If you’re looking for novice work by beginning writers, some of whom may later turn out to be important talents, your best bets were L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume IX (Bridge), edited by Algis Budrys, and Hitting the Skids in Pixeltown: The Phobos Science Fiction Anthology (Phobos Books), edited by Orson Scott Card, Keith Olexa, and Christian O’Toole, which features winners of the 2nd Annual Phobos Fiction Contest. There’s decent work in both, but Hitting the Skids in Pixeltown may have a slight edge, due to an intriguing story by David D. Levine.
There were supposed to be two regional anthologies of Canadian SF edited by Claude Lalumiere, but I was unable to find them before the selections for this book had to be made, and so they’ll have to wait for next year.
Coming up next year: A new anthology edited by Peter Crowther, Constellations, and the long-delayed Microcosms, edited by Gregory Benford.
Addresses: PS Publishing, 98 High Ash Drive, Leeds L517 8RE, England, UK—$16.00 for Dear Abbey, by Terry Bisson, $16. 00 for Light Stealer, by Janes Barclay, $16.00 for Jigsaw Men, by Gary Greenwood, $16.00 for Jupiter Magnified, by Adam Roberts, $16.00 for In Springdale Town, by Robert Freeman Wexler, $65.00 for Infinity Plus Two, edited by Keith Brooke and Nick Gevers (mentioned in reprint anthology section); Golden Gryphon Press, 3002 Perkins Road, Urbana, IL 61802—$27.95 for The Silver Gryphon, edited by Gary Turner and Marty Halpern, $15.95 for A Better World’s in Birth!, by Howard Waldrop, $15.95 for The Angel in the Darkness, by Kage Baker; Wildside Press—for William Hope Hodgon’s Night Lands, Volume 1, Eternal Love, go to www.wildsidepress.com for pricing and ordering; Wheatland Press, P.O. Box 1818, Wilsonville, OR, 97070—$16.95 for Polyphony 2, edited by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake, $17.95 for Polyphony 3, edited by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake; Agog! Press, P.O. Box U302, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia—A$ $24.95 for Agog! Terrific Tales, edited by Cat Sparks; Night Shade Books, 3623 SW Baird St., Portland, OR 97219—$35.00 for The Empress of Mars, by Kage Baker, $45.00 for The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric Diseases, edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Mark Roberts; Small Beer Press, 360 Atlantic Avenue, PMB# 132, Brooklyn, NY 11217—$17.00 for Trampoline, edited by Kelly Link; Fairwood Press, 5203 Quincy Ave SE, Auburn, WA 98092—$26.99 for Imagination Fully Dilated: The Literated Artwork of Alan M. Clark, edited by Robert Kruger and Patrick Swenson; Phobos Books, 200 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003—$14.95 for Hitting the Skids in Pixeltown: The Phobos Science Fiction Anthology, edited by Orson Scott Card, Keith Olexa, and Christian O’Toole; SFF.NET—$14.95 for Beyond the Last Star, edited by Sherwood Smith, order online from www.sff.net/store/index.asp; Ministry of Whimsy Press, POB 4248, Tallahasse, FL 32315—$12.99 for Album Zutique #1, edited by Jeff VanderMeer.
2003 seemed like another strong year for novels—not quite as strong in overall literary quality as last year, perhaps, but close, with not only a lot of books coming out, but a lot of good books coming out as well.
According to the newsmagazine Locus, there were 2,429 books “of interest to the SF field,” both original and reprint (but not counting “media tie-in novels” such as Star Trek and Star Wars novels, gaming novels, novelizations of movies, or novels drawn from other TV shows such as Angel, Charmed, and Buffy, the Vampire Slayer), published in 2003, up by 8% from 2002’s total of 2,241. Original books were up by 8% to 1,375 from last year’s total of 1,271; reprint books were up by 9% to 1,054 titles over last year’s total of 970. The number of new SF novels was down slightly, with 236 new titles published as opposed to 256 novels published in 2002. The number of new fantasy novels was up slightly, to 340, as opposed to 333 novels published in 2002. Horror was also up, rising to 171, its highest total since 1995, from last year’s total of 112. (Keep in mind that, for the most part, these totals don’t even reflect Print-On-Demand novels, or novels offered as downloads on the Internet.)
I suppose that the “SF is dying” crowd will gleefully point out that the number of SF novels is down—but twenty titles is hardly a precipitous drop; in fact, in spite of changes in the publishing scene, lines gained and lines dropped, the number of new SF titles published every year has not varied by any significant amount for the last decade. So there’s still a lot of new SF novels being published every year. I wonder how many people have read all of the 236 new SF titles published this year? Probably nobody has. My guess is that few individual readers have even read a significant percentage of them.
