The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection (6 page)

An odd item, another British small-press anthology, is
The West Pier Gazette and Other Stories, Quercus One
(Three Legged Fox Books), edited by Paul Brazier, an anthology of stories that have supposedly been previously published in electronic form on the members-only
Quercus SF
site (quercus-sf.com – although it doesn’t seem to have been updated for several years, and may be fallow). Half of the book is taken up by rather specialized Alternate History stories about alternate fates for the nowdestroyed West Pier in Brighton, England, hence the title, and the rest of the book is devoted to more generalized SF, fantasy, and slipstream stories. Best thing here is a high-tech literalization of Egyptian mythology by Liz Williams, but there are also good stories by Geoff Ryman, Lavie Tidhar, Andy W. Robertson, Chris Butler, and others.

Clockwork Phoenix:
Tales of Beauty and Strangeness
, edited by Mike Allen, is a mixed science fiction/fantasy anthology, with a few slipstream stories thrown in for good measure. In an exceptional year for original anthologies, it doesn’t come in at the top of the heap, but there is a lot of good stuff here, and the cover, an effective use of an old painting, is lovely. The best story in
Clockwork Phoenix
, by a considerable margin, is an SF story by Vandana Singh, but there is also good work by John C. Wright, Cat Sparks, C. S. MacCath, and others. The best of the fantasy stories are by Tanith Lee, Marie Brennan, John Grant, Cat Rambo, Ekaterina Sedia, and others.

Another good anthology, full of solid, enjoyable work, is
Seeds of Change
(Prime), edited by John Joseph Adams. Best story here by a substantial margin, and one of the best of the year, is Ted Kosmatka’s “N-Words”, but there is also good work to be had here from Ken MacLeod, Jay Lake, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Mark Budz, Tobias Buckell, and others

2012
(Twelfth Planet Press), edited by Alisa Krasnestein and Ben Payne, delivers a smaller proportion of substantial work than
Seeds of Change,
although there are still worthwhile stories here by Sean McMullen and Simon Brown.

There are probably no award-winners in
Transhuman
(DAW), edited by Mark L. Van Name and T. K. F. Weisskopf (title makes the subject matter self-explanatory, surely), but there is a respectable amount of good solid core SF. Best story here is by David D. Levine, but there are also good stories by Mark L. Van Name, Paul Chafe, Sarah A. Hoyt, Wen Spenser, and others.

Future Americas
(DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers, and
Front Lines
(DAW), edited by Denise Little, are a bit more substantial than these DAW anthologies usually are. Best story in
Future Americas
is by Brendan DuBois; best story in
Front Lines
is by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
The Dimension Next Door
(DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes, was worthwhile but minor.

Another pleasant surprise last year was the sudden appearance of two pretty good ultra-small press anthologies from Hadley Rille Books, edited by Eric T. Reynolds,
Visual Journeys and Ruins Extraterrestrial.
Reynolds brought out another three anthologies this year,
Return to Luna
(Hadley Rille Books),
Desolate Places
(Hadley Rille Books – co-edited with Adam Nakama), and
Barren Worlds
(Hadley Rille Books – co-edited with Adam Nakama), but unfortunately they were much weaker, with some decent work but nothing particularly memorable.
Return to Luna
was marginally the strongest of the three.

Noted without comment is
Galactic Empires
(Science Fiction Book Club), edited by Gardner Dozois.

The best fantasy anthology was probably
Fast Ships, Black Sails
(Night Shade), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. Playful and a lot of fun, it’s an anthology of original pirate story/fantasy crosses, pirate/slipstream crosses, and even a few pirate/SF crosses. If some authors here give the impression that the whole of their research into pirates consisted of watching a DVD of
Pirates of the Caribbean
, others clearly know their stuff, and, for the most part, even the stories that are the sketchiest on the pirate stuff make up for it with the colourful fantasy element. There’s first-rate work here by Garth Nix, Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, Kage Baker, Jayme Lynn Blaschke, Naomi Novik, Howard Waldrop, Carrie Vaughn, and others. Also excellent is
Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy
(Subterranean), edited by William Schafer. The stories here are fairly representative of the kind of stories usually to be found on the
Subterranean
website, although none of them actually appeared there, being published for the first time here instead: fantasy, dark fantasy sometimes shading into horror, a smattering of science fiction, all extremely well crafted. The best stories here are by William Browning Spencer, Tim Powers, Patrick Rothfuss, Kage Baker, although there’s also good work by Caitlin R. Kiernan, Joe R. Lansdale, Mike Carey, and others. Also good was
A Book of Wizards
(Science Fiction Book Club), edited by Marvin Kaye, which featured novellas by Peter S. Beagle, Tanith Lee, Patricia A. McKillip, and others. There was also another instalment in a long-running fantasy anthology series,
Swords and Sorceress XXIII
(Norilana), edited by Elizabeth Waters.

