Reach Trilogy. If that description seems a little vague, I'm both trying to avoid spoilers and also dealing with a creation which is by design ambiguous. The trilogy lives and breathes within the opaque reaches of life, and it's this strange and unknown nature which both gives the story it's power and ensures the reader is both unsettled and fascinating by the world VanderMeer has created.

The trilogy's novels — Annihilation, Authority, & Acceptance — follow a fascinating arc. In the first book, we follow the newest expedition as they explore Area X, which appeared on the Florida panhandle decades before and ever since has devoured most people who enter its boundaries. In the second book, we witness the government's feeble attempts to contain Area X and the struggle of one man to understand what Area X might be. In the final book, the past and present-day worlds of Area X, along with the lives of those who have experienced Area X, implode into a surreal understanding of what the region/wilderness/ecology/creature/entity might actually be.

If you're not familiar with VanderMeer's writing, he's a master of description, psychological depth, and insightful, literary explorations. He's also very comfortable writing within the unknown realms of fiction, where unseen monsters bring a far deeper level of unsettling fear than anything we might truly see. When done correctly, as VanderMeer does, this level of ambiguity allows the reader to more deeply experience the truths of fiction than can be found in the concrete, black and white stories most authors create. 

The Southern Reach trilogy isn't merely one of the best stories of the year — it's one of the best of the last decade.

I'd love for the entire trilogy to be named to all the award shortlists, but that's probably expecting too much. So I will be naming Annihilation to my final ballots for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards and I urge others to do the same.

And if you haven't already read the trilogy, it's not too late. FSG Originals has just released the trilogy as a hardcover omnibus edition. This edition is beautifully designed and crafted, and is a great way to dive into the truths of Area X.

We can forget it for you wholesale

Today the Vice Motherboard launched Terraform, a hub for publishing in their words "future fiction," or science fiction.

I wish Terraform the best. Want to give more exposure to SF stories? You have my support. Want to pay 20 cents a word? From the perspective of this SF author, you have my attention.

But unfortunately for Terraform, they attracted a different type of attention today with their manifesto, which stated that "there’s a distinct dearth of science fiction in its purest, arguably its original, form — short fiction — in the environment to which it seems best-suited. The internet."

I suppose this news came as a shock to the authors, editors and readers who have been enjoying and publishing online SF stories since the dawn of the internet.

This oversight irks me on a personal level because for many years I ran the Million Writers Award, which worked hard to highlight online fiction — including online SF stories. A number of SF stories won our top award over the years and an entire anthology of MWA SF/F stories was also released. Because of my work on the award it seems incredible to me that anyone could overlook pioneering online SF magazines like Sci Fiction, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, InterGalactic Medicine Show,  among many, many others.

But perhaps the problem is I'm too much an insider to online science fiction. I play in the online SF sandpit so of course I know all the other sand-covered kids.

Asa Whitman announces as much in the Terraform comment section by stating that Terraform is doing the right thing in not acknowledging its online competition. After all, what new business mentions its competition when it opens? Whitman also adds that there's something wrong with Terraform having to recognize that the sandpit belongs to someone else before they can even play in the sand.

And if that was true, I'd be in total agreement.

But the problem isn't in Terraform having to say the sandpit belongs to someone else. The problem is that Terraform acted like the sandpit didn't even exist.

There is truth in Terraform's manifesto. They rightly point out that in our SF-obsessed world, SF stories are overlooked. This has long been an issue with the genre and if Terraform can help solve this problem, more power to them. And I don't want anyone to avoid playing in the SF sandbox because someone else thinks they own it. That should never be how literature works.

But when you ignore what came before in literature — which includes the publishing of that literature — you're not simply dismissing the work of generations of writers and fans. Which you are. No, you're also saying science fiction isn't important enough for you to study. That you don't want to know science fiction's strengths and weaknesses and loves and powers and its continuing hold on readers.

As an author, I often wish to build a new science fiction. But this wish doesn't come from a hatred or ignorance of SF — it comes from a deep love and knowledge of the genre. I know what SF is and because of that I dream deeply about the new heights it might one day achieve.

So best of luck to Terraform. I hope they reach all their SF dreams. But no one should ever pretend that any literary dream can be created by ignoring what that literature has already achieved.

