Jonathan Strahan (ed)'s "The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Five" (anthology, 2011): Annotated table of contents & review

Jonathan Strahan has posted the ToC of the volume, due out in March 2011 from Night Shade Books. Book collects editor's choice of short fiction originally published during 2010.

I do wish he would mark the stories that are clearly science fiction or clearly fantasy, for those of us with limited tastes. No luck here. Some cases are obvious from publisher, author or title; others aren't. My immediate impression is: anthology is highly biased towards fantasy.

Also, I'm now-a-days a lot less enthusiastic about these "best of the year" volumes than I was some years ago. Ones I've tried reading in the last couple of years appear to be full of fillers, with just one or two good stories - if that.

Table of contents (29 stories, best first, unread last).

Links on author, editor, or publisher fetches more matching fiction. If I am aware of an online copy of a story, I include it too. If I've read a story, my rating appears in brackets. If I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there.

Note the list is in order of my preference (where I've read the stories), rather than editor's ToC order (unread stories are in editor's order).

1. [ss] Peter Watts' "The Things" (A); download text/MP3; Clarkesworld, #40 (January 2010); fanfic: A retelling of John Campbell's "Who Goes There?" from the point of view of the alien.
   
   Also included in my "best of 2010" list.
   
2. [novelette] K J Parker's "Amor Vincit Omnia" (B); download; Subterranean Online, "Summer" (July-September) 2010; magic: What's most threatening to authority, government? A citizen who's beyond the government's power to hurt!
   
   Caution: Initial parts use far too much of ... is it Latin? I don't know the language, but almost gave up. Those funny words cease to be an issue once the story picks up.
3. Hannu Rajaniemi's "Elegy for a Young Elk"; download; Subterranean Online, Spring 2010: Not read.
4. Neil Gaiman's "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains"; download; Neil Gaiman & Al Sarrantonio (eds)' "Stories: All New Tales" (read first 4 stories online): Not read.
5. Sandra McDonald's "Seven Sexy Cowboy Robots"; download; Strange Horizons, 4 October 2010: Not read.
6. Sarah Rees Brennan's "The Spy Who Never Grew Up"; Trisha Telep (ed)'s "Kiss Me Deadly: 13 Tales of Paranormal Love": Not read.
7. Holly Black's "The Aarne-Thompson Classification Revue"; Darrell Schweitzer & Martin H Greenberg (eds)' "Full Moon City": Not read.
8. Damien Broderick's "Under the Moons of Venus"; download; Subterranean Online, Spring 2010: Not read.
9. Joe Abercrombie's "The Fool Jobs"; Jonathan Strahan & Lou Anders (eds)' "Swords and Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery": Not read.
10. Robert Reed's "Alone"; Jonathan Strahan (ed)'s "Godlike Machines": Not read.
11. Kij Johnson's "Names for Water"; Asimov's, October/November 2010: Not read.
12. Theodora Goss' "Fair Ladies"; download; Apex magazine, 2 August 2010: Not read.
13. James Patrick Kelly's "Plus or Minus"; Asimov's, December 2010: Not read.
14. Ellen Kushner's "The Man With the Knives"; download; first published as a "chapbook from Temporary Culture" on 3 May 2010: Not read.
15. Cory Doctorow's "The Jammie Dodgers and the Adventure of the Leicester Square Screening"; download; Shareable, 25 May 2010: Not read.
16. Elizabeth Hand's "The Maiden Flight of McAuley's Bellerophon"; Neil Gaiman & Al Sarrantonio (eds)' "Stories: All New Tales" (read first 4 stories online - not including this one): Not read.
17. Margo Lanagan's "The Miracle Aquilina"; Jonathan Strahan & Marianne S Jablon (eds)' "Wings of Fire": Not read.
18. Pat Cadigan's "The Taste of Night"; download in three parts; Nick Gevers & Marty Halpern (eds)' "Is Anybody Out There?": Not read.
19. Bruce Sterling's "The Exterminator's Want-Ad"; download; Shareable, 22 June 2010: Not read.
20. Christopher Barzak's "Map of Seventeen"; Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling (eds)' "The Beastly Bride and Other Tales of the Animal People": Not read.
21. Maureen McHugh's "The Naturalist"; download; Subterranean Online, Spring 2010: Not read.
22. Sara Genge's "Sins of the Father"; Asimov's, December 2010: Not read.
23. Geoffrey A Landis' "The Sultan of the Clouds"; Asimov's, September 2010: Not read.
24. John Kessel's "Iteration"; download; Strange Horizons, 13 September 2010: Not read.
25. Diana Peterfreund's "The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn"; Holly Black & Justine Larbalestier (eds)' "Zombies vs Unicorns": Not read.
26. Lavie Tidhar's "The Night Train"; download; Strange Horizons, 14 June 2010: I think I've read it; but I don't remember anything of it now.
27. Ian Tregillis' "Still Life (A Sexagesimal Fairy Tale)"; download; Apex magazine, 4 October 2010: Not read.
28. Genevieve Valentine's "The Zeppelin Conductors' Society Annual Gentlemen's Ball"; download; Lightspeed, July 2010: Not read.
29. Rachel Swirsky's "The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Window"; download; Subterranean Online, Summer 2010: Not read. 

