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According to the newsmagazine Locus, there were 2,625 books “of interest to the SF field” published in 2015, up 7 percent from 2,459 titles in 2014, the first rise in overall books published in three years. New titles were up 4 percent to 1,820 from 2014’s 1,750, while reprints also rose by 14 percent to 805 from 2014’s 709. Hardcover sales rose by 7 percent to 849 from 2014’s 799; the number of trade paperbacks rose even more significantly, up 17 percent to 1,343 from 2014’s 1,149. Mass-market paperbacks, the format facing the most competition from e-books, continued to drop, down 15 percent, to 433 from 2014’s 511. The number of new SF novels was up to 396 titles from 2014’s 367 titles, with 95 of those titles being YA SF novels. The number of new fantasy novels climbed to 682 titles from 2014’s 620 titles, with 225 of those titles being YA fantasy novels. Horror novels were down slightly to 183 titles from 2014’s 187 titles. Paranormal romances continued to slide, down to 111 titles from 2014’s 148 titles.
This is an enormous number of books, far more than the entire combined total of genre titles only a few decades back. And these totals don’t count many e-books, media tie-in novels, gaming novels, novelizations of genre movies, print-on-demand books, or self-published novels—all of which would swell the overall total by hundreds if counted.
As usual, busy with all the reading I have to do at shorter lengths, I didn’t have time to read many novels myself this year, so I’ll limit myself to mentioning those novels that received a lot of attention and acclaim in 2015.
Luna: New Moon (Tor), by Ian McDonald; The House of Shattered Wings (Roc), by Aliette de Bodard; Something Coming Through (Gollancz), by Paul McAuley; The Water Knife (Knopf), by Paolo Bacigalupi; Aurora (Orbit), by Kim Stanley Robinson; Ancillary Mercy (Orbit), by Ann Leckie; Chasing the Phoenix (Tor), by Michael Swanwick; Tracker (DAW), by C. J. Cherryh; Karen Memory (Tor), by Elizabeth Bear; Half a War (Del Rey), by Joe Abercrombie; The Dark Forest (Tor), by Cixin Liu; The End of All Things (Tor), by John Scalzi; Nemesis Games (Orbit), by James S. A. Corey; The Affinities (Tor), by Robert Charles Wilson; Uprooted (Del Rey), by Naomi Novik; Harrison Squared (Tor), by Daryl Gregory; The Book of Phoenix (DAW), by Nnedi Okorafor; The Just City (Tor), by Jo Walton; The Philosopher Kings (Tor), by Jo Walton; Finches of Mars (Open Road), by Brian W. Aldiss; Fool’s Quest (Del Rey), by Robin Hobb; The Annihilation Score (Ace), by Charles Stross; Pacific Fire (Tor), by Greg van Eekhout; A Borrowed Man (Tor), by Gene Wolfe; Dark Orbit (Tor), by Carolyn Ives Gilman; U Where (Tor), by Kit Reed; The Flicker Men (Henry Holt and Co.), by Ted Kosmatka; Corsair (Tor), by James L. Cambias; Finders Keepers (Scribner), by Stephen King; and the last Discworld novel, The Shepherd’s Crown (Harper), by Terry Pratchett.
In the face of continued rumblings about how the shelf space for science fiction is on the decline, let me mention that in the list just given that the McDonald, the McAuley, the Robinson, the Leckie, the Cherryh, the Liu, the Corey, the Wilson, and many others are not only SF, but rather hard SF at that.
Small presses are active in the novel market these days, where once they published mostly collections and anthologies. Novels by established authors issued by small presses this year included: Savages (Subterranean), by K. J. Parker; Dark Intelligence (Night Shade Books), by Neal Asher; Wylding Hall (PS Publishing), by Elizabeth Hand; Persona (Saga), by Genevieve Valentine; and Cracking the Sky (Fairwood Press), by Brenda Cooper.
