Year's Best SF 17

Pleasantville, NY

The Best Science Fiction of the Year Three KEN MACLEOD

Ken MacLeod (Kenmacleod.blogspot.com) was born in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland, on August 2, 1954. He is married with two grown-up children and lives in West Lothian. He has an Honours and Masters degree in biological subjects and worked for some years in the IT industry. Since 1997 he has been a full-time writer, and in 2009 was Writer in Residence at the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum at Edinburgh University. He is the author of thirteen novels, from The Star Fraction (1995) to Intrusion (2012), and many articles and short stories. His collection, Giant Lizards from Another Star, was published in 2006. His novels and stories have received three BSFA awards and three Prometheus Awards, and several have been short-listed for the Clarke and Hugo Awards.

“The Best Science Fiction of the Year Three” was first published in Solaris Rising: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction, edited by Ian Whates, who had a particularly good year as an editor of anthologies in 2011. It is a model of SF plotting, and we feel that in it MacLeod engages both with the current state of the world and with the current state of science fiction in a gripping and entertaining fashion. So we chose to put it first in this book.

In the Year Three, l’année trois as it’s called here, there are three kinds of Americans living in Paris: the old expats, the new émigrés, and the spooks. And then there are the tourists, who’ve travelled via Dublin, their passports unstamped at Shannon. You can find them all at Shakespeare and Co.; or they can find you.

I was browsing the bargain boxes for SF paperbacks when I noticed that the guy at my elbow wasn’t going away. At a sideways glance I identified him as a tourist—something in the skin texture, the clothes, the expression. He looked back at me, and we both did a double take.

“Bob!” I said, sticking out my hand. “Haven’t seen you since—when?”

“The London Worldcon,” said Bob, shaking my hand. “God, that’s … a long time.”

“How are you doing?”

“Fine, fine. You know how it is.”

I nodded. Yes, I knew how it was.

“What brings you here?” I asked.

“Business,” said Bob. He smiled wryly. “Yet another SF anthology. The angle this time is that it features stories from American writers in exile. So I’m systematically approaching the ones I know, trying to track down those I don’t have a contact for, and commissioning. The deal’s already set up with Editions Jules Verne—the anthology will be published here, in English. In the US it’ll be available on Amazon. That way, I can get around all the censorship problems. It’s not so bad you can’t read what you like, but publishing what you like is more of a problem.”

“So bad you had to come here just to contact the writers?”

“That’s right. Trying to set this up online from inside the US might be … well. Let’s just say I didn’t want to take the chance.”

“Jeez,” I said. “That bad.”

I looked back down at the books and saw that my forefinger had landed, as if guided by an invisible hand, on the spine of a J. Neil Schulman paperback. I tugged out Alongside Night.

“Well,” I said, “I’ve found what I’m looking for. You?”

Bob shrugged. “Just browsing,” he said. “Fancy a coffee?”

“Sure.”

I nipped inside, paid a euro for the book, and rejoined Bob outside in the chilly February afternoon. He stood gazing across the Seine at Notre-Dame.

“Hard to believe I’m actually looking at it,” he said. He blinked and shook his head. “Where to?”

I indicated left. “Couple of hundred metres, nice traditional place.”