Related.

1. Previous volumes in this series: Vol 4 (2010), Vol 3 (2009).
2. Competing "best of 2010" anthologies: Dozois', Hartwell/Cramer's, Horton's.
3. Fiction originally published during 2010.
4. My "best of 2010" list (links others' lists at bottom).
5. "Best of" lists; "good" fiction; "good" online fiction.
6. Works of Jonathan Strahan.
7. Short fiction anthologies, collections, magazines (only old pulps); all short fiction.
8. Pre-order at Amazon.com.

Note: I normally update list posts like this when I read one of the stories, find a new online link, etc. This post was last updated on 4 December 2010.

Jonathan Strahan (Ed)'s "The Best of Larry Niven" (collection): Annotated table of contents & review

ToC of this yet to be published book is available at Subterranean.

At least 3 of the stories are online: "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" (download), "Cloak of Anarchy" (download), & "Smut Talk" (download), none particularly good,. First one can be very inaccessible to those not into Hollywood movies.
An aside: Heinlein's "Coventry" is a far more interesting treatment of "an experiment in anarchy on a small scale" than "Cloak of Anarchy".

Among those I've read, "The Jigsaw Man" is probably the best. "The Hole Man" is very famous, but appreciating it can take a while after reading it! "The Borderland of Sol", I think, is highly overrated though well known because of Hugo award it got; I've a feeling I've seen it online, but cannot find the URL right now.

I can name at least one story that does belong to any "best of Niven" list but isn't here: "Plaything".

Table of contents (27 stories, best first, unread last).

My rating is in brackets. Where I've a separate post on a story, link on title goes there. Where I'm aware of an online copy, download link is provided too.

1. "The Jigsaw Man" (A); 1967: Chilling implications of human organ transplant technology. Nominated for Hugo Award 1968 in short story category.
2. "The Hole Man" (B); Analog, January 1974: Poking your nose at certain places can be harmful!
3. "Becalmed in Hell" (B); F&SF, July 1965: An accident on Venus.
4. "Cloak of Anarchy" (B); download Analog, Mar 1972: An experiment in an anarchy-based society where there is no government.
5. "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" (B); download; Knight, December 1969: Superman's sex problems!
6. "Smut Talk" (C); Playboy (US), January 2000: Sentient parasitic bacteria of alien origin.
7. "The Borderland of Sol" (C); Analog, Jan 1975: Space pirates are robbing commercial traffic on busy interstellar routes with a novel weapon. Our heroes are out to hunt them down.
8. "Bordered in Black"
9. "Neutron Star"
10. "The Soft Weapon"
11. "The Deadlier Weapon"
12. "All the Myriad Ways"
13. "Not Long Before the End"
14. "Inconstant Moon"
15. "Rammer"
16. "The Fourth Profession"
17. "Flash Crowd"
18. "The Defenceless Dead"
19. "The Flight of the Horse"
20. "Night On Mispec Moor"
21. "Flatlander"
22. "The Magic Goes Away"
23. "Cautionary Tales"
24. "Limits"
25. "A Teardrop Falls"
26. "The Return of William Proxmire"
27. "The Missing Mass"

Related: Stories of Larry Niven; works of Jonathan Strahan; "best of" lists.

Note: I normally update list posts like this when I read a story, find online link, etc. This post was last updated on 8 March 2010.

ToC of forthcoming collection "Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories", edited by Jonathan Strahan, is online

At Night Shade Books.

Possibly useful "best of" list even for those not planning to pick up a print copy.

Jonathan Strahan (ed)'s "The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year", Volume 4 (anthology, 2010): Table of contents

Note: If you landed here looking for 2011 edition of this anthology, that's here.

Jonathan Strahan has posted the ToC for 2010 edition of his "best of the year" reprint anthology. It collects stories originally published during 2009.

Table of contents (29 stories).

