The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection (4 page)

Another new fantasy-oriented site,
Heroic Fantasy Quarterly
(www. heroicfantasyquarterly.com), started up this year, as did an SF site selling downloads and PDFs (a model which didn’t work for
Aeon
),
M-Brane SF
(http://mbranesf.blogspot.com).

Below this point, it becomes harder to find center-core SF, and most of the stories are slipstream or literary surrealism. Sites that feature those, as well as fantasy (and, occasionally, some SF) include Rudy Rucker’s
Flurb
(www.flurb.net),
RevolutionSF
(www.revolutionsf com),
CoyoteWild
(www.coyotewildmag.com),
Heliotrope
(www.heliotropemag.com), and the somewhat less slipstreamish
Bewildering Stories
(www. bewilderingstories.com).

However, original fiction isn’t all that can be found on the Internet – there are a lot of good
reprint
SF and fantasy stories out there too, usually available for free. On all of the sites that make their fiction available for free,
Strange Horizons, Tor.com, Fantasy Magazine, Subterranean, Abyss & Apex, Jim Baen’s Universe
, and so on, you can also access large archives of previously published material as well as stuff from the ‘current issue.’ Most of the sites that are associated with existent print magazines, such as
Asimov’s, Analog, Weird Tales
, and
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, make previously published fiction and nonfiction available for access on their sites, and also regularly run teaser excerpts from stories in forthcoming issues. Hundreds of out-of-print titles, both genre and mainstream, are also available for free download from Project Gutenberg (http://promo.net/ pg/), and a large selection of novels and a few collections can also be accessed for free, to be either downloaded or read on-screen, at the Baen Free Library (www.baen.com/library). Sites such as Infinity Plus (http://www. infinityplus.co.uk) and the Infinite Matrix (www.infinitematrix.net) may have died as active sites, but their extensive archives of previously published material are still accessible.

An even greater range of reprint stories becomes available, though, if you’re willing to pay a small fee for them. Perhaps the best and the longest-established place to find such material is Fictionwise (www.fictionwise. com), where you can buy downloadable e-books and stories to read on your PDA, Kindle, or home computer; in addition to individual stories, you can also buy ‘fiction bundles’ here, which amount to electronic collections; as well as a selection of novels in several different genres – you can also subscribe to downloadable versions of several of the SF magazines here, including
Asimov’s
,
Analog
,
F&SF
, and
Interzone
, in a number of different formats. A similar site is ElectricStory (www.electricstory.com), where in addition to the fiction for sale, you can also access free movie reviews by Lucius Shepard, articles by Howard Waldrop, and other critical material.

Finding fiction to read, though, is not the only reason for SF fans to go on the Internet. There are also many general genre-related sites of interest to be found, most of which publish reviews of books as well as of movies and TV shows, sometimes comics or computer games or anime, many of which also feature interviews, critical articles, and genre-oriented news of various kinds. The best such site is easily Locus Online (www.locusmag.com), the online version of the newsmagazine
Locus
, where you can access an incredible amount of information – including book reviews, critical lists, obituaries, links to reviews and essays appearing outside the genre, and links to extensive database archives such as the Locus Index to Science Fiction and the Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards – it’s rare when I don’t find myself accessing Locus Online several times a day. Other major general-interest sites include SF Site (www.sfsite.com), SFRevu (www.sfrevu.com), SFCrowsnest (www.sfcrowsnest.com), SFScope (www.sfscope. com), io9 (http://io9.com), Green Man Review (http://greenman review. com), The Agony Column (http://trashotron.com/agony), SFFWorld.com (www.sffworld.com), SFReader.com (www.sfreader.com), SFWatcher.com (www.sfwatcher.com), and Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist (www.fantasyhotlist.blogs-pot.com). One of the best of the general-interest sites, the Internet Review of Science Fiction, has unfortunately died. Another,
Science Fiction Weekly
, first merged with news site Sci Fi Wire to form a new site called Sci Fi Wire, and then transformed to Syfy (www.syfy.com) when its parent channel changed its name from the Sci Fi Channel to Syfy as well, dropping all its columnists and book reviews along the way to concentrate exclusively on media news and reviews – and thus making itself largely uninteresting to me. A great research site, invaluable if you want bibliographic information about SF and fantasy writers, is Fantastic Fiction (www. fantasticfiction.co.uk). Reviews of short fiction as opposed to novels are very hard to find anywhere, with the exception of
Locus
, but you can find reviews of both current and past short fiction at Best SF (www.bestsf net), as well as at pioneering short-fiction review site Tangent (www.tangentonline. com), which had gone on a long hiatus but returned to active status in 2009 – ironically, just as its rival The Fix, launched by a former Tangent staffer, seems to have gone inactive. Other sites of interest include: SFF NET (www.sff.net) which features dozens of home pages and “newsgroups” for SF writers; the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America page (www.sfwa.org), where genre news, obituaries, award information, and recommended reading lists can be accessed; Ansible (http://news.ansible. co.uk/), the online version of multiple Hugo-winner David Langford’s long-running fanzine
Ansible;
and a number of sites where podcasts and SF-oriented radio plays can be accessed: Audible.com (www.audible.com), Escape Pod (http://escapepod.org), StarShipSofa (www.starshipsofa.com), and PodCastle (http://podcastle.org).

