The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection (6 page)

In spite of the recession, there were still a huge number of novels published in the SF/fantasy genres during the year – more than ever before, in fact, and it looks likely that there’ll be even more next year.

According to the newsmagazine
Locus
, there were a record 2,901 books ‘of interest to the SF field’ published in 2009, up 2 per cent from 2,843 titles in 2008. Sixty-seven percent of those were new titles, not reprints. (It’s worth noting that this total doesn’t count novels offered as downloads on the Internet or on Kindle, media tie-in novels, gaming novels, novelizations of genre movies, or most Print on Demand books – all of which would swell the total by hundreds if counted.) Paranormal romances remained strong, with 339 titles this year as opposed to 328 in 2008; one of the paranormal romance writers, Stephanie Meyer, edged out J. K. Rowling in sales, and others such as Charlaine Harris, Laurell K. Hamilton, Jim Butcher, and Diana Gabaldon are among the bestselling writers in America. The number of new SF novels was down slightly, by 7 per cent, to 232 as opposed to 2008’s total of 249 (still far larger than the field was even a few years back, and more novels than any one person is going to have a chance to read in the course of a year). The number of new fantasy novels was up by 30 per cent, to 572 titles as opposed to 2008’s total of 439. Horror novels were up to 251 titles as opposed to 2008’s total of 175, the biggest gain since the Big Horror Boom busted; in 2002, for instance, there were only 112 horror titles published.

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 2009. These include:

Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America
(Tor Books), by Robert Charles Wilson;
Steal Across the Sky
(Tor Books), by Nancy Kress;
Drood
(Little, Brown and Company), by Dan Simmons;
The Empress of Mars
(Tor Books), by Kage Baker;
The Caryatids
(Del Rey/Ballantine Books), by Bruce Sterling;
This Is Not a Game
(Orbit), by Walter Jon Williams;
House of Suns
(Ace Science Fiction), by Alastair Reynolds;
The Revolution Business
(Tor Fantasy), by Charles Stross;
Gardens of the Sun
(Gollancz), by Paul McAuley;
The High City
(Forge), by Cecelia Holland;
Ark
(Gollancz), by Stephen Baxter;
The Sunless Countries
(Tor Books), by Karl Schroeder;
Transition
(Orbit Books), by Iain M. Banks;
Galileo’s Dream
(HarperVoyager), by Kim Stanley Robinson;
Mind Over Ship
(Tor Books), by David Marusek;
Yellow Blue Tibia
(Gollancz), by Adam Roberts;
The Devil’s Alphabet
(Del Rey), by Daryl Gregory;
Boneshaker
(Tor Books), by Cherie Priest;
The City & The City
(Del Rey), by China Mieville;
Coyote Horizon
(Ace), by Allen Steele;
Regenesis
(DAW Books), by C. J. Cherryh;
Conspirator
(DAW Books), by C. J. Cherryh;
The Walls of the Universe
(Tor Science Fiction), by Paul Melko;
Avilion
(Gollancz), by Robert Holdstock;
The Magicians
(Viking Press), by Lev Grossman;
Chasing the Dragon
(Pyr), by Justina Robson;
The Steel Remains
(Ballantine Books), by Richard K. Morgan;
The Price of Spring
(Tor Fantasy), by Daniel Abraham;
The Red Tree
(Roc Trade), by Caitlin R. Kiernan;
Green
(Tor Books), by Jay Lake;
The Knights of the Cornerstone
(Ace Books), by James P. Blaylock;
Buyout
(Del Rey), by Alexander Irvine;
Palimpset (Bantam
Spectra), by Catherynne M. Valente;
Hope’s Folly
(Bantam), by Linnea Sinclair;
End of the Century
(Pyr), by Chris Roberson;
Duplicate Effort
(Roc Books), by Kristine Kathryn Rusch;
Diving into the Wreck
(Pyr), by Kristine Kathryn Rusch;
Turn Coat
(Roc), by Jim Butcher;
Corambis
(Ace Books), by Sarah Monette;
The Sharing Knife
(Eos), by Lois McMaster Bujold;
Buyout
(Del Rey), by Alexander Irvine;
Storm from the Shadows
(Baen Books), by David Weber;
Escape from Hell
(Tor Books), by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle;
Heroes of the Valley
(Hyperion), by Jonathan Stroud;
Bone Crossed
(Ace), Patricia Briggs;
Unseen Academicals
(Harper), by Terry Pratchett; and
Under the Dome
(Scribner), by Stephen King.