Certainly I have not. As usual, busy with all the reading I have to do at shorter lengths, I didn’t have time to read many novels this year.
So instead I’ll limit myself to mentioning the novels that received a lot of attention and acclaim in 2003 include: The Light Ages (Ace), Ian R. MacLeod; Darwin’s Children (Del Rey), Greg Bear; Singularity Sky (Ace), Charles Stross; Crossfire (Tor), Nancy Kress; Air (St. Martin’s Griffin), Geoff Ryman; Omega (Ace), Jack McDevitt; Absolution Gap (Gollancz), Alastair Reynolds; Ilium (Eos), Dan Simmons; The Anvil of the World (Tor), Kage Baker; The Sundering (Earthlight), Walter Jon Williams; Coalescent (Del Rey), Stephen Baxter; Sister Alice—considered as a novel rather than a collection—(Tor), Robert Reed; 1610: A Sundial in a Grave (Gollancz), Mary Gentle; Extremes (Roc), The Sundering (Avon), Walter Jon Williams; Kristine Kathryn Rusch; Red Thunder (Ace), John Varley; Memory (Tor), Linda Nagata; In the Presence of Mine Enemies (NAL), Harry Turtledove; The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla (Scribner), Stephen King; The Salt Roads (Warner), Nalo Hopkinson; Noise (Tor), Hal Clement; The Crystal City (Tor), Orson Scott Card; Midnight Lamp (Gollancz), Gwyneth Jones; The Return of Santiago (Tor), Mike Resnick; Felaheen: The Third Arabesk (Earthlight), Jon Courtenay Grimwood; The Line of Polity (Tor UK), Neal Asher; The Golden Age: The Phoenix Exultant (Tor), John C. Wright; The Golden Age: The Golden Transcendence (Tor), John C. Wright; The Poison Master (Bantam Spectra), Liz Williams; Nine Layers of Sky (Bantam Spectra), Liz Williams; Paladin of Souls (Eos), Lois McMaster Bujold; The Lost Steersman (Del Rey), Rosemary Kirstein; Monstrous Regiment (HarperCollins), Terry Prachett; Natural History (Macmillan), Justina Robson; Blind Lake (Tor), Robert Charles Wilson; Maul (Orbit), Tricia Sullivan; In the Forests of Serre (Ace), Patricia A. McKillip; The Wreck of the River of Stars (Tor), Michael Flynn; Lady Robyn (Forge), R. Garcia y Robertson; Sunshine (Berkley), Robin McKinley; Any Man So Daring (Ace), Sarah A. Hoyt; Mortal Suns (Overlook), Tanith Lee, The Briar King (Del Rey), Greg Keyes; Wyrmhole (Roc), Jay Caselberg; Tinker (Baen), Wen Spencer; (Tor), The Braided World (Bantam Spectra), Kay Kenyon; The Seperation (Gollancz), Christopher Priest; The Night Country (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Stewart O’Nan; and The War of the Flowers (DAW), Tad Williams.
The first novel that drew the most attention this year seemed to be Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (Tor), by Cory Doctorow, although The Time Traveler’s Wife (Cage), by Audrey Niffenegger and Veniss Underground (Prime), by Jeff VanderMeer drew a good number of reviews as well. Other first novels included: Clade (Bantam), by Mark Budz; Star Dragon (Tor), by Mike Brotherton; Paper Mage (Roc), by Leah R. Cutter; The Buzzing (Vintage), Jim Knipfel; Spin State (Bantam Spectra), by Chris Moriarty; The Etched City (Prime), by K. J. Bishop; The Darknesses That Comes Before (Penguin Canada), by R. Scott Bakker; Magic’s Silken Snare (DAW), by ElizaBeth Gilligan; and A Telling of Stars (Penguin Canada), by Caitlin Sweet.
There were several big-selling novels that were out on the ambiguous edge of genre this year, including Pattern Recognition (Putnam), by William Gibson, a novel set in the present day rather than in Gibson’s usual “Sprawl” future, and Quicksilver (Morrow), a secret history novel by Neal Stephenson. The small presses are publishing more novels than ever these days, even small-press houses such as Golden Gryphon, Subterranean, and PS Publishing that up until now have concentrated mostly on short story collections. First-rate novels from small-presses this year included a slew of novels by Lucius Shepard—Colonel Rutherford’s Colt (Subterranean), Floater (PS Publishing), Louisiana Breakdown (Golden Gryphon), and Aztechs (Subterranean)—as well as N
othing Human (Golden Gryphon), by Nancy Kress, Year Zero (Five Star), by Brian Stableford, Mockeymen (Golden Gryphon), by Ian Watson, Reading the Bones (Tachyon), Sheila Finch; and Fuzzy Dice (PS Publishing), by Paul Di Filippo.
