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Rich Horton's Market Summaries:
Anthologies, 2004
In 2004 I read 34 different original anthologies. (Some had a couple of reprint stories, and two were half or more than half reprint, but had several new stories each.) 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: 34 books, 477 stories (28 novellas, 134 novelettes, 315 short stories (22 "short-shorts")), about 3.5 million words. (This leaves out one full-length novel that appeared in an original anthology.)
A series of posts will follow in the next few days going into detail about the best stories from each subset.
1. DAW
This includes 11 mass market paperbacks in what is sometimes called DAW's "monthly magazine". That's all the original DAW anthologies, I believe -- the missing month was occupied by a paperback reprint of the 2003 hardcover anthology _Stars_. (I made a special effort this year to read all the DAW anthologies.
The books:
- Microcosms, edited by Gregory Benford;
- The Magic Shop, edited by Denise Little;
- Space Stations, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers;
- Conqueror Fantastic, edited by Pamela Sargent;
- Faerie Tales, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Russell Davis;
- Little Red Riding Hood in the Big Bad City, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers;
- Sirius: The Dog Star, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Alexander Potter;
- ReVisions, edited by Julie E. Czerneda and Isaac Szpindel;
- Haunted Holidays, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Russell Davis;
- Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress XXI, edited by Diana L. Paxson;
- Rotten Relations, edited by Denise Little.
Subtotals: 11 books, 164 new stories (2 novella, 40 novelettes, 122 short stories (2 short-shorts)), just over a million words.
2. Baen anthologies
I read enough anthologies from Baen Books this year to qualify them for a separate listing like DAW's. A total of four books:
- Cosmic Tales: Adventures in Sol System, edited by T.K.F. Weisskopf;
- Masters of Fantasy, edited by Bill Fawcett and Brian Thomsen;
- Visions of Liberty, edited by Mark Tier and Martin H. Greenberg;
- Turn the Other Chick, edited by Esther M. Friesner.
Subtotals: 4 books, 54 new stories (1 novel, 2 novellas, 17 novelettes, 34 short stories (one a short-short)), for 443,000 words of new fiction, of which about 388,000 words was short fiction. (The novel was "Web of Deception", a 55,000 word self-contained excerpt from David Weber's 2004 book Windrider's Oath.)
3. "Other Genre" anthologies
There were two curious "pairs" of anthologies aimed at readers of different genres, but containing SF (actually mostly Fantasy) stories.
The first pair was marketed to Romance readers. The books were Irresistible Forces, edited by Catherine Asaro; and To Weave a Web of Magic, which had no editor listed. The second pair was marketed to Mystery readers (actually -- these may have been marketed more to SF readers, but the books were explicitly mystery collections). These two books were Murder by Magic, edited by Rosemary Edghill; and Powers of Detection, edited by Dana Stabenow.
Subtotals: 4 books, 42 stories (8 novellas, 5 novelettes, 29 short stories), a total of just under 440,000 words.
4. Hardcover anthologies
This is a convenient way to group six rather diverse anthologies, that all came out in hardcover from major publishers. Perhaps not surprisingly, this includes some of the best books of the year. The six books I roped together this way are:
- The First Heroes, edited by Harry Turtledove and Noreen Doyle;
- Night Visions 11, edited by Bill Sheehan;
- Flights, edited by Al Sarrantonio;
- Between Worlds, edited by Robert Silverberg;
- The Faery Reel, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling;
- Crossroads, edited by F. Brett Cox and Andy Duncan.
Subtotals: 84 stories (12 novellas, 30 novelettes, 42 short stories (2 short-shorts)), about 800,000 words. (Crossroads, I should add, included a substantial quantity (about half the book) of reprint stories, not included in the total above.)
5. Small Press anthologies
Again, a convenient way to group several diverse anthologies. Perhaps slightly more surprisingly, this group also includes some of the best anthologies of the year. The four books I placed in this group were:
- Leviathan 4: Cities, edited by Forrest Aguirre;
- Polyphony 4, edited by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake;
- All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, edited by David Moles and Jay Lake;
- Scattered, Covered, Smothered, edited by Jason Erik Lundberg.
Subtotals: 77 stories total, of which two were reprints. Of the 75 new stories, there were: 1 novella, 18 novelettes, 56 short stories (15 of them "short-shorts"), for a total of about 435,000 words total, 417,000 of them new to 2004.
6. Miscellaneous
And finally a catchall category to fit some books I couldn't fit elsewhere. (Some may have been arguably "small press", I suppose.) These five books were:
- Absolutely Brilliant in Chrome, edited by Keith Olexa;
- Synergy SF, edited by George Zebrowski;
- Agog! Smashing Stories, edited by Cat Sparks;
- The Mammoth Book of Sorcerer's Tales, edited by Mike Ashley;
- McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, edited by Michael Chabon.
Subtotals: 5 books, 59 stories total (3 novellas, 24 novelettes, 32 short stories (1 a short-short), about 467,000 words of new fiction. (The Mammoth Book of Sorcerer's Tales is indeed a "Mammoth" book, but the great bulk of it is reprints. However, it features 6 new stories, mostly novelettes, for about 60,000 words of fiction (more than the shortest book of all new stories in my list), so I included it. Only the originals are included in the stats above.)