Links on author, editor, or publisher fetch more matching fiction. Where I'm aware of an online copy of a story, I include download links too.

1. Nicola Griffith's "It Takes Two"; Jonathan Strahan (ed)'s "Eclipse Three": Not read.
   
2. Jo Walton's "Three Twilight Tales"; Sharyn November (ed)'s "Firebirds Soaring": Not read.
3. Editor's note for this as yet unnamed story: "I’ve agreed not to publicise one of the stories until the book comes out, so that publication here doesn’t step too badly on the toes of its original publisher. I will, however, reveal the omitted story in March."
4. Peter Watts' "The Island"; read online (no download); Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan (eds)' "The New Space Opera 2"
5. Margo Lanagan's "Ferryman"; Sharyn November (ed)'s "Firebirds Soaring": Not read.
6. Ellen Kushner's "A Wild and Wicked Youth"; F&SF, April/May 2009: Not read.
7. Karen Joy Fowler's "The Pelican Bar"; Jonathan Strahan (ed)'s "Eclipse Three": Not read.
8. Kij Johnson's "Spar"; download text/audio; Clarkesworld, #37 (October 2009): Not read.
9. James Patrick Kelly's "Going Deep"; download MP3 in three parts (with small text annotations); Asimov’s, June 2009: Not read.
10. Holly Black's "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown"; Trisha Telep (ed)'s "The Eternal Kiss": Not read.
    
    Note: I've an impression The Eternal Kiss is a vampire anthology.
11. Michael Swanwick & Eileen Gunn's "Zeppelin City"; download; tor.com, 6 October 2009: Not read.
12. Alex Irvine's "Dragon’s Teeth"; F&SF, December 2009: Not read.
13. Damien Broderick's "This Wind Blowing, and This Tide"; Asimov’s, April/May 2009: Not read.
14. Peter S. Beagle's "By Moonlight"; Peter S Beagle's "We Never Talk About My Brother" (collection?): Not read.
15. Bruce Sterling's "Black Swan"; F&SF, (when) 2009 (or is it Interzone, #221?): Not read.
16. Sara Genge's "As Women Fight", Asimov’s, December 2009: Not read.
17. Kelly Link's "The Cinderella Game"; Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling's "Troll's Eye View": Not read.
18. Stephen Baxter's "Formidable Caress"; Analog, December 2009: Not read.
19. Geoff Ryman's "Blocked"; F&SF, October/November 2009: Not read.
20. Pat Cadigan's "Truth and Bone"; Ellen Datlow (ed)'s "Poe": Not read.
21. Rachel Swirsky's "Eros, Philia, Agape"; download; tor.com, 3 March 2009: Not read.
22. John Kessel's "The Motorman’s Coat"; F&SF, June/July 2009: Not read.
23. Sarah Monette & Elizabeth Bear's "Mongoose"; Ellen Datlow (ed)'s "Lovecraft Unbound": Not read.
24. Ellen Klages' "Echoes of Aurora"; "What Remains" (author's collection?): Not read.
25. Robert Reed's "Before My Last Breath"; Asimov’s, October/November 2009: Not read.
26. Diana Wynne Jones's "Jo Boy"; Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois (eds)'s "The Dragon Book": Not read.
27. Robert Charles Wilson's "Utriusque Cosmi"; read online (no download); Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan (eds)' "The New Space Opera 2": Not read.
28. Catherynne Valente's "A Delicate Architecture"; Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling's "Troll's Eye View": Not read.
29. Kij Johnson's "The Cat That Walked a Thousand Miles"; download; tor.com, 14 July 2009: Not read.

Related.

1. Competing "best fiction of 2009" anthologies: Dozois', Horton's, Hartwell/Cramer's.
2. Previous volumes of this anthology series: Vol 5 (2011), Vol 3 (2009).
3. Works of Jonathan Strahan.
4. All anthologies (annotated but infrequently updated list of anthologies & collections).
5. "best of" lists.
6. My "best of 2009" fiction list (includes others' "best of 2009" lists at bottom).
7. Pre-order at Amazon.

Note: I normally update anthology posts as I read stories, find online links for a story, etc. This post was last updated on 4 December 2010.

For authors: Submissions open for 2011 edition of Jonathan Strahan's "The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy" (vol 5)

Link. [via SF Signal]

"This is a reprint anthology, so I am only reading material published between 1 January and 31 December 2010." "the submission deadline for this year’s book is 1 October 2010."

Related: Works of Jonathan Strahan.

