Gardner Dozois - The Years Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

And no doubt there were other reprints that I’ve missed.

As I said, this is the best time in decades to pick up new editions of long out-of-print work, so go out and get them while you can!

I’ve almost given up trying to guess which novels are going to win the year’s major awards, especially as SFWA’s weird and dysfunctional “rolling eligibility” rule means that books that already won a Hugo last year, such as Neil Caiman’s American Gods, get to go head-to-head with new novels such as Michael Swanwick’s Bones of the Earth. To be fair, it’s hard to see a clear or obvious winner for the Hugo, either. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Small-press original novels of interest this year included Charles L. Harness’s Cybele, with Bluebonnets (NESFA Press), an autobiographical novel with some fantastic elements, and Carol Emshwiller’s The Mount (Small Beer Press).

Associational novels by SF writers this year included a mystery novel by Ray Bradbury, Let’s All Kill Constance (HarperCollins/Morrow).

Mail-order information: NESFA Press, P.O. Box 809, Frammghan, MA 01701-0809-$21 (plus $2.50 shipping in all cases) for Cybele, with Bluebonnets, by Charles Harness, $29.00 (plus $2.50 shipping) for Martians and Madness: The Complete SF Novels of Fredric Brown, $29.00 for Dimensions of Sheckley, by Robert Sheckley; Small Beer Press, 360 Atlantic Avenue, PMB #132, Brooklyn, NY 112117-$16 for The Mount, by Carol Em-shwiller; Tachyon Publications, 1459 18th Street #139, San Francisco, CA 94107-$14.95 for The Shadow Hunter, by Pat Murphy, $15.00 for The Phoenix and the Mirror, by Avram Davidson.

It was another good year for short-story collections. The year’s best collections included: The Birthday of the World (HarperCollins), by Ursula K. Le Guin; Black Projects, White Nights; The Company Dossiers (Golden Gryphon), by Kage Baker; Toast and Other Rusted Futures (Cosmos), by Charles Stress; Worlds Enough amp; Time (Subterranean), by Dan Simmons; Strange But Not a Stranger (Golden Gryphon), by James Patrick Kelly; The Retrieval Artist and Other Stories (Five Star), by Kristine Kathryn Rusch; Vinland the Dream and Other Stories (Voyager), In Another Country and Other Short Novels (Five Star), by Robert Silverberg; Stories of Your Life and Others (Tor), by Ted Chiang; The Lady Vanishes and Other Oddities of Nature (Five Star), by Charles Sheffield; Everything’s Eventual (Scribner), by Stephen King, Aristotle and the Gun and Other Stories (Five Star), by L. Sprague de Camp; and Phase Space (Voyager), by Stephen Baxter. (It’s worth noting that the Le Guin, the Baker, the Stress, the Simmons, the Kelly, the Rusch, and the Chiang collections all contain original stories.)

Other good collections included The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories (Golden Gryphon), by Jeffery Ford; The Great Escape (Golden Gryphon), by Ian Watson; Strangers and Beggars (Fairwood Press), by James Van Pelt; Hunting the Snark and Other Short Novels (Five Star), by Mike Resnick; Rosetti Song: Four Stories (Small Beer Press), by Alex Irvine; Dragon’s Island and Other Stories (Five Star), by Jack Williamson; The Mountain Cage and Other Stories (Meisha Merlin), by Pamela Sargent; Human Voices (Five Star), by James Gunn; Counting Up, Counting Down (Del Rey), by Harry Turtledove; The Ogre’s Wife (Obscura Press), by Richard Parks; Babylon Sisters and Other Posthuman Stories (Prime), by Paul Di Filippo; God Is an Iron and Other Stories (Five Star), by Spider Robinson; Little Doors (Four Walls, Eight Windows), by Paul Di Filippo; Generation Gap and Other Stories (Five Star), by Stanley Schmidt; If Lions Could Speak (Cosmos), by Paul Park; Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories (Small Beer Press), by Carol Emshwiller; Death and the Librarian and Other Stories (Five Stars), by Esther Friesner; Waifs and Strays (Viking), by Charles de Lint; Through My Glasses Darkly (KaCSFFS Press), by Frank Robinson, selected and edited by Robin Wayne Bailey; Claremont Tales II (Golden Gryphon), by Richard Lupoff; Swift Thoughts (Golden Gryphon), by George Zebrowski; and Lord Stink and Other Stories (Small Beer Press), Judith Berman.

