There were four other small press anthologies this year that mixed slipstream, horror, fantasy, and science fiction in their contents lists to varying effect, usually with science fiction the smallest element in the mix by far. Polyphony, Volume 1 (Wheatland Press), edited by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake, is more unambiguously a “slipstream” anthology than Conjunctions 39, with little that could be mistaken for any other genre, but is still worthwhile. The best story here is Maureen F. McHugh’s “Laika Comes Home Safe,” but Polyphony also contains good stuff by Andy Duncan, Lucius Shepard, Leslie What, James Van Pelt, and others. Leviathan Three (Ministry of Whimsy Press), edited by Jeff VanderMeer and Forrest Aguirre, mixes other fairly identifiable genres (mostly fantasy) in with the slipstream stuff, and mixes genres more within individual stories than most of these anthologies do (Brian Stableford’s story, for instance, mixes science fiction and fantasy to enough of a degree that it can only be called science-fantasy), and although there’s some over-pretentious and rather dull stuff here, there’s also some excellent work. The best stories here are “The Face of an Angel,” by Brian Stableford and “The Fool’s Tale,” by L. Timmel Duchamp, but there are also good stories by Jeffrey Ford, Carol Emshwiller, Stepan Chapman, and others. J. K. Potter’s Embrace the Mutation (Subterranean Press), edited by William Schafer and Bill Sheehan, is an anthology of stories supposedly inspired by the work of artist J. K. Potter (included in the book); not surprisingly, considering Potter’s sometimes grotesque work and the publisher’s usual fare, Embrace the Mutation leans a good deal more toward straight horror than the other three anthologies being discussed here, but there still are visitations from other genres, notably pure fantasy in a story by Elizabeth Hand and even science fiction in a story by Lucius Shepard-those two, in fact, “Pavane for a Prince of the Air,” by Elizabeth Hand, and “Radiant Green Star,” by Lucius Shepard, are the best stories in the book, but it also features good work by Michael Bishop, Kim Newman, John Crowley, Peter Crowther, and others. In the Shadow of the Wall (Cumberland House), edited by Byron R. Tetrick and Martin H. Greenberg, is an otherwise pretty good anthology, mostly of rather Twilight Zonish fantasy stories, that hampers itself a bit by insisting that all its stories deal centrally with the Vietnam Memorial (the Wall of the title. The best story here is Michael Swanwick’s bitter little story “Dirty Little War,” but there is also good work by Barry N. Malzberg, Orson Scott Card, Nick DiChario, and Byron R. Terrick himself.
Two other small-press anthologies filled an odd and rather specialized literary niche: anthologies of stories about (or inspired by, in one case, to be precise) science fiction and fantasy bookstores. Shelf Life: Fantastic Stories Celebrating Bookstores (DreamHaven), edited by Gregg Ketter, the owner of the DreamHaven science fiction bookstore in Minneapolis. Shelf Life deals pretty centrally with the bookstore theme, here treated mostly as a variant of the “little magic shop” story in a sequence of mostly rather gentle fantasy stories, with some mild horror, by Gene Wolfe (with his “From the Cradle,” being, unsurprisingly, the volume’s best), P. D. Cacek, John J. Miller, and others, plus one SF story by Jack Williamson (a pleasant-enough anthology, but at $75.00, it’s wildly overpriced). The Bakka Anthology (The Bakka Collection), edited by Kristen Pederson Chew, has a looser theme, stories “inspired by” the authors having worked in the Bakka science fiction bookstore in Toronto, and, as might be expected, gathers a more eclectic crop of stories as a result, mostly science fiction, with some fantasy and harder- to-classify stuff thrown in. The best story here is Michelle Sagara West’s “To Kill an Immortal,” but there’s good work by Cory Doctorow, Nalo Hopkinson, Robert J. Sawyer, and others, here as well.
The best original genre fantasy anthology of the year, again with little real competition, was probably The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest (Viking) edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling, which contained good-to-excellent work by M. Shayne Bell, Tanith Lee, Delia Sherman, Emma Bull, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Patricia A. McKillip, and others. 30th Anniversary DAW: Fantasy (DAW), edited by Ellizabeth R. Wollheim and Sheila E. Gilbert is also worth mentioning; although it suffers from the same faults as its SF brother-volume, it contains good work by Tanith Lee, Michelle West, and others. The rest of the year’s original fantasy anthologies were pleasant but minor, including, Knight Fantastic (DAW), edited by John Heifers and Martin H. Greenberg; Pharaoh Fantastic (DAW), edited by Brittiany A. Koren and Martin H. Greenberg; and Apprentice Fantastic (DAW), edited by Russell Davis and Martin H. Greenberg.
Shared-world anthologies this year included Wild Cards: Deuces Down (ibooks), edited by George R. R. Martin; Thieves’ World: Turning Points (Tor), edited by Lynn Abbey; and Deryni Tales (Ace), edited by Katherine Kurtz.
Although I don’t pay a lot of attention to the horror genre anymore, from what I could tell the big original anthology of the year there seemed to be Dark Terrors 6 (Gollancz), edited by Stephen Jones and David Sutton. Other original horror anthologies included The Children of Cthulhu: Chilling Tales Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft (Del Rey), edited by John Polant and Benjamin Adams and The Darker Side: Generations of Horror (Roc), edited by John Pelan.
