The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

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 the handicap of only appearing as a serial in Spectrum SF magazine, and not yet in book form; in spite of this, it got a lot of notice). Other first novels included: Solitaire (Eos), Kelly Eskridge; The Summer Country (Ace), James A. Hetley; Fires of the Faithful (Bantam Spectra), Naomi Kritzer; The Red Church (Pinnacle), Scott Nicholson; The Eve of Night (Bantam Spectra), Pauline J. Alama; Altered Carbon (Del Rey), Richard Morgan; Warchild (Warner Aspect), Karin Lowachee; Just Like Beauty (Farrar, Straus, Giroux), Lisa Lerner; and The God Who Beget a Jackal (Picador USA), Nega Mezlekia.

Looking over these lists, it’s clear that Tor, Eos, and Ace had strong years, although Del Rey had a pretty good year as well. And in spite of the usual critical chorus about how science fiction is “dying” or being driven off the shelves by fantasy, it’s clear that the majority of novels here are center-core science fiction. Even omitting the fantasy of novels and the borderline genre-straddling work from the list, the Egan, the Kress, the two Baxters, the Reynolds, the McDevitt, the Swanwick, the Stablefords, the Barnes, the Goonan, the Harrison, the Bear, the Bova, the Sheffield, the Silverberg, the McDonald, the McDevitt, the Williams, the MacLeod, the Brin, the Card, the Steele, and almost a dozen others are clearly and unmistakably science fiction, many of them “hard science fiction” at that. Pretty fair numbers for an endangered species!