The much-heralded ‘New Golden Age’ of original anthologies may have reached its high-water mark in 2008, and even receded a bit. There were still plenty of anthologies out, especially from small presses and books available as downloads online, but several of the most prominent high-end original series, upon which many hopes were pinned, have died. Of the three much-talked-about original anthology series launched in 2007,
Fast Forward
, edited by Lou Anders,
The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction
, edited by George Mann, and
Eclipse
, edited by Jonathan Strahan, only
Eclipse
survives at the end of the year. A shame, because both other series had a lot to recommend them.

The fact is, although many good individual stories were published, it was something of a lackluster year for original anthologies as a whole, with no clear-cut standouts. In terms of literary quality, judging the stories
as
stories, without taking genre classification into consideration, the strongest of the year’s anthologies was clearly
Eclipse Three
(Night Shade Books), edited by Jonathan Strahan – I personally found it somewhat disappointing, though, that there was relatively little science fiction here, most of the contents being fantasy or slipstream. Best stories in
Eclipse Three
were by Maureen F. McHugh and Nicola Griffith, although there was also good stuff of various sorts by Caitlin R. Kiernan, Daniel Abraham, Karen Joy Fowler, Peter S. Beagle, and others.
The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume 3
(Solaris), edited by George Mann, was mostly SF, and featured strong work by Paul Cornell, Warren Hammond, Alastair Reynolds, John Meaney, and others. There were two anthologies from DAW Books this year which are a cut above the usual DAW anthology product: a strong steampunk/alternate history anthology,
Other Earths
(DAW), edited by Nick Gevers and Jay Lake, which featured a standout story by Robert Charles Wilson, and good work by Gene Wolfe, Theodora Goss, Liz Williams, and others; and
We Think, Therefore We Are
(DAW), edited by Peter Crowther.
We Think, Therefore We Are
wasn’t as strong as past Crowther anthologies such as
Moon Shots
have been, but still featured interesting stuff by Chris Roberson, Keith Brooke, Patrick O’Leary, Robert Reed, and others.

A cut below this level, the strongest story in
Federations
(Prime), edited by John Joseph Adams, an anthology of stories inspired by
Star Trek
(which looked for work that ‘builds on those same tropes and traditions’), was by John C. Wright, but there was also good work by Mary Rosenblum, Allen Steele, Yoon Ha Lee, and others, as well as good reprint stories by Alastair Reynolds, Robert Silverberg, George R.R. Martin and George Guthridge, Lois McMaster Bujold, Orson Scott Card, and others.
Clockwork Phoenix 2
, edited by Mike Allen, was mostly fantasy instead of science fiction, unlike the original volume, but had worthwhile stuff by Tanith Lee, Mary Robinette Kowal, Ann Leckie, and others. Mike Ashley’s anthology with the somewhat overheated title
of The Mammoth Book of Mindblowing SF: The 21 Finest Stories of Awesome Science Fiction
was mostly a reprint anthology, with strong reprints by Gregory Benford, Michael Swanwick, Terry Bisson, Geoffrey A. Landis, Alastair Reynolds, James Blish, and others, but did find room for intriguing original stuff by Robert Reed, Eric Brown, Adam Roberts, Stephen Baxter, Paul Di Filippo, and others.

