The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 24 Read online

  Addresses: PS Publishing, Grosvener House, 1 New Road, Hornsea, East 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, 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.oldearthbooks.com; Tachyon Publications, 1459 18th St. #139, San Francisco, CA 94107, www.tachyonpublications.com; Night Shade Books, 1661 Tennessee Street, #3H, San Francsisco, CA 94107, www.nightshadebooks.com; Five Star, 295 Kennedy Memorial Drive, Waterville, ME 04901, www.gale.cengage.com/fivestar; NewCon Press, via www.newconpress.co.uk; Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306 Easthampton MA 01027, http://smallbeerpress.com; Locus Press, P.O. Box 13305, Oakland, CA 94661, www.locusmag.com; Crescent Books, Mercat Press Ltd., 10 Coates Crescent, Edinburgh, Scotland EH3 7AL, www.mercatpress.com; Wildside Press/Borgo Press, 9710 Traville Gateway Dr., #234, Rockville, MI 20850, 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, http://phobosweb.com; Fairwood Press, 5203 Quincy Ave. SE, Auburn, WA 98092, www.fairwoodpress.com; BenBella Books, 10300 N. Central Expressway, Suite 400, Dallas, TX 75231, 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 Books, 2526 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berkeley, CA, 94704; Prime Books, P.O. Box 36503, Canton, OH, 44735, www.primebooks.com; MonkeyBrain Books, 11204 Crossland Drive, Austin, TX 78726, www.monkeybrainbooks.com; Wesleyan University Press, University Press of New England, Order Dept., 1 Court St., Lebanon NH 03766-1358, 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 546 Chatswood NSW 2057, Australia, www.tabula-rasa.info/ MirrorDanse; Arsenal Pulp Press, 101-211 East Georgia Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6A 1Z6, www.arsenalpulp.com; DreamHaven Books, 2301 East 38th Street, Minneapolis, MN 55406; Elder Signs Press/Dimensions Books, order through www.eldersignspress.com; Chaosium, via www.chaosium.com; 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; Suddenly Press, via [email protected]; Sandstone Press, P.O. Box 5725, One High St., Dingwall, Ross-shire, IV15 9WJ, UK, www.sandstonepress.com; Tropism Press, via www.tropismpress.com; Science Fiction Poetry Association/Dark Regions Press, www.sfpoetry.com, checks to Helena Bell, SFPA Treasurer, 1225 West Freeman St., Apt. 12, Carbondale, IL 62901; DH Press, via diamondbookdistributors.com; Kurodahan Press, via Web site 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 www.coeurdelion.com.au; PARSEC Ink, via http://parsecink.org; Robert J. Sawyer Books, via www.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.

  If print books are about to disappear, to be replaced by e-books, as argued by some commentators, there was no sign of it in 2010. In fact, in spite of the recession, the number of novels published in the SF/fantasy genres increased for the fourth year in a row.

  According to the newsmagazine Locus, there were a record 3,056 books “of interest to the SF field” published in 2010, up 5 percent from 2,901 titles in 2009, and 69 percent of those were new titles, not reprints. (It’s worth noting that this total doesn’t count the previously mentioned e-books, media tie-in novels, gaming novels, novelizations of genre movies, or print-on-demand books – all of which would swell the total by hundreds if counted.) The number of new SF novels was up 14 percent to 285 as opposed to 2009’s 232. The number of new fantasy novels was up by 7 percent, to 614 titles as opposed to 2009’s total of 572. Horror novels remained the same at 251 titles. Paranormal romances were up 13 percent to 384 titles from 2009’s 339, second in numbers only to fantasy (although sometimes it can be difficult and even subjective to make some of these judgment calls regarding categorization – once a novel about vampires would have been considered to be a fantasy novel, now it’s probably counted under paranormal romance instead, and could even show up under horror, depending on who was doing the categorizing).

