Without doubt, the first novel that drew the most attention this year, by a large margin, was Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (Bloomsbury) by Susanna Clarke, which was not only a huge best-seller, but which drew rave reviews everywhere, including sources from well outside the genre. Other first novels that received a fair amount of attention this year (although nothing came even close to the Clarke) were: City of Pearl (Eos), by Karen Traviss; Crux, by Albert E. Cowdrey; The Year of Our War (Gollancz), by Steph Swainston; The Holy Machine (Wildside), by Chris Beckett; The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (Del Rey), by Minister Faust; and Olympic Games (Tachyon), by Leslie What. Other first novels included: Trash Sex Magic (Small Beer), by Jennifer Stevenson; Orphanage (Warner Aspect), by Robert Boettner; Weapons of Choice (Del Rey), by John Birmingham; Fitzpatrick’s War (DAW), by Theodore Judson; The Gods and Their Machines (Tor), by Oisin Mc-Gann; The Labyrinth (Prime), by Catherynenne M. Valente; Through Violet Eyes (Dell), by Stephen Woodworth; Move Under Ground (Night Shade), by Nick Mamatas; Firethorn (Scribner), by Sarah Mickelm; The Arcanum (Bantam), by Thomas Wheeler; and Ghosts in the Snow (Bantam Spectra), by Tamara Siler Jones.
There were a number of hard-to-classify novels out on the edge of genre this year, as well as associational novels by genre authors, and ventures into genre by well-known mainstream authors, including: The Jane Austen Book Club (Putnam), by Karen Joy Fowler; The Zenith Angle (Del Rey), by Bruce Sterling; The Confusion (Morrow), and The System of the World (Morrow), by Neal Stephenson; The Rebel: An Imagined Life of James Dean (Morrow), by Jack Dann; A Handbook of American Prayer (Thunder’s Mouth), by Lucius Shepard; Cloud Atlas (Random House), by David Mitchell; The Plot Against America (Houghton Mifflin), by Philip Roth; Adventures of the Artificial Woman (Simon & Schuster), by Thomas Berger; Stone Cribs (St. Martin’s Minotaur), a mystery novel by Kristine Kathryn Rusch writing as “Kris Nelscott”; and historical novel Owls to Athens (Tor/Forge), by H. N. Turteltaub (a pseudonym for Harry Turtledove). Some of these, especially the Stephenson and Fowler novels, were among the best-selling titles of the year.
Small presses of varying sizes of “small,” including some that until recently had mostly concentrated on short-story collections, also published a fair number of novels this year, among them: The Scarlet Fig, or, Slowly Through a Land of Stone (Rose Press), by Avram Davidson; Perfect Circle (Small Beer), by Sean Stewart; Life (Aqueduct Press), by Gwyneth Jones; The Course of the Heart (Night Shade Books), by M. John Harrison; Harp, Pipe and Symphony (Prime Books), and Spondulix (Cambrian Publications), by Paul Di Filippo; Letters from the Flesh (Red Deer Press), by Marcos Donnelly; Medicine Road (Subterranean Press), by Charles de Lint; The Prince of Christler-Coke (Golden Gryphon Press), by Neal Barrett Jr.; Getting Near the End (Red Deer Press), by Andrew Weiner; Bengal Station (Five Star), by Eric Brown; The Holy Machine (Wildside Press), by Chris Beckett; and Kiss the Goat (Prime Books/Wildside), by Brian Stableford.
Although there are a good number of fantasy novels and borderline genre-mixing things on these lists, there are also a lot of pure-quill center-core SF novels here that would clearly and unambiguously be science fiction by almost anybody’s definition, including those by Haldeman, McDonald, Harrison, Ryman, Kress, Stross, Baxter, Vance, Baker, Reynolds, Banks, MacLeod, Doctorow, Benford, Hamilton, Robinson, McAuley, Asher, Cowdrey, Brown, McCarthy, Morgan, Pohl, Traviss, and lots of others. So center-core science fiction still hasn’t been driven off the bookstore shelves, although gloomy prognosticators ensure us every year that this is just about to happen.
