Turning from series to stand-alone books, there were some excellent retrospective anthologies this year. The best of these is the exceptional The Hard SF Renaissance (Tor), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, probably the best reprint anthology of the decade so far, and one of the best to come out in the last ten years as well. I don’t always agree with Hartwell and Cramer’s critical opinions and rhetoric, expressed in the extensive storynotes and introductions, and I don’t always agree that all of their selections are a perfect fit for the book, but when any anthology includes 960 pages filled with stories such as Greg Egan’s “Wang’s Carpets,” Paul McAuley’s “Gene Wars,” Poul Anderson’s “Genesis,” Michael Swanwick’s “Griffin’s Egg,” Bruce Sterling’s “Taklamakan,” Stephen Baxter’s “On the Orion Line,” and thirty-five other good-to-great stories by writers such as Nancy Kress, Joe Haldeman, Hal Clement, Kim Stanley Robinson, Brian Stableford, Alastair Reynolds, Charles Sheffield, Gregory Benford, and many others, then it becomes pointless to quibble about such things. This book is a great read, and an invaluable reference anthology if you want a picture of how SF is evolving in the Oughts, and even at $39.95, it’s one of the best reading bargains you’re going to find this year; buy it. The Mammoth Book of Science Fiction (Carroll amp; Graf), edited by Mike Ashley, is not quite as exceptional as the Hartwell/Cramer anthology, but is still a good solid value, featuring first-rate stories such as Connie Willis’s “Firewatch,” Michael Swanwick’s “The Very Pulse of the Machine,” Damon Knight’s “Anacron,” Greg Egan’s “The Infinite Assassin,” Geoffry A. Landis’s “Approaching Perimelasma,” Clifford D. Simak’s “A Death in the House,” and lots of others. The Great SF Stories (1964) (NESFA Press), edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg, takes a look back at the year 1964, when classic stories such as Jack Vance’s “The Kraken,” Roger Zelazny’s “The Graveyard Heart,” Fritz Leiber’s “When the Change Winds Blow,” Gordon R. Dickson’s “Soldier, Ask Not,” Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Dowry of Angyat,” and Norman Kagan’s “Four Brands of Impossible” appeared, demonstrating that it was a very good year indeed. And The Ultimate Cyberpunk (ibooks), edited by Pat Cadigan, takes a look back into the more-recent past, at the Cyberpunk Revolution of the mid-’80s, examining some of cyberpunk’s rarely mentioned roots in stories such as James Tiptree’s “The Girl Who Was Plugged In,” Cordwainer Smith’s “The Game of Rat and Dragon,” Philip K. Dick’s “We Can Remember it for You Wholesale,” and Alfred Bester’s “Fondly Farenheit,” and then passing through some canonical stories such as William Gibson’s “Burning Chrome,” Greg Bear’s “Blood Music,” William Gibson and Michael Swanwick’s “Dogfight,” Bruce Sterling’s “Green Days in Brunei,” and Cadigan’s own “Patterns,” before considering more-recent progressions of the form such as Paul McAuley’s “Dr. Luther’s Assistant.” At $16.00 for the trade paperback, this is a great reading bargain, and another valuable reference anthology.
Noted without comment: Future Sports (Ace), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, and Beyond Flesh (Ace), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois.
The most important reprint fantasy anthology this year (indeed, one of the only reprint fantasy anthologies this year, other than the two Fantasy Bests and the Windling half of the Datlow/Windling) was The American Fantasy Tradition (Tor), edited by Brian M. Thomsen and Martin H. Greenberg, which gives a comprehensive overview of the evolution of American fantasy, from stories by Nathanial Hawthorne, Stephen Vincent Benet, Mark Twain, and Robert W. Chambers on to more recent classics such as H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” Manly Wade Wellman’s “O Ugly Bird!,” R. A. Lafferty’s “Narrow Valley,” Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery,” Ray Bradbury’s “The Black Ferris,” Harlan Ellison’s “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” Orson Scott Card’s “Hatrack River,” and many others.
Other than the Stephen Jones “Best” anthology and Datlow’s half of the Datlow A Vindling anthology, there didn’t seem to be many reprint horror anthologies this year either, but then again, I wasn’t looking intensively for them either. I did spot The Literary Werewolf: An Anthology (Syracuse University Press), edited by Charlotte F. Otten, which could also be considered to be a fantasy anthology instead, I suppose, depending on how you squint at it.