  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 the novels that received a lot of attention and acclaim in 2010. These include: The Dervish House (Pyr), by Ian McDonald; Zendegi (Night Shade Books), by Greg Egan; Not Less Than Gods (Tor), by Kage Baker; The Bird of the River (Tor), by Kage Baker; Blackout/All Clear (Spectra), by Connie Willis; Hull Zero Three (Orbit), by Greg Bear; Coyote Destiny (Ace), by Allen Steele; Deceiver (DAW Books), by C. J. Cherryh; Starbound (Ace) by Joe Haldeman; Chill (Ballantine Books), by Elizabeth Bear; Terminal World (Gollancz), by Alastair Reynolds; Surface Detail (Orbit), by Iain M. Banks; Kraken (Del Rey), by China Miéville; The Folding Knife (Orbit), by K. J. Parker; Directive 51 (Ace), by John Barnes; Brain Thief (Tor), by Alexander Jablokov; Cryoburn (Baen), by Lois McMaster Bujold; Who Fears Death (DAW Books), by Nnedi Okorafor; The Technician (Tor), by Neal Asher; Echo (Ace), by Jack McDevitt; New Model Army (Gollancz), by Adam Roberts; Dreadnought (Tor), by Cherie Priest; The Wolf Age (Pyr), by James Enge; Dragon Haven (Eos), by Robin Hobb; The Restoration Game (Orbit), by Ken MacLeod; Behemoth (Simon Pulse), by Scott Westerfeld; Sleepless (Ballantine Books), by Charlie Huston; Hespira (Night Shade Books), by Matthew Hughes; The Fuller Memorandum (Ace), by Charles Stross; The Trade of Queens (Tor), by Charles Stross; The Evolutionary Void (Del Rey), by Peter F. Hamilton; The Sorcerer’s House (Tor), by Gene Wolfe; For the Win (Tor), by Cory Doctorow; Ship Breaker (Little, Brown and Company), by Paolo Bacigalupi; Discord’s Apple (Tor), by Carrie Vaughn; Mockingiay (Scholastic Press), by Suzanne Collins; and I Shall Wear Midnight (HarperCollins), by Terry Pratchett.

  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: Zendegi (Night Shade Books), by Greg Egan; Hespira (Night Shade Books), by Matthew Hughes; and The Habitation of the Blessed (Night Shade Books), by Catherynne M. Valente.

  The year’s first novels included: The Quantum Thief (Gollancz), by Hannu Rajaniemi; The Loving Dead (Night Shade Books), by Amelia Beamer; Clowns at Midnight (PS Publishing), by Terry Dowling; The Native Star (Spectra), by M. K. Hobson; The Bookman (Angry Robot), by Lavie Tidhar; Bitter Seeds (Tor), by Ian Tregillis; Redemption in Indigo (Small Beer Press), by Karen Lord; How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (Pantheon Books), by Charles Yu; Passion Play (Tor), by Beth Bernobich; Shades of Milk and Honey (Tor), by Mary Robinette Kowal; The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Orbit), by N. K. Jemisin; Tome of the Undergates (Pyr), by Sam Sykes; The Dream of Perpetual Motion (St. Martin’s Press), by Dexter Palmer; Meeks (Small Beer Press), by Julia Holmes; The Last Page (Tor), by Anthony Huso; Noise (Spectra), by Darin Bradley; Crossing Over (Viking), by Anna Kend
all; Spellwright (Tor), by Blake Charlton; A Book of Tongues (CZP), by Gemma Files; Sixty-One Nails (Angry Robot), by Mike Shevdon; Black Blade Blues (Tor), by J. A. Pitts; and The Girl with Glass Feet (Henry Holt), by Ali Shaw. Of these, The Quantum Thief drew the best notices, generating the same kind of buzz that 2009’s The Windup Girl got, although The Loving Dead and Bitter Seeds also drew their share of attention.

  Historical or mainstream novels that add strong fantastic elements to the mix included: Black Hills (Little, Brown and Company), by Dan Simmons; Kings of the North (Forge), by Cecelia Holland; Under Heaven (Viking Canada), by Guy Gavriel Kay; A Dark Matter (Doubleday), by Peter Straub; and Zero History (Putman), by William Gibson. Ventures into the genre, or at least the ambiguous fringes of it, by well-known mainstream authors, included: The Passage (Ballantine Books), by Justin Cronin; The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (Prometheus Books), by Mark Hodder; The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Random House), by David Mitchell; and Luka and the Fire of Life (Random House), by Salman Rushdie.

  It was a strong year for individual novellas published as chapbooks: Subterranean published Blue and Gold, by K. J. Parker; Bone and Jewel Creatures, by Elizabeth Bear; The Lifecycle of Software Objects, by Ted Chiang; The God Engines, by John Scalzi; The Last Song of Orpheus, by Robert Silverberg; and The Taborin Scale, by Lucius Shepard. PS Publishing brought out Cloud Permutations, by Lavie Tidhar, Seven Cities of Gold, by David Moles; The Baby Killers, by Jay Lake; and Quartet and Triptych, by Matthew Hughes. Fairwood Press published The Specific Gravity of Grief, by Jay Lake. Aqueduct Press published Tomb of the Fathers, by Eleanor Arnason. PM Press brought out Mammoths of the Great Plains, by Eleanor Arnason. Drollerie Press published The Big Bah-Ha, by C.S.E. Cooney. Silverberry Press brought out Pink Noise, by Leonid Korogodsky. Cemetery Dance published Blockade Billy, by Stephen King. Little, Brown published The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, by Stephenie Meyer.