This is the best time in decades to pick up reissued editions of formerly long-out-of-print novels. So many such novels are coming back into print these days, from both small presses and regular trade publishers (to say nothing of print-on-demand books from places such as Wildside Press, and the availability of out-of-print books as electronic downloads on Internet sources such as Fictionwise, and through reprints issued by The Science Fiction Book Club) that it’s become difficult to produce an exhaustive list of such titles; therefore I’ll just list some of the more prominent reprints that caught my eye. Old Earth Books reissued: Davy and A Mirror for Observers, by Edgar Pangborn; City and Way Station, by Clifford D. Simak. Reissued by ibooks: The World Inside, by Robert Silverberg; The Languages of Pao and To Live Forever, by Jack Vance; This Immortal and Damnation Alley, by Roger Zelazny; Bill, the Galactic Hero, by Harry Harrison; Flandry of Terra and Agent of the Terran Empire , by Poul Anderson; Watchtower, by Elizabeth Lynn; and I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay, by Isaac Asimov and Harlan Ellison. Eos reissued: Lord of Light, by Roger Zelazny; Beggars in Spain, by Nancy Kress, and Forge of Heaven, by C. J. Cherryh. Bantam and Bantam Spectra reissued: Dying of the Light and Fevre Dream, by George R. R. Martin; A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Le Guin; Thomas the Rhymer, by Ellen Kushner; and Foundation, Foundation and Earth, Second Foundation, Prelude to Foundation, and Forward the Foundation, all by Isaac Asimov. Ace reissued: Neuromancer, by William Gibson, A Talent for War, by Jack McDevitt, Rocket Ship Galileo, by Robert A. Heinlein, and The Golden Globe, by John Varley. BenBella reissued: The Sheep Look Up, by John Brunner; The Shore of Women, by Pamela Sargent, and The Listeners , by James Gunn. Tor reissued: Glory Road, by Robert A. Heinlein, The Beginning Place, by Ursula K. Le Guin, and Marooned in Realtime, by Vernor Vinge. Orb reissued: The Boat of a Million Years, by Poul Anderson; Sleeping in Flame, by Jonathan Carroll; and Lavondyss, by Robert Holdstock. Baen reissued: The Witches of Karres, by James H. Schmitz, and Kaspar’s Box, by Jack L. Chalker. Del Rey reissued: Gateway , by Frederik Pohl and Lord Foul’s Bane, The Illearth War, and The Power That Preserves, by Stephen R. Donaldson. Vintage reissued three books by Philip K. Dick: Vulcan’s Hammer, Lies, Inc., and The Penultimate Truth. Warner Aspect reissued: Glorianna, by Michael Moorcock, and Tides of Light, Great Sky River, Across the Sea of Suns, and In the Ocean of Night, by Gregory Benford. Wesleyan University Press reissued: Stars in My Pocket like Grains of Sand, by Samuel R. Delany and Star Maker, by Olaf Stapledon. NESFA Press reissued: Silverlock, by John Myers Myers. Red Jacket Press reissued Judgement Night, by C. L. Moore. Beacon Press reissued: Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler. Plume reissued: Sarah Canary, by Karen Joy Fowler.
Omnibus collections of reissued novels included: Legions of Space (Baen), by Keith Laumer; The Fall of the Towers (Vintage), by Samuel R. Delany; 3XT (Baen), by Harry Turtledove; Death and Thraxas (Baen), by Scott Martin; Powers of Two (NESFA Press), by Tim Powers; To Die in Italbar (ibooks), by Roger Zelazny; Eternal Frontier (Baen), by James H. Schmitz; The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places (Night Shade Books), by William Hope Hodgson; Yaleen (BenBella Books), by Ian Watson; The Complete Roderick (Overlook Press), by John Sladek; The Cobra Trilogy (Baen), by Timothy Zahn; The Solar Queen (Tor), Lost Worlds of Witch World (Tor), and Gods and Androids (Baen), by Andre Norton; redemolished (ibooks), by Alfred Bester; and A World Divided (DAW), by Marian Zimmer Bradley. Also, many omnibuses of novels—and many individual novels—are reissued each year by The Science Fiction Book Club, too numerous to individually list here.
