The boom in Young Adult SF novels, especially dystopian and post-apocalyptic SF, slowed a bit, from making up 36 percent of the original SF novels total in 2013 to 31 percent in 2014, so perhaps that area is beginning to cool a bit as well. The 367 original SF novels also include 49 SF first novels, up from last year’s 38, 13 percent of the new SF total, up from last year’s 11 percent of the new SF total, down from 13 percent last year. Fantasy’s 620 original novels include 210 YA novels, down from 2013’s 233, from making up 36 percent of the new fantasy total to making up 34 percent; this includes sixty-three fantasy first novels, up from 2013’s fifty-seven, making up 10 percent of the fantasy total, up from 2013’s 9 percent.
This is still an enormous number of books, in spite of slight declines—far more than the entire combined total of genre titles only a few decades back. And these totals don’t count 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 novels that received a lot of attention and acclaim in 2014.
Empress of the Sun (Jo Fletcher Books), by Ian McDonald; The Memory of Sky (Prime Books), by Robert Reed; Work Done for Hire (Ace), by Joe Haldeman; My Real Children (Tor), by Jo Walton; The Martian (Crown Publishers), by Andy Weir; Lockstep (Tor), by Karl Schroeder; Cibola Burn (Orbit), by James S. A. Corey; Ancillary Sword (Orbit), by Ann Leckie; Peacemaker (DAW), by C. J. Cherryh; Echopraxia (Tor), by Peter Watts; The Causal Angel (Tor), by Hannu Rajaniemi; War Dogs (Orbit), by Greg Bear; Dreams of the Golden Age (Tor), by Carrie Vaughn; Ultima (Orion/Gollancz), by Stephen Baxter; V-S Day (Ace), by Allen Steele; The Three-Body Problem (Tor), by Cixin Liu; A Man Lies Dreaming (Hodder & Stoughton), by Lavie Tidhar; Bête (Orion/Gollancz), by Adam Roberts; Lock In (Tor), by John Scalzi; The Silk Map (Pyr), by Chris Willrich; World of Trouble (Quirk Books), by Ben H. Winters; Written in My Own Heart’s Blood (Delacorte Press), by Diana Gabaldon; The Magician’s Land (Viking), by Lev Grossman; The Peripheral (Penguin/Putnam), by William Gibson; Fool’s Assassin (Ballantine Del Rey), by Robin Hobb; Dark Lightning (Ace), by John Varley; Dreamwalker (DAW), by C. S. Friedman; Ghost Train to New Orleans (Orbit), by Mur Lafferty; Lagoon (Hodder & Stoughton), by Nnedi Okorafor; Descent (Orbit), by Ken MacLeod; Broken Homes (DAW), by Ben Aaronovitch; Steles of the Sky (Tor), by Elizabeth Bear; Jupiter War (Tor UK), by Neal Asher; Strange Bodies (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), by Marcel Theroux; The Judge of Ages (Tor), by John C. Wright; Annihilation (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), by Jeff VanderMeer; Afterparty (Tor), by Daryl Gregory; California Bones (Tor), by Greg van Eekhout; The Rhesus Chart (Ace), by Charles Stross; All Those Vanished Engines (Tor), by Paul Park; Shipstar (Tor), by Gregory Benford and Larry Niven; Raising Steam (Doubleday UK), by Terry Pratchett; Half a King (Ballantine Del Rey), by Joe Abercrombie; The Severed Streets (Tor), by Paul Cornell; The Widow’s House (Orbit), by Daniel Abraham; The Doubt Factory (Little, Brown), by Paolo Bacigalupi; Hurricane Fever (Tor), by Tobias S. Buckell; The Long Mars (HarperCollins), by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter; Skin Game (Penguin/Roc), by Jim Butcher; Sleeping Late on Judgement Day (DAW), by Tad Williams; and Revival (Simon & Schuster), by Stephen King.
Small presses are active in the novel market these days, where once they published mostly collections and anthologies. Novels issued by small presses this year included: Beautiful Blood (Subterranean Press), by Lucius Shepard; The Arrows of Time (Skyhorse/Night Shade), by Greg Egan; One-Eyed Jack (Prime Books), by Elizabeth Bear; The Voyage of the Sable Keech (Skyhorse/Night Shade), by Neal Asher; Polity Agent (Skyhorse/Night Shade), by Neal Asher; The Line of Polity (Skyhorse/Night Shade), by Neal Asher; Hilldiggers (Skyhorse/Night Shade), by Neal Asher; We Are All Completely Fine (Tachyon Publications), by Daryl Gregory; Heirs of Grace (47 North), by Tim Pratt; Our Lady of the Islands (Per Aspera Press), by Shannon Page and Jay Lake; and The Madonna and the Starship (Tachyon Publications), by James Morrow.
