# 2009 BSFA Short Fiction award



## Anthony G Williams (May 10, 2010)

The British Science Fiction Association presents annual awards to the best in four categories (Novel, Short Fiction, Artwork and Non-Fiction) as determined by the votes of the members. The six stories in the Short Fiction category were included in a booklet sent out to members. By the time I worked my way to it through my ever-growing pile of reading material I was (as usual) too late to vote, but this is my take on them anyway. Two of them had previously been published in Interzone magazine so have already been mentioned in this blog, but I'll paste my comments in here to save you searching for them:

*Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast *by Eugie Foster  (first published in _Interzone 220_): a fantasy in which everyone wears a mask in public – a mask which determines their personalities and the events they are involved in. It is illegal to be seen in public without one, so every morning people have to choose which identity to adopt from their varied collections of masks.  But there are some who reject the idea and try to develop their own independent personalities.

*Johnny and Emmy-Lou Get Married* by Kim Lakin-Smith (first published in _Interzone 222_): 1950s-style romance across the boundaries of futuristic US gangs, the Rocketeers and the Flies.

*The Push* by Dave Hutchinson (first published in _The Push,_ Newcon Press): a long short story about planetary colonisation. One of the original founders of a colony on a distant planet returns several centuries later (although only a few years for him as the result of the temporal effects of the FTL space travel technology) to discover that a previously non-sentient native race had suddenly acquired intelligence - and that meant trouble.

*Vishnu at the Cat Circus* (extract) by Ian McDonald (first published in _Cyberabad Days_, Gollancz): set in a future fragmented India, the ancient genetically-enhanced owner of a circus of performing cats tells the story of his early life.

*The Beloved Time of their Lives* by Ian Watson & Roberto Quaglia (first published in _The Beloved Of My Beloved_, Newcon Press): Two lovers keep meeting, the man growing steadily older as he works his way back though time to keep meeting his ever-younger lover.

*The Assistant* by Ian Whates (first published in _The Solaris Book of Science Fiction, Volume 3_): the cleaning squad enters the office building for their night job, but it involves a lot more than just physical cleaning; there are cyber attacks and infiltration by mini robots to deal with too.

I couldn't really evaluate Ian MacDonald's extract as it is abruptly cut short before it gets anywhere, and makes no sense by itself with a complete disconnect between the protagonist's early and late lives. For inventive and original fantasy I would choose Eugie Foster's story, but being a sucker for traditional SF my personal favourite was Dave Hutchinson's tale; it could have been written at any time in the past few decades but is none the worse for that.

PS Having written the above, I checked the BSFA site and found that the Watson/Quaglia story had won the award. I found that one a bit irritating because of the way in which the meetings were curtailed because the couple kept making the same mistake.

(An extract from my SFF blog)


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