VECTOR 275 — SPRING 2014 VVectorector The critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association BEST OF 2013 ISSUE No. 275 Springpage 20141 £4.00 VECTOR 275 — SPRING 2014 Vector 275 The critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association ARTICLES Torque Control Editorial by Glyn Morgan ....................... 3 Vector http://vectoreditors.wordpress.com The BSFA Review: Best of 2013 Features, Editorial Glyn Morgan Compiled by Martin Petto ....................... 4 and Letters: 36 Stamford Street, Liverpool L7 2PT 2013 in SF Cinema [email protected] by David Hering ..................................... 12 Book Reviews: Martin Petto 27 Elmfield Road, 2013 in SF Television Walthamstow E17 7HJ [email protected] by Molly Cobb ....................................... 16 Production: Alex Bardy 2013 in Comics [email protected] by Laura Sneddon .................................. 19 British Science Fiction Association Ltd 2013 in SF Audio The BSFA was founded in 1958 and is a non-profitmaking by Tony Jones ......................................... 24 organisation entirely staffed by unpaid volunteers. Registered in England. Limited by guarantee. BSFA Website www.bsfa.co.uk RECURRENT Company No. 921500 Resonances: Stephen Baxter ................... 28 Registered address: 61 Ivycroft Road, Warton, Tamworth, Staffordshire B79 0JJ Foundation Favourites: Andy Sawyer ... 30 President Stephen Baxter Kincaid in Short: Paul Kincaid ................. 33 Vice President Jon Courtenay Grimwood Chair Donna Scott THE BSFA REVIEW [email protected] Inside The BSFA Review .................... 36 Treasurer Martin Potts Editorial by Martin Petto ................... 37 61 Ivy Croft Road, Warton, In this issue, Paul Kincaid gets lost in Nr. Tamworth B79 0JJ [email protected] Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Jim Steel enter- Membership Services Martin Potts (see above) tains The Fractal Prince therein, Cherith Baldry visits Phoenicia’s Worlds, Andy Sawyer has some Close Encounters of the MEMBERSHIP FEES Invasive Kind, and Tony Jones sings The UK £29 per annum (Unwaged: £20 pa) Life Membership £500 Ballad of Halo Jones. Dan Hartland then Outside UK £40 discovers The Lowest Heaven, where Joint/Family Membership Add £2 to the above prices Graham Andrews meets a few Gods & Cheques (Pounds Sterling only) should be made payable to ‘BSFA Ltd’ Monsters, Nial Harrison finds A History of and sent to Martin Potts at the address above, or join via the BSFA the Future in 100 Objects, but Martin website at www.bsfa.co.uk McGrath assures him The Rook isn’t one of them. And all the while Donna Scott is FOCUS: THE BSFA MAGAZINE FOR WRITERS Design Editor: Alex Bardy wandering free in Dream London... [email protected] BSFA AWARDS Administrator: Farah Mendlesohn Published by the BSFA Ltd © 2014 ….. ISSN 05050448 [email protected] All opinions expressed are those of the individual contributors ORBITER WRITING GROUPS and not BSFA Ltd except where expressly stated. Copyright of Online: Terry Jackman individual articles remains with the author. [email protected] page 2 VECTOR 275 — SPRING 2014 Torque Control o here I am, writing my first Torque Control, edit- latest selection of reviews. Our back cover is turned over to ing my first issue of Vector. It’s one of those mo- an “In Memoriam” dedicated to some of the genre figures S ments when you just have to pause and reflect on we’ve lost in 2013, we couldn’t include everyone we might how you got here; luckily the Best of 2013 issue is the have wanted to, but the page stands as a symbol of remem- perfect place for a certain amount of retrospection. brance to friends and colleagues. First off I want to say a big thank you to my predecessor It won’t have gone unnoticed that the BSFA Awards Shana Worthen for her time at the helm, and for the kind Booklet is also bundled with this issue, please take the words and advice she’s been offering me over the past few time to look through it and send in your votes for which- months. I really am honoured to be joining the great team ever categories you feel qualified to select between. This at the BSFA and Vector, and am well aware of the long line year has seen a lot of debate rage online about the merits of impressive names who have held this position before me. of awards, but I believe there is still a place for fan-voted Hopefully I’ll do you all proud. It’s my aim to continue the awards and the BSFA Awards rank in my mind as the great work done by Shana, but also to build upon it and most important of these to British SF. So please share enhance the journal to better reflect the ever-changing your opinions with us and the wider community. world of science fiction. — • — For now, however, let us dwell a little longer in the past. I have a particular affection for the “Best of…” issues, for the 2014 promises to be a bumper year for SF in Britain, not same reason that I hoard annual anthologies