The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection
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And SF stories continued to be found in unlikely places, including, again this year, a series of short-shorts by big-name authors such as Ian R. Macleod, Cory Doctorow, Eileen Gunn, and David Marusek in nearly every issue of the science magazine Nature, as well as a series of shorts by authors such as Pamela Sargent, Chris Lawson, and Jay Lake appearing in the recently launched Australian science magazine Cosmos. Good genre stories (fantasy if not SF) also appeared this year as far afield as The New Yorker and the British newspaper The Guardian.
Coming up next year are the debuts of three projected annual original anthology series: The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction (Solaris), edited by George Mann, Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge (Pyr), edited by Lou Anders, and Eclipse: New Science Fiction and Fantasy (Night Shade Books), edited by Jonathan Strahan. If even one of these series succeeds in establishing itself, it should brighten up the original anthology scene considerably, and even if none of them does, the debut volumes should at least make 2007’s SF anthology market more interesting.
There were some good original fantasy anthologies out in 2006, as well as a number of slipstream/fabulist/New Weird/whatever-we’re-calling-it-this-year anthologies—appropriately enough, the distinction between the fantasy anthologies and the slipstream anthologies was sometimes a bit blurry, since most of the fantasy anthologies had at least a few slipstreamish stories in them, although you could usually get perhaps arbitrary feeling for which category the anthology generally belonged in. On the more-fantasy-than-slipstream side, it was difficult to pick a clear favorite from among several good anthologies that were similar in tone and literary ambition, but I think I would give Salon Fantastique (Thunder’s Mouth), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, a slight edge over Firebirds Rising (Firebird), edited by Sharyn November, although it’s close and both have lots of good stuff: by Peter S. Beagle, Jeffery Ford, Delia Sherman, Lucius Shepard, Paul Di Filippo, Christopher Barzak, and others in Salon Fantastique, and in Firebirds Rising (which can also be considered a Young Adult anthology, probably more so than Salon Fantastique, and has a few science fiction stories in it as well, although they’re not among the strongest stories in the book), there’s good material by Kelly Link, Emma Bull, Patricia McKillip, Ellen Klages, Tamora Pierce, and others. Also similar in tone and attack, although with perhaps more (and edgier) slipstream material in it, is Eidolon 1 (Wildside), edited by Jonathan Strahan and Jeremy G. Byrne, which featured strong stories by Tim Pratt, Holly Phillips, Eleanor Arnason, Hal Duncan, Margo Lanagan, Lucy Susex, and others. Slewing even more to the slipstream side of the Force is Twenty Epics (All Star), edited by David Moles and Susan Marie Groppi. In spite of its promise to provide concise, compact “epics” of storytelling that don’t sprawl into multivolume fantasy “trilogies,” some of the stories here are too self-consciously clever and postmodern to really deliver successfully on that promise; there are other stories here, though, that come a lot closer to living up to the theme, including stuff by Benjamin Rosenbaum, Christopher Rowe, Alan Deniro, K. D. Wentworth, and others. Swinging to the year’s batch of unambiguously slipstream/fabulist/New Weird anthologies, the strongest, in terms of literary quality, is probably Polyphony 6 (Wheatland Press), edited by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake, with good stuff by Richard Wadholm, Robert Reed, Tim Pratt, Pamela Sargent, Paul M. Berger, Esther Friesner, Anna Tambour, and others. A bit more opaque, and a bit too aggressively postmodern for my taste, is ParaSpheres: Extending Beyond the Spheres of Literary and Genre Fiction, Fabulist and New Wave Fabulist Stories (Omnidawn), edited by Rusty Morrison and Ken Keegan, although it does have some good stuff in it, including reprints by Ursula K. Le Guin, Alasdair Gray, Kim Stanley Robinson, and others, and good original works by L. Timmel Duchamp, Jeff VanderMeer, Anna Tambour, and others. As for how it functions as part of the continuing effort at canon-forming and definition within the emerging slipstream/fabulist genre, it seems to be a bit of a grab bag, with no really clear argument emerging from its pages, as far as I can tell, anyway. It’s hard to see any real reason other than editorial caprice, for instance, for including Le Guin’s “The Birthday of the World” or Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Lucky Strike,” SF stories that were originally published as such in SF markets. The mostly reprint Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology (Tachyon), edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel, tackles the (perhaps doomed) effort to draw the boundaries of this very slippery subgenre in a much more rigorous and logical fashion, and perhaps does as good a job as anyone is likely to do of pinning down things that by their very nature are designed not to be easily pinned down (not that it will settle any arguments, of course; in fact, if anything, it’s likely to pour gasoline on i he flames). Slipstreams (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Heifers, does an unconvincing job of assembling a slipstream anthology, as if the editors aren’t really sure what slipsteam is, and the stories are no more than average/mediocre at best. Jabberwocky 2 (Prime), edited by Sean Wallace, features mostly poetry, but does have original stories by Holly Phillips, Richard Parks, and others.
