(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. If you can’t find an address for a publisher, and it’s quite likely that I’ve missed some here, or failed to update them successfully, Google it. It shouldn’t be that difficult these days to find up-to-date contact information for almost any publisher, however small.)
Addresses are: PS Publishing, Grosvenor House, 1 New Road, Hornsea, West Yorkshire, HU18 1PG, England, UK www.pspublishing.co.uk; Golden Gryphon Press, 3002 Perkins Road, Urbana, IL 61802, www.goldengryphon.com; NESFA Press, P.O. Box 809, Framingham, MA 01701-0809, www.nesfa.org/press; Subterranean Press, P.O. Box 190106, Burton, MI 48519, www.subterraneanpress.com; Old Earth Books, P.O. Box 19951, Baltimore, MD 21211-0951, www.oldearthbooks.com; Tachyon Press,1459 18th St. #139, San Francisco, CA 94107, www.tachyonpublications.com; Night Shade Books,1470 NW Saltzman Road, Portland, OR 97229, www.nightshadebooks.com; Five Star Books, 295 Kennedy Memorial Drive, Waterville, ME 04901, www.galegroup.com/fivestar; NewCon Press, via www.newconpress.com; Small Beer Press,176 Prospect Ave., Northampton, MA 01060, www.smallbeerpress.com; Locus Press, P.O. Box 13305, Oakland, CA 94661; Crescent Books, Mercat Press Ltd., 10 Coates Crescent, Edinburgh, Scotland EH3 7AL, www.crescentfiction.com; Wildside Press/Borgo Press, P.O. Box 301, Holicong, PA 18928-0301, or go to www.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, www.edgewebsite.com; Aqueduct Press, P.O. Box 95787, Seattle, WA 98145-2787, www.aqueductpress.com; Phobos Books, 200 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003, www.phobosweb.com; Fairwood Press, 5203 Quincy Ave. SE, Auburn, WA 98092, www.fairwoodpress.com; BenBella Books, 6440 N. Central Expressway, Suite 508, Dallas, TX 75206, www.benbellabooks.com; Darkside Press, 13320 27th Ave. NE, Seattle, WA 98125, www.darksidepress.com; Haffner Press, 5005 Crooks Rd., Suite 35, Royal Oak, MI 48073-1239, www.haffnerpress.com; North Atlantic Press, P.O. Box 12327, Berkeley, CA 94701; Prime Books, P.O. Box 36503, Canton, OH 44735, www.primebooks.net; MonkeyBrain Books, 11204 Crossland Drive, Austin, TX 78726, www.monkeybrainbooks.com; Wesleyan University Press, University Press of New England, Order Dept., 37 Lafayette St., Lebanon, NH 03766-1405, www.wesleyan.edu/wespress; Agog! Press, P.O. Box U302, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia, www.uow.ed.au/~rhood/agogpress; Wheatland Press, via www.wheatlandpress.com; MirrorDanse Books, P.O. Box 3542, Parramatta NSW 2124, www.tabula-rasa.info/MirrorDanse; Arsenal Pulp Press, 103–1014 Homer Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6B 2W9, www.arsenalpress.com; DreamHaven Books, 912 W. Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN 55408; Elder Signs Press/Dimensions Books, order through www.dimensionsbooks.com; Chaosium, via www.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 www.omnidawn.com; CSFG, Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild, www.csfg.org.au/publishing/anthologies/the_outcast; Hadley Rille Books, via www.hadleyrillebooks.com; ISFiC Press, 707 Saplilng Lane, Deerfield, IL 60015-3969, or www.isficpress.com; Suddenly Press, via [email protected]; Sandstone Press, P.O. Box 5725, One High St., Dingwall, Ross-shire, IV15 9WJ; Tropism Press, via www.tropismpress.com; SF Poetry Association/Dark Regions Press, www.sfpoetry.com, send checks to Helena Bell, SFPA Treasurer, 1225 West Freeman St., Apt. 12, Carbondale, IL 62401; DH Press, via diamondbookdistributors.com; Kurodahan Press, via www.kurodahan.com; Ramble House, 443 Gladstone Blvd., Shreveport, LA 71104; Interstitial Arts Foundation, via www.interstitialarts.org; Raw Dog Screaming, via www.rawdogscreaming.com; Three Legged Fox Books, 98 Hythe Road, Brighton, BN1 6JS, UK; Norilana Books, via www.norilana.com; coeur de lion, via coeurdelion.com.au; PARSECink, via www.parsecink.org; Robert J. Sawyer Books, via wwww.sfwriter.com/rjsbooks.htm; Rackstraw Press, via http://rackstrawpress; Candlewick, via www.candlewick.com; Zubaan, via www.zubaanbooks.com; Utter Tower, via www.threeleggedfox.co.uk; Spilt Milk Press, via www.electricvelocipede.com; Paper Golem, via www.papergolem.com; Galaxy Press, via www.galaxypress.com.; Twelfth Planet Press, via www.twelfthplanetpress.com; Five Senses Press, via www.sensefive.com; Elastic Press, via www.elasticpress.com; Lethe Press, via www.lethepressbooks.com; Two Cranes Press, via www.twocranespress.com; Wordcraft of Oregon, via www.wordcraftoforegon.com; Down East, via www.downeast.com.
