The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 25 (Mammoth Books) (8 page)

Career-spanning retrospective collections this year included:
Admiralty: Volume 4 of the Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson
(NESFA Press), by Poul Anderson;
Shannach—The Last: Farewell to Mars
(Haffner Press), by Leigh Brackett;
The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume Six: Multiples 1983–1987
(Subterranean Press), by Robert Silverberg;
Hunt the Space-Witch: Seven Adventures in Time and Space
(Paizo/Planet Stories), by Robert Silverberg;
At the Human Limit, The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson, Volume Eight
(Haffner Press), by Jack Williamson;
The Universe Wreckers, The Collected Edmond Hamilton
(Haffner Press), by Edmond Hamilton;
The Collected Captain Future, Man of Tomorrow, Volume Two
(Haffner Press), by Edmond Hamilton;
The Collected Captain Future, Man of Tomorrow, Volume Three
(Haffner Press), by Edmond Hamilton;
Terror in the House: The Early Kuttner, Volume One
(Haffner Press), by Henry Kuttner;
The Miscellaneous Writings of Clark Ashton Smith
(Night Shade Books), by Clark Ashton Smith;
Scream Quietly: The Best of Charles L. Grant
(PS Publishing), by Charles L. Grant;
Collected Ghost Stories
(Oxford University Press), by M. R. James;
The Inhabitant of the Lake and Other Unwelcome Tenants
(PS Publishing), by Ramsey Campbell; and
Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume One)
(Subterranean Press), by Caitlín R. Kiernan.

As has become usual, small presses again dominated the list of short-story collections, with Haffner Press and Subterranean Press being particularly active in the issuing of retrospective collections.

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.

As usual, among the most reliable buys in the reprint anthology market are the various Best of the Year anthologies, although this is an area in constant flux, with old series disappearing and new series being born. This year seemed to be relatively stable. At the moment, science fiction is being covered by three anthologies (actually, technically, by two anthologies and by two separate half anthologies): the one you are reading at the moment,
The Year’s Best Science Fiction
series from St. Martin’s Press, edited by Gardner Dozois, now up to its twenty-ninth annual collection; the
Year’s Best SF
series (Harper Voyager), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, now up to its sixteenth annual volume; the science fiction half of
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Five
(Night Shade Books), edited by Jonathan Strahan; and the science fiction half of
The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: 2011 Edition
(Prime Books), edited by Rich Horton (in practice, of course, these books probably won’t divide neatly in half with their coverage, and there’s likely to be more of one thing than another). The annual Nebula Awards anthology, which covers science fiction as well as fantasy of various sorts, functions as a de facto Best of the Year anthology, although it’s not usually counted among them; this year’s edition was
Nebula Awards Showcase 2011
(Tor), edited by Kevin J. Anderson. (A similar series covering the Hugo winners began in 2010, but swiftly died.) There were three Best of the Year anthologies covering horror:
The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Three
(Night Shade Books), edited by Ellen Datlow;
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror: 22
(Running Press), edited by Stephen Jones; and
The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, 2011 Edition
(Prime Books), edited by Paula Guran. This year there was also
The Horror Hall of Fame: The Stoker Winners
(Cemetery Dance Publications), edited by Joe R. Lansdale, although it’s unclear whether this is going to be a continuing series. Fantasy is covered by the fantasy halves of the Strahan and Horton anthologies (plus whatever stories fall under the Dark Fantasy part of Guran’s anthology), but with the death of Kevin Brockmeier’s
Best American Fantasy
series last year, the only remaining Best of the Year anthology dedicated solely to fantasy is David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer’s
Year’s Best Fantasy
series –
Year’s Best Fantasy 10
was announced as forthcoming by Kathryn Cramer in her blog, but I haven’t actually seen a copy, and it isn’t listed on Amazon, so whether this will actually appear is anyone’s guess. There was also
The 2011 Rhysling Anthology
(Science Fiction Poetry Association), edited by David Lunde, which compiles the Rhysling Award-winning SF poetry of the year.