of the best least because Worldcon, the Olympic Games of Science short stories. It’s great to have someone take you to one Fiction, comes to London this Summer. Hopefully, Vector side and say “listen, I know you were busy this year but can go some way towards capturing something of the some great stuff came out that you might have missed.” zeitgeist and continue to provide fascinating, enlighten- Having this kind of service appeals to me because I spend ing articles that can be enjoyed by all of the BSFA mem- so much time sifting through older SF that I’m often sadly bership. With this in mind I welcome your feedback on slow on the uptake with contemporary material, but also this and all future issues, as well as ideas and suggestions because it reassures me of one of the things that makes SF for the future. New contributors are also invited to get in special: it’s a living breathing genre, constantly on the move, touch and submit articles for consideration. The email constantly adapting, evolving, being added to and enriched. address remains: [email protected]. And so we have the annual BSFA review, compiled by Martin Petto, presenting the highlights of 2013 as selected — • — by various contributors to Vector over the last 12 months. This is followed by four specially commissioned articles, How to end my first Torque Control? As a kid I read Marvel each reflecting on a facet of SF. The first, by David Hering, comics and loved Stan Lee’s editorials, as such I feel I dissects and analyses the cinema of the year, whilst in the should sign off with some sort of catchphrase to echo his second article Molly Cobb turns her focus to the small cry of “Excelsior”, but since no such phrase is forthcoming screen. Laura Sneddon presents her highlights of the past I’ll simply wish you all the best, see you next time. year’s comics and, last but not least, Tony Jones follows up on his article from last year’s issue and gives us an over- Glyn Morgan view of 2013 in audio. Each of the articles found room to Features Editor praise a piece of SF which wasn’t caught on my radar, and so editing them became an educational experience. I hope reading them will produce a similar reaction for you. The regular columns continue in this issue with Stephen Baxter exploring unmanned probes in popular SF, Andy Cover art by Dimitra Papadimitriou Sawyer presents a Foundation Favourite with a difference, and finally Paul Kincaid presents a short story by a neglect- “Requiem for a Dream” ed author who is worthy of far more significant attention. www.mimikascraftroom.com Rounding off the issue, Martin Petto presents the results of this year’s reviewer’s poll, in which are selected the best thought off novels of the year, before presenting us with the page 3 VECTOR 275 — SPRING 2014 The BSFA Review: Best of 2013 compiled by Martin Lewis Graham Andrews on The Primal Urge James Solent is the viewpoint character, an ordinary Silly Ass-type bloke, except for the “shining circle, three by Brian W Aldiss and a half centimetres in diameter, permanently fixed in the centre of his forehead. Made of a metal resembling he Primal Urge takes place in a future Britain stainless steel, its surface was slightly convex, so that it where forehead-implanted Emotion Registers re- gave a vague and distorted image of the world before it.” T act whenever a person is attracted to someone of His ER, in other words, which soon lights up like a dement- the opposite sex. These so-called “Norman Lights” (named ed pinball machine. after the British firm which invented them) enable the id The Primal Urge says more about neurotic late-Fifties/ to contact the libido without being intercepted by that early-Sixties Britain than some better-known novels such spoilsport ego. Hilarious consequences ensue. as Room At The Top by John Braine and Saturday Night And Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe. Ballantine’s original front-cover blurb has deservedly attained semi-classic status: “WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE BRITISH CAST OFF THEIR TRADITIONAL RESERVE.” Richard Powers con- tributed an equally classic cover painting, which probably did quite a lot to stimulate the jolly old sales figures. The Norman Lights apparently don’t register any emotions where same-sex attraction is concerned. Aldiss may have missed a prophetic bet there, but it isn’t too late for him to bring out a revised version. He might even collaborate with Stephen Fry, who is also a writer. Lynne Bispham on Great North Road by Peter F Hamilton or the last few years, I’ve tended to read more fan- tasy than science fiction but a trawl through the F books that other people had left behind in a holiday villa this summer brought me to Peter Hamilton’s Great North Road (2012), a sprawling epic of a space opera that encompasses an alien threat to humanity, a search for immortality, spaceships and a futuristic murder mystery in the city of Newcastle.