Many of these titles have been unavailable for years, if not decades, and they include some of the classics of modern science fiction, so don’t miss your chance to get them while you can.
What’s going to win the major novel awards is anybody’s guess. The Preliminary Nebula Ballot this year pits three novels from 2003 against three novels from 2004; I think that Gene Wolfe’s The Knight might have a slight edge, but it’s hard to call. It’s impossible to predict what’s going to win the Hugo at this point, because we don’t even know what’s going to be on the ballot yet, but Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell sold so enormously that I wonder if it’s going to be a contender.
This was another strong year for short-story collections, with some especially good retrospective collections that give overviews of an author’s entire career. The year’s best collections included: Breathmoss (Golden Gryphon), by Ian R. MacLeod; Mother Aegypt and Other Stories
(Night Shade Books), by Kage Baker; Hunters of Pangaea (NESFA Press), by Stephen Baxter; Stable Strategies and Others (Tachyon), by Eileen Gunn; Designer Genes: Tales of the Biotech Revolution (Five Star), by Brian Stableford; The Banquet of the Lords of Night and Other Stories (Night Shade), by Liz Williams; The Atrocity Archives (Golden Gryphon), by Charles Stross; Trujillo (PS Publilshing), by Lucius Shepard; Innocents Abroad (Tor), by Gene Wolfe; and several big retrospective collections: Phases of the Moon: Six Decades of Masterpieces by the SFWA Grand Master (Subterranean Press), by Robert Silverberg; The John Varley Reader (Ace), by John Varley; Novelties and Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction (Perennial), by John Crowley; Lord Darcy (Baen), by Randall Garrett; The State of the Art (Night Shade Books), by lain M. Banks; The Collected Short Fiction of C. J. Cherryh (DAW), by C. J. Cherryh; Dancing Naked: The Unexpurgated William Tenn (NESFA Press), by William Tenn (which doubles as a collection of essays); and Seventy-Five: The Diamond Anniversary of a Science Fiction Pioneer (Haffner), by Jack Williamson.
Other good collections this year included: Thumbprints (Golden Gryphon), by Pamela Sargent; Neutrino Drag (Four Walls Eight Windows), by Paul Di Filippo; Two Trains Running (Golden Gryphon), by Lucius Shepard; American Sorrows (Wheatland Press), by Jay Lake; Stagestruck Vampires and Other Phantasms (Tachyon), by Suzy McKee Charnas; Heat of Fusion and Other Stories (Tor), by John M. Ford; Sleepside: The Collected Fantasies of Greg Bear (ibooks), by Greg Bear; Men and Cartoons (Doubleday), by Jonathan Lethem; Tales of the Grand Tour (Tor), by Ben Bova; Secret Life (Golden Gryphon), by Jeff VanderMeer; Love’s Body, Dancing in Time (Aqueduct), by L. Timmel Duchamp; Cartomancy (Gollancz), by Mary Gentle; The Cat’s Pajamas (Tachyon), by James Morrow; The Cat’s Pajamas: New Stories (Morrow), by Ray Bradbury; Dogs in the Moonlight (Wildside) and Green Grow the Rushes-Oh (Fairwood Press), by Jay Lake; He Do the Time Police in Different Voices (Wildside), by David Langford; Quicksilver and Shadow (Subterranean Press), by Charles de Lint; Songs of Leaving (Subterranean Press), by Peter Crowther; Take No Prisoners (Willowgate Press), by John Grant; Salome and other Decadent Fantasies (Wildside), by Brian Stableford; Different Kinds of Darkness (Cosmos), by David Langford; Bumper Crop (Golden Gryphon), by Joe Lansdale; The Rose in Twelve Petals and Other Stories (Small Beer), by Theodora Goss; Horses Blow Up Dog City and Other Stories (Small Beer), by Richard Butner; and Mountain Men (Baen), a collection of Henry Kuttner’s little-known “Hogben” stories, accompanied by similar comic work by David Drake, Eric Flint, Ryke Speer, and Henry Kuttner.
