The Year's Best Science Fiction, Thirty-Second Annual Collection
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Sites where podcasts and SF-oriented radio plays can be accessed have also proliferated in recent years: at Audible (www.audible.com), Escape Pod (escapepod.org, podcasting mostly SF), SF Squeecast (sfsqueecast.com), The Coode Street Podcast (jonathanstrahan.podbean.com), The Drabblecast (www.drabblecast.org), StarShipSofa (www.starshipsofa.com), FarFetchedFables (www.farfetchedfables.com), new companion to StarShipSofa, concentrating on fantasy, SF Signal Podcast (www.sfsignal.com), Pseudopod (pseudopod.org), podcasting mostly fantasy, Podcastle (podcastle.org), podcasting mostly fantasy, and Galactic Suburbia (galacticsuburbia.podbean.com). Clarkesworld routinely offers podcasts of stories from the e-zine, and The Agony Column also hosts a weekly podcast. There’s also a site that podcasts nonfiction interviews and reviews, Dragon Page Cover to Cover (www.dragonpage.com).
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2014 wasn’t a really strong year for short fiction overall—although, as usual, so much of it is now published in so many different mediums, from print to electronic to audiobooks, that it wasn’t hard to find a lot of good material to read if you looked around for it a bit.
This year, the best short SF was probably to be found in the original SF anthologies, of which there were several good ones available in 2014. The best of these were probably Reach for Infinity (Solaris), edited by Jonathan Strahan—which featured strong work by Ian McDonald, Aliette de Bodard, Karl Schroeder, Ellen Klages, Alastair Reynolds, Pat Cadigan, and others—and Hieroglyph: Stories and Visions for a Better Future (Arizona State University), edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer, which featured first-rate stuff by Cory Doctorow, Vandana Singh, Elizabeth Bear, Geoffrey A. Landis, Kathleen Ann Goonan, and others; Hieroglyph also features nonfiction essays and commentary on the stories by the authors as well as the fiction, and links to places on the Center for Science and the Imagination Web site (csi.asu.edu) where you can read extended discussions of the subject matter of the stories (and evaluations of its feasibility) by SF writers, scientists, engineers, and futurologists.
A step down from the top two, but still loaded with good material, were Upgraded (Wyrm Publishing), a cyborg anthology edited by Neil Clarke, and Solaris Rising 3: The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction (Solaris), edited by Ian Whates. Upgraded featured good stories by Ken Liu, Peter Watts, Rich Larson, Elizabeth Bear, Greg Egan, and others, while Solaris Rising 3 had strong work by Aliette de Bodard, Adam Roberts, Gareth L. Powell, Chris Beckett, and others.
Coming in just under the top anthologies was Twelve Tomorrows (MIT Technology Review), edited by Bruce Sterling, which featured strong work by Lauren Beukes, Paul Graham Raven, William Gibson, Cory Doctorow, Pat Cadigan, Warren Ellis, and others.
Also worthwhile, although not as strong overall as the anthologies listed above, were Coming Soon Enough: Six Tales of Technology’s Future (IEEE Spectrum), an e-book anthology edited by Stephen Cass, which featured a strong story by Greg Egan; War Stories: New Military Science Fiction (Apex Publications), edited by Jaym Gates and Andrew Liptak, with good work by Ken Liu, Rich Larson, James L. Cambias, Linda Nagata, Yoon Ha Lee, Karin Lowachee, Keith Brooke, and others; The End Is Nigh (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform), the first in an anthology trilogy of apocalyptic stories edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey, with good work by Paolo Bacigalupi, Tananarive Due, Nancy Kress, Ken Liu, and others; The End Is Now (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform), again edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey, the sequel to The End Is Nigh, which also contains good work by Ken Liu, Tananarive Due, Nancy Kress, Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Langan, and others, although having the same authors do sequels to their stories in the previous volume may not have been the best idea, and produces a somewhat weaker book; and Carbide Tipped Pens: Seventeen Tales of Hard Science Fiction (Tor), edited by Ben Bova and Eric Choi, with good work by Aliette de Bodard, Jean-Louis Trudel, Gregory Benford, Robert Reed, Nancy Fulda, and others. Postscripts 32/33: Far Voyager (PS Publishing), edited by Nick Gevers, was not so much an SF anthology as a slipstream/fantasy/soft horror anthology with an occasional SF story in it, but they were good ones by Michael Swanwick, Ian Sales, Robert Reed, and others, with good non-SF work by Richard Calder, Paul Park, Andrew Hook, Angela Slatter, and others. Paradox: Stories Inspired by the Fermi Paradox (NewCon Press), edited by Ian Whates, somewhat oddly didn’t feature many stories offering ingenious explanations of the Fermi paradox, but did feature solid work by David L. Clements, Pat Cadigan, Paul Cornell, Tricia Sullivan, Robert Reed, Keith Brooke and Eric Brown, Mercurio D. Rivera, and others. There were a number of anthologies from Fiction River, which last year launched a continuing series of original SF and fantasy anthologies, with Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith as overall series editors, and individual editions edited by various hands; the best SF one this year was probably Moonscapes (Fiction River), edited by Dean Wesley Smith, but Universe Between (Fiction River), was also worth a look.
