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 Vaughn; 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 Mieville, 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 Tea 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 nonfiction 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 e-books 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 Jose 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
