Readers
Rich Horton's Market Summaries:
Summary: Anthologies, 2003
In 2003 I read 29 different original anthologies. (Some had a couple of reprint stories, and one, Witpunk, is about half reprint. The statistics below consider original stories only.) This is by far a record for me. For manageability I'll divide them into smaller chunks which I will consider in separate posts. These "chunks" are ad hoc, devised by me, and any individual anthology might of course fit better, or at any rate just as well, into a different chunk. For those who think it matters, some of these books included some stories that were not SF (nor fantasy nor horror) by any definition: I haven't bothered to separate these from the rest.
Totals first: 29 books, 453 stories (9 novellas, 1113 novelettes, 331 short stories), about 3.15 million words.
1. DAW
This includes 6 mass market paperbacks in what is sometimes called DAW's "monthly magazine", plus one big hardcover (the latter being the Resnick/Ian anthology Stars). I assume I missed 6 more of DAW's monthly "issues", except that these may include the three Steven Silver/Martin Greenberg anthologies reprinting authors' first sales (Wondrous Beginnings et. al.): these of course were not original anthologies.
The books: Future Wars, Sword and Sorceress XX, Stars, Women Writing Science Fiction as Men, Men Writing Science Fiction as Women, Space, Inc., New Voices in Science Fiction
Subtotals: 7 books, 125 new stories (1 novella, 22 novelettes, 102 short stories), about 706,000 words.
2. Hardcover Fantasy/Horror
Three nice hardcover anthologies consisted entirely (by design or accident) of fantasy or horror stories.
The books: Firebirds, Shadows Over Baker Street, The Dark
Subtotals: 3 books, 50 stories (1 novella, 26 novelettes, 23 short stories), about 416,000 words
3. Longer Stories
Two books focussed on novelettes and novellas only. (Remember back in the 70s when people like Silverberg routinely put out original anthologies collecting 3 to 5 novellas?)
The books: Imaginings, The Dragon Quintet
Subtotals: 2 books, 15 stories (2 novellas, 13 novelettes), about 205,000 words.
4. "Traditional" Science Fiction
These four books I've grouped as being fairly "traditional" science fiction-oriented anthologies -- not that there aren't a couple of fantasy stories mixed in, but mostly these seem SF -- at least for the purposes of my "chunks"!
The books: Witpunk, The Silver Gryphon, Hitting the Skids in Pixeltown, Live Without a Net
Subtotals: 4 books, 62 stories (1 novella, 17 novelettes, 44 short stories), about 388,000 words.
5. "Out of Genre" anthologies
This is a convenient grouping of three anthologies that seemed more out of our genre than the other books -- though just because the stories in Album Zutique (particularly) are unusual or exotic doesn't mean we need to banish them from the genre -- perhaps what I really mean is that it seemed unimportant to the editors of these anthologies where one might pigeonhole any particular story.
The books: McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, Album Zutique #1, Trampoline
Subtotals: 3 books, 55 new stories (3 novellas, 11 novelettes, 41 short stories), about 390,000 words.
6. Outside the US
I found five anthologies that either explicitly or implicitly selected stories from non-US authors. One is Australian, one includes mostly old-time British authors, one is an historical look at Latin American and Spanish SF, one is Canadian, and one is restricted even further, to Montrealers.
The books: Agog! Terrific Tales, Fantasy Annual 5, Open Space, Island Dreams, Cosmos Latinos
Subtotals: 5 books, 90 stories (17 novelettes, 73 short stories), about 480,000 words.
7. Polyphony
Could have been called "out of genre" too, I suppose, but I figured it was sensible to treat the two 2003 issues of this new series in a post of their own.
The books: Polyphony 2, Polyphony 3
Subtotals: 2 books, 37 stories (1 novella, 7 novelettes, 29 short stories), about 232,000 words.
8. Small Press Anthologies
These three books are grouped only by coming from smaller presses (its only fair to note that many of the other anthologies in the other groups come from small presses -- it's just that this is a convenient way to clump together these three otherwise unrelated books).
The books: Imagination Fully Dilated: Science Fiction, Low Port, The Book of Final Flesh
Subtotals: 3 books, 58 stories (5 novelettes, 53 short stories), about 325,000 words.