Ebooks have not yet driven print books out of existence, as some commentators insist that they eventually will, not by a long shot, although there are indications that they’re definitely having an effect, especially on mass-market paperbacks, and taking an increasing share of the market. There were still plenty of print books around in 2011. In fact, in spite of the recession and the ebook revolution, the number of novels published in the SF and fantasy genres increased for the fifth year in a row.
According to the newsmagazine Locus, there were a record 3,071 books “of interest to the SF field” published in 2011, up slightly from 3,056 titles in 2010. New titles hit a new high for the third year in a row, up 2 percent to 2,140, 70 percent of the total, while reprints dropped 3 percent for 931, their lowest point since 2000. (It’s worth noting that this total doesn’t count ebooks, media tie-in novels, gaming novels, novelizations of genre movies, or print-on-demand books – all of which would swell the overall total by hundreds if counted.) The number of new SF novels was up 7 percent to 305 titles as opposed to 2010’s 285. The number of new fantasy novels was up by 7 percent, to 660 titles as opposed to 2010’s total of 614. Horror novels were down 9 percent to 229 titles as opposed to 2010’s 251 titles. Paranormal romances were up 8 percent to 416 titles as opposed to 2010’s 384 titles, second in numbers only to fantasy (although sometimes it’s almost a subjective call whether a particular novel should be pigeonholed as paranormal romance, fantasy, or horror).
All of these genres showed a sharp increase in young adult novels, up to 24 percent from 2010’s 20 percent in science fiction, up to 35 percent from 2010’s 34 percent in fantasy, and up to 31 percent from 2010’s 24 percent for horror. In SF, dystopian and post-apocalyptic YA SF novels were one of the year’s hottest trends.
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 those novels that received a lot of attention and acclaim in 2011.
A Dance with Dragons (Bantam), by George R. R. Martin; Earthbound (Ace), by Joe Haldeman; City of Ruins (Pyr), by Kristine Kathryn Rusch; Embassytown (Del Rey), by China Miéville; Cowboy Angels (Pyr), by Paul McAuley; The Wise Man’s Fear (DAW Books), by Patrick Rothfuss; Among Others (Tor), by Jo Walton; This Shared Dream (Tor), by Kathleen Ann Goonan; Hex (Ace), by Allen Steele; Deep State (Orbit), by Walter Jon Williams; The Children of the Sky (Tor), by Vernor Vinge; Rule 34 (Ace), by Charles Stross; Planesrunner (Pyr), by Ian McDonald; Vortex (Tor), by Robert Charles Wilson; Betrayer (DAW Books), by C. J. Cherryh; Home Fires (Tor), by Gene Wolfe; Count to a Trillion (Tor), by John C. Wright; The Magician King (Viking), by Lev Grossman; All the Lives He Led (Tor), by Frederik Pohl; Daybreak Zero (Ace), by John Barnes; After the Golden Age (Tor), by Carrie Vaughn; Kitty’s Big Trouble (Tor), by Carrie V
aughn; Leviathan Wakes (Orbit), by James S. A. Corey; 7th Sigma (Tor), by Steven Gould; The Dragon’s Path (Orbit), by Daniel Abraham; Deathless (Tor), by Catherynne M. Valente; The Heroes (Orbit), by Joe Abercrombe; Bronze Summer (Gollancz), by Stephen Baxter; Stone Spring (Gollancz), by Stephen Baxter; Endurance (Tor), by Jay Lake; The Tempering of Men (Tor), by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear; Goliath (Simon Pulse), by Scott Westerfeld; The Cold Commands (Del Rey), by Richard Morgan; Grail (Spectra), by Elizabeth Bear; Fuzzy Nation (Tor), by John Scalzi; The Islanders (Gollancz), by Christopher Priest; Reamde (HarperCollins), by Neal Stephenson; By Light Alone (Gollancz) by Adam Roberts; Firebird (Ace), by Jack McDevitt; The Hammer (Orbit), by K. J. Parker; The Highest Frontier (Tor), by Joan Slonczewski; The Kings of Eternity (Solaris), by Eric Brown; Remade (William Morrow), by Neal Stephenson; The Kings of Eternity (Solaris), by Eric Brown; Raising Stony Mayhall (Del Rey), by Daryl Gregory; 11/23/63 (Scribner), by Stephen King; and Snuff (HarperCollins), by Terry Pratchett.
