The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

Mail-order information: NESFA Press, P.O. Box 809, Frammghan, MA 01701-0809-$21 (plus $2.50 shipping in all cases) for Cybele, with Bluebonnets, by Charles Harness, $29.00 (plus $2.50 shipping) for Martians and Madness: The Complete SF Novels of Fredric Brown, $29.00 for Dimensions of Sheckley, by Robert Sheckley; Small Beer Press, 360 Atlantic Avenue, PMB #132, Brooklyn, NY 112117-$16 for The Mount, by Carol Em-shwiller; Tachyon Publications, 1459 18th Street #139, San Francisco, CA 94107-$14.95 for The Shadow Hunter, by Pat Murphy, $15.00 for The Phoenix and the Mirror, by Avram Davidson.

It was another good year for short-story collections. The year’s best collections included: The Birthday of the World (HarperCollins), by Ursula K. Le Guin; Black Projects, White Nights; The Company Dossiers (Golden Gryphon), by Kage Baker; Toast and Other Rusted Futures (Cosmos), by Charles Stress; Worlds Enough amp; Time (Subterranean), by Dan Simmons; Strange But Not a Stranger (Golden Gryphon), by James Patrick Kelly; The Retrieval Artist and Other Stories (Five Star), by Kristine Kathryn Rusch; Vinland the Dream and Other Stories (Voyager), In Another Country and Other Short Novels (Five Star), by Robert Silverberg; Stories of Your Life and Others (Tor), by Ted Chiang; The Lady Vanishes and Other Oddities of Nature (Five Star), by Charles Sheffield; Everything’s Eventual (Scribner), by Stephen King, Aristotle and the Gun and Other Stories (Five Star), by L. Sprague de Camp; and Phase Space (Voyager), by Stephen Baxter. (It’s worth noting that the Le Guin, the Baker, the Stress, the Simmons, the Kelly, the Rusch, and the Chiang collections all contain original stories.)

Other good collections included The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories (Golden Gryphon), by Jeffery Ford; The Great Escape (Golden Gryphon), by Ian Watson; Strangers and Beggars (Fairwood Press), by James Van Pelt; Hunting the Snark and Other Short Novels (Five Star), by Mike Resnick; Rosetti Song: Four Stories (Small Beer Press), by Alex Irvine; Dragon’s Island and Other Stories (Five Star), by Jack Williamson; The Mountain Cage and Other Stories (Meisha Merlin), by Pamela Sargent; Human Voices (Five Star), by James Gunn; Counting Up, Counting Down (Del Rey), by Harry Turtledove; The Ogre’s Wife (Obscura Press), by Richard Parks; Babylon Sisters and Other Posthuman Stories (Prime), by Paul Di Filippo; God Is an Iron and Other Stories (Five Star), by Spider Robinson; Little Doors (Four Walls, Eight Windows), by Paul Di Filippo; Generation Gap and Other Stories (Five Star), by Stanley Schmidt; If Lions Could Speak (Cosmos), by Paul Park; Report to the Men’s Club and Other Stories (Small Beer Press), by Carol Emshwiller; Death and the Librarian and Other Stories (Five Stars), by Esther Friesner; Waifs and Strays (Viking), by Charles de Lint; Through My Glasses Darkly (KaCSFFS Press), by Frank Robinson, selected and edited by Robin Wayne Bailey; Claremont Tales II (Golden Gryphon), by Richard Lupoff; Swift Thoughts (Golden Gryphon), by George Zebrowski; and Lord Stink and Other Stories (Small Beer Press), Judith Berman.

The year also featured excellent retrospective collections such as The Collected Stories of Greg Bear (Tor), by Greg Bear; Smoke Ghost amp; Other Apparitions (Midnight House), by Fritz Leiber; Going For Infinity (Tor), by Poul Anderson; Keith Laumer: The Lighter Side (Baen), by Keith Laumer; One More for the Road (Morrow), by Ray Bradbury; The Amazing Dr. Darwin (Baen), by Charles Sheffield; Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick (Pantheon), by Philip K. Dick; Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (Tor), by Richard Matheson; Med Ship (Baen), by Murry Leinster; The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson; Volume Four: Spider Island and Other Stories, by Jack Williamson; The Emperor of Dreams (Gollancz), by Clark Ashton Smith; Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek (Big Engine), by John Sladek; and Bright Segment: The Complete Short Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Volume VIII (North Atlantic), by Theodore Sturgeon.