The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection (2 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The editor would like to thank the following people for their help and support: Susan Casper, Jonathan Strahan, Gordon Van Gelder, Ellen Datlow, Peter Crowther, Nicolas Gevers, Jack Dann, Mark Pontin, William Shaffer, Ian Whates, Mike Resnick, Andy Cox, Sean Wallace, Robert Wexler, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Torie Atkinson, Jed Hartman, Eric T. Reynolds, George Mann, Jennifer Brehl, Peter Tennant, Susan Marie Groppi, Karen Meisner, John Joseph Adams, Wendy S. Delmater, Rich Horton, Mark R. Kelly, Andrew Wilson, Damien Broderick, Gary Turner, Lou Anders, Cory Doctorow, Patrick Swenson, Bridget McKenna, Marti McKenna, Jay Lake, Sheila Williams, Brian Bieniowski, Trevor Quachri, Alastair Reynolds, Michael Swanwick, Stephen Baxter, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Nancy Kress, Greg Egan, Ian McDonald, Paul McAuley, Ted Kosmatka, Paolo Bacigalupi, Elizabeth Bear, Robert Reed, Vandana Singh, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Daryl Gregory, James Alan Gardner, Maureen McHugh, L. Timmel Duchamp, Walter Jon Williams, Jeff VanderMeer, Gwyneth Jones, Dominic Green, William Sanders, Lawrence Watt-Evans, David D. Levine, Liz Williams, Geoff Ryman, Paul Brazier, Charles Coleman Finlay, Gord Sellar, Steven Utley, James L. Cambias, Garth Nix, David Hartwell, Ginjer Buchanan, Susan Allison, Shawna McCarthy, Kelly Link, Gavin Grant, John Klima, John O’Neill, Rodger Turner, Tyree Campbell, Stuart Mayne, John Kenny, Edmund Schubert, Tehani Wessely, Tehani Croft, Karl Johanson, Sally Beasley, Connor Cochran, Tony Lee, Joe Vas, John Pickrell, Ian Redman, Anne Zanoni, Kaolin Fire, Ralph Benko, Paul Graham Raven, Nick Wood, David Moles, Mike Allen, Jason Sizemore, Karl Johanson, Sue Miller, David Lee Summers, Christopher M. Cevasco, Tyree Campbell, Andrew Hook, Vaughne Lee Hansen, Mark Watson, Sarah Lumnah, and special thanks to my own editor, Marc Resnick.

Thanks are also due to Charles N. Brown, whose magazine Locus (Locus Publications, P. O. Box 13305, Oakland, CA 94661. $60 in the United States for a one-year subscription [twelve issues] via second class; credit card orders 510-339-9198) was used as an invaluable reference source throughout the summation; Locus Online (locusmag.com), edited by Mark R. Kelly, has also become a key reference source.

SUMMATION: 2007

The publishing world proved not to be immune to the deepening recession, and the genre suffered several major losses in 2008. About the best spin that can be put on it is to say that things could have been worse. (And things may yet still
get
worse, of course. The rumoured possible bankruptcy of the Borders bookstore chain, which has been buzzed about for months now, would, if it happens, likely have an adverse effect on many publishers.)

Much of 2008’s bad news was delivered on 3 December, what has come to be called Black Wednesday in the publishing industry, when Random House announced major restructuring and layoffs, making Bantam Dell part of Random House instead of an independent operation; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt saw resignations and firings even at the highest levels of the company (and caused a furore by announcing a “buying freeze” on new titles); and Simon & Schuster also announced significant staff cuts. Earlier, many people had been let go by Doubleday, and later there were huge layoffs at Macmillan, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, and elsewhere. Random House, the largest publisher in the United States, was the most strongly affected, undergoing sweeping changes, with many divisions being consolidated. The Random House Publishing Group swallowed the adult imprints of the Bantam Dell Publishing Group, including Bantam Spectra and Del Rey. The Knopf Publishing Group will absorb Doubleday as well as imprint Nan A. Talese. Senior Bantam Spectra editor Juliet Ulman was let go, as was Bantam Dell publisher Irwyn Applebaum and Doubleday publisher Steve Rubin; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publisher and senior vice-president Rebecca Saletan resigned and executive editor Ann Patty was fired; Simon & Schuster Children’s president Rick Richter and senior vice-president and publisher Rubin Pfeffer; Farrar, Straus, and Giroux lost publisher Linda Rosenberg, the heads of production and sub rights, a senior editor, and several assistants---and scores of people in lesser positions lost their jobs throughout the industry. The slaughter continued into the early months of 2009, with Del Rey editor Liz Scheier and Ballantine editor Anika Streitfeld being fired, along with Pantheon Books publisher Janice Goldklang.