Associational novels, non-SF novels by those associated with the field, included Voices from the Street (Orion/Gollancz), by Philip K. Dick; The Broken Bubble (Orion/Gollancz), by Philip K. Dick; Gather Yourselves Together (Orion/Gollancz), by Philip K. Dick; and Chernobyl (Tor), by Frederik Pohl.
The year’s first novels included: The Martian (Crown Publishers), by Andy Weir; Koko Takes a Holiday (Titan Books), by Kieran Shea; Unwrapped Sky (Tor), by Rjurik Davidson; The Ultra Thin Man (Tor), by Patrick Swenson; Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (Little, Brown), by David Shafer; The Great Glass Sea (Grave Press), by Josh Weil; A Darkling Sea (Tor), by James L. Cambias; The Forever Watch (St. Martin’s Press), by David Ramirez; The Boost (Tor), by Stephen Baker; Black Moon (Hogarth), by Kenneth Calhoun; The Word Exchange (Doubleday), by Alena Graedon; Tomorrow and Tomorrow (Putnam), by Thomas Sweterlitsch; Barricade (Orion/Gollancz), by Jon Wallace; The Queen of the Tearling (HarperCollins), by Erika Johansen; Free Agent (Ace), by J. C. Nelson; The Quick (Random House), by Lauren Owen; American Craftsmen (Tor), by Tom Doyle; Traitor’s Blade (Jo Fletcher Books), by Sebastien de Castell; The Bees (HarperCollins), by Laline Paull; The Memory Garden (Sourcebooks Landmark), by Mary Rickert; The Waking Engine (Tor), by David Edison; Haxan (ChiZine Publications), by Kenneth Mark Hoover; and Invisible Beasts (Bellevue Literary Press), by Sharona Muir. Of these, by far the most successful, and the only bestseller, was The Martian, by Andy Weir, although Koko Takes a Holiday, by Kieran Shea, Unwrapped Sky, by Rjurik Davidson, and The Memory Garden, by Mary Rickert, got a fair number of reviews as well.
Good novella chapbooks in 2014 included Yesterday’s Kin (Tachyon Publications), by Nancy Kress; Famadihana on Fomalhaut IV (PS Publishing), by Eric Brown; The Ape Man’s Brother (Subterranean Press), by Joe R. Lansdale; The Slow Regard of Silent Things (DAW), by Patrick Rothfuss; Nobody’s Home (Subterranean Press), by Tim Powers; Of Whimsies and Noubles (PS Publishing), by Matthew Hughes; The Deep Woods (PS Publishing), by Tim Pratt; Sleep Donation (Atavist Books), by Karen Russell; Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome (Subterranean Press), by John Scalzi; Equoid (Subterranean Press), by Charles Stross; and In the Lovecraft Museum (PS Publishing), by Steve Rasnic Tem.
Orion unleashed an unprecedented flood of novel omnibuses with its SF Gateway program this year, offering unprecedented access to long out-of-print material, including: Gregory Benford SF Gateway Omnibus: Artifact, Cosm, Eater, by Gregory Benford; Barrington J. Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus: The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis (two novels and one collection), by Barrington Bayley; John Brunner SF Gateway Omnibus: The Sheep Look Up, The Shockwave Rider, The Traveller In Black, by John Brunner; Algis Budrys SF Gateway Omnibus: The Iron Thorn, Michaelmas, Hard Landing, by Algis Budrys; Carson of Venus SF Gateway Omnibus: Pirates of Venus, Lost on Venus, Carson of Venus, by Edgar Rice Burroughs; Pat Cadigan SF Gateway Omnibus: Mindplayers, Fools, Tea from an Empty Cup, by Pat Cadigan; Jack L. Chalker SF Gateway Omnibus: Midnight at the Well of Souls, Spirits of Flux and Anchor, The Identity Matrix, by Jack L. Chalker; Hal Clement SF Gateway Omnibus: Iceworld, Cycle of Fire, Close to Critical, by Hal Clement; D. G. Compton SF Gateway Omnibus: Synthajoy, The Steel Crocodile, Ascendancies, by D. G. Compton; Edmund Cooper SF Gateway Omnibus: The Cloud Walker, All Fools’ Day, A Far Sunset, by Edmund Cooper; Richard Cowper SF Gateway Omnibus: Piper at the Gates of Dawn, The Road to Corlay, A Dream of Kinship, A Tapestry of Time, by Richard Cowper; L. Sprague de Camp SF Gateway Omnibus: Lest Darkness Fall, Rogue Queen, The Tritonian Ring, by L. Sprague de Camp; Philip José Farmer SF Gateway Omnibus: The Maker of Universes, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, The Unreasoning Mask, by Philip José Farmer; Edmond Hamilton SF Gateway Omnibus: Captain Future and the Space Emperor, The Star Kings, The Weapon from Beyond, by Edmond Hamilton; Robert A. Heinlein SF Gateway Omnibus: The Past Through Tomorrow, by Robert A. Heinlein; Berserker SF Gateway Om