  Novel omnibuses this year included: Young Flandry (Baen), by Poul Anderson; Darkshade (Night Shade Books), by Glen Cook; The Ware Tetralogy (Prime Books), by Rudy Rucker; Virga; Cities of the Air (Tor), by Karl Schroeder; Flaming Zeppelins: The Adventures of Ned the Seal (Tachyon Publications), by Joe R. Lansdale; A Matter of Magic (Orb Books), by Patricia C. Wrede; Riverworld (Tor), by Philip José Farmer; Century of the Soldier (Solaris Books), by Paul Kearney; The Many Deaths of the Black Company (Tor), by Glen Cook; Beast Master’s Planet (Tor), by Andre Norton; Search for the Star Stones (Baen), by Andre Norton; The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds (Everyman’s Library), by H. G. Wells; and Damned If You Do in the Nightside (Solaris Books), by Simon R. Green. (Omnibuses that contain both short stories and novels can be found listed in the short-story section.)

  Not even counting print-on-demand books and the availability of out-of-print books as electronic downloads from Internet sources such as Fictionwise, 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. Tor reissued: The Currents of Space, by Isaac Asimov; The Word for World Is Forest, by Ursula K. Le Guin; A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge; The Dark Design, by Philip José Farmer; Dream Park, by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes; Hawkmoon: The Jewel in the Skull, by Michael Moorcock; Hawkmoon: The Runestaff by Michael Moorcock; Hawkmoon: The Mad God’s Amulet, by Michael Moorcock; Hawkmoon: The Sword of the Dawn, by Michael Moorcock; and associational novel The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike, by Philip K. Dick. Orb reissued: Our Lady of Darkness, by Fritz Leiber; The World Inside, by Robert Silverberg; Slant, by Greg Bear; Moving Mars, by Greg Bear; Mysterium, by Robert Charles Wilson; and Spiritwalk and Muse and Reverie, by Charles de Lint. Baen reissued: The High Crusade, by Poul Anderson and The Rolling Stones, by Robert A. Heinlein. Eos reissued: Creatures of Light and Darkness, by Roger Zelazny. Roc reissued: Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors, by Guy Gavriel Kay. Night Shade Books reissued: Starfishers and Stars’ End: The Starfishers Trilogy, Volume Three, by Glen Cook. Orbit reissued: Fallen Dragon, by Peter F. Hamilton. Aqueduct Press reissued: Dorothea Dreams, by Suzy McKee Charnas. Melville House reissued: The Castle in Transylvania, by Jules Verne. Ad Stellae reissued: This Star Shall Abide, by Sylvia Engdahl. Pazio Publishing reissued: Steppe, by Piers Anthony. Create Space reissued: Dreambaby, by Bruce McAllister.

  It was another strong year for short-story collections, especially for career-spanning retrospective collections. The year’s best nonretrospective collections included: The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories (Night Shade Books), by Walter Jon Williams; Journeys (Subterranean Press), by Ian R. MacLeod; The Sky That Wraps (Subterranean Press), by Jay Lake; On the Banks of the River of Heaven (Prime Books), by Richard Parks; Deep Navigation (NESFA Press), by Alastair Reynolds; Leviathan Wept (Subterranean Press), by Daniel Abraham; Recovering Apollo 8 (Golden Gryphon Press), by Kristine Kathryn Rusch; The Third Bear (Tachyon Publications), by Jeff VanderMeer; Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories (Lethe Press), by Sandra McDonald; The Ammonite Violin and Others (Subterranean Press), by Caitlin R. Kiernan; The Mysteries of the Diogenes Club (MonkeyBrain), by Kim Newman; Occultation (Night Shade Books), by Laird Barron; The Juniper Tree and Other Blue Rose Stories (Subterranean Press), by Peter Straub; What Will Come After? (PS Publishing) by Scott Edelman; Atlantis and Other Places (Roc), by Harry Turtledove; A Handful of Pearls and Other Stories (Lethe Press), by Beth Bernobich; What I Didn’t See and Other Stories (Small Beer Press), by Karen Joy Fowler; Diving Mime, Weeping Czars, and Other Unusual Suspects (Fairwood Press), by Ken Scholes; Through the Drowsy Dark (Aqueduct Press), by Rachel Swirsky; The Poison Eaters (Big Mouth House), by Holly Black; and Full Dark, No Stars (Scribner), by Stephen King.

