The Year’s Best Science Fiction Read online

  Although not as strong as the anthologies mentioned earlier, the reborn version of the old Solaris anthology series, now called Solaris Rising: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction (Solaris Books) and edited by new editor Ian Whates, turned in a solid debut performance, consisting of almost all center-core SF, and featuring good work by Dave Hutchinson, Ian McDonald, Ken MacLeod, Alastair Reynolds, Stephen Palmer, Keith Brooke and Eric Brown, and others. Ian Whates also brought out two more minor but enjoyable original anthologies, Further Conflicts (NewCon Press) and Fables from the Fountain (NewCon). Print magazine MIT Technology Review published a special all-fiction issue, supposedly the start of an annual series, which featured intelligent core SF by Pat Cadigan, Ken MacLeod, Gwyneth Jones, Elizabeth Bear, Vandana Singh, Cory Doctorow, Paul Di Filippo, and others. Postscripts 24/25 (PS Publishing) featured mostly slipstream, fantasy, and soft horror, too much of it for my taste, but did also feature strong SF stories by Ken MacLeod, Keith Brooke, and Adam Roberts. Panverse Three (Panverse Publishing), an all-novella anthology edited by Dario Ciriello, featured strong novellas by Ken Liu and Don D’Ammassa. Welcome to the Greenhouse (OR Books), edited by Gordon Van Gelder, was somewhat disappointing overall, although it had interesting work by Chris Lawson, Bruce Sterling, Gregory Benford, Brian W. Aldiss, and others. There were two steampunk anthologies, Steampunk!: An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories (Candlewick Press), edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant and The Immersion Book of Steampunk (Immersion Press), edited by Gareth D. Jones and Carmelo Rafala, as well as the steampunkish Gaslight Arcanum: Uncanny Tales of Sherlock Holmes (Hades/EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing), edited by J. R. Campbell and Charles Prepolec (and, in fantasy, the Dann and Gevers Ghosts by Gaslight, mentioned later).

  Pleasant but minor SF anthologies included End of an Aeon (Fairwood Press), edited by Bridget McKenna and Marti McKenna, an anthology made up of stories leftover in inventory from the now-deceased small press magazine Aeon. Human for a Day (DAW Books), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Jennifer Brozek, and The Wild Side: Urban Fantasy with an Erotic Edge (Baen), edited by Mark L. Van Name. L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XXVII (Galaxy Press), edited by K. D. Wentworth, is the lastest in a long-running series featuring novice work by beginning writers, some of whom may later turn out to be important talents.

  The best of the year’s fantasy anthologies (although an argument could be made for putting it in with the urban fantasy and paranormal anthologies discussed later) was probably Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy 2 (Subterranean Press), edited by William Schafer, and featuring good stories by K. J. Parker, Bruce Sterling, William Browning Spencer, Jay Lake and Shannon Page, Norman Patridge, Kelley Armstrong, and others.

  Pleasant but minor fantasy anthologies included Courts of the Fey (DAW Books), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Russell Davis, and Hot and Steamy: Tales of Steampunk Romance (DAW Books), edited by Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg.

  There were a number of anthologies exploring the confusing and sometimes contradictory area now known as “urban fantasy,” including Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy (St. Martin’s Press), edited by Ellen Datlow; Supernatural Noir (Dark Horse Books), edited by Ellen Datlow; Down These Strange Streets (Ace), edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois; Ghosts by Gaslight (HarperCollins Voyager), edited by Jack Dann and Nick Gevers; Welcome to Bordertown: New Stories and Poems of the Borderlands (Random House), edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner; and Home Improvement: Undead Edition (Ace), edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner. Original horror anthologies included Teeth: Vampire Tales (Harper), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling; Blood and Other Cravings (Tor), edited by Ellen Datlow; A Book of Horrors (Jo Fletcher Books), edited by Stephen Jones; Zombiesque (DAW Books), edited by Stephen L. Antczak, James C. Basser, and Martin H. Greenberg; and a mixed reprint and original shapeshifter anthology, Bewere the Night (Prime Books), edited by Ekaterina Sedia.