Pleasant but minor fantasy anthologies included Warrior
Wisewoman
(Norilana), edited by Roby James;
Enchantment Place
(DAW), edited by Denise Little;
Fellowship Fantastic
(DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes;
Mystery Date
(DAW), edited by Denise Little;
Something Magic This Way Comes
(DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Sarah Hoyt;
Witch High
(DAW), edited by Denise Little; Catopolis (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Janet Deaver-Pack;
My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon
(St. Martin’s Griffin), edited by P. N. Elrod;
Magic in the Mirrorstone: Tales of Fantasy
(Mirrorstone), edited by Steve Berman; and
Lace and Blade
(Lada), a fantasy/romance cross edited by Deborah J. Ross.

It’s worth mentioning here that some of the anthologies mentioned above as SF anthologies, such as
Clockwork Phoenix, Dreaming Again
, and the Whates anthologies, had substantial amounts of good fantasy in them as well, sometimes nearly half the contents.

The line between fantasy and slipstream is often hard to draw rigorously, but anthologies that seemed to me more slipstream than fantasy

(in spite of some of their titles) included:
Paper Cities, An Anthology of Urban Fantasy
(Five Senses Press), edited by Ekaterina Sedia;
Subtle Edens
(Elastic Press), edited by Allen Ashley; Alembical (Paper Golem), edited by Lawrence M. Shoen and Arthur Dorrance;
Spicy Slipstream Stories
(Lethe Press), edited by Nick Mamatas and Jay Lake;
A Field Guide to Surreal Biology
(Two Cranes Press), edited by Janet Chui and Jason Erik Lundberg; and
Tesseracts Twelve
(Edge), edited by Claude Lalumiere.

Shared world anthologies, many of them superhero oriented, included
Wild Cards
:
Inside Straight
(Tor), edited by George R. R. Martin;
Wild Cards: Busted Flush
(Tor), edited by George R. R. Martin;
Hellboy:
Oddest Jobs
(Dark Horse), edited by Christopher Golden; and
Ring of Fire II
(Baen), edited by Eric Flint.

As usual, novice work by beginning writers, some of whom may later turn out to be important talents, was featured in
L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume XXIV
(Galaxy), the last in this long-running series to be edited by the late Algis Budrys. No word yet on whether the series will continue under different editorship.

There were lots of stories about robots this year, and
lots
of stories about zombies, including a dedicated zombie anthology. There were at least three retropunk Space Pirate stories, and two stories about really nasty mermaids who kill people. There were two or three pastiches of H. G. Wells’
The War of the Worlds
, and two gritty retellings of Hansel and Gretel. Stories appeared that were obviously inspired by
Second Life
, as well as by MMORPGs like
Worlds of Warcraft,
and by anime. There were several stories that tried to put new twists on the idea of people’s minds being uploaded into a computer, including several where survivors were not happy about having to continue to deal with nagging relatives who were now “virtual”. In addition to the dedicated Alternate History magazine,
Paradox
, there was also lots of Alternate History stuff published elsewhere, most of it leaning towards steampunk – there were three Alternate History anthologies,
Sideways in Crime, Extraordinary Engines,
and
Steampunk
, but almost every market featured steampunkish Alternate History stories this year, including a few Alternate History/Mystery crosses in
Interzone, Postscripts,
and elsewhere that could just as easily have fit into
Sideways in Crime.

Science fiction continued to pop up in unexpected places, both in print and online, from the Australian science magazine
Cosmos
to the
MIT Technology Review
. Even
The New Yorker
published two stories this year that could be considered to be genuine SF, an unheard of occurrence that made some observers glance at Hell to see if it had frozen over (there have been stories by SF writers in
The New Yorker
before, but they’ve usually been slipstream/surrealist/literary pieces of the sort that is more typical of the magazine).

(Finding individual pricings for all of the items from small-presses mentioned in the Summation has become too time-intensive, and since several of the same small presses publish anthologies, novels,
and
short story collections, it seems silly to repeat addresses for them in section after section. Therefore, I’m going to attempt to list here, in one place, all the addresses for small presses that have books mentioned here or there in the Summation, whether from the anthologies section, the novel section, or the short-story-collection section, and, where known, their website addresses. That should make it easy enough for the reader to look up the individual price of any book mentioned that isn’t from a regular trade-publisher; such books are less likely to be found in your average bookstore or even in a chain superstore, and so will probably have to be mail-ordered. Many publishers seem to sell only online, through their websites, and some will only accept payment through PayPal. Many books, even from some of the smaller presses, are also available through Amazon.com.)