The year’s first novels included: The Grace of Kings (Saga), by Ken Liu; Archangel (Arche Press), by Marguerite Reed; Updraft (Tor), by Fran Wilde; Clash of Eagles (Ballantine/Del Rey), by Alan Smale; Battlemage (Orbit), by Stephen Aryan; Sorcerer to the Crown (Ace), by Zen Cho; Flesh and Wires (Aqueduct), by Jackie Hatton; Inherit the Stars (Roc), by Tony Peak; The Diabolical Miss Hyde (Harper Voyager), by Viola Carr; Y Negative (Riptide), by Kelly Haworth; Solomon’s Arrow (Skyhorse/Talos Press), by J. Dalton Jennings; The Traitor Baru Cormorant (Tor), by Seth Dickinson; Mystic (Tor), by Jason Denzel; Gideon (Harper Voyager), by Alex Gordon; The Weave (Aqueduct), by Nancy Jane Moore; Half-Resurrection Blues (Roc), by Daniel José Older; The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (Bloomsbury), by Natasha Pulley; The Promise of the Child (Skyhorse/Night Shade), by Tom Toner; RAM-2050 (Kauai Institure), by Joan Roughgarden; Windswept (Angry Robot), by Adam Rakunas; Sunset Mantle (Tor), by Alter S. Reiss; The Night Clock (Solaris), by Paul Meloy; The Shards of Heaven (Tor), by Michael Livingston; Last Song Before Night (Tor), by Ilana C. Myer; Signal to Noise (Solaris), by Silvia Moreno-Garcia; Vermilion (Word Horde), by Molly Tanzer; Abomination (Inkshares), by Gary Whitta; A Crucible of Souls (Harper Voyager), by Mitchell Hogan; Finn Fancy Necromancy (Tor), by Randy Henderson; Apocalypse Now Now (Titan), by Charlie Human; The Pilots of Borealis (Skyhorse/Talos Press), by David Nabhan; The King of the Cracksmen (Skyhorse/Night Shade Books), by Dennis O’Flaherty; The Buried Life (Angry Robot), by Carrie Patel; Marked (Quercus/Jo Fletcher), by Sue Tingey; and The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps (Tor), by Kai Ashante Wilson. No first novel dominated the category in the clear and unequivocal way that Andy Weir’s The Martian did last year, but Ken Liu’s The Grace of Kings probably attracted the most attention, although the Reed, the Wilde, and the Smale got a fair number of reviews as well.
There were far fewer novel omnibuses available this year than last year, when Orion unleashed an unprecedented flood with its SF Gateway program. Novel omnibuses that were available this year, though, included A, B, C: Three Short Novels (Vintage), by Samuel R. Delany; Gateway to Never (Baen), by A. Bertram Chandler; and Confluence—The Trilogy (Orion/Gollancz), by Paul J. McAuley.
Novel omnibuses are also frequently made available through the Science Fiction Book Club.
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Not even counting print-on-demand books and the availability of out-of-print books as e-books or as electronic downloads from Internet sources, a lot of long out-of-print stuff has come back into print in the last couple of years in commercial trade editions. Here’s some out-of-print titles that came back into print this year, although producing a definitive list of reissued novels is probably impossible.
In addition to the novel omnibuses already mentioned, Orion/Gollancz reissued Windhaven, by George R. R. Martin and Lisa Tutttle, and The Disposessed, by Ursula K. Le Guin; Gollancz reissued Downward to the Earth, by Robert Silverberg; Tor reissued The Edge of Reason, by Melinda Snodgrass, Kushiel’s Dart, by Jacqueline Carey, Eon, by Greg Bear, and Jewel and Amulet, by Michael Moorcock; Skyhorse/Night Shade Books reissued The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi, and Diaspora, Distress, Schild’s Ladder, and Teranesia, all by Greg Egan; Fairwood Press reissued A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire, by Michael Bishop; Aqueduct Press reissued Daughter of the Bear King, by Eleanor Arnason; Penguin Classics reissued Perchance to Dream, by Charles Beaumont; Little, Brown reissued Seven Wild Sisters, by Charles de Lint; Simon & Schuster reissued Dragonsinger, by Anne McCaffrey; Bloomsbury reissued Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: Illustrated Edition, by J. K. Rowling; Ace reissued The Hercules Text, by Jack McDevitt; Titan reissued The Bull and the Spear, The King of the Swords, The Sword and the Stallion, and The Night Mayor, all by Michael Moorcock; DAW reissued The Birthgrave, by Tanith Lee; Valancourt Books reissued The Brains of Rats, by Michael Blumlein.
Many authors are now reissuing their old back titles as e-books, either through a publisher or all by themselves, so many that it’s impossible to keep track of them all here. Before you conclude that something from an author’s backlist is unavailable, though, check with the Kindle and Nook stores, and with other online vendors.
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2015 was another good year for short-story collections.