The year also featured excellent retrospective collections such as The Collected Stories of Greg Bear (Tor), by Greg Bear; Smoke Ghost amp; Other Apparitions (Midnight House), by Fritz Leiber; Going For Infinity (Tor), by Poul Anderson; Keith Laumer: The Lighter Side (Baen), by Keith Laumer; One More for the Road (Morrow), by Ray Bradbury; The Amazing Dr. Darwin (Baen), by Charles Sheffield; Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (Pantheon), by Philip K. Dick; Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (Tor), by Richard Matheson; Med Ship (Baen), by Murry Leinster; The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson; Volume Four: Spider Island and Other Stories, by Jack Williamson; The Emperor of Dreams (Gollancz), by Clark Ashton Smith; Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek (Big Engine), by John Sladek; and Bright Segment: The Complete Short Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume VIII (North Atlantic), by Theodore Sturgeon.

It’s good to see regular trade publishers such as Tor and HarperCollins publishing collections, especially major, important collections such as the Bear, the Anderson, the Chiang, and the Le Guin, but, as has been true for many years now, it’s still the small press publishers who are publishing the bulk of the year’s collections. New book line Five Star Books exploded on the scene with an unprecedented twelve collections, but Golden Cryphon Press held its own with six, and may have had the edge in overall quality, although both houses brought out first-rate collections this year. But as you can see from the lists above, publishers such as NESFA Press, Four Walls, Eight Windows, and North Atlantic remain important as well, as do even smaller presses such as Fairwood Press. Print-on-demand collections are becoming more frequent as well, with collections from Charles Stross, Paul Park, John Sladek, and others, coming out from POD houses such as Cosmos/Wildside and Big Engine, and I suspect that this area will grow in importance as a source of short-story collections as the years go by. (Toast, by Charles Stross and If Lions Could Speak, by Paul Park can be ordered from Wildside Press at www.wildsidepress.com. Maps: the Uncollected John Sladek, by John Sladek, can be ordered from Big Engine Press at www.bigengine.com.)

“Electronic collections” continue to be available for downloading online at sites such as Fictionwise and ElectricStory, and I expect that this area will continue to grow as we progress into the century as well.

As very few small-press titles will be findable in the average bookstore, or even in the average chain superstore, means that mail-order is still your best bet, and so I’m going to list the addresses of the small-press publishers mentioned above who have little presence in most bookstores: Golden Gryphon Press, 3002 Perkins Road, Urbana, IL 61802-$24.95 for Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers, by Kage Baker, $25.95 for Strange but Not a Stranger, by James Patrick Kelly, $23.95 for The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories, by Jeffrey Ford, $23.95 for The Great Escape, by Ian Watson, $23.95 for Claremont Tales II, by Richard Lupoff; $24.95 for Swift Thoughts, by George Zebrowski; Midnight House, 4128 Woodland Park Ave., N. Seattle, WA 98103-$40.00 for Smoke Ghost and Other Apparitions, by Fritz Leiber; Fairwood Press, 5203 Quincy Ave SE, Auburn, WA 98092-$17.99 for Strangers and Beggars, by James Van Pelt; Haffner Press, 5005 Crooks Rd., Suite 35, Royal Oak, MI 48G73-1239-$35.00 plus $5.00 postage for The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson, Volume Four: Spider Island and Other Stories, by Jack Williamson; Small Beer Press, 360 Atlantic Avenue, PMB# 132, Brooklyn, NY 11217-$16.00 for Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories, by Carol Emshwiller, $6.00 including shipping for Rosetti Song: Four Stories, by Alex Irvine, $6.00 including shipping for Lord Stink and Other Stories, by Judith Berman; Obscura Press, P.O. Box 1992, Ames, 1A, 50010-$18.95 for The Ogre’s Wife, by Richard Parks; KaCSFFS Press, P.O. Box 36212, Kansas City, MO, 64171-6212-$15.00 for Through My Glasses Darkly, by Frank M. Robinson; Prime, P.O. Box 36503, Canton, OH 44735-$17.95 for Babylon Sisters and Other Posthuman Stories, by Paul Di Filippo; North Atlantic Press, P.O. Box 12327, Berkeley, CA 94701-$35.00 for Bright Segment: The Complete Short Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume VIII.