In addition to a cyborg anthology, there were two anthologies about robots, Robot Uprisings (Vintage), edited by Daniel H. Wilson and John Joseph Adams, and Bless Your Mechanical Heart (Evil Girlfriend Media), edited by Jennifer Brozek. Kaleidoscope (Twelfth Planet Press), edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios, was an anthology of YA SF stories, with an emphasis on cultural diversity.
Noted without comment is a big crossover anthology, Rogues, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.
There were three tribute anthologies to the work of individual SF/fantasy authors: The Book of Silverberg (Subterranean Press), edited by Gardner Dozois and William K. Schafer; Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson’s Worlds (Subterranean Press), edited by Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois; and The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron (Word Horde), edited by Ross E. Lockhart and Justin Steele.
The best fantasy anthology of the year was Fearsome Magics: The New Solaris Book of Fantasy (Solaris) edited by Jonathan Strahan, the second time Strahan has pulled off the trick of having both the best SF anthology and the best fantasy anthology in the same year; Fearsome Magics featured strong work by K. J. Parker, Garth Nix, Justina Robson, Ellen Klages, Karin Tidbeck, and others. Another strong fantasy anthology was Monstrous Affections: An Anthology of Beastly Tales (Candlewick Press), edited by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant, with good stories by Paolo Bacigalupi, Nalo Hopkinson, Holly Black, Kelly Link herself, and others. Dead Man’s Hand: An Anthology of the Weird West (Titan Books), edited by John Joseph Adams, contains strong work by Elizabeth Bear, Ken Liu, Joe R. Lansdale, Alastair Reynolds, Tad Williams, Jeffrey Ford, Walter Jon Williams, and others.
Other original fantasy anthologies included Trafficking in Magic, Magicking in Traffic (Fantastic Books), edited by David Sklar and Sarah Avery; Fantastic Detectives (Fiction River), edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch; and Fantasy for Good: A Charitable Anthology (Nightscape Press), edited by Jordan Ellinger and Richard Salter.
Hard to classify anthologies included The Mammoth Book of Gaslit Romance (Running Press), edited by Ekaterina Sedia; and Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (Crossed Genres), edited by Rose Fox and Daniel José Older, which featured stories set in historical periods between 1400 and the early 1900s.
The year’s prominent original horror anthologies included Fearful Symmetries: An Anthology of Horror (ChiZine Publications), edited by Ellen Datlow; Nightmare Carnival (Dark Horse), edited by Ellen Datlow; Games Creatures Play (Ace), edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner; The Madness of Cthulhu Anthology (Titan Books), edited by S. T. Joshi; Letters to Lovecraft: Eighteen Whispers to the Darkness (Stone Skin), edited by Jesse Bullington; Searchers After Horror: New Tales of the Weird and Fantastic (Fedogan & Bremer), edited by S. T. Joshi; Shadows and Tall Trees, Volume 6 (ChiZine Publications), edited by Michael Kelly; and Handsome Devil: Stories of Sin and Seduction (Prime Books), a mixed original and reprint anthology edited by Steve Berman. Dangerous Games (Solaris), edited by Jonathan Oliver, straddles the line between SF and horror.
