Every year, there’s a new volume of the Year’s Best Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois. This year marks the 25th edition. There are a lot of genre year’s best anthologies, but this is the longest running. These days I find myself reading less science fiction and more fantasy and speculative fiction (think Kelly Link or Jeff VanderMeer or Jeffrey Ford or Lucius Shephard or Theodora Goss to name a few) so I always enjoy going through the new volume to get my SF fix, so to speak.
Since 2002, I’ve rushed out to the bookstore to read the yearly summation in the front of the book and the review the list of the Honorable Mentions in the back of the book. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know a lot of people who do the same thing.
We all do this for very selfish reasons. We’re either authors or publishers, but we’re both looking for some recognition of the work we’ve done. For an author, it’s fairly simple the scroll the list and find your name (yay!) or not (sob!) but for me, it’s a little trickier. I have to scan the right-hand side of the list to see where the Honorable Mentions were published. And then I go back through the list and scan the names for the people I’ve published just in case I missed something.
Before you get ready to sent me some consolatory flowers (or candy, which is the better way to go), I am searching the list for Electric Velocipede, which stands out fairly readily from the other text. This year I was also looking Logorrhea, which as you may imagine, also stands out nicely from the surrounding text. And there’s the fact that many publications don’t get any mentions at all, so no need to feel sorry for me (I will, however, still take candy if you have a wont to send it).
So whenever the book comes out, there is the annual tradition of posting your Honorable Mentions online. I won’t try to keep track of all the authors doing this, but after the break there are some links to lists from publishers who have had a chance to see the book.
The book just came out this month, so there aren’t that many places that have had a chance to go through it and post their respective Honorable Mentions.
Here are mine (from Electric Velocipede, the Logorrhea anthology, and the William Shunn chapbook):
http://blog.electricvelocipede.com/2008/07/years-best-science-fiction-25th-edition.html
Here are Neil Clarke’s (from Clarkesworld Magazine):
http://clarkesworld.livejournal.com/119281.html
Here are Sean Wallace’s (from Fantasy Magazine, Weird Tales, and also from Clarkesworld Magazine):
http://oldcharliebrown.livejournal.com/197853.html
Here are Doug Cohen’s (Doug works for Realms of Fantasy):
http://slushmaster.livejournal.com/121726.html