Pleasant but minor original fantasy anthologies this year included Children of Magic (DAW), by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes, fantasy Gone Wrong (DAW), by Martin H. Greenberg and Brittiany A. Koren, My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding (St. Martin’s Griffin), edited by P. N. Elrod, and The Magic Toybox (DAW) and Hags, Sirens and Other Bad Girls of Fantasy (DAW), both edited by Denise Little. An oddball item, stories inspired by “Furry Fandom,” whose members like to dress up as furry animals, is Furry Fantastic (DAW), edited by Jean Rabe and Brian M. Thomsen.
The year also featured a slew of original anthologies from very small presses, most of which will have to be mail-ordered, as they probably won’t be available in most bookstores, perhaps even in specialty SF bookstores. Cross Plains Universe: Texans Celebrate Robert E. Howard (MonkeyBrains), edited by Scott A. Cupp and Joe R. Lansdale, is at its least successful when its authors are attempting direct Conan pastiches, at its most successful when the authors put a bit of distance between themselves and honoree Robert E. Howard, so that the best stories are those by writers such as Neal Barrett Jr., Lawrence Person, Gene Wolfe, Carrie Richerson, Mark Finn, Howard Waldrop, and others who find a different perspective from which to tackle the anthology’s subject matter instead of just churning out Conan imitations. A similar “retro-pulp” feel is to be found in the aptly named Retro Pulp Tales (Subterranean), edited by Joe R. Lansdale, with good stuff by Alex Irvine, Al Sarrantonio, Kim Newman, and others. As with Cross Plains Universe, the least successful stories in Space Cadets (Scifi, Inc.), edited by Mike Resnick, are those that take the theme the most literally, producing jokey homages or satires of either the old Tom Corbett, Space Cadet television show or the Heinlein juvenile Space Cadet on which it was loosely based, while the most successful stories are by authors such as David Gerrold, Connie Willis, and Larry Niven, who stretch the ostensible theme as far as it will go. Golden Age SF: Tales of a Bygone Future (Hadley Rille Books), edited by Eric T. Reynolds, has the somewhat dubious premise of getting today’s authors to write “new” Golden Age stories, stories written in the spirit of SF’s so-called Golden Age that look ahead not to the real future but to the “bygone future” that SF writers were dreaming about in the fifties; Justin Stanchfield, G. David Nordley, Terry Bisson, and Stephen Baxter actually manage to do a reasonable job of it. Sex in the System (Prime), edited by Cecilia Tan, mixes eroticism and SF in a playful manner, while the much more serious-minded The Future Is Queer (Arsenal Pulp Press), edited by Richard Labonte and Lawrence Schimel, examines the roles that gay men, lesbians, and transgenders might play in future societies, with the best stories being provided by Candas Jane Dorsey, L. Timmel Duchamp, Hiromi Goto, and Rachel Pollack. The earnest Jigsaw Nation: Science Fiction Stories of Secession (Spyre Books), edited by Edward J. McFadden III and E. Sedia, conceived right after the presidential election of 2004, provides one angry and/or despairing story after another about the division