The year’s best collections included: The Best of Nancy Kress (Subterranean), by Nancy Kress; Frost on Glass (PS Publishing), by Ian R. MacLeod; The Best of Alastair Reynolds (Subterrranean), by Alastair Reynolds; The Best of Gregory Benford (Subterranean), by Gregory Benford, edited by David G. Hartwell; A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (Bantam), by George R. R. Martin; Get in Trouble: Stories (R
andom House), by Kelly Link; Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances (William Morrow), by Neil Gaiman; The Very Best of Kate Elliott (Tachyon), by Kate Elliott; Romance on Four Worlds: A Casanova Quartet (Fantastic Books), by Tom Purdom; Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan, Volume 2 (Subterranean), by Caitlín R. Kiernan; The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (Scribner), by Stephen King; and To Hold the Bridge (HarperCollins), by Garth Nix.
Also good were: Ghost Summer: Stories (Prime), by Tananarive Due; A Palazzo in the Stars (Wildside Press), by Paul Di Filippo; We Install and Other Stories (Open Road), by Harry Turtledove; Three Moments of an Explosion (Ballantine Del Rey), by China Miéville; Falling in Love with Hominids (Tachyon), by Nalo Hopkinson; The End of the End of Everything (Arche Press), by Dale Bailey; Led Astray: The Best of Kelly Armstrong (Tachyon), by Kelly Armstrong; Tales from the Nightside (Ace), by Simon R. Green; Reality by Other Means: The Best Short Fiction of James Morrow (Wesleyan University Press), by James Morrow; Cracking the Sky (Fairwood Press), by Brenda Cooper; Word Puppets, (Prime), by Mary Robinette Kowal; Blue Yonders, Grateful Pies, and Other Fanciful Feasts (Fairwood Press), by Ken Scholes; and You Have Never Been Here: New and Selected Stories (Small Beer Press), by Mary Rickert.
Career-spanning retrospective collections this year included: Grand Crusades: The Early Jack Vance, Volume Five (Subterranean), by Jack Vance, edited by Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan; The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s (Part 2) (Harper Voyager), by Brian W. Aldiss; I Am Crying All Inside and Other Stories: The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak, Volume 1 (Open Road), by Clifford D. Simak; The Man with the Aura: The Collected Short Fiction, Volume Two (Centipede Press), by R. A. Lafferty; Dancing Through the Fire (Fantastic Books), by Tanith Lee; Tales from High Hallack: The Collected Short Stories of Andre Norton, Volume Three (Open Road), by Andre Norton; Gateway to Never (Baen), by A. Bertram Chandler; A Blink of the Screen: Collected Shorter Fiction (Random House), by Terry Pratchett; Dragons at Crumbling Castle (Hougton Mifflin Harcourt), by Terry Pratchett; The Essential W. P. Kinsella (Tachyon), by W. P. Kinsella; Can & Can’takerous (Subterranean), by Harlan Ellison; H. P. Lovecraft’s Collected Fiction: A Variorum Edition (Hippocampus Press), by H. P. Lovecraft, edited by S. T. Joshi; Working for Bigfoot (Subterranean), by Jim Butcher; Fathoms (Resurrection House), by Jack Cady; and Let Me Tell You: New Stories, Essays, and Other Writings (Random House), by Shirley Jackson.
As usual, small presses dominated the list of short-story collections, with trade collections having become rare.
A wide variety of “electronic collections,” often called “fiction bundles,” too many to individually list here, are also available for downloading online, at many sites. The Science Fiction Book Club continues to issue new collections as well.
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As usual, the most reliable buys in the reprint anthology market are the various best of the year anthologies, the number of which continues to fluctuate. We lost one series in 2014, with the death of David G. Hartwell’s Year’s Best SF series (Tor), which ceased publication after eighteen volumes—but we gained several new series in 2015, with the addition of: The Year’s Best Military SF and Space Opera (Baen), edited by David Afsharirad; The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novellas: 2015 (Prime Books), edited by Paula Guran; and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), this volume edited by Joe Hill, with the overall series editor being John Joseph Adams. These join the established best of the year series: the one you are reading at the moment, The Year’s Best Science Fiction from St. Martin’s Press, edited by Gardner Dozois, now up to its thirty-third annual collection; The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine (Solaris), edited by Jonathan Strahan; The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: 2015 Edition (Prime Books), edited by Rich Horton; The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Seven (Skyhorse/Night Shade Books), edited by Ellen Datlow; The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: 2014 (Prime Books), edited by Paula Guran; The Year’s Best Weird Fiction (which seems to have switched publishers, coming now from Undertow Publications), volume two edited by Kathe Koja and Michael Kelly; and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Volume 26 (which also seems to have switched publishers, coming now from PS Publishing), edited by Stephen Jones.