Free fiction: 3 stories from Charles N Brown & Jonathan Strahan's anthology "The Locus Awards: Thirty Years of the Best in Science Fiction & Fantasy"

Read online at HarperCollins (no download):

1. Gene Wolfe's "The Death of Dr Island": Not read.
2. Ursula K Le Guin's "The Day Before the Revolution": Not read.
3. Harlan Ellison's "Jeffty is Five": It appears in a lot of All Time Top 50 lists, though I cannot figure out why.
   
   From what I recall, it's the familiar grandmother's lament on how music was music when she was young & now it's noise, or how milk was "free" when she was young (because the family had buffaloes & lived in a village) against Rs 22 a liter today in city!
   
   Jeffty, a boy at the heart of the story, has the time magically stopped for him at age 5 while rest of the world moves on!

[via Free SF Reader]

Jonathan Strahan on "1999 Locus All-Time Poll" Short Story selections

Jonathan Strahan is posting notes on these stories at Locus Roundtable - one story a week, 43 stories in all - mostly famous ones. The series is picked up by my featured posts feed.

PS: Locus link also includes lists of "best" novelettes, novellas, collections, & anthologies. All have major gaps, but they look like worthy lists.

Quotes: What's in an anthology?

A panel of well known sf Anthologists Discuss Their Craft with Jeremy L C Jones in Clarkesworld, January 2009. Some highlights:

1. Jonathan Strahan, & John Joseph Adams: An ideal anthology has 3 "really good" stories. Rest presumably of varying quality.
   
   Crappy stuff I keep finding in even anthologies whose title includes "best of" is filler.
2. Editor's credo: Jonathan Strahan: "be honest.
   
   Ultimately you're acting as an agent for the reader so you need to be as straightforward and as honest with your reader as you can. Title a book clearly. Write an introduction that actually describes the book you've edited. Buy stories that fit the title and the idea. Encourage the publisher, as much as you can, to put a cover on it that fits... If you do that, then a reader can pick up a book and feel they're going to get what they expect."
3. John Joseph Adams: "In the case of a reprint anthology, I think it's also important to include a large number of stories from disparate sources so that any one reader is unlikely to have read them all and will find many new discoveries, even if they voraciously read short fiction."
4. John Joseph Adams: "the anthologist does have some obligation to the publisher to include a sufficient number of brand name authors in order to help market the anthology."
5. Ellen Datlow: "I pay as much as I can from the advance on signature of the contract, so the early birds don't have to wait until I hand in the book to get paid."
   
   May be one of the reasons many authors love to work with her.
6. Ellen Datlow: "For original anthologies I request stories from at least a third over the number I need because not everyone I approach will submit her story in the time required and at least a few of the stories won't be right for the anthology and will be rejected."
7. Ellen Datlow: "be strong and reject stories that don't work, even if I really want that author in my book."
8. Classical way of sequencing the ToC: Jonathan Strahan: "open with your strongest story, second strongest goes last, third strongest in the middle, then shuffle from there."

More on sequencing the ToC.

Ann VanderMeer: "because we know that the typical reader will read the anthology from beginning to end."

John Joseph Adams takes a more reasonable stand, in my book anyway: "that's assuming the stories are read in the order the anthologist chooses, of which there is no guarantee."

I'm among those who never read an anthology in order. I mean - I personally look at familiar authors, catchy titles, story sizes, & fame of an individual story to determine reading order:

1. Editor's introductions to all stories first.
2. Next the really famous ones - rarely more than a very few, if at all, in a specific anthology.
3. Smallest stories next, except for those by a personal list of "banned authors".
4. Next either very familiar authors or completely unknown ones - depending on mood, impulsively mixing with catchy titles.
5. Then the rest, often skipping the "banned authors".

How do you choose your reading order?

Jonathan Strahan (Ed)'s "Best SF and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 3" (anthology): Annotated table of contents & review

This is a couple of weeks old. I'd missed it because it appeared during Bombay terrorist attacks.

This one is due March 2009, & collects another "best of" list of short fiction first published during 2008.

I haven't yet read many stories from the list; will fill out as I read. Where I'm aware of an online version of a story, I provide the link. Links on author name leads to other works by the author. Link on publisher name leads to more works from publisher. My rating for read stories is in brackets. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on title goes there.

Table of contents (28 stories, best first, unread last).