  It was an even stronger year for retrospective career-spanning collections. They included: Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories (Night Shade Books), by Fritz Leiber; Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance (Subterranean Press), by Jack Vance; The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson (Night Shade Books), by Kim Stanley Robinson; Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle (Subterranean Press), by Peter S Beagle; Young Flandry (Baen), by Poul Anderson; Sir Dominic Flandry; The Last Knight of Terra (Baen), by Poul Anderson; Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire (Baen), by Poul Anderson; The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny: Volume Five – Nine Black Doves (NESFA Press), by Roger Zelazny; The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny: Volume Six – The Road to Amber (NESFA Press), by Roger Zelazny; The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson, Volume 3: The Saturn Game (NESFA Press), by Poul Anderson; Who Fears the Devil?: The Complete Tales of Silver John (Planet Stories), by Manly Wade Wellman; The Best of Joe R. Lansdale (Tachyon Publications), by Joe R. Lansdale; The Best of Larry Niven (Subterranean Press), by Larry Niven; Amberjack: Tales of Fear and Wonder (Subterranean Press), by Terry Dowling; Detour to Otherness (Haffner Press), by Henry Kutner and C. L. Moore; The Early Kuttner, Volume One: Terror in the House (Haffner Press), by Henry Kuttner; The Stories of Ray Bradbury (Everyman’s Library), by Ray Bradbury; Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories (Library of America); Selected Short Stories of Lester Del Rey, Robots and Magic Volume 2 (NESFA Press), by Lester Del Rey; An Empire Unacquainted with Defeat: A Chronicle of the Dread Empire (Night Shade Books), by Glen Cook; The Very Best of Charles de Lint (Tachyon Publications), by Charles de Lint; The Last Hieroglyph (The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Vol. 5) (Prime Books), by Clark Ashton Smith; With Folded Hands . . . and Searching Minds: The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson, Volume Seven (Haffner Press), Jack Williamson; and Case and the Dreamer: Volume XIII: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon (North Atlantic Books), by Theodore Sturgeon.

  Small presses again dominated the list of short-story collections. Subterranean, Night Shade Books, and NESFA Press had particularly strong years.

  A wide variety of “electronic collections,” often called “fiction bundles,” too many to ind
ividually list here, are also available for downloading online, at sites such as Fictionwise and ElectricStory, and the Science Fiction Book Club continues to issue new collections as well.

  As is often the case, the most reliable buys in the reprint anthology market may have been the various “Best of the Year” anthology series. This is an area in constant flux – this year alone, we lost at least two Best Of series, maybe three, and added a brand-new one. Science fiction is being covered by three anthologies (actually, technically, by two anthologies and by two separate half anthologies): 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 Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection; the Year’s Best SF series (Eos), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, now up to its fifteenth annual volume; by the science fiction half of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Five (Night Shade Books), edited by Jonathan Strahan; and by the science fiction half of The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, Edition 2010 (Prime Books), edited by Rich Horton (in practice, of course, these books probably won’t divide neatly in half with their coverage, and there’s likely to be more of one thing than another). 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 2010: The Year’s Best SF and Fantasy Selected by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (Roc), edited by Bill Fawcett. In 2010, a similar series began, covering the Hugo winners, The Hugo Award Showcase: 2010 Volume (Prime Books), edited by Mary Robinette Kowal, but it died after a single volume. There were three Best of the Year anthologies covering horror: The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Two (Night Shade Books), edited by Ellen Datlow; The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 21 (Running Press), edited by Stephen Jones; and a new series, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2010 (Prime Books), edited by Paula Guran. The popularity of fantasy remains high, particularly in the novel market, but coverage of it by Best of the Year volumes continues to shrink. When the long-running Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, and Gavin Grant Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series died early in 2009, Ellen Datlow found a new home for her horror best half almost immediately, but the Link and Grant Fantasy Best half has yet to find a new home, and must be considered to be gone. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer’s Year’s Best Fantasy series was supposed to have transmogrified from a print publication into a version available as a download or a print-on-demand title from Tor.com, but I haven’t seen any sign of it being actually available, and wonder if it isn’t gone too. That left fantasy to be covered by the fantasy halves of Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year and Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy (plus whatever stories fall under the “Dark Fantasy” part of Guran’s anthology), and by Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy, Volume 3 (Underland Press), edited by Kevin Brockmeier and Matthew Cheney – but it’s just been announced that that series is dying as well. There was also The 2010 Rhysling Anthology (Science Fiction Poetry Association), edited by Jamie Lee Moyer, which compiles the Rhysling Award-winning SF poetry of the year.