That leaves science fiction being covered by two dedicated best of the year anthologies, my own and the Afsharirad, plus four separate half-anthologies, the science fiction halves of the Strahan, Horton, Hill, and Guran novella book, which in theory adds up to two additional anthologies (in practice, of course, the contents of those books probably won’t divide that neatly, with exactly half with their coverage going to each genre, and there’ll likely to be more of one thing than another). With two dedicated anthologies and four half-anthologies (adding up to two more), that’s actually more best coverage than SF has had for a while. There is no dedicated fantasy anthology anymore, fantasy only being covered by the fantasy halves of the Strahan, Horton, Hill, and Guran novella book (in effect, by two anthologies when you add the halves together). Horror is now being covered by two dedicated volumes, the Datlow and the Jones, and the “horror” half of Guran’s The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror (although the distinction between “dark fantasy” and “horror” is a fine—and perhaps problematic—one). I suspect that “weird fiction” (another subjective term) is going to fall under the horror heading more often than not, so The Year’s Best Weird Fiction could possibly be counted as covering horror as well. The annual Nebula Awards anthology, which covers science fiction as well as fantasy of various sorts, functions as a de facto “best of the year” anthology, although it’s not usually counted among them; this year’s edition was Nebula Awards Showcase 2015 (Pyr), edited by Greg Bear. A more specialized best of the year anthology is Wilde Stories 2015: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press), edited by Steve Berman.
The stand-alone reprint anthology market was a bit weak this year. The most substantial one was probably Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology (PM Press), edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer, a reprint anthology with classic stories by Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Octavia Butler, James Tiptree, Jr., Tanith Lee, and others. Similar reprint anthologies, with a shift in genres, were Warrior Women (Prime Books), edited by Paula Guran, with reprints from Elizabeth Bear, Aliette de Bodard, Caitlín R. Kiernan, George R. R. Martin, Carrie Vaughn, and others, and Blood Sisters: Vampire Stories by Women (Skyhorse/Night Shade Books), also edited by Paula Guran, with reprints from Suzy McKee Charnas, Tanith Lee, Carrie Vaughn, Laurell K. Hamilton, and others.
Other prominent reprint anthologies were the two apocalyptic/environmental disaster anthologies mentioned earlier, Loosed upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction (Simon & Schuster) and Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse (Titan), both edited by John Joseph Adams. Also substantial was Pwning Tomorrow: stories from the Electronic Frontier (Electronic Frontier Foundation), edited by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a reprint SF anthology about the wired, extensively networked future that’s become one of the standard futures in SF in the last few years; this seems to be mostly available in various e-book and downloadable formats, for a range of voluntary donations, but it features good reprints from Paolo Bacigalupi, Lauren Beukes, Hannu Rajaniemi, Pat Cadigan, Cory Doctorow, Madeline Ashby, Neil Gaiman, James Patrick Kelly, Bruce Sterling, and others. (If you want this, your best bet is probably to download it, for a range of voluntary donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, from www.supporters-eff.org/donate/pwningtomorrow.) Another reprint SF anthology available only in digital form was Digital Dreams: A Decade of Science Fiction by Women (NewCon Press), edited by Ian Whates, with reprints by Pat Cadigan, Justina Robson, Lauren Beukes, Nina Allan, and Una McCormack.
Minor but pleasant SF or fantasy anthologies this year included As Time Goes By (Baen), edited by Hank Davis, Future Wars … and Other Punchlines (Baen), edited by Hank Davis, and Chicks and Ba
lances (Baen), edited by Esther Friesner and John Helfers.
I don’t follow horror closely, but there the most celebrated reprint anthology of the year seems to have been The Monstrous (Tachyon Publications), edited by Ellen Datlow.
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It was a fairly weak year in the genre-oriented nonfiction category.
The most prominent such book this year was probably Steering the Craft: A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Mariner), by Ursula K. Le Guin. Other general studies of the field were The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics (Wesleyan University Press), by Louis Chude-Sokei, Tomorrowland: Our Journey from Science Fiction to Science Fact (New Harvest), by Steven Kotler, and Luke Skywalker Can’t Read: And Other Geeky Truths (Plume), by Ryan Britt.
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