Addresses:
PS Publishing
, Grosvener House, 1 New Road, Hornsea, West Yorkshire, HU18 1PG, England, UK, pspublishing.co.uk;
Golden Gryphon Press
, 3002 Perkins Road, Urbana, IL 61802, goldengryphon. com;
NESFA Press
, P.O. Box 809, Framinghan, MA 01701-0809, nesfa. org;
Subterranean Press
, P.O. Box 190106, Burton, MI 48519, subterra-neanpress.com;
Solaris
, via solarisbooks.com;
Old Earth Books
, P.O. Box 19951, Baltimore, MD 21211-0951, oldearthbooks.com;
Tachyon Press
, 1459 18th St. #139, San Francisco, CA 94107, tachyonpublications.com;
Night Shade Books
, 1470 NW Saltzman Road, Portland, OR 97229, nightshadebooks.com;
Five Star Books
, 295 Kennedy Memorial Drive, Waterville, ME 04901, galegroup.com/fivestar;
NewCon Press
, via newcon-press.com;
Small Beer Press
, 176 Prospect Ave., Northampton, MA 01060, smallbeerpress.com;
Locus Press
, P.O. Box 13305, Oakland, CA 94661, locusmag.com;
Crescent Books
, Mercat Press Ltd., 10 Coates Crescent, Edinburgh, Scotland EH3 7AL, crescentfiction.com;
Wildside Press/ Cosmos Books/Borgo Press
, P.O. Box 301, Holicong, PA 18928-0301, or go to wildsidepress.com for pricing and ordering;
Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing
, Inc. and Tesseract Books, Ltd., P.O. Box 1714, Calgary, Alberta, T2P 2L7, Canada, edgewebsite.com;
Aqueduct Press
, P.O. Box 95787, Seattle, WA 98145-2787, aqueductpress.com;
Phobos Books
, 200 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003, phobosweb.com;
Fairwood Press
, 5203 Quincy Ave. SE, Auburn, WA 98092, fairwoodpress. com;
BenBella Books
, 6440 N. Central Expressway, Suite 508, Dallas, TX 75206, benbellabooks.com;
Darkside Press
, 13320 27th Ave. NE, Seattle, WA 98125, darksidepress.com;
Haffiner Press
, 5005 Crooks Rd., Suite 35, Royal Oak, MI 48073-1239, haffinerpress.com;
North Atlantic Press
, P.O. Box 12327, Berkeley, CA 94701;
Prime
, P.O. Box 36503, Canton, OH 44735, primebooks.net;
Fairwood Press
, 5203 Quincy Ave SE, Auburn, WA 98092, fairwoodpress.com;
MonkeyBrain Books
, 11204 Crossland Drive, Austin, TX 78726, monkeybrainbooks.com;
Wesleyan University Press
, University Press of New England, Order Dept., 37 Lafayette St., Lebanon NH 03766-1405, wesleyan.edu/wespress;
Agog! Press
, P.O. Box U302, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia, uow.ed.au/~rhood/agog-press;
Wheatland Press
, via wheatlandpress.com; MirrorDanse Books, P.O. Box 3542, Parramatta NSW 2124, tabula-rasa.info/MirrorDanse;
Arsenal Pulp Press
, 103--1014 Homer Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6B 2W9, arsenalpress.com;
DreamHaven Books
, 912 W. Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN 55408, dreamhavenbooks.com;
Elder Signs Press/Dimensions Books
, order through dimensionsbooks.com;
Chaosium
, via chaosium.com;
Spyre Books
, P.O. Box 3005, Radford, VA 24143; SCIFI, Inc., P.O. Box 8442, Van Nuys, CA 91409-8442;
Omnidawn Publishing
, order through omni-dawn.com;
CSFG
, Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild, csfig.org.au/publishing/anthologies/the_outcast;
Hadley Rille Books
, via hadleyrillebooks. com;
ISFiC Press
, 707 Sapling Lane, Deerfeld, IL 60015-3969, or isficpress. com;
Suddenly Press
, via [email protected]; Sandstone Press, P.O. Box 5725, One High St., Dingwall, Ross-shire, IV15 9WJ UK, sandstone-press.com;
Tropism Press
, via tropismpress.com;
SF Poetry Association/ Dark Regions Press
, sfpoetry.com, cheques to Helena Bell, SFPA Treasurer, 1225 West Freeman St., Apt. 12, Carbondale, IL 62401;
DH Press
, via diamondbookdistributors.com;
Kurodahan Press
, via website kurodahan. com;
Ramble House
, 443 Gladstone Blvd., Shreveport, LA 71104, ramble-house.com;
Interstitial Arts Foundation
, via interstitialarts.org;
Raw Dog Screaming
, via rawdogscreaming.com;
Three Legged Fox Books
, 98 Hythe Road, Brighton, BN1 6JS, UK;
Norilana Books
, via norilana.com;
coeur de lion
, via coeurdelion.com.au;
PARSECink
, via parsecink.org;
Robert J. Sawyer Books
, via sfwriter.com/rjsbooks.htm;
Rackstraw Press
, via rack-strawpress;
Candlewick
, via candlewick.com;
Zubaan
, via zubaanbooks. com;
Utter Tower
, via threeleggedfox.co.uk;
Spilt Milk Press
, via electricvelocipede.com;
Paper Golem
, via papergolem.com;
Galaxy Press
, via galaxypress.com;
Twelfth Planet Press
, via twelfthplanetpress.com;
Five Senses Press
, via sensefive.com;
Elastic Press
, via elasticpress.com;
Lethe Press
, via lethepressbooks.com;
Two Cranes Press
, via twocranespress. com;
Wordcraft of Oregon
, via wordcraftoforegon.com;
Down East
, via downeast.com.