  Less easily classifiable stuff, dancing on the edge of one genre or another, included the entertaining and vaguely steampunkish The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities (Harper Voyager), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer; Kafkaesque (Tachyon Publications), edited by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly; and Tesseracts Fifteen: A Case of Quite Curious Tales (Hades/EDGE Science Fiction), edited by Julie E. Czerneda and Susan MacGregor.

  Shared-world anthologies included In Fire Forged (Baen Books), edited by David Weber; Golden Reflections: Stories of the Mask (Baen Books), edited by Joan Spicci Saberhagen and Robert E. Vardeman; and Under the Vale and Other Tales of Valdemar (DAW Books), edited by Mercedes Lackey.

  Short fiction stalwarts such as Robert Reed, Michael Swanwick, and Ken MacLeod published a lot of good work this year, as usual, but so did prolific younger writers such as Lavie Tidhar, Ken Liu, Cat Rambo, Catherynne M. Valente, and Genevieve Valentine. Stories about Mars seemed popular this year, as did stories about ecological terrorists, and stories where SF was disguised as fantasy or even as fairy tales.

  (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. Many publishers seem to sell only online, through their Web sites, and some will only accept payment through PayPal. Many books, even from some of the smaller presses, are also available through Amazon.com. If you can’t find an address for a publisher, and it’s quite likely that I’ve missed some here, or failed to update them successfully, Google it. It shouldn’t be that difficult these days to find up-to-date contact information for almost any publisher, however small.)

  Addresses are: 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/press; Subterranean Press, P.O. Box 190106, Burton, MI 48519, www.subterraneanpress.com; Old Earth Books, P.O. Box 19951, Baltimore, MD 21211-0951, www.oldearthbooks.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; NewCon Press, via www.newconpress.com; 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.crescentfiction.com; Wildside Press/Borgo Press, P.O. Box 301, Holicong, PA 18928-0301, or go to www.wildsidepress.com for pricing and ordering; 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.fairwoodpress.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 Books, P.O. Box 36503, Canton, OH 44735, www.primebooks.net; Fairwood Press, 5203 Quincy Ave.
SE, Auburn, WA 98092, www.fairwoodpress.com; 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.ed.au/~rhood/agogpress; Wheatland Press, via www.wheatlandpress.com; MirrorDanse Books, P.O. Box 3542, Parramatta NSW 2124, www.tabula-rasa.info/MirrorDanse; Arsenal Pulp Press, 103–1014 Homer Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6B 2W9, www.arsenalpress.com; DreamHaven Books, 912 W. Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN 55408; Elder Signs Press/Dimensions Books, order through www.dimensionsbooks.com; Chaosium, via www.chaosium.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 Saplilng Lane, Deerfield, IL 60015-3969, or www.isficpress.com; Suddenly Press, via [email protected]; Sandstone Press, P.O. Box 5725, One High St., Dingwall, Ross-shire, IV15 9WJ; Tropism Press, via www.tropismpress.com; SF Poetry Association/Dark Regions Press, www.sfpoetry.com, send checks to Helena Bell, SFPA Treasurer, 1225 West Freeman St., Apt. 12, Carbondale, IL 62401; DH Press, via diamondbookdistributors.com; Kurodahan Press, via www.kurodahan.com; Ramble House, 443 Gladstone Blvd., Shreveport, LA 71104; Interstitial Arts Foundation, via www.interstitialarts.org; Raw Dog Screaming, via www.rawdogscreaming.com; Three Legged Fox Books, 98 Hythe Road, Brighton, BN1 6JS, UK; Norilana Books, via www.norilana.com; coeur de lion, via coeurdelion.com.au; PARSECink, via www.parsecink.org; Robert J. Sawyer Books, via wwww.sfwriter.com/rjsbooks.htm; Rackstraw Press, via http://rackstrawpress; Candlewick, via www.candlewick.com; Zubaan, via www.zubaanbooks.com; Utter Tower, via www.threeleggedfox.co.uk; Spilt Milk Press, via www.electricvelocipede.com; Paper Golem, via www.papergolem.com; Galaxy Press, via www.galaxypress.com.; Twelfth Planet Press, via www.twelfthplanetpress.com; Five Senses Press, via www.sensefive.com; Elastic Press, via www.elasticpress.com; Lethe Press, via www.lethepressbooks.com; Two Cranes Press, via www.twocranespress.com; Wordcraft of Oregon, via www.wordcraftoforegon.com; Down East, via www.downeast.com.