Associational novels by SF writers this year included Lust (St. Martin’s Press), by Geoff Ryman, and The Druid King (Knopf), by Norman Spinrad. Robert A. Heinlein’s sixty-six-year old first novel, For Us, the Living (Scribners), first written in 1938 and first published this year, is science fiction of the Tour of a Future Utopia sort, but is so completely dated by now that it might as well be listed as an associational novel, as it probably will not be of real interest to any but the most dedicated Heinlein fans (although critics also seem to have found it intriguing to pour over it to pick out the seeds of future—and better—novels that are visible here). All that really needs to be said about this book, it seems to me, is that Heinlein himself tried to destroy all traces of it to ensure that it would never be printed. I think that his wishes ought to have been respected.
And since I continue to hear the complaint, usually from people who haven’t read any new science fiction in years, that there’s no “real” science fiction out there anymore, let me point out that, even discounting the fantasy and the borderline genre-mixing stuff on the list, the Bear, the Reynolds, the two Kress novels, the Baxter, the McDevitt, the Reed, the Stross, the Nagata, the Clement, the Flynn, the two Wright novels, the Williams, and more than a dozen others are clearly and unmistakably science fiction—many of them “hard science fiction” as hard and as rigorous as it’s ever been written, at that.
Throughout the 80s and 90s, shortsighted bottom-line corporate publishing practices meant that books almost never came back into print once they had gone out of it, and even classics of the genre remained unavailable for decades. Fortunately, this has turned around in the Oughts, and the last few years have proved to be the best time since the 70s to pick up new editions of out-of-print classics of science fiction and fantasy, books that have been long unavailable to the average reader.
There’s such a flood of reprints now that it’s become difficult to keep track of all the reprint editions coming out—with Tor/Orb, ibooks, Baen, and the Science Fiction Book Club especially active—particularly when you factor in the availability of Print-On-Demand books from places such as Wildside Press, and the availability of formerly out-of-print books as electronic downloads on Internet sources such as Fictionwise. Therefore, rather than trying to produce an exhaustive list of such titles, I’ll just mention a few that caught my eye. There were a number of good omnibus volumes, usually including two or more of an author’s novels, including, The Dragon Masters (ibooks), by Jack Vance; Latro in the Mist (Tor/Orb), by Gene Wolfe; Dorsai Spirit (Tor/Orb), by Gordon R. Dickson; John Grimes: Tramp Captain (SFBC), by A. Bertram Chandler; General Practice (Tor/Orb), by James White; Tales of Sector General (SFBC), by James White; Med Ships (SFBC), by James White; The Peace War (Tor), by Vernor Vinge; Heavy Planet (SFBC), by Hal Clement; The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring (Del Rey), by Larry Niven; Planet of Adventure (Baen), by Murry Leinster; At the Edge of Space (DAW), by C. J. Cherryh; Swan Songs (SFBC), by Brian Stableford, and Carlucci (Ace), by Richard Paul Russo. Good singleton reprints included, from ibooks: Brain Wave, The High Crusade, and Ensign Flandry, all by Poul Anderson, Swords Against Death and Swords and Deviltry, by Fritz Leiber, Nostrilla, by Cordwainer Smith, Shadrach in the Furnace, by Robert Silverberg, Strangers, by Gardner Dozois, Maske: Thaery, by Jack Vance, Beyond Heaven’s River and Hegira, by Greg Bear, and To Die in Italbar and Changling, by Roger Zelazny; Tor/Orb reprinted, in addition to those titles already mentioned: Mythago Wood, by Robert Holdstock, The Summer Queen, by Joan Vinge, and Red Prophet and Seventh Sun, by Orson Scott Card; Gollancz reprinted The Blue World, by Jack Vance, Son of Man, by Robert Silverberg, The Ophiuchi Hotline, by John Varley, and The Miracle Visitors, by Ian Watson; The Science Fiction Book Club reprinted Three Hearts and Three Lions, by Poul Anderson; Vintage reprinted Eye in the Sky, The Cosmic Puppets, and Solar Lottery, all by Philip K. Dick; HarperCollins/Perennial reprinted The Dispossessed and The Lathe of Heaven, by Ursula K. Le Guin; Carroll & Graf reprinted On Wings of Song, by Thomas M. Disch; Bantam Spectra reprinted Windhaven, by George R. R. Martin and Lisa Tuttle, and Swordpoint, by Ellen Kushner; Eos reprinted The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman; Del Rey reprinted Have Space Suit—Will Travel, Tunnel in the Sky, and The Door into Summer, all by Robert A. Heinlein; DAW reprinted The Edge of Space, by C. J. Cherryh; Starscape reprinted Putting Up Roots, by Charles Sheffield, and The Eye of the Heron, by Ursula K. Le Guin; and Modern Library reissued The Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndham. Plus, no doubt, many reprints that I missed. Check around for them, and buy them while you can.