It was an unexceptional year in the SF-and-fantasy-oriented nonfiction and reference book field, although there were a slew of literary biographies and studies of the work of individual authors, including L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz (St. Martin’s), by Katharine M. Rogers; The Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith (MacFarland), by Karen L. Hellekson; A. E. van Vogt: Science Fantasy’s Icon (H. L. Drake), by H. L. Drake; Mervyn Peake: My Eyes Mint Gold: A Life (Overlook), by Malcolm Yorke; Harlan Ellison: The Edge of Forever (Ohio State), by Ellen Weil and Gary K. Wolfe; Starlight Man: The Extraordinary Life of Algernon Blackwood (Constable), by Mike Ashley; The Age of Chaos: The Multiverse of Michael Moorcock (The British Fantasy Society), by Jeff Gardiner; Clive Barker: The Dark Fantastic (HarperCollins), by Douglas E. Winter, and Isaac Asimov: It’s Been a Good Life (Promethaeus Books), edited by J. O. Jeppsen, a nonfiction collection of excerpts from Asimov’s three previous autobiographical volumes. Of books of this sort this year, the most accessible to the average reader, and probably the most enjoyable, would be Judith Merril’s “autobiography,” Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril (Between the Lines, 720 Bathurst St., Suite 404, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2R4, C$29.95), by Judith Merril and Emily Pohl-Weary. The quotation marks around “autobiography” are there because Merril didn’t live to complete the full-dress autobiography she’d had planned, and there are only pieces of it here, with the book filled out with articles, letters, and other autobiographical snippets Merril produced for one reason or another over the years. There’s still enough here though to give you a bit of the flavor of Merril’s colorful, highly opinionated, passionate, and forceful personality, make this an entertaining read, and make you wish that she’d been able to complete a full autobiography before her untimely death.
More generalized reference books this year included Supernatural Fiction Writers: Contemporary Fantasy and Horror, Volumes I amp; II (Scribner), edited by Richard Bleiler; The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction (Wesleyan), by Justine Larbalestier; Once There Was a Magazine (Beccon), by Fred Smith; John W. Campbell’s Golden Age of Science Fiction (DMZ), by Eric Solstein; Smokin’ Rockets (McFarland), by Patrick Lucanio and Gary Coville; and, probably the most accessible of these for the average reader, a collection of essays by horror writer Ramsey Campbell, Ramsey Campbell, Probably: On Horror and Sundry Fantasies (PS Publishing), by Ramsey Campbell.
The most generally enjoyable books in this category this year (or at least they sort of fit into this category; although they’re not a perfect fit anywhere) are two “travel guide” books, Roswell, Vegas, and Area 51: Travels with Courtney (Wormhole Books, 413 High St., Fort Wayne, IN 46808, $15.00), by Connie Willis, and A Walking Tour of the Shambles (American Fantasy Press, P.O. Box 1059, Woodstock, IL 60098, $15.00), by Gene Wolfe and Neil Gaiman. A Walking Tour of the Shambles is a whimsical and good-naturedly grotesque “travel guide” to an imaginary Chicago neighborhood filled with enchanted places and magical people, and Roswell, Vegas, and Area 51: Travels with Courtney is a caustic, sharp-eyed, and very funny tour through real places so bizarre and unlikely that they might just as well be the products of a fantasy writer’s fevered imagination (and it makes it even funnier that they are not).
As has been true for the last few years, the art book field was very strong this year. Among the best of the art books were Fantasy Art Masters: The Best in Fantasy and SF Art Worldwide (Collins), by Dick Jude; Paper Tiger Fantasy Art Gallery (Paper Tiger), edited by Paul Barnett; The Art of Jeffrey Jones (Underwood Books), edited by Cathy and Arnie Fenner; The Science Fiction Art of Vincent Di Fate (Paper Tiger), by Vincent Di Fate; Perceptualistics: Art by Jael (Paper Tiger), by Jael and John Grant; Manchu: Science (Fiction) (Guy Delcourt), by Manchu; Dragonhenge (Paper Tiger), by Bob Eggleton and John Grant; GOAD: The Many Moods of Phil Hale (Donald M. Grant), by Phil Hale, and the latest edition in a Best-of-the-Year-like retrospective of the year in fantastic art, Spectrum 9: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art (Underwood), by Kathy Fenner and Arnie Fenner.