(Noted without comment: Morning Child and Other Stories (ibooks), by Gardner Dozois.)
Reissued collections this year included: I, Robot (Bantam Spectra) and Robot Dreams (Ace), by Isaac Asimov; Distant Stars (ibooks), by Samuel R. Delany; The Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth (ibooks), by Roger Zelazny; Swords in the Mist (ibooks), by Fritz Leiber; Sailing to Byzantium (ibooks), by Robert Silverberg; Daughter of Regals and Other Tales (Del Rey), by Stephen R. Donaldson; and The Notebooks of Lazarus Long (Baen), by Robert A. Heinlein.
And, as usual, “electronic collections” continue to be available for downloading online as well, at sites such as Fictionwise and ElectricStory.
It’s worth noting that many of these collections—including Baker’s Mother Aegypt and Other Stories, Stross’s The Atrocity Archieve, Sargent’s Thumbprints, Baxter’s Hunters of Pangaea, Williams’ The Banquet of the Lords of Night, Shepard’s Two Trains Running, Gunn’s Stable Strategies and Others, Lethem’s Men and Cartoons, and Duchamp’s Love’s Body, Dancing in Time—feature original, never-before-published work.
Although a few regular trade publishers such as Tor, Baen, Ace, and DAW feature on these lists, they’re dominated to an even larger extent than usual this year by small-press publishers, with Golden Gryphon Press especially prominent, although Subterraean Press, Tachyon, Night Shade Press, and others were also very active; in fact, between them, small presses were responsible for the bulk of the short-story collections published this year.
It was a decent year in the reprint anthology market, with some big retrospective anthologies giving you good value for your money, in addition to the usual “Best of the Year” and award anthologies. There will be six best-of-the-year anthologies out in 2005. Science fiction will be covered by four anthologies: the one you are holding in your hand, The Year’s Best Science Fiction series from St. Martin’s Press, now up to its twenty second annual collection; the Year’s Best SF series (Eos), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, now up to its tenth annual volume, Science Fiction: The Best of 2004 (ibooks), edited by Jonathan Strahan and Karen Haber, and Best Short Novels (Science Fiction Book Club), edited by Johanthan Strahan. There’ll be two best-of-the-year anthologies covering horror: the latest edition in the British series The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (Robinson, Caroll & Graff), edited by Stephen Jones, now up to volume fifteen, and the Ellen Datlow half of a huge volume covering both horror and fantasy, The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror (St. Martin’s Press), this year up to its seventeenth annual collection, edited by Datlow and Kelly Link and Gavin Grant. Fantasy will be covered by three anthologies: the Kelly Link and Gavin Grant half of the Datlow/Link and Grant anthology, by Year’s Best Fantasy (Eos), edited by David G. Hartwell and Katherine Cramer, now up to its fifth annual volume; and a revived fantasy best-anthology series from ibooks, edited by Jonathan Strahan and Karen Harber. The most recent Nebula Awards anthology is Nebula Awards Showcase 2004 (Roc), edited by Vonda N. McIntyre.
