The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction: 23rd Annual Collection by Gardner Dozois

also be two new series in 2010, one by Ellen Datlow and one by Rich Horton, covering the online world specifically. The annual Nebula Awards anthology, which covers science fiction as well as fantasy of various sorts, functions as a de-facto ‘Best of the Year’ anthology, although it’s not usually counted among them; this year’s edition was Nebula Awards Showcase 2009 (Roc), edited by Ellen Datlow. In 2010, there’ll be a new series covering the Hugo winners, edited by Mary Robinette Kowal. The long-running Datlow, Link & Grant Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series died early in 2009, after twenty-one years of publication. Datlow immediately went on to start up a new horror series, The Best Horror of the Year: Volume One (Night Shade Books); the Kelly Link & Gavin Grant fantasy half has yet to find a new home. There were two Best of the Year anthologies covering horror: the new Datlow book, and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror (Robinson, Carroll & Graff), edited by Stephen Jones, up to its twentieth volume. Horror: The Best of the Year (Prime Books), edited by John Gregory Betancourt and Sean Wallace, seems to be at least on hiatus, if not gone. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer’s Year’s Best Fantasy is still around, but it has changed form and transmogrified in its ninth volume from a print publication issued by Tachyon to a version available as a download or a Print on Demand title from Tor.com. Since the Link/Gavin half of the old Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror is gone, and Rich Horton’s fantasy series will be merged with his science fiction Best in 2010, that left fantasy being covered by only two and a half anthologies in 2009, the Hartwell/Cramer, the Best American Fantasy (Prime), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, and by the fantasy half of The Best SF and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 3 (Night Shade Books), edited by Jonathan Strahan. There was also The 2009 Rhysling Anthology (Science Fiction Poetry Association/Prime), edited by Drew Morse, which compiles the Rhysling Award-winning SF poetry of the year.
    Perhaps the best reading bargain among the year’s stand-alone reprint anthologies is The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction (Tachyon Publications), edited by Gordon Van Gelder, a retrospective ranging across the magazine’s sixty-year history, and containing classic stories by Alfred Bester, Daniel Keyes, Roger Zelazny, Ursula K. Le Guin, Damon Knight, Peter S. Beagle, Ted Chiang, and others. Another of the year’s prominent reprint anthologies is The Secret History of Science Fiction (Tachyon Publications), edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel; you don’t have to agree with the polemical agenda being promulgated here – which I have my doubts about – to realize that you’re getting a great bunch of reprint stories for your money, with a list split between SF writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, Maureen F. McHugh, Gene Wolfe, and Kessel and Kelly themselves, and writers usually more identified as ‘mainstream,’ such as Michael Chabon, George Saunders, T.C. Boyle, and Margaret Atwood. The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Mystery and the Imagination Detailing the Adventures of the World’s Most Famous Detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes (Night Shade Books), edited by John Joseph Adams, is a mixed reprint (mostly) and original cross-genre anthology of Sherlock Holmes pastiches by various hands, some of them by SF/fantasy writers and some by writers known better for their work in the mystery genre; there’s reprint work here by Neil Gaiman, Stephen Baxter, Laurie R. King, Sharyn McCrumb, Tanith Lee, Stephen King, Peter Tremayne, Vonda N. McIntyre, Chris Roberson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Michael Moorcock, and others, and good original work by Naomi Novik and others.
    Lots of fang-flashing vampire stories were reprinted this year, perhaps not surprisingly considering the commercial success of Twilight both on the page and on the screen. One such reprint (mostly)