of the country into blue states and red states and how this will eventually lead to the sundering of the union and usually to police states and concentration camps. While this may have provided some useful venting for its authors, it’s preaching to the choir, as far as blue state readers are concerned, and its rather cartoonish nightmares are not going to sway either red staters or those sitting somewhere on the political fence; best work here is by Paul Di Filippo, Michael Jasper, and Ruth Nestvold and Jay Lake. Elemental: The Tsunami Relief Anthology (Tor), edited by Steve Savile and Alethea Kontis, whose proceeds are being donated, admirably enough, to relief efforts to aid the victims of the Asian tsunami, is a well-intentioned and worthwhile project, one worth spending money on just to help out, but the stories, for the most part, are not particularly memorable; the best work here is by Joe Haldeman, Brian W. Aldiss, Syne Mitchell, and Larry Niven. Talking Back (Aqueduct Press), edited by L. Timmel Duchamp, is an anthology of “epistolary fantasies,” letters to dead people written by living authors, including Eileen Gunn and Carol Emshwiller.
There were two regional Australian anthologies this year, Agog! Ripping Reads (Agog! Press), edited by Cat Sparks, and The Outcast: An Anthology of Strangers and Exiles (CSFG Publishing), edited by Nicole R. Murphy, but I missed them and will hold consideration of stories from them over until next year. The new Canadian anthology Tesseracts 10 (Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy), edited by Edo Van Belkom and Robert Charles Wilson, also crossed my desk too late for my deadline, and I’ll hold it over until next year, too.
There were two cross-genre anthologies this year, both crosses with romance: The Best New Paranormal Romance (Juno), edited by Paula Guran, and Dates from Hell (Avon), a collection of four paranormal romance novellas by Kim Harrison, Lynsay Sands, Kelley Armstrong, and Lori Handeland. A shared-world anthology of sorts was 1634: The Ram Rebellion (Baen), edited by Eric Flint and Virginia DeMarce.
As usual, novice work by beginning writers, some of whom may later turn out to be important talents, was featured in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future “Volume XXII (Galaxy), edited by Algis Budrys.
I don’t follow horror closely anymore, but there, as far as I could tell, the prominent original anthologies of the year included Hardboiled Cthulhu: Two-Fisted Tales of Tentacled Terror (Dimensions Books), edited by James Arnbuehl, and a tribute anthology to Joe R. Lansdale, Joe R. Lansdale’s Lords of the Razor (Subterranean), edited by Bill Sheehan and William Schafer. Many of the anthologies already mentioned, including Retro Pulp Tales, Cross Plains Universe, Salon Fantastique, Eidolon 1, Firebirds Rising, and so forth, and even some of the SF anthologies, will also contain horror stories of one degree or another of horrificness.
(Finding individual pricings for all of the items from small presses mentioned in the summation has become too time-intensive, and since several of the same small presses publish anthologies, novels, and short-story collections, it seems silly to repeat addresses for them in section after section. Therefore, I’m going to attempt to list here, in one place, all the addresses for small presses that have books mentioned here or there in the summation, whether from the anthologies section, the novel section, or the short-story collection section, and, where known, their Web site addresses. That should make it easy enough for the reader to look up the individual price of any book mentioned that isn’t from a regular trade publisher; such books are less likely to be found in your average bookstore, or even in a chain superstore, and so will probably have to be mail-ordered. Some publishers seem to sell only online, through their Web sites, so Google the name of the publisher or the title of the book if all else fails. Many books, even from some of the smaller presses, are also available through Amazon.com.