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  E-books have not yet driven print books out of existence, as some commentators insist that they eventually will, not by a long shot, although there are indications that they’re definitely having an effect, especially on mass-market paperbacks, and taking an increasing share of the market. There were still plenty of print books around in 2011. In fact, in spite of the recession and the e-book revolution, the number of novels published in the SF and fantasy genres increased for the fifth year in a row.

  According to the newsmagazine Locus, there were a record 3,071 books “of interest to the SF field” published in 2011, up slightly from 3,056 titles in 2010. New titles hit a new high for the third year in a row, up 2 percent to 2,140, 70 percent of the total, while reprints dropped 3 percent for 931, their lowest point since 2000. (It’s worth noting that this total doesn’t count e-books, media tie-in novels, gaming novels, novelizations of genre movies, or print-on-demand books—all of which would swell the overall total by hundreds if counted.) The number of new SF novels was up 7 percent to 305 titles as opposed to 2010’s 285. The number of new fantasy novels was up by 7 percent, to 660 titles as opposed to 2010’s total of 614. Horror novels were down 9 percent to 229 titles as opposed to 2010’s 251 titles. Paranormal romances were up 8 percent to 416 titles as opposed to 2010’s 384 titles, second in numbers only to fantasy (although sometimes it’s almost a subjective call whether a particular novel should be pigeonholed as paranormal romance, fantasy, or horror).

  All of these genres showed a sharp increase in young adult novels, up to 24 percent from 2010’s 20 percent in science fiction, up to 35 percent from 2010’s 34 percent in fantasy, and up to 31 percent from 2010’s 24 percent for horror. In SF, dystopian and postapocalyptic YA SF novels were one of the year’s hottest trends.

  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 2011.

  A Dance with Dragons (Bantam), by George R. R. Martin; Earthbound (Ace), by Joe Haldeman; City of Ruins (Pyr), by Kristine Kathryn Rusch; Embassytown (Del Rey), by China Miéville; Cowboy Angels (Pyr), by Paul McAuley; The Wise Man’s Fear (DAW Books), by Patrick Rothfuss; Among Others (Tor), by Jo Walton; This Shared Dream (Tor), by Kathleen Ann Goonan; Hex (Ace), by Allen Steele; Deep State (Orbit), by Walter Jon Williams; The Children of the Sky (Tor), by Vernor Vinge; Rule 34 (Ace), by Charles Stross; Planesrunner (Pyr), by Ian McDonald; Vortex (Tor), by Robert Charles Wilson; Betrayer (DAW Books), by C. J. Cherryh; Home Fires (Tor), by Gene Wolfe; Count to a Trillion (Tor), by John C. Wright; The Magician King (Viking), by Lev Grossman; All the Lives He Led (Tor), by Frederik Pohl; Daybreak Zero (Ace), by John Barnes; After the Golden Age (Tor), by Carrie Vaughn; Kitty’s Big Trouble (Tor), by Carrie Vaughn; Leviathan Wakes (Orbit), by James S. A. Corey; 7th Sigma (Tor), by Steven Gould; The Dragon’s Path (Orbit), by Daniel Abraham; Deathless (Tor), by Catherynne M. Valente; The Heroes (Orbit), by Joe Abercrombe; Bronze Summer (Gollancz), by Stephen Baxter; Stone Spring (Gollancz), by Stephen Baxter; Endurance (Tor), by Jay Lake; The Tempering of Men (Tor), by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear; Goliath (Simon Pulse), by Scott Westerfeld; The Cold Commands (Del Rey), by Richard Morgan; Grail (Spectra), by Elizabeth Bear; Fuzzy Nation (Tor), by John Scalzi; The Islanders (Gollancz), by Christopher Priest; Reamde (HarperCollins), by Neal Stephenson; By Light Alone (Gollancz) by Adam Roberts; Firebird (Ace), by Jack McDevitt; The Hammer (Orbit), by K. J. Parker; The Highest Frontier (Tor), by Joan Slonczewski; The Kings of Eternity (Solaris), by Eric Brown; Remade (William Morrow), by Neal Stephenson; The Kings of Eternity (Solaris), by Eric Brown; Raising Stony Mayhall (Del Rey), by Daryl Gregory; 11/23/63 (Scribner), by Stephen King; and Snuff (HarperCollins), by Terry Pratchett.

