Gardner Dozois - The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 29

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.)

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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 ress/Borgo Press,P.O. Box 301, Holicong, PA 18928-0301, or go to www.wildsidepress.comfor 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;