nibus: Shadow of the Wolf, The Bull Chief, The Horned Warrior, by Robert Holdstock; Garry Kilworth SF Gateway Omnibus: The Roof of Voyaging, The Princely Flower, Land-of-Mists, by Garry Kilworth; Henry Kuttner SF Gateway Omnibus: Fury, Mutant, The Best of Henry Kuttner, by Henry Kuttner; C. L. Moore SF Gateway Omnibus: Shambleau, Northwest of Earth, Judgement Night, by C. L. Moore; Charles Sheffield SF Gateway Omnibus: Sight of Proteus, Summertide, Cold as Ice, by Charles Sheffield; Clifford D. Simak SF Gateway Omnibus: Time Is the Simplest Thing, Way Station, A Choice of Gods, by Clifford D. Simak; John Sladek SF Gateway Omnibus: The Reproductive System, The Muller-Fokker Effect, Tik-Tok, by John Sladek; Theodore Sturgeon SF Gateway Omnibus: The Dreaming Jewels, To Marry Medusa, Venus Plus X, by Theodore Sturgeon; E. C. Tubb SF Gateway Omnibus: Extra Man, The Space-Born, Fires of Satan, by E. C. Tubb; Jack Williamson SF Gateway Omnibus: The Legion of Space, The Humanoids, Terraforming Earth, Wonder’s Child (three novels and an autobiography), by Jack Williamson; and Connie Willis SF Gateway Omnibus: Lincoln’s Dreams, Passage, by Connie Willis. Other novel omnibuses included The Galactic Center Companion (Lucky Bat Books), by Gregory Benford; Upon a Sea of Stars (Baen Books—two novels and two collections), by A. Bertram Chandler; The Memory of Sky: A Great Ship Trilogy (Prime Books—three novels), by Robert Reed; Votan and Other Novels (Orion/Gollancz), by John James; Tales from the End of Time (Orion/Gollancz—a novel and two collections), by Michael Moorcock; The War Amongst the Angels (Orion/Gollancz—three novels), Elric: The Moonbeam Roads (Orion/Gollancz—three novels), by Michael Moorcock; and Kurt Vonnegut: Novels 1976–1985 (Library of America), by Kurt Vonnegut.
Novel omnibuses are also frequently made available through the Science Fiction Book Club.
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 The Space Machine, by Christopher Priest, Headlong, by Simon Ings, and Behold the Man, by Michael Moorcock; Gollancz reissued Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner, A Case of Conscience, by James Blish, and The Phoenix and the Mirror, by Avram Davidson; Tor reissued Star Bridge, by James Gunn and Jack Williamson, Gaudeamus, by John Barnes, and Winter’s Heart and Knife of Dreams, both by Robert Jordon; Tor Teen reissued The Ice Dragon, by George R. R. Martin; Orb reissued Sethra Lavode, by Steven Brust; Baen reissued Beyond This Horizon, by Robert A. Heinlein and Secret of the Stars, by Andre Norton; Skyhorse/Night Shade Books reissued Sung in Blood, by Glen Cook, and Quarantine, Axiomatic, and Permutation City, all by Greg Egan; Subterranean Press reissued The Compleat Crow, by Brian Lumley; Chicago Review reissued Hard to Be a God, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky; Harper Voyager reissued Metrophage, by Richard Kadrey; Roc reissued Science Fiction: 101: Exploring the Craft of Science Fiction, by Robert Silverberg; Fairwood Press reissued Count Geiger’s Blues, by Michael Bishop.
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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2014 was a moderately strong year for short-story collections.
The year’s best collections included: Academic Exercises (Subterranean Press), by K. J. Parker; Unexpected Stories (Open Road Media), by Octavia E. Butler; Last Plane to Heaven: The Final Collection (Tor), by Jay Lake; The Very Best of Tad Williams (Tacyhon), by Tad Williams; Sergeant Chip and Other Novellas (Tachyon), by Bradley Denton; Questionable Practices: Stories (Small Beer Press), by Eileen Gunn; Black Gods Kiss (PS Publishing), by Lavie Tidhar; Prophecies, Libels, and Dreams: Stories (Small Beer Press), by Ysabeau S. Wilce; Hidden Folk: Icelandic Fantasies (Many Worlds Press), by Eleanor Arnason; and The Best of Ian Watson (PS Publishing), by Ian Watson.
Also good were: Tales of the Hidden World (Open Road Media), by Simon R. Green; Death at the Blue Elephant (Ticonderoga Publications), by Janeen Webb; New Frontiers: A Collection of Tales about the Past, the Present, and the Future (Tor), by Ben Bova; Young Woman in a Garden: Stories (Small Beer Press), by Delia Sherman; and Dragons at Crumbling Castle: And Other Stories (Transworld/Doubleday UK), by Terry Pratchett.