I still hear the complaint that there are no SF books left to buy these days, that they’ve all been driven off the shelves by fantasy books, but although there’s a good deal of fantasy in the titles given here, the Haldeman, the Rusch, the Miéville, the McAuley, the Goonan, the Steele, the Williams, the Vinge, the Stross, the McDonald, the Wilson, the Wright, the Corey, the Pohl, the McDevitt, and a number of others are unquestionably core science fiction, and many more could be cited from the lists of small press novels and first novels. There’s still more good core SF out there than any one person could possibly have time to read in the course of a year.
Small presses are active in the novel market these days, where once they published mostly collections and anthologies. Novels issued by small presses this year included: The Clockwork Rocket (Night Shade Books), by Greg Egan; Dancing with Bears (Night Shade Books), by Michael Swanwick; Osama: A Novel (PS Publishing), by Lavie Tidhar; Wake Up and Dream (PS Publishing), by Ian R. MacLeod; The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Feiwel and Friends), by Catherynne M. Valente; The Folded World (Night Shade Books), by Catherynne M. Valente; The Uncertain Places (Tachyon Publications), by Lisa Goldstein; The Other (Underland Press), by Matthew Hughes; Heart of Iron (Prime Books), by Ekaterina Sedia; Infidel (Night Shade Books), by Kameron Hurley; Scratch Monkey (NESFA Press), by Charles Stross; and Dark Tangos (Subterranean Press), by Lewis Shiner.
The year’s first novels included: Robopocalypse (Doubleday), by Daniel H. Wilson; Ready Player One (Crown Publishers), by Ernest Cline; Soft Apocalypse (Night Shade Books), by Will McIntosh; Debris (Angry Robot), by Jo Anderton; Mechanique (Prime Books), by Genevieve Valentine; Necropolis (Night Shade Books), by Michael Dempsey; The Falling Machine (Pyr), by Andrew Mayer; The Traitor’s Daughter (Spectra), by Paula Brandon; No Hero (Night Shade Books), by Jonathan Wood; The Girl of Fire and Thorns (Greenwillow), by Rae Carson; 2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America (St. Martin’s Press), by Albert Brooks; God’s War (Night Shade Books), by Hurley Kameron; Reality 36 (Angry Robot), by Guy Haley; Spellcast (DAW Books), by Barbara Ashford; Sword of Fire and Sea (Pyr), by Erin Hoffman; Low Town (Doubleday), by Daniel Polansky; Kindling the Moon (Pocket Books), by Jenn Bennett; Farlander (Tor), by Col Buchanan; Revolution World (Night Shade Books), by Katy Stauber; A Discovery of Witches (Viking), by Deborah Harkness; The Tiger’s Wife (Random House), by Téa Obreht; The Night Circus (Doubleday), by Erin Morgenstern; The Desert of Souls (Thomas Durine Books), by Howard Andrew Jones; The Unremembered (Tor), by Peter Orullilan; Seed (Night Shade Books), by Rob Ziegler; Of Blood and Honey (Night Shade Books), by Stina Leicht; Among Thieves (Roc), by Douglas Hulick; Awakenings (Tor), by Edward D. Lazellari; Miserere: An Autumn Tale (Night Shade Books), by Teresa Frohock; and The Whitefire Crossing (Night Shade Books), by Courtney Schafer. Unlike last year, when Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief soaked up most of the attention, none of these novels seemed to have a real edge in attention or acclaim.
Night Shade Books obviously published a lot of novels this year, particularly for a small press, and was particularly active in first novels.
The strongest novella chapbook of the year, by a good margin, was Silently and Very Fast (WSFA Press), by Catherynne M. Valente, but there were other good novella chapbooks as well, such as Jesus and the Eightfold Path (Immersion Press), by Lavie Tidhar; Angel of Europa (Subterranean Press), by Allen Steele; Blue and Gold (Subterranean Press), by K. J. Parker; Gravity Dreams (PS Publishing), by Stephen Baxter; The White City (Subterranean Press), by Elizabeth Bear; A Brood of Foxes (Aqueduct), by Kristin Livdahl; The Affair of the Chalk Cliffs (Subterranean Press), by James P. Blaylock; and The Ice Puzzle (PS Publishing), by Catherynne M. Valente.
Novel omnibuses this year included: Flandry’s Legacy (Baen Books), by Poul Anderson; Rise of the Terran Empire (Baen Books), by Poul Anderson; Introducing Garrett, P.I. (Roc), by Glen Cook; Galactic Courier (Baen Books), by A. Bertram Chandler; The Crystal Variation (Baen Books), by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller; Moonsinger’s Quest (Baen Books), by Andre Norton; and Kurt Vonnegut: Novels and Stories 1963–1973 (The Library of America), an omnibus of four novels, three stories, and three non-fiction pieces by Vonnegut. Novel omnibuses are also frequently made available through the Science Fiction Book Club.