Small presses once published mostly collections and anthologies, but these days they’re active in the novel market as well. Novels issued by small presses this year, some of them among the year’s best, included:
The Empress of Mars
(Subterranean Press), by Kage Baker;
The Hotel Under the Sand
(Tachyon Publications), by Kage Baker;
Lifelode
(NESFA Press), by Jo Walton;
The Shadow Pavillion
(Night Shade Books), by Liz Williams;
Madness of Flowers: A Novel of the City Imperishable
(Night Shade Books), by Jay Lake;
The Proteus Sails Again
(Subterranean Press), by Thomas M. Disch; and
Those Who Went Remain There Still
(Subterranean Press), by Cherie Priest.

The year’s first novels included:
The Windup Girl
(Night Shade Books), by Paolo Bacigalupi;
The Manual of Detection
(Penguin Group), by Jedediah Berry;
Lamentation
(Tor Books), by Ken Scholes;
Harbinger
(Fairwood Press), by Jack Skillingstead;
Prospero Lost
(Tor Books), by L. Jagi Lamplighter;
Total Oblivion, More or Less
(Ballantine Spectra), by Alan DeNiro; and
The Adamantine Palace
(Gollancz), by Stephen Deas. Of these,
The Windup Girl
got by far the best notices, with several critics calling it not only the best first novel of the year but the best science fiction novel of the year, period.

Associational novels by people connected with the science fiction and fantasy fields included:
Four Freedoms
(HarperCollins), by John Crowley;
The Dead Man’s Brother
(Hard Case Crime), by Roger Zelazny;
Mariposa
(Vanguard Press), by Greg Bear;
The Asylum Prophecies
(Leisure Books), by Daniel Keyes; and
Chronic City
(Doubleday), by Jonathan Lethem. Ventures into the genre, or at least the ambiguous fringes of it, by well-known mainstream authors, included:
Inherent Vice
(Penguin Press), by Thomas Pynchon;
The Year of the Flood
(Doubleday), by Margaret Atwood; and
Her Fearful Symmetry
(Scribner), by Audrey Niffenegger. A surprise bestseller,
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
(Quirk Books), by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, has already spawned several sequels, and may launch a whole new subgenre, the literary classic/horror mash-up.

There were again some good individual novellas published as chap-books, although perhaps nothing that really stood out. Subterranean Press published
The Women of Nell Gwynne’s
, by Kage Baker;
The God Engines
, by John
Scalzi; Seven for a Secret
, by Elizabeth Bear;
and Alpha and Omega
, by Patricia Briggs. PS Publishing brought out
Starfall
, by Stephen Baxter;
Ars Memoriae
, by Beth Bernobich;
The Night Cache
, by Andy Duncan; and
Gilbert and Edgar on Mars
, by Eric Brown. NewCon Press brought out
The Push
, by David Hutchinson, and
Starship Fall
, by Eric Brown. MonkeyBrain Books published
Death of a Starship
, by Jay Lake. Hadley Rille Books published
The Priestess and the Slave
, by Jenny Blackford.

Novel omnibuses this year included:
The Books of the Wars
(Baen Books), by Mark Geston;
Divisions
(Orb), by Ken MacLeod;
Exile and Glory
(Baen Books), by Jerry Pournelle;
Fires of Freedom
(Baen Books), by Jerry Pournelle;
Triplanetary
(Cosmos Books), by E.E. Smith;
This Fortress World
(Fantastic Books), by James Gunn; and
VALIS and Later Novels
(Library of America), by Philip K. Dick, as well as many omnibus novel volumes published by the Science Fiction Book Club. (Omnibuses that contain both short stories
and
novels can be found listed in the short story section.)

A lot of long out-of-print stuff has come back into print in the last couple of years in commercial trade editions. Not even counting Print on Demand books from places such as Wildside Press, the reprints issued by the Science Fiction Book Club, and the availability of out-of-print books as electronic downloads from Internet sources such as Fictionwise, that makes this the best time in de cades to pick up reissued editions of formerly long-out-of-print novels. Here are some out-of-print titles that came back
into
print this year, although producing a definitive list of reissued novels is probably difficult to impossible:

