"David G. Hartwell - Year's Best SF 8" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hartwell David G)

paperback lead this year). Mass market distributors are still pressing all publishers to reduce the number
of titles and just publish тАЬbig books,тАЭ but SF and fantasy seem to be resisting further diminution.
The last SF and fantasy magazines that are widely distributed are Analog, AsimovтАЩs, F&SF, and
Realms of Fantasy. All of them published a lot of good fiction this year, we are pleased to report. 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 semi-prozinesтАФfor
example, Interzone, Tales of the Unanticipated, Spectrum SF, Black GateтАФmirror the тАЬlittle
magazinesтАЭ of the mainstream in function, holding to professional editorial standards and publishing the
next generation of writers, along with some of the present masters.
The small presses were a very healthy presence. We have a strong short-fiction field today in part
because the small presses publishing semi-professional magazines, single-author collections, and
anthologies are printing and circulating a majority of the high-quality fiction published in SF and fantasy
and horror. One significant trend noticeable in the small press anthologies this year was toward
genre-bending slipstream stories. The SF Book Club, now part of the mega-corporation (Bookspan) that
resulted from the combination of all of the Literary Guild and Book of the Month Club divisions,
continues to be an innovative and lively publisher, as well as an influential reprinter. 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
editions of those anthologies.
The best original anthologies of the year in our opinion were Leviathan 3, edited by Jeff
VanderMeer and Forrest Aguirre; Polyphony, edited by Jay Lake; Conjunctions 39, edited by Peter
StraubтАФthese books mixing SF and fantasy with slipstream fiction; Mars Probes, edited by Peter
Crowther (DAW); Embrace the Mutation, edited by Bill Sheehan; Agog, edited by Cat Sparks; and
The DAW 30th Anniversary SF Anthology, edited by Betsy Wollheim and Sheila Gilbert (which
contained in general long episodes from popular novel series rather than independent stories; there was
also a companion volume for fantasy). Of these, the particular excellences of Polyphony, Conjunctions
39, Leviathan, and Embrace the Mutation were mostly in the realm of fantasy, and the especial
pleasures of Mars Probes were in SF. So you will find a couple of stories here from Mars Probes, but
should look to our companion YearтАЩs Best Fantasy 3 for stories from the other books. The rest of the
paperback original anthologies of the year should best be considered as equivalent to single issues of
magazines, and on that basis, 2002 was on the whole not a distinguished year for original anthologies in
paperback.
Several online short fiction markets (Infinite Matrix, SciFiction, and Strange Horizons) helped to
cushion the loss in recent years of print media markets for short fiction. We found some excellent science
fiction, particularly from editor Ellen DatlowтАЩs SciFiction site, now the highest-paying market in the genre
for short fiction, although both the others were of quite high quality in general. We offer stories from them
in this book for perhaps the first time in print.
In 2002 it was good to be reading the magazines, as well, both professional and semi-pro. It was a
very strong year for novellas, and there were more than a hundred shorter stories in consideration. So we
repeat, for readers new to this series, the usual disclaimer: This selection of science fiction stories
represents the best that was published during the year 2002. It would take two or three more volumes of
this size to include nearly all of the best short storiesтАФthough even then, not all of the best novellas. And
we believe that representing the best from year to year, while it is not physically possible to encompass it
all in even one very large book, also implies presenting some substantial variety of excellences, and we
left some worthy stories out in order to include others in this limited space.
Our general principle for selection: This book is full of science fictionтАФevery story in the book is
clearly that and not something else. We have a high regard for horror, fantasy, speculative fiction, and
slipstream, and postmodern literature. We (Kathryn Cramer and David G. Hartwell) edit 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, we chose science fiction.