German media conglomerate Bertelsmann, which had bought BookSpan, publisher of numerous book clubs, including the Science Fiction Book Club, just last year, turned around and sold their Direct Group North America in 2008, including BookSpan, to private investment firm Najafi Companies. What effect this will ultimately have on the Science Fiction Book Club is as yet uncertain, although at the moment they seem to be continuing to function pretty much as normal. Small press Wheatland Press went on “hiatus”, usually a bad sign, as far as issuing new titles is concerned, and may or may not be back, although they’re continuing to make already-released titles available for order. Several other small presses are rumoured to be teetering on the edge (while others seem to be doing okay).

Horrendous as all this is, it could have been worse. It was possible to see much of the restructuring of Random House coming a year or so back, even before the economic downturn had really taken hold, as a result of corporate mergers, and to date the party line is that Del Rey and Spectra will be kept as separate imprints. Most of the major SF lines are still in business, and a few, like the Hachette Book Group, which includes Orbit, even registered modest gains.

Of course, as the recession continues to deepen, there may be – and probably
will
be – lots of hard times left ahead.

Historically, books, magazines, and movies do well during recessions, as hard economic times make people search for cheap entertainment to distract themselves from their financial woes. The question for this particular recession is, Do books, magazines, and movies qualify as “cheap” entertainment anymore? These days, many hardcover books are in the $25 to $30 range, even a mass-market paperback can cost eight bucks, and in many places a single movie ticket can cost over $13 (for a family of five, once you throw in the eight-bucks-a-shot boxes of stale popcorn, you’re edging perilously close to having had to spend $100 to go to the movies). Even adjusting for inflation, it seems to me that this doesn’t really qualify as “cheap”. Ironically, the one form of entertainment in the genre that
is
still reasonably cheap, the digest-sized SF magazines, are being put out of business because they can no longer easily reach the customers; most people, even most regular SF readers, may go for years without ever laying eyes on an SF magazine, many don’t even know they exist, and even those who do may not be able to find one even if they go to a newsstand specifically searching for it. Perhaps the Kindle and the iPod and other similar text readers (and there are new and improved generations of them coming along all the time) will save the magazines by making them easily accessible to readers once again.

Considering the problems that have lately plagued Borders and other brick-and-mortar bookstores, they may save the publishing industry too, if anything can. Certainly everything in the publishing world is going to look very different ten years from now, and in twenty years it may be completely unrecognizable. Even today, many people are as likely or more likely to read a book on their iPod while commuting to work as they are to walk into a bookstore and buy a book. It’s worth noting that online bookseller Amazon was one of the very few businesses in the entire country to actually turn a profit in the fourth quarter of 2008.

The print magazines had a good year creatively, in terms of the quality of the material published, although circulation continued its slow decline.
Asimov’s
and
Analog
changed their trim size, getting larger although dropping pages, losing about 4,000 words’ worth of content in the process, and
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
changed from their decades-long monthly format to a bi-monthly format of larger but fewer issues, losing about 10 per cent of their overall content in the process. Opinion among industry insiders was divided as to whether these were sensible money-saving measures that will help the magazines survive or bad ideas, risky last-ditch attempts to save the magazines that could backfire; time will tell, I guess. With another big postal hike looming on the horizon in 2009, rising printing costs, and some major magazine distributors (including two of the nation’s biggest) beginning to charge a seven-cent-per-copy surcharge for all the magazines they distribute, a surcharge many magazines just can’t afford, things are looking precarious, and if the cost-cutting moves that
Asimov’s
,
Analog
, and
F&SF
are taking turn out to be ineffective in offsetting rising costs, all of these magazines could be in serious trouble. (Just as I was finishing work on this Summation, word came in that Anderson News, the huge magazine wholesaler and distributor who had been one of the distributors demanding a seven-cent-per-copy surcharge for every copy of the magazines they handle had been forced to suspend operations because many publishers had balked at paying the surcharge and stopped shipping them product. The CEO there says that the company is working “towards an amicable solution” with the publishers, and it remains to be seen how this situation will ultimately play out.)

Realms of Fantasy
magazine threw in the towel early in 2009, citing disastrously plummeting newsstand sales (although the declining advertising revenue due to the recession – ROF was always heavily dependent on advertising – may also have been a factor). The magazine would die after the April 2009 issue, a sad loss to the field.