Career-spanning retrospective collections this year included: The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson, Volume 6: A Bicycle Built for Brew (NESFA Press), by Poul Anderson; The Millennium Express: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Nine (Subterranean Press), by Robert Silverberg; The Man Who Made Models: The Collected Short Fiction, Volume One (Centipede Press), by R. A. Lafferty; The Top of the Volcano: The Award-Winning Stories of Harlan Ellison (Subterranean Press), by Harlan Ellison; Tarzan the Untamed and Other Tales (Orion/Gollancz), by Edgar Rice Burroughs; The New Annotated H. P. Lovecraft (Liveright/Norton) edited by Leslie S. Klinger; The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (Tor), by Frank Herbert; Jerry Cornelius: His Lives and His Times (Orion), by Michael Moorcock; The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies (Penguin), by Clark Ashton Smith; and Minding the Stars: The Early Jack Vance, Volume Four (Subterranean Press), by Jack Vance, edited by Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan. Damon Knight SF Gateway Omnibus: Far Out, In Deep, Off Centre, Turning On, by Damon Knight, is an omnibus of four short-story collections by Knight, making almost his entire output at short lengths available again. The SF Gateway omnibuses by Barrington Bailey, Michael Moorcock, Henry Kuttner, and Robert A. Heinlein also contain collections, as does the A. Bertram Chandler omnibus from Baen Books. There was also a reprint of quintessential retrospective Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (Orion/Gollancz), by James Tiptree, Jr.
Again, small presses as usual 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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The most reliable buys in the reprint anthology market are usually the various best of the year anthologies. We lost one series this year, with the death of David G. Hartwell’s Year’s Best SF series (Tor), which ceased publication after eighteen volumes. That leaves science fiction being covered by one dedicated Best of the Year anthology, the one you are reading at the moment, The Year’s Best Science Fiction series from St. Martin’s Press, edited by Gardner Dozois, now up to its thirty-second annual collection, plus two separate half anthologies, the science fiction half of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eight (Solaris), edited by Jonathan Strahan; and by the science fiction half of The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: 2014 Edition (Prime Books), edited by Rich Horton (in practice, of course, Strahan and Horton’s books probably won’t divide neatly in half with their coverage, and there’s likely to be more of one thing than another—but if you put the two halves together, I suppose you could say that SF is covered by two anthologies). 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 2014 (Pyr), edited by Kij Johnson. There were three best of the year anthologies covering horror: The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Six (Skyhorse Publishing/Night Shade Books), edited by Ellen Datlow, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 25 (A Herman Graf Book/Skyhorse Publishing), edited by Stephen Jones; and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: 2014 Edition (Prime Books), edited by Paula Guran. Since the distinction between “weird fiction” and “horror” seems a fine one
to me, I suspect that newer series Year’s Best Weird Fiction (ChiZine Publications), this year edited by Laird Barron, should probably be counted for horror as well. Fantasy, which used to have several series devoted to it, is now only covered by the fantasy halves of the Stranhan and Horton anthologies, plus whatever stories fall under the “dark fantasy” part of Guran’s anthology, with no best series dedicated specifically to it. A more specialized best of the year anthology is Wilde Stories 2014: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press), edited by Steve Berman.
The best stand-alone reprint anthology of the year was probably the retrospective anthology The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 2 (Tachyon Publications), edited by Gordon Van Gelder, which featured classics by Damon Knight, Robert A. Heinlein, Brian W. Aldiss, Jack Vance, R. A. Lafferty, Robert Silverberg, Lucius Shepard, Maureen F. McHugh, Bruce Sterling, Robert Reed, Geoff Ryman, Elizabeth Hand, George Alec Effinger, James Patrick Kelly, Gene Wolfe, and many others. Also strong was Space Opera (Prime Books), edited by Rich Horton, with strong work by Ian McDonald, Greg Egan, Gwyneth Jones, David Moles, Robert Reed, Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, Ian R. MacLeod, Aliette de Bodard, Naomi Novik, Yoon Ha Lee, Kage Baker, Jay Lake, Alastair Reynolds, Lavie Tidhar, and others, and baseball SF/fantasy anthology Field of Fantasies: Baseball Stories of the Strange and Supernatural (Night Shade Books), edited by Rick Wilber, which features good work by Kim Stanley Robinson, Louise Marley, John Kessel, Bruce McAllister, Harry Turtledove, Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan, Wilber himself, Karen Joy Fowler, T. Coraghessan Boyle, Cecilia Tan, W. P. Kinsella, and others.
The Year's Best Science Fiction, Thirty-Second Annual Collection Page 4