1. [ss] Ted Chiang's "Exhalation" (A); download text/MP3; Jonathan Strahan (Ed)'s "Eclipse Two: New Science Fiction and Fantasy": A "man"'s quest for knowledge in an unusual universe reveals something unexpected & alarming. Included in my "best of 2008" list.
2. [novelette] Greg Egan's "Crystal Nights" (A); download text from publisher's site, or podcast at Transmission from Beyond (includes downloabable MP3 audio); Interzone, #215 (April 2008): A retelling of Theodore Sturgeon's "Microcosmic God". A man creates a fast-evolving micro-cosmos as a computer simulation, but things aren't quite under control...
3. Holly Phillips' "The Small Door" (A); download; Fantasy Magazine, July 2008; fantasy: A teenage girl solves the mystery of what happens to the small animals that enter a neighbor's house & are never seen again. Fantasy part is actually limited; meat of the story is in its non-genre part (which is most of the text).
4. John Kessel's "Pride and Prometheus" (B); online in collection "The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories"; F&SF, January 2008: Description of life in England of a few centuries back.
5. Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Gambler" (B); download; Lou Anders (Ed)'s "Fast Forward 2": A Vietnamese immigrant to US is working for a near-future newsroom, & is not quite cut out for the job.
6. Kij Johnson's "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" (B); download; Asimov's, July 2008; fantasy: A bunch of monkeys can vanish at will, & later return.
7. Megan McCarron's "The Magician's House" (B); download part 1 & part 2; as two part serial in Strange Horizons, 14 & 21 July 2008; non-genre: A teenage girl gets into a sexual relation with an older married man.
8. Rachel Swirsky's "Marry the Sun" (B); download; Fantasy Magazine, June 2008; fantasy: Attempt of the Sun-god Helios to marry a mortal woman fails.
9. Elizabeth Bear's "Shoggoths in Bloom" (B); download; Asimov's, March 2008: In 1938, a US man has stumbled upon a still-living sea-based bioslave, artificially engineered by a lost civilization dating from pre-dinosaur age!! He's going to use it against Germans in the coming war.
   
   Story has parts dealing with black man, white man tensions that readers outside US may not find interesting. They also happen to be irrelevant to the story.
10. [ss] Mary Rickert's "Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment: One Daughter's Personal Account" (C); download text/MP3; F&SF, October/November 2008; horror: Talibanization of the US. A dystopia where Homeland Security hunts & publicly executes any woman who's ever had an abortion. These executions are very common & regular - & the events are treated as entertainment!
11. Peter S Beagle's "Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel"; Strange Roads: Not read.
12. Jeff VanderMeer's "Fixing Hanover"; Extraordinary Engines: Not read.
13. Ian McDonald's "The Dust Assassin"; The Starry Rift: Not read.
    
14. Holly Black's "Virgin"; Magic in the Mirrorstone: Not read.
    
15. Paul McAuley's "The Thought War"; Postscripts, #15: Not read.
16. Garth Nix's "Beyond the Sea Gates of the Scholar Pirates of Sarskoe"; Fast Ships, Black Sails: Not read.
    
17. Stephen Baxter's "Turing's Apples"; Eclipse 2: Not read.
18. Stephen King's "The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates"; F&SF, October/November 2008: Not read.
19. Robert Reed's "Five Thrillers"; F&SF, April 2008: Not read.
20. Joan Aiken's "Goblin Music"; The Serial Garden: Not read.
21. Margo Lanagan's "Machine Maid"; Extraordinary Engines: Not read.
22. Ted Kosmatka's "The Art of Alchemy"; F&SF, June 2008: Not read.
23. Hannu Rajaniemi's "His Master's Voice"; Interzone, #218: Not read.
24. Maureen McHugh's "Special Economics"; The Del Rey Book of SFF: Not read.
25. Michael Swanwick's "From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled..."; Asimov's, February 2008: Not read.
26. [ss] Michael Swanwick's "From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled..."; download; Asimov's, February 2008: Not read & likely will not read. I just don't seem to have Swanwick recepters.
27. Rick Bowes' "If Angels Fight"; F&SF, February 2008: Not read.
28. Ken Scholes' "The Doom of Love in Small Spaces"; Realms of Fantasy, April 2008: Not read.
29. Kelly Link's "Pretty Monsters"; Pretty Monsters: Not read.

[via Torque Control]

Fact sheet.

First published: To be published March 2009.

Related.

1. Other volumes of this anthology series: Vol 5 (2011), Vol 4 (2010).
   
2. My best of the year 2008 selections (some online).
3. Rich Horton (Ed)'s "Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2009 Edition": Stories first published during 2008, both online & offline publishers included.
4. Rich Horton (Ed)'s "Unplugged: The Best of Online Fiction": Stories first published online during 2008. By both by free fiction publishers & paid ones.
   
5. "Best new stories of 2008" thread at Asimov's Forum.
   
6. Collections & anthologies.
7. "Best of" lists.