This was a very good year for anthologies that afford a view of what’s happening in fantastic literature in other countries, outside the usual genre boundaries. Anthologies of this sort included The Future is Japanese (Haikasoru), edited by Nick Mamatas and Maumi Washington; Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana, edited by Anil Menon and Vandana Singh; Afro SF: Science Fiction by African Writers (StoryTime Press), edited by Ivor W. Hartmann; Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic (Small Beer Press), edited by Eduardo Jiménez Mayo and Chris N. Brown; Lauriat: A Filipino-Chinese Speculative Fiction Anthology (Lethe Press), edited by Charles Tan; Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction (University of Arizona), edited by Grace L. Dillon; and The Apex Book of World SF 2 (Apex Publications), edited by Lavie Tidhar.
L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XXVIII (Galaxy Press), edited by the late K. D. Wentworth, is the most recent in a long-running series featuring novice work by beginning writers, some of whom may later turn out to be important talents. Wentworth died in 2012, and her replacement has yet to be named.
Noted without comment is Rip-Off! (Audible), an audio anthology of SF and fantasy stories edited by Gardner Dozois.
Jonathan Strahan, who had an excellent year in 2012, also edited the year’s best fantasy anthology, a YA anthology about witches, Under My Hat: Tales from the Cauldron (Random House Books for Young Readers), which means that Strahan has pulled off, in my own estimation, anyway, the difficult task of editing both the best fantasy anthology and the best science fiction anthology of 2012. Not surprisingly, since it’s aimed at a YA audience, Under My Hat is not as substantial and chewy as Strahan’s Edge of Infinity, but it has a very pleasing wit and lightness of tone about it (for the most part, there are a few darker stories) that ought to appeal to the adult fantasy-reading audience as well. The best stories here include work by Peter S. Beagle, Margo Lanagan, Ellen Klages, Garth Nix, Jane Yolen, and Holly Black, although there are also good stories here by Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Jim Butcher, M. Rickert, Patricia A. McKillip, Isobelle Carmody, Tim Pratt, Tanith Lee, Charles De Lint, Frances Hardinge, and Diana Peterfreund, as well as a poem by Neil Gaiman. A (mostly) reprint anthology on the same subject was this year’s Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful (Prime Books), edited by Paula Guran.
Other original fantasy anthologies were Magic, An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane, edited by Jonathan Oliver (Solaris); Elemental Magic: All-New Tales of the Elementary Masters (DAW), edited by Mercedes Lackey; and Hex Appeal (St. Martin’s Griffin), edited by P. N. Elrod. There was a tribute anthology to Ray Bradbury, Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury (William Morrow Paperbacks), edited by Sam Weller and Mort Castle; mostly fantasy with an admixture of horror, and a tribute anthology to Charles Dickens, Pandemonium: Stories of the Smoke (Jurrasic London), edited by Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin; which had a similar fantasy/horror mix. Other books on the borderland between fantasy and horror included An Apple for the Creature (Ace), edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner; The Alchemy Press Book of Ancient Wonders (Alchemy Press), edited by Jan Edwards and Jenny Barber; The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes (Alchemy Press), edited by Mike Chinn; and Westward Weird (DAW), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes; which also mixed in elements of the Western.
The most prominent original horror anthology this year seemed to be A Book of Horrors (St. Martin’s Griffin), edited by Stephen Jones, but there was also a big zombie anthology, 21st Century Dead: A Zombie Anthology (St. Martin’s Griffin), edited by Christopher Golden; Danse Macabre: Close Encounters with the Reaper (EDGE), edited by Nancy Kilpatrick; and Dark Currents (NewCon Press), edited by Ian Whates; and The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer.
Lavie Tidhar, Aliette de Bodard, Ken Liu, Elizabeth Bear, and (as usual) Robert Reed were all highly prolific this year, publishing good stories all over, in many different markets.
SF continued to appear in places well outside accepted genre boundaries, from the science magazines Cosmos and Nature to The New Yorker, which surprised everybody by releasing a “Special SF Issue” this year.
(Finding individual pricings for all of the items from small presses mentioned in the Summation has become too time intensive, and since several of the same small presses publish anthologies, novels, and short-story collections, it seems silly to repeat addresses for them in section after section. Therefore, I’m going to attempt to list here, in one place, all the addresses for small presses that have books mentioned here or there in the Summation, whether from the anthologies section, the novel section, or the short-story collection section, and, where known, their Web site addresses. That should make it easy enough for the reader to look up the individual price of any book mentioned that isn’t from a regular trade publisher; such books are less likely to be found in your average bookstore, or even in a chain superstore, and so will probably have to be mail-ordered. Many publishers seem to sell only online, through their Web sites, and some will only accept payment through PayPal. Many books, even from some of the smaller presses, are also available through Amazon.com. If you can’t find an address for a publisher, and it’s quite likely that I’ve missed some here, or failed to update them successfully, Google it. It shouldn’t be that difficult these days to find up-to-date contact information for almost any publisher, however small.)
