Year’s Best ToCs Start To Appear
December 2nd, 2010 by Editors
It being that time of year, prominent anthologists are beginning to issue the tables of contents for their Year’s Best books. With any luck this will help you narrow down the reading list when contemplating your award nominations in 2011.
- Jonathan Strahan has posted his ToC for his anthology from Night Shade;
- Sean Wallace has posted the ToC for the Rich Horton anthology from Prime;
- And in a similar vein the LiveJournal community, “Not If You Were The Last Short Story On Earth,” has posted a recommended reading list.
The gossip on Twitter is already about how many of the stories chosen were published in online magazines.
One story that is included in the list on LiveJournal but not in either of the proposed anthologies is “Troika” by Al Reynolds. That’s because it was published in an anthology from the Science Fiction Book Club (Godlike Machines, Strahan) and, for contractual reasons, it is unavailable for reprint. The buzz online from those who have read it is very positive, so seek it out if you can. (The list also includes a couple of other stories from Godlike Machines, but it is the Reynolds story in particular we are hearing a lot of buzz about.)
There are several books edited by Jonathan Strahan slated to come out within the next 6-8 months that I cannot wait for, including:
Life on Mars
The Best of Larry Niven
Eclipse Four
Engineering Infinity
and
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Vol. 5
Over the past few years Strahan has become a ‘must buy’ editor for me. I don’t “love” every story in his collections but overall I am impressed every time.
I’m curious about the Reynolds story being contractually unavailable, as Strahan and Dozois are each using stories from Godlike Machines in their books (“Alone” by Robert Reed and “Return to Titan” by Stephen Baxter, respectively).
Frank:
I don’t suppose we’ll ever know what the contractual issue is, but having spoken to Jonathan about this I know he very much wanted to use “Troika” and cannot do so.