There were a large number of good stand-alone reprint anthologies this year. Although it’s a bit of an oddity, a discussion of reprint anthologies published in 2011 wouldn’t be complete without mention of
Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction
(Wildside Press), edited by Leigh Ronald Grossman, which earns the odd distinction of being perhaps the
largest
SF anthology ever published: almost a thousand pages, roughly the size of an old-fashioned telephone directory, weighing five pounds, containing 148 stories and 62 specialized essays about various authors and categories of science fiction. At almost fifty bucks, this will probably be too expensive for most casual readers (there is an ebook version available for forty bucks), but it’s a great choice for libraries and serious collectors, practically being a one-volume library, containing memorable stories by Damon Knight, Cordwainer Smith, Alfred Bester, Robert A. Heinlein, Joanna Russ, Samuel R. Delany, Octavia Butler, Edgar Pangborn, Terry Bisson, Pat Murphy, James Patrick Kelly, Gene Wolfe, Howard Waldrop, Maureen McHugh, Greg Bear, Michael Swanwick, Bruce Sterling, Jack Vance, L. Sprague de Camp, Nancy Kress, Nalo Hopkinson, Ted Chiang, Pat Cadigan, Cory Doctorow, Connie Willis, Karen Joy Fowler, Kim Stanley Robinson, and
many
others.

Another enormous reprint anthology that spans decades of genre work, examining fantasy-horror rather than science fiction, is
The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
(Corvus), edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer, which devotes 1,152 pages to 110 stories from many historic periods by writers such as H. P. Lovecraft, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Kelly Link, George R. R. Martin, Mervyn Peake, William Gibson, China Miéville, Angela Carter, Michael Chabon, and many, many others.

Also good – although
considerably
smaller – is
Alien Contact
(Night Shade Books), edited by Marty Halpern, stories about contacts with aliens, all of them science fiction (and all of them considerably more varied, subtle, and intelligent than the flood of shoot-’ em-up alien invasion movies we got over the last year or so), featuring work by Bruce Sterling, Michael Swanwick, Bruce McAllister, Molly Gloss, Pat Cadigan, Nancy Kress, Neil Gaiman, George Alec Effinger, Cory Doctorow, Stephen Baxter, Mike Resnick, Harry Turtledove, and thirteen others.
Brave New Worlds
(Night Shade Books) is a reprint anthology of dystopian stories edited by John Joseph Adams, most of them pretty depressing but also pretty powerful, including stories by Shirley Jackson, Geoff Ryman, Kate Wilhelm, Kim Stanley Robinson, Alex Irvine, Cory Doctorow, Harlan Ellison, and others.
Lightspeed: Year One
(Prime Books), edited by John Joseph Adams, is a collection of the first year’s worth of stories from electronic online magazine
Lightspeed,
featuring good work by Carrie Vaughn, Yoon Ha Lee, Ted Kosmatka, Vylar Kaftan, and others, and reprints by Ursula K. Le Guin, George R. R. Martin, Robert Silverberg, Joe Haldeman, and others.
Future Media
(Tachyon Publications), edited by Rick Wilber, is an anthology of views of the media age, featuring reprint stories by Pat Cadigan, Gregory Benford, James Tiptree, Jr., and others, plus essays by Marshall McLuhan, Vannevar Bush, and others.
Battlestations
(Prime Books), edited by David Drake and Bill Fawcett, is an omnibus of two previously published anthologies of military SF.

Less dark and more lighthearted is
Happily Ever After
(Night Shade Books), an anthology of retold fairy tales edited by John Klima, and featuring strong work by Howard Waldrop, Gregory Frost, Bruce Sterling, Nancy Kress, Neil Gaiman, Jane Yolen, Theodora Goss, Garth Nix, and others.
People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy
(Prime Books), edited by Rachel Swirsky and Sean Wallace, features SF and fantasy stories (mostly fantasy), by Peter S. Beagle, Theodora Goss, Jane Yolen, Alex Irvine, Neil Gaiman, Benjamin Rosenbaum, and Michael Chabon.

