The One Constant in Life

When starting a new tradition - and I sincerely hope this inaugural volume of The Best of British Fantasy becomes one - the respectful thing to do is study what came before. And then promptly do the opposite.

In the case of the “year’s best” subgenre, introductions tend to take one of two forms. The first approach is that of the annual overview. The editor heroically attempts to catalogue all things related to the genre that occurred in the calendar year. Some of these introductions can run into the hundreds of pages: an annual index of trend-spotting that captures publications, movies, comics, awards, theatre, and beyond.

I suspect the reasoning behind this approach stems from the sub-genre’s distant origins – that is, “before the internet”. It is flattering to be part of a tradition this ancient, but, in 2019, I think these details are best captured elsewhere. There are a host of formal and informal resources that capture this data for posterity far better than I ever could.

The second approach found in “year’s best” volumes is the imposition of thematic consistency. The editor stares at the year’s fantasy outputs until the void stares back - and then helpfully whispers a single, unifying truth. Future readers then learn that 2018 was entirely about the apocalypse. Or nostalgia. Or any other themes that could, with the appropriate amount of pruning or plumping, define the historical record. As a fan of brutal simplicity - and of sweeping statements - I can appreciate this approach.

However, as much as I admire the ambition, I’m not comfortable with how the thematic approach deceives when it comes to chronology. All of the stories enclosed in this volume, for example, were definitely published in 2018. They were not all written in 2018. Some were written and published that same day: the miracle of self-publishing. Others were written in the interminable past, then sent forth to run the submissions gauntlet: the vagaries of traditional publishing. Some were inspired years before being written; some were constructed on the spot in workshops. Nor can we even ascribe “publisher intent”. The websites, anthologies and magazines that published these stories all began their own selection and publication processes at various times.

As much as I would love to declare 2018 to be the year of the apocalypse, nostalgia, or anxiety, that would be a false imposition not only of my own perspective, but of what even constituted “2018”.

What unites both approaches - the fact-collecting and the theme-building - is the sense of writing for posterity. These are introductions not for readers in 2018 (or even 2019), but in 2028, 2038, and beyond. They are attempts to provide valuable context for future readers of the collection. To explain not only that these are the best stories of the year, but to provide a ‘why’: what it is about the stories that makes them so very 2018ish.

But if the ‘facts’ are best provided elsewhere, and the ‘theme’ is chronologically suspect, what else is there?

Only the most important thing of all: the reader.

Whenever they were written, commissioned or conceived, all of these stories were first read in 2018. The reader is therefore the ultimate context. Who are the people who read these stories? And how would the stories have reflected their attitudes, or their perceptions?