Missed it by that much

Lou Antonelli was kind enough to point out to me that once again my name is being taken in vain on the Asimov's message boards. Although my name isn't actually mentioned. One poster takes Gardner Dozois to task for not including any Interzone stories in his upcoming Year's Best Science Fiction anthology, and Gardner replies thusly:

You're wrong, Anders, there is a story from INTERZONE in my new Best, "The Sledge-Maker's Daughter," by Alastair Reynolds--and there were almost a couple of others. I came close to using Chris Roberson's "Metal Dragon Year," but finally decided that "The Sky is Large and the Earth is Small" edged it. I also considered using "The Last Voyage of La Raza."

First off, congrats to Chris Roberson for almost pulling off a double-play. "Metal Dragon Year" certainly deserved the consideration. That doesn't make me hate him any less for getting into the book while I'm left standing at the curb. I'm just saying.

The thread the above exchange took place on featured--a good bit higher up--that long-in-tooth debate on what constitutes SF vs. fantasy. Gardner made the point that he continues to keep his Year's Best series a SF-only affair. Although it'd be nicer to get the reprint (and accompanying check) I'm heartened to see that Gardner got what I was attempting to do with "The Finale Voyage of La Riaza." That makes him and Lois Tilton the only two to do so. Although there's no way in Hell that La Riaza would ever be accepted for publication in Analog, I tried to do fairly rigorous worldbuilding, keeping everything just this side of impossible. The whole "Cielo Mar" is based on the gas torus concept which Larry Niven used in his novels The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring (both of which I have on my bookshelf but have yet to read--from what I know, however, my worlds of Cibola are vastly different from Niven's creation). My work is most likely far less rigorously engineered out than Niven's. That's not my forté.

It was somewhat disappointing when some early readers made critiquing suggestions that more often involved magic than not. And more reviews than not described the airships featured in the story as magically flying galleons rather than the primitive dirigibles I'd tried very hard to convey. Of course, that's what the art conveyed, and visuals invariably trump the printed word. But still.

All in all, learning of Gardner's affection toward the story has given me new enthusiasm for "The Shoals of Cibola," the direct sequel to "La Riaza." I've actually written more on it since starting on the serialized Memory, and just the other night came up with a workable solution to prevent my protagonists from getting killed very convincingly by a situation I've written them into. It'll be interesting to see if readers continue to think "magic" as more of these stories find their way into print.


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