Are there too many speculative fiction year’s best? In
my opinion, they are not. And although once in a while the quality of the
selections is questioned I found the ones I read constantly each year at the
highest levels. Their efforts of promoting short fiction and bringing into the
attention of the readers some of the best voices of speculative fiction is
nothing but praiseworthy and as long as we would not have an invasion of such
year’s best anthologies I will continue to read them with interest and delight.
Even more so after such titles started to expend worldwide with the apparition
of “The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy
& Horror” in 2011 and “Imaginarium:
The Best Canadian Speculative Writing” last year. After I signaled the third edition of “The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror”, due to be
released this year, it gives great pleasure to see the second edition of
“Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing” coming out on July 15th
and the publication of the first “The Best British Fantasy” by Salt Publishing. And with the likes of Amal El-Mohtar, Gemma Files, Cate Gardner,
Lisa Hannett, Carole Johnstone, Helen
Marshall, Alison Littlewood, Angela Slatter, Simon Bestwick, Michael
Kelly, Mark Morris and Adam Nevill on their line-ups both promise
plenty of excellent things. However, more good news come our way from Salt Publishing, it seems that they will not
only release a series of year’s best British fantasy, but also starting from
next year a series of yearly “Best British Horror” too, edited by Johnny Mains.
With so many great speculative fiction year’s best collections I only hope that
soon the Romanian SF, fantasy and horror would see the publication of a similar
yearly anthology. It will certainly do the local readers and writers a lot of
good. And why not, one such year’s best for the global speculative fiction too.
From the post-apocalyptic American West to the rural
terror in New Zealand, this major anthology has evil spirits, bin-Laden style
assassinations, steampunk, sexual dysfunction, a twisted version of Peter Pan,
the folklore of standing stones, mermaids, alien tour guides, zombies, gruesome
beasts, voice-controlled police states, environmental disasters and off world
penal colonies. Unmissable.
“Introduction” by Steve Haynes
“Lips and Teeth” by Jon Wallace
“The Last Osama” by Lavie Tidhar
“Armageddon Fish Pie” by Joseph D’Lacey
“The Complex” by E.J. Swift
“God of the Gaps” by Carole Johnstone
“Corset Wings” by Cheryl Moore
“The Wheel of Fortune” by Steph Swainston
“The Island of Peter Pandora” by Kim Lakin-Smith
“Too Delicate for Human Form” by Cate Gardner
“Imogen” by Sam Stone
“In the Quiet and in the Dark” by Alison Littlewood
“The Scariest Place in the World” by Mark Morris
“Qiqirn” by Simon Kurt Unsworth
“The Third Person” by Lisa Tuttle
“Dermot” by Simon Bestwick
“Fearful Symmetry” by Tyler Keevil
“Pig
Thing” by Adam L.G. Nevill
Imaginarium 2013: The Best Canadian Speculative
Writing is a reprint anthology published annually by ChiZine Publications,
collecting speculative short fiction and poetry (science fiction, fantasy,
horror, magic realism, etc.) that represents the best work produced by Canadian
writers.
Canadian speculative fiction has been increasingly
recognized internationally for the calibre of its authors and their insight
into the nature of social and religious identities, the implications of new
technologies, and the relationship between humankind and its environments. We
use the term “speculative fiction” in order to free ourselves from the
associations of terms like “science fiction,” “horror,” and “fantasy.” At their
best, these stories disrupt habits, overcome barriers of cultural perception to
make the familiar strange through the use of speculative elements such as magic
and technology. They provide glimpses of alternate realities and possible
futures and pasts that provoke an ethical, social, political, environmental and
biological inquiry into what it means to be human.
“Blink” by Michael Kelly
“Nightfall in the Scent
Garden” by Claire Humphrey
“The Ghosts of Birds” by
Helen Marshall
“The Last Love of the
Infinity Age” by Peter Darbyshire
“Too Much is Never Enough”
by Don Bassingthwaite
“Bigfoot Cured My
Arthritis” by Robert Colman
“Wing” by Amal El-Mohtar
“Arrow” by Barry King
“Penny” by Dominik Parisien
“Thought and Memory” by
Catherine Knutsson
“Gaudifingers” by Tony
Burgess
“A sea monster tells his
story” by David Livingstone Clink
“Son of Abish” by Dave
Duncan
“Opt-In” by J.W. Schnarr
“Last Amphibian Flees” by
M.A.C. Farrant
“White Teeth” by David
Livingstone Clink
“The Sweet Spot” by A.M.
Dellamonica
“Verse Found Scratched
Inside the Lid of a Sarcophagus (Dynasty Unknown)” by Gemma Files
“Collect Call” by Silvia
Moreno-Garcia
“Bella Beaufort Goes to
War” by Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter
“A Spell for Scrying Mirror
Gremlins” by Peter Chiykowski
“The Book of Judgement” by
Helen Marshall
“The Audit” by Susie
Moloney
“Sixteen Colours” by David
Livingstone Clink
“The Old Boys Club” by
Geoff Gander
“Fin de Siècle” by Gemma
Files
“Since Breaking Through the
Ice” by Dominik Parisien
“The Pack” by Matt Moore
“Invocabulary” by Gemma
Files
“I Was a Teenage Minotaur”
by A.G. Pasquella
“Weep For Day” by
Indrapramit Das
“What I Learned at Genie
School” by Jocko Benoit
“Aces” by Ian Rogers
“No Poisoned Comb” by Amal El-Mohtar
“What a Picture Doesn’t
Say” by Christopher Willard
“The
Last Islander” by Matthew Johnson
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