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

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 suddenlypress@yahoo.com;

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 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;

Down East, via www.downeast.com.

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.