One of the year’s best anthologies was published by an ultra-small press in Australia, and is going to be very difficult for most readers to find. Neverthless,
X6
(Coeur de Lion), a collection of six novellas edited by Keith Stevenson, features two of the best stories of the year – an evocative reinvention of the selkie legend by Margo Lanagan and a brutal, hard-hitting examination of a disintegrating future Australia by Paul Haines – as well as good work by Terry Dowling and Cat Sparks. Not quite as successful as
X6
, but still featuring some substantial work, is another novella collection from another small press,
Panverse One: Five Original Novellas of Fantasy and Science Fiction
(Panverse Press), edited by Dario Ciriello. The best story here is probably an atmospheric fantasy by Alan Smale, centering on a strange space-time discontinuity that opens up around Emily Brontë
of Wuthering Heights
fame, but there is also good work by Jason K. Chapman and Andrew Tisbert. I had high hopes for another ultra-small press anthology,
When It Changed
(Comma Press), edited by Geoff Ryman, which had an intriguing premise and a good roster of authors, but somehow the final product was mildly disappointing, although there were strong stories there by Adam Roberts, Ryman himself, and others. Another ultra-small press produced the anthology
Footsteps
(Hadley Rille Books), edited by Jay Lake and Eric T. Reynolds, a somewhat lackluster volume of Moon landing-related stories, although there was solid work there by James Van Pelt, Brenda Cooper, and others.

We’re supposed to consider the British publication
Postscripts
(PS Publishing) to be an anthology now rather than a magazine, so this seems like the appropriate place to take a look at it. They managed three issues this year, one of them a double issue:
Postscripts 18: This Is the Summer of Love, Postscripts 19: Enemy of the Good
, and
Postscripts 20/21: Edison’s Frankenstein
, all edited by Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers. These three volumes maintain a reasonably high level of literary accomplishment, although none of them matches 2008’s
Postscripts 15;
there’s good work in the three volumes by Chris Roberson, Lisa Tuttle, Daniel Abraham, Paul Park, M.K. Hobson, Matthew Hughes, Marly Youmans, and others.

Pleasant but minor science fiction anthologies included
Intelligent Design
(DAW Books), edited by Denise Little,
Gamer Fantastic
(DAW Books), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes, and a mixed SF and fantasy anthology, Warrior Wisewoman 2 (Norilana), edited by Roby James.

Noted without comment is
The New Space Opera 2
, edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan.

The best original fantasy anthology of the year (although it contains a couple of SF stories) may have been
Firebirds Soaring
(Firebird), edited by Sharyn November, which featured excellent work by Jo Walton, Margo Lanagan, Chris Roberson, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Ellen Klages, Louise Marley, and others.
Troll’s Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales
(Viking), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling, is aimed at a younger audience than most of their other collections of fairy tale retellings have been – best story here is by Kelly Link, although there’s also entertaining work by Peter S. Beagle, Garth Nix, Delia Sherman, Jane Yolen, and others.

Pleasant but minor original fantasy anthologies included
Swordplay
(DAW Books), edited by Denise Little;
The Trouble with Heroes
(DAW Books), edited by Denise Little;
Lace and Blade 2
(Norilana Books), edited by Deborah J. Ross;
Ages of Wonder
(DAW Books), edited by Julie E. Czerneda and Rob St. Martin;
Strip Mauled
(Baen Books), edited by Esther M. Friesner;
Witch Way to the Mall
(Baen Books), edited by Esther M. Friesner;
Terribly Twisted Tales
(DAW Books), edited by Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg;
Under the Rose
(Norilana Books), edited by Dave Hutchinson; and
Crime Spells
(DAW Books), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Loren L. Coleman. There was also another installment in a long-running fantasy anthology series,
Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Swords and Sorceress XXIV
(Norilana Books), edited by Elisabeth Waters.

Noted without comment are
Songs of the Dying Earth
(Subterranean Press/HarperCollins UK), an anthology of new fantasy stories inspired by the work of Jack Vance, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, and
The Dragon Book
(Ace Books) edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.