Meta-Anthology 2015

This year's Meta-Anthology is derived from Pushcart Prize XL, The Best American Short Stories 2015, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, and The Best American Mystery Stories 2015. I also bought a copy of The O. Henry Prize Stories 2015, but I noticed when I checked the copyright information for the stories that they had mostly been published in 2013, whereas the other collections contained stories from 2014, so to maintain some consistency I will not be including stories from that collection in this post. There are some further levels of analysis to be done on this selection, about which I may try to write later in the week.

Richard Bausch, "Map-Reading". From Pushcart Prize XL. First published in Virginia Quarterly Review.

A deft thought-experiment in how, especially in families, the things people do to protect themselves can inadvertently hurt others. For gay men of a certain age who thought the rainbow was enough.

Justin Bigos, "Fingerprints". From The Best American Short Stories 2015. First published in McSweeney's Quarterly 47.

Terrible fathers often make for good stories.

T. C. Boyle, "The Relive Box". From The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015. First published in The New Yorker, March 17, 2014.

I had already read this story, which was also included in the themed collection Press Start to Play. It was worth reliving, if only as a reminder of how good Boyle is at evoking the inattentive self-absorption of sad middle-aged white men (of which I am one).

Lee Child, "Wet with Rain". From The Best American Mystery Stories 2015. First published in Belfast Noir.

Evokes both the bleakness of place and the sangfroid of the international spy game with prose that is just the right kind of laconic.

Julia Elliott, "Bride". From The Best American Short Stories 2015. First published in Conjunctions 63.

The best passages effectively evoke medieval mystic manuscripts.

Scott Grand, "A Bottle of Scotch and a Sharp Buck Knife". From The Best American Mystery Stories 2015. First published in Thuglit 11.

What I found most compelling about this story was the simmering undercurrent of violence in the relationship between father and son: Though that is not the central axis of the action, the story would not have been possible without it.

Alaya Dawn Johnson, "A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i". From The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

I tend not to like vampire stories. Occasionally I make exceptions, such as when the implicit metaphor of the vampire as capitalist oppressor draining the blood of the working class is made explicit, but with well-turned rather than strident rhetoric. Marred slightly by the human characters acting like overgrown adolescents.

Arna Bontemps Hemenway, "The Fugue". From The Best American Short Stories 2015. First published in Alaska Quarterly Review Vol. 31, No. 1 & 2

This might be the best "Iraq veteran with an obscure neurological illness" story published in the year 2014. I like it almost as much as my "Afghanistan veteran with an obscure neurological illness" story published in the year 2014, "The Jumping Frenchmen of Maine".

Janette Turner Hospital, "Afterlife of a Stolen Child". From The Best American Mystery Stories 2015. First published Georgia Review, vol. LXVIII, no. 3.

The most effective deceptions begin with self-deception. Mesh them together, and everyone is satisfied with the new consensual reality, except the dead child.

Richard Lange, "Apocrypha". From The Best American Mystery Stories 2015. First published in Bull Men's Fiction, Bull #4.

I had already read this in Lange's new collection, which was one of my favorite books of last year. This was not among the best stories in that collection, but it was very good and held up to a re-read. The narrator's voice is near-perfect.

Victor Lodato, "Jack, July". From The Best American Short Stories 2015. First published in The New Yorker, September 22, 2014.

I loved this story when it first came out, and I still love it--unfolds new mind crevices upon re-reading.

Elizabeth McCracken, "Thunderstruck". From The Best American Short Stories 2015. First published in StoryQuarterly 46/47.

I think this is my third time reading the story--when it first appeared, then again in the short story collection that McCracken named after it, and now in the anthology. Each time I find a new sentence or paragraph to be amazed by. Puts me in mind of one of my favorite Carver stories, "The Bath," which was much improved by Gordon Lish cutting it to hell. It's as if McCracken found a better way to continue that story than either Carver or Lish were capable of imagining.

Maile Meloy, "Madame Lazarus". From The Best American Short Stories 2015. First published in The New Yorker, June 23, 2014.

An aging gay man's love for his dying dog uncovers his uncertainty about his present relationship, his feelings about his own advancing years, and his regrets about past loves.

Sam J. Miller, "We Are the Cloud". From The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015. First published at Lightspeed Magazine.

What is better than Marxist cyberpunk? Gay intersectional Marxist cyberpunk with hot sex, snappy dialogue, and sentences that imply worlds within worlds.

Susan Palwick, "Windows". From The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015. First published in Asimov's.

I don't want to believe that continued drug prohibition could coincide temporally with a generational starship, but worse futures that at some point would have seemed improbable have already come to pass.

Lilliam Rivera, "Death Defiant Bomba or What to Wear When Your Boo Gets Cancer". From Pushcart Prize XL. First published in Bellevue Literary Review.

Read it and then ask yourself, would you wear the red dress?

Karen Russell, "The Bad Graft". From The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015. First published in The New Yorker, June 9, 2014.

Great sentence after great sentence, building one upon the other into paragraphs, narrative arcs, and elucidating digressions that will leave you rooted in place.

Sofia Samatar, "Ogres of East Africa". From The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015. First published in Long Hidden.

Against the bestiality of colonialism, an esoteric bestiary gathers strength.

Zadie Smith, "Miss Adele Amidst the Corsets". From Pushcart Prize XL. First published in The Paris Review.

Sometimes microaggressions make you want to aggress right back. Smith evokes the tension and pace of life in New York City, reminding me both of why I left, and that I need a new corset.

Frederic Tuten, "Winter, 1965". From Pushcart Prize XL. First published in Bomb.

We all know that guy, the guy who reads only fictions more recondite and experimental than he has the talent to emulate, who finds his fantasies of other people, women especially, more satisfying than his actual interactions with them, and who is helpless as a newborn when it comes to business end of his writing "vocation." At my worst, I am that guy.

Jo Walton, "Sleeper". From The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015. First published at Tor.com.

Marxist cyberpunk, but also a meditation on how secrets work and the frustrating necessity of refighting old battles, with a bit of philosophizing on interpersonal relationships sneaking in between the cracks.