  I still hear the complaint that there are no SF books left to buy these days, that they’ve all been driven off the shelves by fantasy books, but although there’s a good deal of fantasy in the titles given here, the Haldeman, the Rusch, the Miéville, the McAuley, the Goonan, the Steele, the Williams, the Vinge, the Stross, the McDonald, the Wilson, the Wright, the Corey, the Pohl, the McDevitt, and a number of others are unquestionably core science fiction, and many more could be cited from the lists of small press novels and first novels. There’s still more good core SF out there than any one person could possibly have time to read in the course of a year.

  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: The Clockwork Rocket (Night Shade Books), by Greg Egan; Dancing with Bears (Night Shade Books), by Michael Swanwick; Osama: A Novel (PS Publishing), by Lavie Tidhar; Wake Up and Dream (PS Publishing), by Ian R. MacLeod; The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Feiwel and Friends), by Catherynne M. Valente; The Folded World (Night Shade Books), by Catherynne M. Valente; The Uncertain Places (Tachyon Publications), by Lisa Goldstein; The Other (Underland Press), by Matthew Hughes; Heart of Iron (Prime Books), by Ekaterina Sedia; Infidel (Night Shade Books), by Kameron Hurley; Scratch Monkey (NESFA Press), by Charles Stross; and Dark Tangos (Subterranean Press), by Lewis Shiner.

  The year’s first novels included: Robopocalypse (Doubleday), by Daniel H. Wilson; Ready Player One (Crown Publishers), by Ernest Cline; Soft Apocalypse (Night Shade Books), by Will McIntosh; Debris (Angry Robot), by Jo Anderton; Mechanique (Prime Books), by Genevieve Valentine; Necropolis (Night Shade Books), by Michael Dempsey; The Falling Machine (Pyr), by Andrew Mayer; The Traitor’s Daughter (Spectra), by Paula Brandon; No Hero (Night Shade Books), by Jonathan Wood; The Girl of Fire and Thorns (Greenwillow
), by Rae Carson; 2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America (St. Martin’s Press), by Albert Brooks; God’s War (Night Shade Books), by Hurley Kameron; Reality 36 (Angry Robot), by Guy Haley; Spellcast (DAW Books), by Barbara Ashford; Sword of Fire and Sea (Pyr), by Erin Hoffman; Low Town (Doubleday), by Daniel Polansky; Kindling the Moon (Pocket Books), by Jenn Bennett; Farlander (Tor), by Col Buchanan; Revolution World (Night Shade Books), by Katy Stauber; A Discovery of Witches (Viking), by Deborah Harkness; The Tiger’s Wife (Random House), by Téa Obreht; The Night Circus (Doubleday), by Erin Morgenstern; The Desert of Souls (Thomas Durine Books), by Howard Andrew Jones; The Unremembered (Tor), by Peter Orullilan; Seed (Night Shade Books), by Rob Ziegler; Of Blood and Honey (Night Shade Books), by Stina Leicht; Among Thieves (Roc), by Douglas Hulick; Awakenings (Tor), by Edward D. Lazellari; Miserere: An Autumn Tale (Night Shade Books), by Teresa Frohock; and The Whitefire Crossing (Night Shade Books), by Courtney Schafer. Unlike last year, when Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief soaked up most of the attention, none of these novels seemed to have a real edge in attention or acclaim.

  Night Shade Books obviously published a lot of novels this year, particularly for a small press, and was particularly active in first novels.

  The strongest novella chapbook of the year, by a good margin, was Silently and Very Fast (WSFA Press), by Catherynne M. Valente, but there were other good novella chapbooks as well, such as Jesus and the Eightfold Path (Immersion Press), by Lavie Tidhar; Angel of Europa (Subterranean Press), by Allen Steele; Blue and Gold (Subterranean Press), by K. J. Parker; Gravity Dreams (PS Publishing), by Stephen Baxter; The White City (Subterranean Press), by Elizabeth Bear; A Brood of Foxes (Aqueduct), by Kristin Livdahl; The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs (Subterranean Press), by James P. Blaylock; and The Ice Puzzle (PS Publishing), by Catherynne M. Valente.