A new anthology by Peter Crowther and Robert Silverberg’s Legends II is about all there is to look forward to in the original anthology market for next year. Maybe the long-promised Greg Benford anthology will finally appear. Not a lot else on the horizon.
Addresses: PS Publishing, 98 High Ash Drive, Leeds L517 8RE, England, UK-$14.00 for V.A.O., by Geoff Ryman, $14.00 for Riding the Rock, by Stephen Baxter, $14.00 for The Tain, by China Mieville; Golden Gryphon Press, 3002 Perkins Road, Urbana, IL 61802-$15.95 for Turquoise Days, by Alastair Reynolds; Conjunctions, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504-$15 for Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists; Wheatland Press, P.O. Box 1818, Wilsonville, OR 97070-$16.95 for Polyphony; Subterranean Press, P.O. Box 190106, Burton, MI 48519-$40.00 for Embrace the Mutation; Ministry of Whimsy Press, P.O. Box 4248, Tallahasse, FL 32315-$21.95 for Leviathan 3; Cumberland House, 431 Harding Industrial Drive, Nashville, TN 37211-$14.95 for In the Shadow of the Wall; DreamHaven Books, 912 W. Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN 55408-$75.00 for Shelf Life: Fantastic Stories Celebrating Bookstores; The Bakka Collection, 598 Yonge Street, Toronto, ONT M4Y 1Z3-$30.00 for The Bakka Anthology.
2002 seemed like a pretty strong year for novels, in spite of all the moaning about how SF is dying and there’s nothing worthwhile to read left out there on the bookstore shelves. According to the newsmagazine Locus, there were 2,241 books “of interest to the SF field,” both original and reprint, published in 2002, up by 4% from 2001’s total of 2,158. Original books were up by 5% to 1,271 from last year’s total of 1,210; reprint books were up by 2 % to 970 titles over last year’s total of 948. The number of new SF novels was up slightly, with 256 new titles published as opposed to 251 novels published in 2001. The number of new fantasy novels was also up, to 333, as opposed to 282 novels published in 2001. Horror, however, was down, dropping to 112 from last year’s total of 151. And, for the most part, these totals don’t even reflect print-on-demand novels, novels offered as downloads on the internet, media tie-in-novels, novelizations of movies, gaming novels, or novels drawn from TV shows such as Charmed, Angel, and Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.
Even sticking to the SF novels alone, that’s a lot of novels. How many of the people who complain that “there’s nothing to read out there” have really sampled even a small percentage of them, let alone all 256?
I myself didn’t have time to read many novels this year, with all the reading I have to do at shorter lengths. So instead I’ll limit myself to mentioning novels that received a lot of attention and acclaim in 2002 include: Guardian (Ace), Joe Haldeman; Schild’s Ladder (Eos), Greg Egan; Probability Space (Tor), Nancy Kress; The Years of Rice and Salt (Bantam), Kim Stanley Robinson; Bones of the Earth (Eos), Michael Swanwick; Coyote (Ace), Allen Steele; Light Music (Eos), Kathleen Ann Goonan; The Scar (Del Rey), China Mieville; The Praxis (Avon), Walter Jon Williams; Redemption Ark (Ace), Alastair Reynolds; Evolution (Del Rey), Stephen Baxter; The Disappeared (Roc), Kristine Kathryn Rusch; Light (Gollancz), M. John Harrison; Castles Made of Sand (Gollancz), Gwyneth Jones; The Lady of the Sorrows (Warner Aspect), Cecilia Dart-Thornton; Shadow Puppets (Tor), Orson Scott Card; Kiln People (Tor), David Brin; Vitals (Del Rey), Greg Bear; Engine City (Tor), Ken MacLeod; The Fall of the Kings (Bantam Spectra), Ellen Kushner amp; Delia Sherman; Ares Express (Earthlight), Ian McDonald; The Sky So Big and Black (Tor), John Barnes; Transcension (Tor), Damien Broderick; Chindi (Ace), Jack McDevitt; Empire of Bones (Bantam Spectra), Liz Williams; The Omega Expedition (Tor) Brian Stableford; The Visitor (Eos), Sheri S. Tepper; The Impossible Bird (Tor), Patrick O’Leary; Ruled Britannia (NAL), Harry Turtledove; The Separation (Scribner UK), Christopher Priest; Spaceland (Tor), Rudy Rucker; A Winter Haunting (Morrow), Dan Simmons; The Translator (Morrow), John Crowley; White Apples (Tor), Jonathan Carroll; The Devil and Deep Space (Roc), Susan R. Matthews; Permanence (Tor), Karl Schroeder; Pitcher’s Brides (Tor), Gregory Frost; Explorer (DAW), C. J. Cherryh; Kushiel’s Chosen (Tor), Jacqueline Carey; The Longest Way Home (Eos), Robert Silverberg; Dark Ararat (Tor), Brian Stableford; Resurgence (Baen), Charles Sheffield; Manifold: Origin (Del Rey), Stephen Baxter; Night Watch (HarperCollins), Terry Pratchett; Burning the Ice (Tor), Laura J. Mixon; The King (Ace), David Feintuch; Jupiter (Tor), Ben Bova; The Alchemist’s Door (Tor), Lisa Goldstein; and Coraline (Harper), Neil Caiman.
The first novels that drew the most attention this year seemed to be The Golden Age (Tor), John C. Wright, A Scattering of Jades (Tor), Alexander C. Irvine, and The Atrocity Archive, Charles Stress (the Stress suffering under