Shared world ant
hologies included Lowball: A Wild Cards Mosaic Novel (Tor), edited by George R. R. Martin and Melinda M. Snodgrass; No True Way (DAW), edited by Mercedes Lackey; Doctor Who: 11 Doctors, 11 Stories (Puffin), edited by the BBC; and Dead But Not Forgotten (Ace), edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner, an anthology of stories set in the world of Sookie Stackhouse.
Anthologies that provided an overview of what’s happening in fantastic literature in other countries included The Apex Book of World SF 3 (Apex Publications), edited by Lavie Tidhar, and Phantasm Japan: Fantasies Light and Dark, From and About Japan (Haikasoru), edited by Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington.
L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume 30 (Galaxy Press), edited by Dave Wolverton, is the most recent in a long-running series featuring novice work by beginning writers, some of whom may later turn out to be important talents.
One interesting thing about this year’s short fiction is that it was easy to see SF’s new consensus future solidifying in dozens of stories from different anthologies and magazines: a linked-in, hooked-up continuous surveillance society, profoundly shaped by social media and the Internet, set in a world radically altered by climate change (but one where it hasn’t gone to civilization-destroying lengths), featuring autonomous drones, bioengineering, cybernetic implants, cyborgs of one degree or another of extremeness, wearable computers, the manipulation of emotions and memory (sometimes by external means), AIs, renewable energy, in which 3-D printing is being used to produce almost everything. Sometimes it features space travel, in which case near Earth space and the nearest reaches of the solar system are busy with human traffic and habitation, sometimes it doesn’t. Not that different, really from the cyberpunk future of the eighties, except for the increased emphasis on radical climate change and 3-D printing.
Ken Liu was easily the most prolific author at short lengths this year, being given a run for his money by Aliette de Bodard, Nancy Kress, Elizabeth Bear, Lavie Tidhar, Rich Larson, and the always-ubiquitous Robert Reed.
(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 Web site 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 Web sites, 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: PS Publishing, Grosvener 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; 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, UK, 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, Austrailia, www.uow.ed.au/~rhood/agogpress; Wheatland Press, via www.wheatlandpress.com; MirrorDanse Books, P.O. Box 3542, Parramatta NSW 2124, Australia, www.tabula-rasa.info/MirrorDanse; Arsenal Pulp Press, 103–1014 Homer Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6B 2W9, www.arsenalpulp.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, via www.csfg.org.au/publishing/anthologies/the_outcast; Hadley Rille Books, via www.hrbpress.com/; Suddenly Press, via suddenlypress@yahoo.com; Sandstone Press, P.O. Box 5725, One High St., Dingwall, Ross-shire UK, IV15 9UG, http://sandstonepress.com; 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 http://coeurdelion.com.au; PARSECink, via www.parsecink.org; Robert J. Sawyer Books, via www.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; ISFiC Press, 456 Douglas Ave., Elgin, IL 60120 or www.isficpress.com.
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According to the newsmagazine Locus, there were 2,459 books “of interest to the SF field” published in 2014, down 7 percent from 2,643 titles in 2013. Overall new titles were down 5 percent to 1,750 from 2013’s 1,850, while reprints dropped 11 percent to 709 from 2013’s 793. Hardcover sales fell by 2 percent to 799 from 2013’s 819, while the number of trade paperbacks declined by 10 percent to 1,149 from 2013’s 1,280. The drop in mass-market paperbacks slowed a little, to 6 percent from 2013’s whopping 26 percent drop, going to 511 from 2013’s 544. The number of new SF novels was up to 367 titles from 2013’s 339. The number of new fantasy novels remained steady at 620 titles, same as last year. Horror novels were up slightly to 187 titles from 2013’s 181. Paranormal romances were down substantially to 148 titles
from 2013’s 237 titles, leading some to speculate that the high-water mark of the big paranormal romance boom may have passed—although it should be noted that sometimes it’s a subjective call whether a particular novel should be pigeonholed as paranormal romance, fantasy, or horror.