 

The difference between successful genre magazines, and failures

Over on io9, K. Tempest Bradford continues her weekly reviews of short stories by asking:

"How does the average reader discover magazines? Assuming that people who like science fiction, fantasy, and horror are just as interested in short stories as novels, do they know how much short fiction is out there and available? Do they stick to the most familiar outlets or go in search of more?"

Sadly, I don't believe most people are as interested in short stories as they are in novels. That's been a pattern in our genre for a few decades and I've yet to see it change. But there are still many people who love short stories and seek them out.

As for how people discover genre short stories, I believe most readers still do this through magazines. Yes, book anthologies are a great way to also discover short fiction. However, most original anthologies reach relatively few readers, while the anthologies with the biggest readerships tend to be reprint anthologies such as Gardner Dozois' The Year's Best Science Fiction series. But since these reprint anthologies depend mostly on magazines for their stories, we've come full circle to magazines again being the place where short fiction truly lives in our genre.

But that raises the question of how people discover genre magazines, and how successful they truly are. In Tempest's column she quotes a Warren Ellis post on the state of today's genre magazines. Ellis laments the death of the new version of New Worlds after only two issues and the near simultaneous passing of Rudy Rucker's Flurb. Ellis then lumps the British magazine Interzone in with these two, declaring that "NEW WORLDS was never a nostalgic enterprise. But, perhaps, publishing a speculative fiction magazine is."

Which goes to show that Warren Ellis doesn't know much of anything about today's genre magazines.

I say this because anyone who paid attention to the revived New Worlds knew it was always a pointless exercise in nostalgia which would end up dying a totally predictable death. And while Flurb published some good fiction, it was very much a fanzine published merely through the love of its editor Rudy Rucker.

But the successful magazines of our genre — wow, they are of an entirely different level of creation. Successful genre magazines don't merely publish stories. Instead, they cultivate authors and readers. They build movements and styles. They stand astride the genre and chart our genre into new and unpredictable directions.

Among the magazines doing this are amazing digital publications like Clarkesworld and Lightspeed and Beyond Ceaseless Skies. In addition, some traditional print magazines like Asimov's continue to rework the genre with their stories (although it's difficult to call Asimov's merely a traditional print magazine — over half their subscribers are now digital only).

But of all the magazines doing influential work in our genre, perhaps the most successful is Interzone.

I'm sure Warren Ellis and others will sputter at this comment — after all, Ellis says people laugh at Interzone because they don't know what its exact circulation is. But circulation isn't a great indicator of a magazine's success and influence, at least with regards to short fiction.

For example, I'm sure Ellis wouldn't debate that Michael Moorcock's run at New Worlds was extremely influential and successful. But New Worlds' circulation during the 1960s and early '70s was never that great, especially compared to the earlier years of the magazine. At times Moorcock and company could barely pay the magazine's bills (and they wouldn't have been able to do so by relying merely on magazine sales and subscriptions — they received a number of arts grants).

But just as Moorcock's run at New Worlds reworked the entire SF/F genre, I likewise predict that Interzone will eventually be seen as doing the same through the stories and authors they publish. There are stories being published in Interzone today which you won't find anywhere else. There are many authors who have been published in Interzone in recent years — including Nina Allan, Aliette de Bodard, Chris Beckett, Eugie Foster, Dominic Green, Will McIntosh, Mercurio D. Rivera, Suzanne Palmer, Gareth L. Powell, and Lavie Tidhar — who wouldn't have found a home for their stories without Interzone or wouldn't be where they are today without the magazine.

And that's not even counting the influence Interzone's sister magazine Black Static has in the horror genre, or the other publishing projects released by Interzone's publisher TTA Press, such as their innovative novella series. 

Speaking both as a reader and writer, Interzone has been extremely influential and successful for me. Without Interzone, I don't know where I'd be with my fiction writing. Without having Interzone to challenge me as a reader, I wouldn't be able see the exciting future our genre has stretching before it.

For all of this, I thank Interzone and the magazine's editor Andy Cox. 

The difference between successful genre magazines, and failures, is in how the magazines recreate our genre. Interzone is doing precisely this.

When Warren Ellis laments the passing of the new New Worlds, he is complaining that a magazine which recycled pointless nostalgia somehow didn't thrive. But that's precisely the type of genre magazine which is doomed to failure. I want genre magazines which will challenge me. Which will encourage the up-and-coming and innovative authors of our genre.

And in these areas, Interzone is one of the most successful genre magazines around.