Addresses: PS Publishing, Grosvener House, 1 New Road, Hornsea, West Yorkshire, HU18 1PG, England, UK www.pspublishing.co.uk; Golden Gryphon Press, 3002 Perkins Road, Urbana, IL 61802, www.goldengryphon.com; NESFA Press, P.O. Box 809, Framingham, MA 01701-0809, www.nesfa.org; Subterranean Press, P.O. Box 190106, Burton, MI 48519, www.subterraneanpress.com; Old Earth Books, P.O. Box 19951, Baltimore, MD 21211-0951, www.oldearth-books.com; Tachyon Press, 1459 18th St. #139, San Francisco, CA 94107, www.tachyonpublications.com; Night Shade Books, 1470 NW Saltzman Road, Portland, OR 97229, www.nightshadebooks.com; Five Star Books, 295 Kennedy Memorial Drive, Waterville, ME 04901, www.galegroup.com/fivestar; Wheatland Press, P.O. Box 1818, Wilsonville, OR 97070, www.wheatlandpress.com; All-Star Stories, see contact information for Wheatland Press; Small Beer Press, 176 Prospect Ave., Northampton, MA 01060, www.smallbeerpress.com; Locus Press, P.O. Box 13305, Oakland, CA 94661; Crescent Books, Mercat Press Ltd., 10 Coates Crescent, Edinburgh, Scotland EH3 7AL, www.mercatpress.com; Wildside Press/Cosmos Books/Borgo Press, P.O. Box 301, Holicong, PA 18928-0301, or go to www.wildside-press.com for pricing and ordering; Thunder’s Mouth, 245 West 17th St., 11th fir., New York, NY 10011-5300, www.thundersmouth.com; Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, Inc. and Tesseract Books, Ltd., P.O. Box 1714, Calgary, Alberta, T2P 2L7, Canada, www.edgewebsite.com; Aqueduct Press, P.O. Box 95787, Seattle, WA 98145-2787, www.aqueductpress.com; Phobos Books, 200 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003, www.phobosweb.com; Fairwood Press, 5203 Quincy Ave. SE, Auburn, WA 98092, www.fairwood-press.com; BenBella Books, 6440 N. Central Expressway, Suite 508, Dallas, TX 75206, www.benbellabooks.com; Darkside Press, 13320 27th Ave. NE, Seattle, WA 98125, www.darksidepress.com; Haffner Press, 5005 Crooks Rd., Suite 35, Royal Oak, MI 48073-1239, www.haffnerpress.com; North Atlantic Press, P.O. Box 12327, Berkeley, CA, 94701; Prime, P.O. Box 36503, Canton, OH, 44735, www.primebooks.net; MonkeyBrain Books, 11204 Crossland Drive, Austin, TX 78726, www.monkeybrainbooks.com; Wesleyan University Press, University Press of New England, Order Dept., 37 Lafayette St., Lebanon NH 03766-1405, www.wesleyan.edu/wespress; Agog! Press, P.O. Box U302, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia, www.uow.edu.au/~rhood/agogpress; MirrorDanse Books, P.O. Box 3542, Parramatta, NSW 2124, Australia, www.tabula-rasa.info/MirrorDanse; Arsenal Pulp Press, 200-341 Water Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6B 1B8, www.arsenalpulp.com; Elder Signs Press/Dimensions Books, order through www.dimensionsbooks.com; Spyre Books, P.O. Box 3005, Radford, VA 24143; SCIFI, Inc., P.O. Box 8442, Van Nuys, CA 91409-8442; Omnidawn Publishing, order through www.omnidawn.com; CSFG, Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild, www.csfg.org.au/publishing/anthologies/the_outcast; Hadley Rille Books, via www.hadleyrillebooks.com; ISFiC Press, 707 Sapling Lane, Deerfield, IL 60015-3969, or www.isficpress.com; DreamHaven Books, 912 West Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN 55408, www.dreamhavenbooks.com; Suddenly Press, via suddenlypress @yahoo.com; Sandstone Press, P.O. Box 5725, One High St., Dingwall, Ross-shire, IV15 9WJ, UK; Tropism Press, via www.tropismpress.com; SF Poetry Association/Dark Regions Press, www.sfpoetry.com, checks to Helena Bell, SFPA Treasurer, 1225 West Freeman St., Apt. 12, Carbondale, IL 62401; DH Press, via www.diamondbookdistributors.com.
