The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection (8 page)

As has become common, there were also a lot of good retrospective collections by older writers (as specialty press hardcovers, many of them may be too expensive for casual readers, although there are a few less-expensive paperbacks here as well), including:
The Van Rijn Method
(Baen – an omnibus of stories about Falstaffan space adventurer Nicolas Van Rijn, plus the well-known novel
The Man Who Counts
), by Poul Anderson; David Falkayn:
Star Trader – The Technic Civilization Saga
(Baen – another ominibus of stories and a novel), by Poul Anderson;
Works of Art
(NESFA Press), by James Bliss;
Lorelei of the Red Mist: Planetary Romances
(Haffiner Press), by Leigh Brackett;
Northwest of Earth: The Complete Northwest Smith
(Prize/Planet Stories), by Leigh Brackett;
H. P. Lovecraft: The Fiction
(Barnes & Noble), by H. P. Lovecraft;
The Worlds of Jack Williamson: A Centennial Tribute 1908–2008
(Haffiner Press), Jack Williamson, edited by Stephen Haffiner;
Gateway to Paradise: The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson
,
Volume Six
(Haffiner Press), Jack Williamson;
The Metal Giants and Others: The Collected Edmond Hamilton
,
Volume One
(Haffiner Press), by Edmond Hamilton;
The Star Stealers: The Complete Adventures of the Interstellar Patrol: The Collected Edmond Hamilton
,
Volume Two
(Haffiner Press), by Edmond Hamilton;
The Collected Captain Future: Volume One
:
Captain Future

and the Space Emperor
(Haffiner Press), by Edmond Hamilton;
Venus on the Half-Shell and Others
(Subterranean – an omnibus of stories and the eponymous novel, written as by “Kilgore Trout”), by Philip José Farmer;
Laugh Lines
(Tor – an omnibus of six stories and two novels), by Ben Bova;
Button, Button: Uncanny Stories
(Tor), by Richard Matheson;
Boy in Darkness and Other Stories
(Peter Owen), by Mervyn Peake;
Elric: The Stealer of Souls
(Del Rey – an omnibus of stories and novels), by Michael Moorcock;
Elric: To Rescue Tanelorn
(Del Rey – an omnibus of stories and novels), by Michael Moorcock;
Viewpoints Critical: Selected Stories
(Tor), by L. E. Modesitt, Jr;
Skeleton in the Closet and Other Stories
(Subterranean), by Robert Bloch;
Summer Morning, Summer Night
(PS Publishing), by Ray Bradbury;
Skeletons
(Subterranean), by Ray Bradbury; and
Project Moonbase and Others
(Subterranean – an omnibus of screenplays and never-filmed adaptations of early Heinlein stories), by Robert A. Heinlein.

The most expensive of these is Bradbury’s
Summer Morning, Summer Night,
which sells for $750.00 (!); one wonders if they’re flying out the door at that price, although there probably are a few collectors willing to pay that much. The bulk of the retrospective collections sells somewhere in the $40 range. The paperbacks from Baen and Tor are much less expensive.

As usual, small press publishers were important – indispensable, really – to the short story collection market, since, with only a few occasional exceptions, the big trade publishers largely don’t do them anymore. Without them, collections would barely exist. As you can see, Subterranean (with the more contemporary stuff) and Haffner Press (with the retrospective stuff) had especially active years. Among trade publishers, Baen seems the most active, particularly in publishing omnibus volumes that contain both short stories and novels.

A wide variety of “electronic collections,” often called “fiction bundles,” too many to individually 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.