Addresses are: PS Publishing, Grosvener House, 1 New Road, Hornsea, West Yorkshire, HU18 1PG, England, UK www.pspublishing.co.uk; Golden Gryphon Press, 3002 Perkins Road, Urbana, IL 61802, www.goldengryphon.com; NESFA Press, P.O. Box 809, Framingham, MA 01701-0809, www.nesfa.org; Subterranean Press, P.O. Box 190106, Burton, MI 48519, www.subterraneanpress.com; Old Earth Books, P.O. Box 19951, Baltimore, MD 21211-0951, www.oldearthbooks.com; Tachyon Press, 1459 18th St. #139, San Francisco, CA 94107, www.tachyonpublications.com; Night Shade Books, 1470 NW Saltzman Road, Portland, OR 97229, www.nightshadebooks.com; Five Star Books, 295 Kennedy Memorial Drive, Waterville, ME 04901, www.galegroup.com/fivestar; NewCon Press, via www.newconpress.com; Small Beer Press, 176 Prospect Ave., Northampton, MA 01060, www.smallbeerpress.com; Locus Press, P.O. Box 13305, Oakland, CA 94661; Crescent Books, Mercat Press Ltd., 10 Coates Crescent, Edinburgh, Scotland EH3 7AL, UK, www.crescentfiction.com; Wildside Press/Borgo Press, P.O. Box 301, Holicong, PA 18928-0301, or go to www.wildsidepress.com for pricing and ordering; Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, Inc. and Tesseract Books, Ltd., P.O. Box 1714, Calgary, Alberta, T2P 2L7, Canada, www.edgewebsite.com; Aqueduct Press, P.O. Box 95787, Seattle, WA 98145-2787, www.aqueductpress.com; Phobos Books, 200 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003, www.phobosweb.com; Fairwood Press, 5203 Quincy Ave. SE, Auburn, WA 98092, www.fairwoodpress.com; BenBella Books, 6440 N. Central Expressway, Suite 508, Dallas, TX 75206, www.benbellabooks.com; Darkside Press, 13320 27thAve. NE, Seattle, WA 98125, www.darksidepress.com; Haffner Press, 5005 Crooks Rd., Suite 35, Royal Oak, MI 48073-1239, www.haffnerpress.com; North Atlantic Press, P.O. Box 12327, Berkeley, CA, 94701; Prime Books, P.O. Box 36503, Canton, OH, 44735, www.primebooks.net; Fairwood Press, 5203 Quincy Ave. SE, Auburn, WA 98092, www.fairwoodpress.com; MonkeyBrain Books, 11204 Crossland Drive, Austin, TX 78726, www.monkeybrainbooks.com; Wesleyan University Press, University Press of New England, Order Dept., 37 Lafayette St., Lebanon NH 03766-1405, www.wesleyan.edu/wespress; Agog! Press, P.O. Box U302, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia, www.uow.ed.au/~rhood/agogpress; Wheatland Press, via www.wheatlandpress.com; MirrorDanse Books, P.O. Box 3542, Parramatta NSW 2124, Australia, www.tabula-rasa.info/MirrorDanse; Arsenal Pulp Press, 103-1014 Homer Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6B 2W9, www.arsenalpress.com; DreamHaven Books, 912 W. Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN 55408; Elder Signs Press/Dimensions Books, order through www.dimensionsbooks.com; Chaosium, via www.chaosium.com; Spyre Books, P.O. Box 3005, Radford, VA 24143; SCIFI, Inc., P.O. Box 8442, Van Nuys, CA 91409-8442; Omnidawn Publishing, order through www.omnidawn.com; CSFG, Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild, www.csfg.org.au/publishing/anthologies/the_outcast; Hadley Rille Books, via www.hadleyrillebooks.com; Suddenly Press, via suddenlypress@yahoo.com; Sandstone Press, P.O. Box 5725, One High St., Dingwall, Ross-shire, IV15 9WJ; Tropism Press, via www.tropismpress.com; SF Poetry Association/Dark Regions Press, www.sfpoetry.com, send checks to Deborah Flores, SFPA Treasurer, P.O. Box 4846, Covina, CA 91723; DH Press, via diamondbookdistributors.com; Kurodahan Press, via www.kurodahan.com; Ramble House, 443 Gladstone Blvd., Shreveport LA 71104; Interstitial Arts Foundation, via www.interstitialarts.org; Raw Dog Screaming, via www.rawdogscreaming.com; Three Legged Fox Books, 98 Hythe Road, Brighton, BN1 6JS, UK; Norilana Books, via www.norilana.com; coeur de lion, via http://coeurdelion.com.au; PARSECink, via www.parsecink.org; Robert J. Sawyer Books, via www.sfwriter.com/rjsbooks.htm; Rackstraw Press, via http://rackstrawpress; Candlewick, via www.candlewick.com; Zubaan, via www.zubaanbooks.com; Utter Tower, via www.threeleggedfox.co.uk; Spilt Milk Press, via www.electricvelocipede.com; Paper Golem, via www.papergolem.com; Galaxy Press, via www.galaxypress.com.; Twelfth Planet Press, via www.twelfhplanetpress.com; Five Senses Press, via www.sensefive.com; Elastic Press, via www.elasticpress.com; Lethe Press, via www.lethepressbooks.com; Two Cranes Press, via www.twocranespress.com; Wordcraft of Oregon, via www.wordcraftoforegon.com; Down East, via www.downeast.com; ISFiC Press, 456 Douglas Ave., Elgin, IL 60120 or www.isficpress.com.