"David G. Hartwell - Year's Best SF 7" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hartwell David G)

Lisa Goldstein The Go-Between
Gene Wolfe Viewpoint
Gregory Benford Anomalies
Alastair Reynolds Glacial
James Patrick Kelly Undone
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the usefulness of Tangents online, and of Locus online and Locus magazine, and
the many reviewers of short fiction with whom we often disagree. And also the help of those fiction websites,
including SciFiction and Strange Horizons, who printed and sent us stories to consider.
Introduction

The year 2001 was an excellent one for the science fiction short story. The stories were often
challenging, thought-provoking, and entertaining in the ways that make SF a unique genre. It was a year
of great excitement, great tragedy in the real world, and great change. There is a war going on.
In 2001, books by the big names were selling better than ever, sliding through the publishing and
distribution process perhaps even easier than before. Hardcover editions contributed substantially to the
support of every SF publishing line. The trade paperback was well-established as the safety net of a
number of publishers and writers. The small presses were again a vigorous presence. We have a strong
short fiction field today because the small presses, semi-professional magazines, and anthologies are
printing and circulating a majority of the high-quality fiction published in sf and fantasy and horror. The
U.S. is the only English language country that still has any professional, large-circulation magazines,
though Canada, Australia, and the UK have several excellent magazines. The semiprozines of our field
mirror the "little magazines" of the mainstream in function, holding to professional editorial standards and
publishing the next generation of writers, along with some of the present masters. What a change that is in
the U.S.тАФthough this trend has been emerging for more than a decade.
We must not forget the SF Book Club, so much a part of the SF field that it is often as invisible,
unless we look up, as the skyscrapers we pass on our way to work in the city. Good anthologies and
collections are harder than ever to select on the bookstore shelves from among the mediocre ones, but
you will find some of the best books each year selected for SFBC editions, often the only hardcover
edition of those anthologies.
The best original anthologies of the year in our opinion were Starlight 3, edited by Patrick Nielsen
Hayden (Tor) and Red Shift, edited by Al Sarrantonio (Roc). Of those, the particular excellences of
Starlight were mostly in the realm of fantasy, and the especial pleasures of Red Shift were in SF. So you
will find some stories here from Red Shift, but should look to our companion, Year's Best Fantasy 2, for
some stories from the Nielsen Hayden book.
I write in December 2001, but the anxious outlines of the publishing future are becoming clear for the
SF field in 2002. SF publishing as we have known it is nine mass market publishing lines (Ace, Bantam,
Baen, DAW, Del Rey, Eos, Roc, Tor, Warner), ten if you count Pocket Book's Star Trek line, and
those lines are hard-pressed to continue distributing the number of new titles they have been able to in the
past. Mass market distributors are pressing all publishers to reduce the number of titles and just publish
"big books." The last SF and Fantasy magazines that are widely distributed (Analog, Asimov's, F&SF,
Realms of Fantasy) are being charged more by the same distributors for distribution because they are
not as high-circulation as The New Yorker or Playboy (which are also under pressure). So the in-field
magazines are hard-pressed but are only a special case of the widespread difficulties facing all magazines.

In 2001, the air went out of electronic bookselling. Amazon.com fired a lot of people and closed
warehouses, intending to claim a profit in early 2002. Barnes & Noble folded its dotcom division back
into the bookstore chain, with attendant layoffs. And electronic text failed to live up to the advance
publicity (both Random House and Warner closed their etext operations by the end of 2001).
Print-on-demand became a very small success. The Wall Street Journal, in a late-year article surveying