Not even counting print-on-demand books and the availability of out-of-print books as ebooks or as electronic downloads from Internet sources such as Fictionwise, a lot of long out-of-print stuff has come back into print in the last couple of years in commercial trade editions. Here are some out-of-print titles that came back into print this year, although producing a definitive list of reissued novels is probably impossible. Tor reissued The Dragons of Babel, by Michael Swanwick; A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge; Gods of Riverworld, by Philip José Farmer; Territory, by Emma Bull; Mindscan, by Robert J. Sawyer; Sati, by Christopher Pike; The Season of Passage, by Christopher Pike; Fleet of Worlds, by Larry Niven and Edward M. Lerner; The Darkest Part of the Woods, by Ramsey Campbell; and A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!, by Harry Harrison. Orb reissued: Stations of the Tide, by Michael Swanwick; A Bridge of Years, by Robert Charles Wilson; The Chronoliths, by Robert Charles Wilson; Stand on Zanzibar, by John Brunner; and Trouble and Her Friends, by Melissa Scott. Tor Teen reissued Sister Light, Sister Dark, by Jane Yolen. Baen Books reissued Starman Jones, by Robert A. Heinlein. Night Shade Books reissued An Ill Fate Marshalling, Reap the East Wind, and A Matter of Time, all by Glen Cook. Small Beer Press reissued The Child Garden, by Geoff Ryman, Stories of Your Life and Others, by Ted Chiang; and Solitaire, by Kelley Eskridge. Angry Robot reissued Infernal Devices and Morlock Night, both by K. W. Jeter. Subterranean Press reissued Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper, by Robert Bloch. Tachyon Publications reissued Promises to Keep, by Charles de Lint. Ace reissued The Terminal Experiment, by Robert J. Sawyer. Ballantine Spectra reissued The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. Ballantine Del Rey reissued Conan the Barbarian, by Robert E. Howard. William Morrow reissued American Gods, The Tenth Anniversary Edition, by Neil Gaiman. Harper Perennial reissued The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman. HarperCollins reissued Abarat, by Clive Barker. Prime Books reissued The Bone Key: The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth, by Sarah Monette. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt reissued The Divine Invasion, by Philip K. Dick. Titan Books reissued Anno Dracula, by Kim Newman. Harper reissued On Stranger Tides, by Tim Powers. St. Martin’s Griffin reissued The Space Merchants, by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Cornbluth.
Many authors are now reissuing their old back titles as ebooks, either through a publisher or all by themselves, so many that it’s impossible to keep track of them all here. Before you conclude that something from an author’s backlist is unavailable, though, check with the Kindle and NOOK stores, and with other online vendors.
2011 was another good year for short-story collections. The year’s best non-retrospective collections included: After the Apocalypse (Small Beer Press), by Maureen McHugh; Gothic High-Tech (Subterranean Press), by Bruce Sterl
ing; Paradise Tales (Small Beer Press), by Geoff Ryman; The Bible Repairman and Other Stories (Tachyon Publications), by Tim Powers; The Universe of Things (Aqueduct Press), by Gwyneth Jones; The Inheritance and Other Stories (Harper Voyager), by Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm; Unpossible and Other Stories (Fairwood Press), by Daryl Gregory; and Sleight of Hand (Tachyon Publications), by Peter S. Beagle. Also good were Wind Angels (PS Publishing), by Leigh Kennedy; Kitty’s Greatest Hits (Tor), by Carrie Vaughn; The Wild Girls (PM Press – omnibus of one story, two essays, one interview, and four poems), by Ursula K. Le Guin; Yellowcake (Allen & Unwin), by Margo Lanagan; Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles (Titan Books), by Kim Newman; Translation Station (The Merry Blacksmith Press), by Don D’Ammassa; Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories (Lethe Press), by Sandra McDonald; Dragon Virus (Fairwood Press), by Laura Anne Gilman; Somewhere Beneath These Waves (Prime Books), by Sarah Monette; Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press), by Tansy Rayner Roberts; Manhattan in Reverse (Pan MacMillan), by Peter F. Hamilton; Steel and Other Stories (Tor), by Richard Matheson; Something More and More (Aqueduct Press – omnibus of two stories, three essays, and an interview), by Nisi Shawl; The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (PM Press – omnibus of a long novella, plus essays and interviews), by Cory Doctorow; Never at Home (Aqueduct Press), by L. Timmel Duchamp; and Aurora in Four Voices (ISFIC Press), by Catherine Asaro.
Noted without comment is When the Great Days Come (Prime Books), by Gardner Dozois.
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.
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