Ellen Datlow -- Best Literature Picks of 2007

I don’t get to read many novels during the year, as I’m usually too busy reading short stories for The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror but these are the novels I did get to and loved:

The Terror by Dan Simmons (Little, Brown) is a brilliant, suspenseful novel about the doomed 1840s Franklin expedition to the Arctic that truly brings to life what it must have been like in that cold cold place. Injected into this great adventure is a major supernatural element as "something" is ambushing and slaughtering men from the two ships. There are human monsters too, and heroes. Highly recommended.

Spook Country by William Gibson (Putnam) is not horrific, but there’s a dark undercurrent of paranoia threaded throughout this tense and satisfying, overtly political “caper” novel. It’s a perfect successor to Pattern Recognition. A former rocker, now a journalist is on assignment for a magazine that doesn’t yet exist, a pill popping break-in wizard is stuck with a paranoid secret ops loony, and a young Cuban is involved in mysterious information transfers. And they’re all converging on a huge shipping container with a mysterious something inside. This all makes for splendid entertainment.

The Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliott (ABC Books 2006) is a nightmarish story about an aimless young Australian who’s warned by a bunch of wayward clowns that his audition is imminent –whoa! Who said he even wanted to be a clown? But it’s down the rabbit hole for him, into a carnival existing in an alternate universe and run by a pair of sadistic brothers who answer to creatures even more monstrous than themselves…and no one –not even the customers, can leave the show intact.

Bangkok Haunts by John Burdett (Knopf) is the third in the remarkable series of mysteries featuring the Thai Police detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep. The novel begins with the detective viewing what is apparently a snuff film, the victim being a former lover with whom he was (and still is) obsessed. The story initially seems pretty straightforward but as with the two earlier novels, it becomes richer and more complex ultimately twisting into web of cruelty, vengeance, mysticism, and magic.

The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes (Victor Gollancz) is an entertaining tale about a conspiracy afoot in Victorian England and the stage conjuror who is called up on to save the threatened city of London. The utterly unreliable narrator, the tall, silent titular character, and a cast of the grotesque makes for magical, bloody fun.

Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand (Small Beer) is the author’s first foray into the psychological suspense thriller and it’s a doozy. Cass (Scary) Neary is a prickly, pill popping protagonist best known for the photographs of dead people she took during the punk scene. Now she’s on an assignment/pilgrimage to backwoods Maine to interview the reclusive photographer who so strongly influenced her own work. What ensues is engrossing and horrifying.

Remainder by Tom McCarthy (Vintage) is a first novel about a man who received an 8 ½ million pound sterling settlement for an accident in which he almost died. The reader never finds out what actually happened but upon the guy’s recovery, he becomes convinced that he has lost his connection to the world and that the only way he can recover is to recreate a specific living condition that he remembers. Hiring a facilitator, he does this by buying up property and peopling it with hirelings who will follow a specific script that he supplies—on call to his every whim. The pianist upstairs must practice a specific piece of music and when he makes mistakes, he has to practice over and over again. The concierge must stand by the door all day –in a mask—as the employer doesn’t remember the actual face of the original concierge. Black cats must roam the red slate roof across the way. His fraying mind demands that he re-enact scenes that he has viewed in life and his wealth makes it possible to do so. The end result is inevitable—monstrous, terrifying, and in a way funny.

Fangland by John Marks (Penguin) is a surprisingly original vampire novel about a young associate producer sent to Transylvania to vet a mysterious crime lord for an interview on The Hour (modeled on 60 Minutes, Marks’ former workplace), a major newsmagazine show in New York. The crime lord, actually a vampiric creature who infects victims with the voices of humans killed in atrocities throughout history uses the woman’s connections to worm his way onto the twentieth floor of The Hour—dubbed “fangland” by its denizens. Every time the reader thinks she knows where the story is going, it takes a neat half turn away from the obvious.

Stalin’s Ghost by Martin Cruz Smith (Simon & Schuster) brings back Arkady Renko, the Moscow detective first introduced by Smith in Gorky Park. Since then, Renko has returned in novels several times since, including the Chernobyl novel Wolves Eat Dogs. In the new book, the ghost of Stalin appears to a subway car full of Muscovites, starting a chain of events that lead to political chicanery, death, revisiting past atrocities in Chechnya, and some nicely done plot twists.

Single author collections:

The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron (Night Shade Books) is probably the most eagerly anticipated debut horror collection of 2007 and it’s one of the best of the year. Barron’s a stylist who creates believable and flawed characters, and his short fiction (usually novellas or long novelettes) often delves into Lovecraftian depths and brings up new takes on very old monsters. The eight reprints and one original novella are completely engrossing. Three of the stories were reprinted in earlier volumes of YBFH and two others would have been if they’d been shorter. A special nod to the jacket artist and designer respectively: Eleni Tsami and Claudia Noble.

No Further Messages by Brett Alexander Savory (Delirium Books) demonstrates the maturation of a fine writer whose short fiction keep getting better and better. Three of the twenty-one stories are original to the collection and one was reprinted in YBFH#20. It is Book 9 in the Delirium Exclusive series. The good-looking jacket art is by Michael Gibbs.

Masques of Satan by Reggie Oliver (Ash-Tree Press) is the author’s third excellent collection, comprised of twelve supernatural stories and a novella, five previously published (all but one, during 2007). Oliver’s experience as an actor, producer, playwright, and theater director shows in several of the stories as he delves behind the bright lights and camaraderie of theatrical life. The jacket art and interior illustrations are all by the author.

I’m still reading and rereading for YBFH so haven’t my whole list of great short stories yet but I can highly recommend Lisa Tuttle’s “Closet Dreams,” (from Postscripts 10), M. Rickert’s “Holiday” (from the Datlow edited Subterreanean #7), William Browning Spencer’s “The Tenth Muse” (from Subterranean #6), Elizabeth Hand’s “Winter’s Wife” (from Wizards), Donald Mead’s A Thing Forbidden” (F&SF April, Nathan Ballingrud’s “The Monsters of Heaven” (Inferno), and Joyce Carol Oates’ “Valentine, July Heat Wave” (EQMM March/April).

There are about twenty more stories/novelettes that I’m trying my damnedest to choose among to include and it’s a very touch choice.