"David G. Hartwell - Year's Best SF 6" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hartwell David G)

next decade.
Worldwide, the small press is a force of growing strength and importance in the field, in part due to
the availability of computers within reach of the average fannish budget and in part due to the new
economies of instant print, now prevalent in the USA and soon to reach everywhere. Hardly a day goes
by without a new instant print review copy of a small press trade paperback in the NYRSF* mailbox.
Many of them are in fact self-published works that do not meet professional standards of writing, it is
true, but a few of them are carefully written, well-edited gems. And the books from the more established
small presses, from Golden Gryphon, Ministry of Whimsey, Borderlands, and others, continue to
impress.
The field lost two fine magazines this year, Amazing and SF Age, but a perceptible increase in the
number and quality of small press magazines helped to cushion the loss, as did the announcement of
several high-paying online short fiction markets. Interestingly, none of the highest paying online publishers
intend to actually make money selling the fiction, but are supporting it as a promotional expense! I
wonder how long that will last. Certainly not many months in the future if the world stock markets
continue to lose trillions of dollars (I write at a particularly low point in recent economic times). Still, we
are better off right now than in the not-too-distant past, and are all grateful that SF is of promotional
value in 2001. I hope to find some excellent science fiction online this year to reprint next year in this
series.
As to the quality of the yearтАЩs fiction, 2000 was a particularly fine year, with grand old names and hot
new talents competing for attention. It was a good year to be reading the magazines, both pro and
semi-professional. It was a strong year for novellas, with fifteen or twenty of them in consideration for the
limited space allowed in this book by length constraints; youтАЩll have to go to the competing YearтАЩs Best in
fat trade paperback to sample more novellas. And there were a hundred shorter stories in consideration,
from which this rich selection was chosen. So I repeat, for readers new to this series, my usual disclaimer:
this selection of science fiction stories represents the best that was published during the year 2000. I
could perhaps have filled two or three more volumes this size and then claimed to have nearly all of the
bestтАФthough not all the best novellas. I believe that representing the best from year to year, while it is not
physically possible to encompass it all in one even very large book, also implies presenting some
substantial variety of excellence, and I left some writers out in order to include others in this limited space.
My general principle for selection: this book is full of science fictionтАФevery story in the book is
clearly that and not something else. I personally have a high regard for horror, fantasy, speculative fiction,
and slipstream, and postmodern literature. This year Kathryn Cramer and I launch the YearтАЩs Best
Fantasy in paperback from Eos as a companion volume to this oneтАФlook for it if you enjoy short fantasy
fiction too. But here, I chose science fiction. It is the intention of this YearтАЩs Best series to focus on
science fiction, and to provide readers who are looking especially for science fiction an annual home
base.
Which is not to say that I chose one kind of science fictionтАФI try to represent the varieties of tones
and voices and attitudes that keep the genre vigorous and responsive to the changing realities out of
which it emerges, in science and daily life. This is a book about whatтАЩs going on now in SF. The stories
that follow show, and the story notes point out, the strengths of the evolving genre in the year 2000. I
hope that this book and its companions are essential reading in SF.

тАФDavid G. Hartwell
 Pleasantville, NY



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PAUL J. MCAULEY