The good news, such as it is, for the so-called Big Three magazines is that sales were nearly flat this year, with only minuscule declines from 2007.
Asimov’s Science Fiction
registered only a 2.7 per cent loss in overall circulation, from 17,581 to 17,102, not bad when compared to last year’s 5.2 per cent loss, 2006’s 13.6 per cent loss, or 2005’s disastrous 23.0 per cent; it seems that declines in circulation here are at least beginning to slow, even if they haven’t yet turned around. Subscriptions dropped from 14,084 to 13,842, and newsstand sales dropped from 3,497 to 3,260; sell-through rose from 30 per cent to 31 per cent. One encouraging note is that digital sales of the magazine through Fictionwise and Kindle were on the rise, although that rise is not yet reflected in these circulation figures. Asimov’s published good stories this year by James Alan Gardner, Mary Rosenblum, Michael Swanwick, Nancy Kress, Elizabeth Bear, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Stephen Baxter, and others. Sheila Williams completed her fourth year as
Asimov’s
editor.
Analog Science Fiction & Fact
registered a 5.1 per cent loss in overall circulation, from 27,399 to 25,999, with subscriptions dropping from 22,972 to 21,880, and newsstand sales dropping from 4,427 to 4,119; sell-through remained steady at 34 per cent.
Analo
g published good work this year by Dean McLaughlin, Geoffrey A. Landis, Michael F. Flynn, Robert R. Chase, Ben Bova, and others. Stanley Schmidt has been editor there for twenty-nine years.
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
registered a small 2.7 per cent loss in overall circulation, from 16,489 to 16,044, with subscriptions dropping from 12,831 to 12,374 but newstand sales actually rising slightly from 3,658 to 3,670; sell-through rose from 33 per cent to 35 per cent.
F&SF
published good work this year by Charles Coleman Finlay, Ted Kostmatka, Albert E. Cowdrey, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Michael Swanwick, Steven Utley, John Kessel, and others. Gordon Van Gelder is in his twelfth year as editor and eighth year as owner and publisher. In its last full year,
Realms of Fantasy
published good stuff by Liz Williams, Carrie Vaughn, Greg Frost, Richard Parks, Tanith Lee, Eugie Foster, Aliette de Bodard, and others. Shawna McCarthy was the editor of the magazine from its launch in 1994 to its death in 2009.

Interzone
doesn’t really qualify as a professional magazine by the definition of
The Science Fiction Writers of America
(
SFWA
) because of its low rates and circulation – in the 2,000 to 3,000 copy range – but it’s thoroughly professional in the calibre of writers that it attracts and in the quality of the fiction it produces, so we’re going to list it with the other professional magazines anyway.
Interzone
had another strong year creatively, in 2008 publishing good stories by Greg Egan, Hannu Rajaniemi, Paul McAuley, Aliette de Bodard, Mercurio D. Rivera, Jamie Barras, Jason Sanford, and others. The ever-shifting editorial staff includes publisher Andy Cox, assisted by Peter Tennant. TTA Press,
Interzone
’s publisher, also publishes straight horror or dark suspense magazine
Black Static
.

The survival of these magazines is essential if you’d like to see lots of good SF and fantasy published every year – and you can help them survive by
subscribing
to them! It’s never been easier to subscribe to most of the genre magazines, since you can now do it electronically online with the click of a few buttons, without even a trip to the mailbox. In the Internet age, you can also subscribe from overseas just as easily as you can from the United States, something formerly difficult-to-impossible. Furthermore, Internet sites such as
Fictionwise
(fictionwise.com), magaz!nes.com (magazines.com), and even Amazon.com sell subscriptions online, as well as electronic downloadable versions of many of the magazines to be read on your Kindle or PDA or home computer, something becoming increasingly popular with the computer-savvy set. And, of course, you can still subscribe the old-fashioned way, by mail.

So I’m going to list both the Internet sites where you can subscribe online and the street addresses where you can subscribe by mail for each magazine:
Asimov
’s site is at asimovs.com; its subscription address is
Asimov’s Science Fiction
, Dell Magazines, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855 – $55.90 for annual subscription in the US.
Analog
’s site is at analogsf. com; its subscription address is
Analog Science Fiction and Fact
, Dell Magazines, 6 Prowitt Street, Norwalk, CT 06855 – $55.90 for annual subscription in the US.
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
’s site is at sfsite.com/fsf; its subscription address is
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, Spilogale, Inc., P.O. Box 3447, Hoboken, NJ 07030, annual subscription – $50.99 in the US.
Interzone
and
Black Static
can be subscribed to online at ttapress.com/onlinestore1.html; the subscription address for both is TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambs CB6 2LB, England, UK, £21 each for a six-issue subscription, or there is a reduced rate dual subscription offer of £40 for both magazines for six issues; make cheques payable to TTA Press.