I have no idea what’s going to win the major awards; there doesn’t seem to be a clear, obvious winner, as there has been in some other years—and SFWA’s dysfunctional “rolling eligibility” rule means that most of the books on the Nebula ballot aren’t from 2003 anyway. So your guess is as good as mine.
Mail-order information: Golden Gryphon Press, 3002 Perkins Road, Urbana, IL 61802—$26.95 for Nothing Human, by Nancy Kress, $21.95 for Louisiana Breakdown, by Lucius Shepard, $26.95 for Mockeymen, by Ian Watson; Subterranean Press, P.O. Box 190106, Burton, MI 48519—$40.00 for Colonel Rutherford’s Colt, by Lucius Shepard, $35.00 for Aztechs, by Lucius Shepard; PS Publishing, 98 High Ash Drive, Leeds L517 8RE, England, UK—$40.00 for Floater, by Lucius Shepard, $50.00 for Fuzzy Dice, by Paul Di Filippo; Five Star Books, 295 Kennedy Memorial Drive, Waterville, ME 04901—$13.95 for Year Zero, by Brian Stableford; Tachyon Press, 1459 18th St. #139, San Francisco, CA 94107—$14.95 for Reading the Bones, by Sheila Fitch.
Once again, it was a good year for short story collections. My personal favorite was Limekiller! (Old Earth Books), by Avram Davidson, a collection of some of the best fantasy stories published in the last thirty years; seeing it in print makes me wonder yet again, as I have for many years now, why it couldn’t be sold to a regular trade house—it’s a wonderful volume, and Old Earth Books is to be congratulated for having the perspicacity that the trade houses lacked. Good as the Davidson is, though, there were a lot of other excellent collections out there this year as well. The year’s best collections included: GRRM: A RRetrospective (Subterranean), by George R. R. Martin, a massive collection spanning Martin’s entire career, in several different genres, including television screenplay writing; Custer’s Last Jump and Other Collaborations (Golden Gryphon), by Howard Waldrop et al, stories by Waldrop in collaboration with Bruce Sterling, Steven Utley, George R. R. Martin, Leigh Kennedy, and others; the first print version of Dream Factories and Radio Pictures (Wheatland Press), by Howard Waldrop; Budayeen Nights (Golden Gryphon), by George Alec Effinger; Changing Planes (Harcourt), by Ursula K. Le Guin; Rome Eterna (Eos), by Robert Silverberg; Sister Alice—considered as a collection instead of a novel—(Tor), by Robert Reed; and American Beauty (Five Star), by Allen Steele.
Other good collections this year included: Visitations (Five Star), by Jack Dann; Cigar-Box Faust and Other Miniatures (Tachyon), by Michael Swanwick; A Field Guide to the Mesozoic Megafauna and Five British Dinosaurs (Tachyon), by Michael Swanwick; Biblliomancy (PS Publishing), by Elizabeth Hand; Written in Blood (MirrorDanse Books), by Chris Lawson; Unintended Consequences (Subterranean), by Alex Irvine; Greetings from Lake Wu (Wheatland Press), by Jay Lake; The Two Sams (Carroll & Graf), by Glen Hirshberg; Little Gods (Prime), by Tim Pratt; Other Cities (Small Beer Press), by Benjamin Rosenbaum; The Amount to Carry (Picador USA), by Carter Scholz; In for a Penny (Subterranean), by James P. Blaylock; The Devils in the Details (Subterranean), by James P. Blaylock and Tim Powers; Unintended Consequences (Subterranean), by Alex Irvine; Things That Never Happen (Night Shade), by M. John Harrison; In This World or Another (Five Star), by James Blish; No Place Like Earth (Darkside Press), John Wyndham; Eye of Flame and Other Fantasies (Five Star), by Pamela Sargent; Brighten to Incandescence (Golden Gryph
on), by Michael Bishop; Night Lives: Nine Stories of the Dark Fantastic (Five Stars), by Phyllis Eisenstein; Deus X and Other Stories (Five Star), Norman Spinrad; Time Travelers, Ghosts, and Other Visitors (Five Star), by Nina Kiriki Hoffman; Ghosts of Yesterday (Night Shade), by Jack Cady; Kalpa Imperial (Small Beer Press), by Angelica Gorodischer, translated by Ursula K. Le Guin, and A Place So Foreign and 8 More (Four Walls Eight Windows), by Cory Doctorow.
The Year's Best SF 21 # 2003 Page 4