The reprint anthology market seemed a bit weaker overall this year than last year. As usual, the bumper crop of “Best of the Year” anthologies were probably your best bet for your money in this market. It’s sometimes hard to tell how many of these there are, as they come and go so quickly, but the field seems to have been winnowed a bit from last year’s record total of fourteen. Science fiction was covered by three and a half anthologies, down from six anthologies last year: the one you are reading at the moment,
The Year’s Best Science Fiction
series from Robinson, edited by Gardner Dozois, now up to its twenty-sixth (in the US) twenty-second (in the UK) annual collection; the
Year’s Best SF series
(Eos), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, now up to its thirteenth annual volume;
Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2007
(Prime), edited by Richard Horton; and
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Two
(Night Shade Books), edited by Jonathan Strahan (this is where the “half a book” comes in, although I doubt that it’ll divide that neatly in practice). Jonathan Strahan’s
Best Short Novels
series has died, as has Richard Horton’s announced but never appearing
Space Opera Best
series. The annual Nebula Awards anthology usually covers science fiction as well as fantasy of various sorts, functioning as a de facto “Best of the Year” anthology, although it’s not usually counted among them (and thanks to SFWA’s bizarre “rolling eligibility” practice, the stories in it are often stories that everybody else saw a year and sometimes even two years before); this year’s edition was
Nebula Awards Showcase 2008
(Roc), edited by Ben Bova. There were two and a half
Best of the Year
anthologies covering horror: the latest edition in the British series,
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror
(Robinson, Carroll & Graf), edited by Stephen Jones, up to its nineteenth volume;
Horror: The Best of the Year 2008 Edition
(Prime), edited by John Gregory Betancourt and Sean Wallace; and the Ellen Datlow half of a huge volume covering both horror and fantasy,
The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror
(St Martin’s Press), edited by Ellen Datlow and Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, this year up to its twenty-First Annual Collection. Fantasy was covered by four anthologies (if you add two halves together): by the Kelly Link and Gavin Grant half of the Datlow/Link & Grant anthology; by
Year’s Best Fantasy 8
(Tachyon) edited by David G. Hartwell and Katherine Cramer; by
Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2008
(Prime), edited by Rich Horton; by
Best American Fantasy
(Prime), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer; and by the fantasy half of
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume One
(Night Shade Books), edited by Jonathan Strahan. There was also
The 2008 Rhysling Anthology
(Science Fiction Poetry Association/Prime), edited by Drew Morse, which compiles the Rhysling Award-winning SF poetry of the year. If you count the Nebula anthology and the Rhysling anthology, there were eleven “Best of the Year” anthology series of one sort or another on offer this year, down from last year’s fourteen.

At the beginning of 2009 it was announced that the long-running Datlow/Link & Grant
Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror
series had died. Ellen Datlow has announced that she will begin doing a different “Best Horror” series for Night Shade Books, exact title as yet undetermined, to be published sometime in 2009 and covering stories published in 2008. So next year we’ll be half a book down in this category, losing the Kelly Link and Gavin Grant half of the former
Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror book.

The last few years have featured big retrospective anthologies, but there were none of them this year and, as a result, fewer stand-alone reprint anthologies of exceptional merit. The best of the reprint anthologies was probably
Steampunk
(Tachyon), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, which featured good reprint stories by Michael Chabon, James Blaylock, Joe R. Lansdale, Ian R. MacLeod, Neal Stephenson, Mary Gentle, Ted Chiang, and others. Also good was
Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse
(Night Shade Books), edited by John Joseph Adams, which featured stories about the you-know-what and its aftermath by George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Gene Wolfe, Octavia Butler, and others. If you like zombies (which were so frequently encountered this year, even in the science fiction anthologies, that they seemed to be taking over the field), you’ll want
The Living Dead
(Night Shade Books), edited by John Joseph Adams and packed full of zombie stories by Dan Simmons, Michael Swanwick, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Andy Duncan, and others. Another attempt at subgenre definition and canon-forming was
The New Weird
(Tachyon), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, a mixed anthology of reprint stories (the best by M. John Harrison, Clive Barker, and Jeff Ford), some original material, critical essays, and transcribed blog entries which had some good stuff in it but which ultimately left me just as confused as to what exactly The New Weird consisted of when I went out as I’d been when I went in. Good work was also to be found in
The Best of Jim Baen’s Universe II
(Baen), edited by Eric Flint and Mike Resnick, and Orson Scott Card’s
Intergalactic Medicine Show, Volume Two
(Tor), edited by Edmund R. Schubert and Orson Scott Card, volumes of stories from two of the most prominent ezines.