There were a lot of reprint horror anthologies this year, including several urban fantasy/paranormal anthologies. The best of these was probably
The Urban Fantasy Anthology
(Tachyon Publications), edited by Peter S. Beagle and Joe R. Lansdale, which featured good stories by Neil Gaiman, Peter S. Beagle, Tim Powers, Thomas M. Disch, Bruce McAllister, Joe R. Lansdale, Susan Palwick, Charles de Lint, Suzy McKee Charnas, Carrie Vaughn, Patty Briggs, Emma Bull, and others. The somewhat grittier
Crucified Dreams
(Tachyon Publications), edited by Joe R. Lansdale, features strong reprints by Harlan Ellison, Lucius Shepard, Joe Haldeman, Octavia Butler, Stephen King, and others. And 2011 brought us two reprint anthologies that give us an interesting overview of the recent work of younger writers who have been influenced by H. P. Lovecraft enough to want to play in his Cthulhu mythos universe,
The Book of Cthulhu
(Night Shade Books), edited by Ross E. Lockhart, and
New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird
(Prime Books), edited by Paula Guran. The best stories in
The Book of Cthulhu
include works by Michael Shea, Gene Wolfe, T.E.D. Klein, Bruce Sterling, and Laird Barron. The best stories in
New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird
include works by Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Laird Barron, and Paul McAuley. Stories by Charles Stross, Elizabeth Bear, and Cherie Priest appear in
both
volumes. There were two reprint anthologies of zombie stories,
Zombies!, Zombies!, Zombies!
(Vintage Black Lizard), edited by Otto Penzler, and
Z: Zombie Stories
(Night Shade Books), edited by J. M. Lassen, and a book of vampire stories,
Vampires: The Recent Undead
(Prime Books), edited by Paula Guran.

There were also two massive reprint anthologies,
The Century’s Best Horror Fiction, Volume One: 1901–1950
and
The Century’s Best Horror Fiction, Volume Two: 1951–2000
(Cemetery Dance Publications), both edited by John Pelan.

*     *     *

It was a solid but unexciting year in the genre-oriented non-fiction category. There were a number of books of essays by or about genre authors, including
Bugf#ck: The Useless Wit and Wisdom of Harlan Ellison
(Spectrum Fantastic Art), by Harlan Ellison, edited by Arnie Fenner;
The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc.
(Doubleday), by Jonathan Lethem;
Unstuck in Time: A Journey Through Kurt Vonnegut’s Life and Novels
(Seven Stories Press), by Gregory D. Sumner;
And So It Goes: Kurt Vonnegut: A Life
(Henry Holt and Co.), by Charles J. Shields;
Context
(Tachyon Publications), by Cory Doctorow;
The Sookie Stackhouse Companion
(Ace), by Charlaine Harris (which also contains a previously unpublished Sookie Stackhouse novella);
The Hollows Insider
(Harper Voyager) by Kim Harrison;
In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination
(Doubleday), by Margaret Atwood;
Becoming Ray Bradbury
(University of Illinois Press), by Jonathan R. Eller; and
Musings and Meditations: Reflections on Science Fiction, Science, and Other Matters
(Nonstop Press), by Robert Silverberg.

There was an autobiography,
Nested Scrolls: The Autobiography of Rudolf von Bitter Rucker
(Tor), by Rudy Rucker; an assembly of lectures by genre figures,
Thirty-Five Years of the Jack Williamson Lectureship
(Haffner Press), compiled by Patrice Caldwell and Stephen Haffner; two books of reviews,
Sightings: Reviews 2002–2006
(Beccon Publications), by Gary K. Wolfe, and
Pardon This Intrusion: Fantastika in the World Storm
(Beccon Publications), by John Clute; and, as usual, several books about science fiction itself, including
Evaporating Genres: Essays of Fantastic Literature
(Wesleyan University Press), by Gary Wolfe;
Science Fiction and the Prediction of the Future
(McFarland & Company, Inc.), edited by Gary Westfahl, Wong Kin Yuen, and Amy Kit-sze Chan; and
Science Fiction: A Very Short Introduction
(Oxford University Press), by David Seed. A study of the steampunk subgenre was
The Steampunk Bible: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Imaginary Airships, Corsets and Goggles, Mad Scientists, and Strange Literature
(Abrams Image), by Jeff VanderMeer with S. J. Chambers (which probably earns the award for most colorful title of the year).

An offbeat item is a collection of essays about pioneering genre movies by the late Kage Baker,
Ancient Rockets: Treasures and Trainwrecks of the Silent Screen
(Tachyon Publications), by Kage Baker, edited by Kathleen Bartholomew. An even more offbeat item – in fact, perhaps the oddest book you’ll read this year – was posthumously assembled from the extensive notebooks left behind by the late Philip K. Dick,
The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), edited by Pamela Jackson, Jonathan Lethem, and Erik Davis. I made my way through ten or twenty pages of this, and put the book down feeling that it left the question of whether Dick was a genius or completely insane up in the air – but, whichever it was, I was much too stupid to successfully absorb his
Exegesis.
I suspect all but the most dedicated Phil Dick fans (or those who are geniuses themselves) will probably bounce off it as well.