Of the stand-alone retrospective anthologies, the best was probably The Locus Awards (Roc), edited by Charles N. Brown and Jonathan Strahan, which featured classic stories such as Gene Wolfe’s “The Death of Doctor Island,” Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Day Before the Revolution,” George R. R. Martin’s “The Way of Cross and Dragon,” and Joanna Russ’s “Souls,” as well as excellent stuff by Pat Murphy, Harlan Ellison, Connie Willis, John Varley, and others. The James Tiptree Award Anthology 1: Sex, the Future and Chocolate Chip Cookies, edited by Karen Joy Fowler, Pat Murphy, Debbie Notkin, and Jeffrey D. Smith, also provided an interesting overview of recent work in the field as well, including good stuff by Greg Egan, Ruth Nestvold, Karen Joy Fowler, Kelly Link, Carol Emshwiller, and others. An overview of a tradition of SF writing from a different culture is provided by The Best Australian Science Fiction Writing (Black Inc.), edited by Rob Gerrand, and offers fine stories by Greg Egan, George Turner, Terry Dowling, A. Bertram Chandler, and others.
(Noted without comment is: A.I.s (Ace), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.)
The best fantasy reprint anthology of the year was probably In Lands That Never Were: Tales of Sword and Sorcery from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (Thunder’s Mouth Press), edited by Gordon Van Gelder, which featured work by Fritz Leiber, Ellen Kushner, Pat Murphy, Ursula K. Le Guin, Charles Coleman Finlay, Jeffrey Ford, and others, although another contender would be New Magics: An Anthology of Today’s Fantasy, a YA fantasy anthology edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, featuring work by Neil Gaiman, Charles de Lint, Ursula K. Le Guin, and others. Also of interest was a mixed reprint and original (but mostly reprint) anthology called The Mammoth Book of Sorcerers’ Tales (Carroll & Graf), edited by Mike Ashley.
There never seem to be many horror reprint anthologies, but I noticed Great Ghost Stories (Carrol & Graf), edited by R. Chetwynd-Hayes and Stephen Jones, and The Mammoth Book of Vampires (Carroll & Graf), edited by Stephen Jones.
Reissued reprint anthologies of note this year included: The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume 2A (Tor), edited by Ben Bova; Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Twentieth Century (Ace), edited by Orson Scott Card; New Worlds: An Anthology (Thunder’s Mouth), by Michael Moorcock (contents assembled from several previous New Worlds anthologies); The Houses of the Kzinti (Baen), edited by Larry Niven (assembled from previous Man/Kzin War anthologies); Christmas Stars (Orb), edited by David G. Hartwell; and a slew of reissued reprint anthologies from ibooks: Time Wars, edited by Ch
arles Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg; Dragon Fantastic, edited by Rosalind M. Greenberg and Martin H. Greenberg; What Might Have Been, Volume 1: Alternate Empires and What Might Have Been, Volume 2: Alternate Heroes, both edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg; The Ultimate Cyberpunk , edited by Pat Cadigan; My Favorite Fantasy Story and Merlin, edited by Martin H. Greenberg; Vamps, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Charles Waugh; Wild Cards II: Aces High and Wild Cards III: Jokers Wild edited by George R. R. Martin; Jack the Ripper, edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Charles Waugh, and Frank D. McSherry Jr. and The Best Time-Travel Stories of All Time, edited by Barry N. Malzberg.
The year 2004 was again fairly weak overall in the SF-and-fantasy-oriented nonfiction and reference book field. The most useful of the year’s reference books was probably Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Literature (Scarecrow Press), by Brian Stableford, but there were a number of other books that scrutinized one period or another of genre history, including a study of the early years of science fiction, The Gernsback Days: A Study of the Evolution of Modern Science Fiction from 1911 to 1936 (Wildside), by Mike Ashley and Robert A. W. Lowndes; a critical look at more recent SF; X, Y, Z, T: Dimensions of Science Fiction (Borgo/Wildside), by Damien Broderick; a historical perspective on South American SF, Brazilian Science Fiction (Bucknell University); and an analysis of The Evolution of the Weird Tale (Hippocampus), by S. T. Joshi.
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