Tor Books reissued
The Currents of Space
, by Isaac Asimov. Orb Books reissued
The Stars, Like Dust
, by Isaac Asimov;
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon
, by Frederik Pohl;
Flashforward
, by Robert J. Sawyer;
Bone Dance
, by Emma Bull; and
Dying Inside
and
A Time of Changes
, both by Robert Silverberg. Baen Books reissued
The Puppet Masters
, by Robert A. Heinlein;
Rx for Chaos
, by Christopher Anvil; and
A Sense of Infinity
, by Howard L. Myers. Pyr reissued
Desolation Road
, by Ian McDonald. Orbit reissued
Against a Dark Background
, by Iain M. Banks; and
The Naked God
and
The Neutronium Alchemist
, both by Peter F. Hamilton. Cosmos reissued
The Moon Pool
, by A. Merritt; and
The 13th Immortal
, by Robert Silverberg. Ace reissued
Ariel
, by Steven R. Boyett. Paizo Publishing reissued
Robots Have No Tails
, by Henry Kuttner; and
The Sword of Rhiannon
, by Leigh Brackett. Fantastic Books reissued
Pennterra
, by Judith Moffett; and
The Dreaming
and
The Judas Mandala
, both by Damien Broderick. New York Review Books Classics reissued
Inverted World
, by Christopher Priest; and
The Chrysalids
, by John Wyndham. Crippen & Landru reissued
A Little Intelligence
, by Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett. Wyrm Publishers reissued
Shriek: An Afterword
, by Jeff VanderMeer. Hippocampus Press reissued
The Hound Hunters
, by Adam Niswander. Penguin Group reissued
The Prisoner
, by Thomas M. Disch. MonkeyBrain Books reissued
Two Hawks from Earth
, by Philip José Farmer.

As has been true for several years now, this was a good year for short story collections, and it was a particularly good year for career-spanning retrospective collections. The year’s best nonretrospective collection may have been
Cyberabad Days
(Pyr), by Ian McDonald, although it was given a run for its money by
Wireless
(Ace), by Charles Stross, and two collections by Greg Egan,
Oceanic
(Gollancz) and
Crystal Nights and Other Stories
(Subterranean Press). Also first-rate were
We Never Talk About My Brother
(Tachyon Publications), by Peter S. Beagle;
The Buonarotti Quartet
(Aqueduct Press), by Gwyneth Jones;
Thousandth Night/Minla’s Flowers
(Subterranean Press), by Alastair Reynolds;
The Radio Magician and Other Stories
(Fairwood Press), by James Van Pelt;
Are You There and Other Stories
(Golden Gryphon Press), by Jack Skillingstead;
Vacancy & Ariel
(Subterranean Press), by Lucius Shepard; and
Uncle Bones
(Fantastic Books), by Damien Broderick. Also good are
Everland and Other Stories
(PS Publishing), by Paul Witcover;
A is for Alien
(Subterranean Press), by Caitlín R. Kiernan;
Collected Stories
(Subterranean Press), by Lewis Shiner;
Dreamwish Beasts and Snarks
(Golden Gryphon Press), by Michael D. Resnick;
Tides from the New Worlds
(Wyrm Publishing), by Tobias S. Buckell;
Eyes Like Sky and Coal and Moonlight
(Paper Golem Press), by Cat Rambo;
A Book of Endings
(Twelfth Planet Press), by Deborah Biancotti; and
We’ll Always Have Paris
(William Morrow), by Ray Bradbury.

Strong as this year was in collections, it was even stronger for big retrospective career-spanning collections. There was a bumper crop of them, including:
The Best of Gene Wolfe
(Tor Books), by Gene Wolfe;
Wild Thyme, Green Magic
(Subterranean Press), by Jack Vance;
Trips: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Four
(Subterranean Press), by Robert Silverberg;
The Best of Michael Moorcock
(Tachyon Publications), by Michael Moorcock;
The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard
(W. W. Norton & Company), by J.G. Ballard;
The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, Volume One: Threshold
(NESFA Press), by Roger Zelazny;
The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, Volume Two: Power & Light
(NESFA Press), by Roger Zelazny;
The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, Volume Three: This Mortal Mountain
(NESFA Press), by Roger Zelazny;
The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny, Volume Four: Last Exit to Babylon
(NESFA Press), by Roger Zelazny;
The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson, Volume 1: Call Me Joe
(NESFA Press), by Poul Anderson;
The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson, Volume 2: The Queen of Air and Darkness
(NESFA Press), by Poul Anderson;
Rise of the Terran Empire
(Baen Books), by Poul Anderson;
Selected Short Stories of Lester del Rey, Volume I: War and Space
(NESFA Press), by Lester del Rey;
Magic Mirrors
(NESFA Press), by John Bellairs;
The Shadow on the Doorstep
(ISFiC Press), by James P. Blaylock;
The Return of the Sorcerer: The Best of Clark Ashton Smith
(Prime Books), by Clark Ashton Smith;
The Early Work of Philip K. Dick, Volume 1: The Variable Man and Other Stories
(Prime Books), by Philip K. Dick;
The Early Work of Philip K. Dick, Volume 2: Breakfast at Twilight and Other Stories
(Prime Books), by Philip K. Dick;
Mysteries of the Worm
(Chaosium), by Robert Bloch; and
Slow Sculpture, Volume XII: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon
(North Atlantic Books), by Theodore Sturgeon.