Otherworldly Maine
(Down East), edited by Noreen Doyle, was a mixed reprint (mostly) and original anthology which featured strong reprints by Edgar Pangborn, Stephen King, Elizabeth Hand, and others, as well as good original work by Gregory Feeley, Lee Allred, and Jessica Reisman. Just exactly what qualifies one to be a Savage Humanist is a bit unclear, in spite of a long analytical introduction, but
The Savage Humanists
(Robert J. Sawyer Books), edited by Fiona Kelleghan, features good reprint stories by Tim Sullivan, Greg Frost, John Kessel, James Patrick Kelly, Kim Stanley Robinson, and others.
When Diplomacy Fails
(Isfic Press), edited by Mike Resnick and Eric Flint, is a reprint anthology of military SF by Harry Turtledove, Gene Wolfe, David Weber, Tanya Huff, Resnick and Flint themselves, and others.
The Best of Abyss & Apex: Volume One
(Hadley Rille Books), edited by Wendy S. Delmater, is drawn from the website of the same name. And a perspective on SF from another part of the world is given by
The Black Mirror and Other Stories
:
An Anthology of Science Fiction from Germany and Austria
(Wesleyan University Press), edited by Franz Rottensteiner.

Reprint fantasy anthologies included
Tales Before Narnia
(Del Rey), edited by Douglas A. Anderson; and
The Dragon Done It
(Baen), edited by Eric Flint and Mike Resnick, a mixed reprint (mostly) and original anthology of fantasy/mystery crosses. There was a big retrospective reprint horror anthology,
Poe’s Children
:
The New Horror
(Doubleday), edited by Peter Straub, featuring reprints by Elizabeth Hand, Stephen King, Melanie and Steve Rasnic Tem, Straub himself, and others.

Reissued anthologies of merit this year included T
he Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume 2B
(Tor), edited by Ben Bova;
The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy
(Running Press), edited by Mike Ashley;
A Science Fiction Omnibus
(Penguin Modern Classics), edited by Brian W. Aldiss; and
The Reel Stuff
(DAW), edited by Brian Thomsen and Martin H. Greenberg. There were almost no SF-and-fantasy-oriented reference books this year, with the closest approach probably being
Lexicon Urthus: A Dictionary for the Urth Cycle, Second Edition
(Sirius Fiction), by Michael Andre-Driussi. There were a number of critical books about SF and fantasy, including
Maps and Legends: Essays on Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands
(McSweeneys), by Michael Chabon;
Rhetorics of Fantasy
(Wesleyan University Press), by Farah Mendlesohn;
The Wiscon Chronicles, Volume 2
(Aqueduct), by Eileen Gunn and L. Timmel Duchamp; and
What Is It We Do When We Read Science Fiction?
(Beccon), by Paul Kincaid. There were autobiographies by or biographies/critical studies of specific authors, including
Miracles of Life: Shanghai to Shepperton
(HarperCollinsUK), by J. G. Ballad;
H. Beam Piper: A Biography
(McFarland), by John F. Carr;
An Unofficial Companion to the Novels of Terry Pratchett
(Greenwood), by Andrew M. Butler;
Anthony Boucher: A Biobibliography
(McFarland), by Jeffrey Marks;
The Vorkosigan Companion
(Baen), by Lillian Stewart Carl and Martin H. Greenberg (a guide to the work of Lois McMaster Bujold);
Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman
(St. Martin’s Press), by Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden, and Stephen R. Bissette;
Basil Cooper: A Life in Books
(PS Publishing), edited by Stephen Jones;
The Richard Matheson Companion
(Gauntlet Press), by Stanley Wiater and Matthew R. Bradley; and a posthumously published collection of articles on diverse subjects by Kurt Vonnegut,
Armageddon in Retrospect
(Putnam).

The year also saw the publication of two books of a kind that I’m sure we’re going to see a lot more of: collections of articles previously published electronically online in blogs and in other Internet sources. They were
Your Hate Mail Is Being Graded
:
Ten Years of Whatever
(Subterranean Press), by John Scalzi,
Whatever
being the very popular blog that Scalzi won a best fanwriter Hugo for his work in this year, and
Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future
(Tachyon), by Cory Doctorow.