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Once again in 2006, there were more good SF and fantasy novels (to say nothing of hard-to-classify hybrids) than any one person could possibly read, unless they made a full-time job of doing nothing else.
According to the newsmagazine Locus, there were 2,495 books “of interest to the SF field,” both original and reprint (but not counting “media tie-in novels,” gaming novels, novelizations of genre movies, print-on-demand novels, or novels offered as downloads on the Internet—all of which would swell the total by hundreds if counted) published in 2006, down 1 percent from 2,516 titles in 2005, the second year in a row of a 1 percent loss after several years of record increases. (This still leaves the number of “books of interest” more or less in the same ballpark in which it’s been for several years now. To put these figures in some historical perspective, there were 2,158 books published in 2001, and only 1,927 books as recently as 2000, so things haven’t changed much.) Original books were up by 3 percent to 1,520 from last year’s total of 1,469, a new record. Reprint books were down by 7 percent to 975 from last year’s total of 1,047. The number of new SF novels was down
by 14 percent to a total of 223 as opposed to last year’s total of 258. The number of new fantasy novels was up by 12 percent to 463 as opposed to last year’s total of 414, another new high. Horror, recovering from its slump in the nineties, was up 28 percent to 271 as opposed to last year’s total of 212; as recently as 2002, the horror total was only 112. (Some of the increase in horror and fantasy may be accounted for by the surge in “paranormal romances,” which are being generated more by the romance industry than the SF/fantasy/horror industry.)
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, as usual, I’ll limit myself to mentioning that novels that received a lot of attention and acclaim in 2006 include:
Rainbows End (Tor), by Vernor Vinge; Blindsight (Tor), by Peter Watts; Glasshouse (Ace), by Charles Stross; Horizons (Tor), by Mary Rosenblum; Nova Swing (Gollancz), by M. John Harrison; Matriarch (Eos), by Karen Traviss; Soldier of Sidon (Tor), by Gene Wolfe; The Tourmaline (Tor), by Paul Park; Carnival (Bantam Spectra), by Elizaberth Bear; The Voyage of the Sable Keech (Tor UK), by Neal Asher; Sun of Suns (Tor), Karl Schroeder; Pretender (DAW), by C. J. Cherryh; Majestrum (Night Shade), by Matthew Hughes; Trial of Flowers (Night Shade), by Jay Lake; The Armies of Memory (Tor), by John Barnes; Emperor (Ace), by Stephen Baxter; Eifelheim (Tor), by Michael Flynn; Keeping It Real (Pyr), by Justina Robson; The Virtu (Ace), by Sarah Monette; The Jennifer Morgue (Golden Gryphon), by Charles Stross; Polity Agent (Tor UK), by Neal Asher; The Privilege of the Sword (Bantam Spectra), by Ellen Kushner; The Last Witchfinder (Morrow), by James Morrow; Fugitives of Chaos (Tor), by John C. Wright; End of the World Blues (Bantam Spectra), by Jon Courtenay Grimwood; Genetopia (Pyr), by Keith Brooke; The Demon and the City (Night Shade), by Liz Wilhams; Mathematicians in Love (Tor), by Rudy Rucker; Three Days to Never (Morrow), by Tim Powers; Predor Moon (Night Shade), by Neal Asher; Voidfarer (Tor), by Sean McMullen; A Dirty Job (Morrow), by Christopher Moore; Idolon (Bantam Spectra), by Mark Budz; Solstice Wood (Ace), by Patricia A. McKillip; Farthing (Tor), by Jo Walton; and Lisey’s Story (Hodder & Stoughton), by Steven King.