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Science Fiction: The Best of 2001
edited by Robert Silverberg and Karen
Haber
(ibooks, $7.99, paperback, 368 pages, February 2002; ISBN: 0743434986.)
Robert Silverberg once edited some of science fiction's  most
provocative anthologies. In the 1970s, he helmed New Dimensions, a series
that published stories that pushed the boundaries of the genre and explored
topical questions with intelligence and daring, testifying to the pertinence
and scope of science fiction. In the early 1990s, he and coeditor Karen
Haber took over the similar Universe series, continuing briefly that
tradition of literary and political engagement.
Now, Silverberg has become an agent of nostalgia. His monthly column
in Asimov's magazine is mostly a forum for reminiscing about
the fiction of his youth. For him, science fiction is no longer a potent
tool to deal with the present and the future, but rather an old-fashioned
idiom good for telling old-fashioned stories.
Compiled by Silverberg and Haber, Science Fiction: The Best of 2001
showcases this retrograde vision of science fiction, one that Silverberg
shares with many established editors, critics, and writers, who, like
Silverberg, have become interested less in what science fiction can
be and more in what it once was.
This "year's best" anthology gathers stories from only five sources,
all major American publications, resulting in a narrow and stilted view
of a field rich with smaller, and adventurous, specialty presses.
This book gives the impression that science fiction is written and
read almost exclusively by those who yearn for stories of a time gone
by. Sadly, for many influential people in the genre, that's what science
fiction is. They overlook, as does this book, most of what is still
exciting, vibrant, and cutting edge in science fiction. And so science
fiction becomes more nostalgic all the time, dying slowly by feeding
upon itself and by ignoring its own new voices and radical visions.
Originally published in The Montreal Gazette,
Saturday, 10 August 2002.
Claude Lalumière's Fantastic Fiction
is a series of
capsule reviews first published in the Saturday Books
section of The Montreal Gazette.
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Elsewhere on the web:
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