The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

Meanwhile, this is the best time in decades to pick up new editions of long out-of-print classics of science fiction and fantasy, books that have been unavailable to the average reader since the ’70s in some cases. Throughout the last two decades, reissues had become as rare as the proverbial hen’s teeth, as shortsighted bottom-line corporate publishing practices meant that books almost never came back into print once they had gone out of it, and that reprints of even older classics were out of the question. Now, however, the ice is beginning to break up a bit. The SF Masterworks and the Fantasy Masterworks reprint series, from English publisher Millennium, have brought forth slews of classic reprints during the last few years, joined by American lines such as Tor Orb, Del Rey Impact, Baen Books, and Vintage, as well as print-on-demand publishers such as Wildside and Big Engine, and Internet sites such as Fictionwise and Electric Story, where classic novels and stories are available for purchase in downloadable form. This year, ibooks joined in with a wave of classic reprints, including Robert Silverberg’s Dying Inside, Up the Line, and The Man in the Maze, Brian W. Aldiss’s Helliconia triology, Greg Bear’s Blood Music and Strength of Stories, William Rotsler’s Patron of the Arts, Roger Zelazny’s collection The Last Defender of Camelot, an omnibus of three Barry Malzberg novels collected as On a Planet Alien, and Harlan Ellison’s famous anthology Dangerous Visions; Vintage reissued a flood of Philip K. Dick titles, including Time Out of Joint, Dr. Bloodmoney, Clans of the Alphane Moon, The Simulacra, Counter-Clock World, The Man Who Japed, and The Zap Gun (if you can afford only one of these, make it Time Out of Joint, one of Dick’s best; some of the others are rather minor), as well as reprints of Samuel R. Delany’s Nova (one of the best and most influential books of its decade) and a combination volume consisting of his Babel-17/Empire Star. Orb published an omnibus by Hal Clement, Heavy Planet, containing his novels Mission of Gravity and Star Light, plus other related material, and an omnibus of three of James White’s “Sector General” novels, Alien Emergencies, as well as a reissue of A E. Van Vogt’s The World of Null-A. Tor reprinted Frank Herbert’s The Green Brain and The Santaroga Barrier, as well as releasing omnibus collections of “Stainless Steel Rat” novels by Harry Harrison, A Stainless Steel Trio, and of “Dorsai” novels by Gordon R. Dickson, Dorsai Spirit. Baen released an omnibus collection of “Lord Darcy” stories and novels by Randall Garrett, Lord Darcy, as well as an omnibus of “Miles Vorkesigan” novels by Lois McMaster Bujold, Miles Errant, and a collection of stories and novels by James H. Schmitz, Eternal Frontier. Gollancz reprinted Jack Vance’s Big Planet, Joe Haldeman’s Worlds, Samuel R. Delany’s The Jewels of Aptor, Robert Silverberg’s The Masks of Time, John Sladek’s Tik-Tok, and Ian Watson’s The Jonah Kit. Big Engine made available an omnibus of Brian Stableford novels, Swan Songs: The Complete Hooded Swan Collection, as well as Leigh Kennedy’s novel The Journal of Nicholas the American; Perennial reprinted John Crowley’s Little, Big, and issued an omnibus of three other Crowley novels, Otherwise. NESFA Press issued an omnibus of novels by Fredric Brown, Martians and Madness: The Complete SF Novels of Fredric Brown, and an omnibus of Robert Sheckley novels, Dimensions of Sheckley. Tachyon Publications reissued Pat Murphy’s The Shadow Hunter and Avram Davidson’s The Phoenix and the Mirror. Overlook Press reissued Evangeline Walton’s The Maginogion Tetralogy; Del Rey reissued Nicola Griffith’s Ammonite; and Starscape reprinted Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game.

And no doubt there were other reprints that I’ve missed.

As I said, this is the best time in decades to pick up new editions of long out-of-print work, so go out and get them while you can!

I’ve almost given up trying to guess which novels are going to win the year’s major awards, especially as SFWA’s weird and dysfunctional “rolling eligibility” rule means that books that already won a Hugo last year, such as Neil Caiman’s American Gods, get to go head-to-head with new novels such as Michael Swanwick’s Bones of the Earth. To be fair, it’s hard to see a clear or obvious winner for the Hugo, either. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Small-press original novels of interest this year included Charles L. Harness’s Cybele, with Bluebonnets (NESFA Press), an autobiographical novel with some fantastic elements, and Carol Emshwiller’s The Mount (Small Beer Press).

Associational novels by SF writers this year included a mystery novel by Ray Bradbury, Let’s All Kill Constance (HarperCollins/Morrow).