summation: 2010

The big story in 2010 was the explosion in e-book sales, something that some industry commentators have seen coming for a long time now, but which has come to a boil faster and more extensively than almost anybody predicted that it would.

This market started to accelerate in 2007, with the introduction of Amazon’s Kindle, the first portable e-book reader, but the lid really blew off this year when Amazon lowered the purchase price for the Kindle down to $139, with the introduction of competing devices such as Apple’s iPad and Barnes & Noble’s NOOK, and with the founding of “online bookstores” by Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Google where products for these devices can be purchased. Amazon has announced that the third-generation Kindle is the bestselling product in its history, having sold “millions” (no exact figures are available) in 2010 alone, and the NOOK is similarly Barnes & Noble’s biggest seller in its forty-year history; Apple’s iPad—which has other functions, so it is technically a touch screen media tablet rather than an e-reader, but you can still read e-books on it, and that’s probably a fairly common use for it—sold 3.27 million units in its first three months after its April 2010 release, and is projected to hit 28 million units sold in 2011. According to a survey of more than 6,000 book shoppers carried out by Codex Group, 21 percent of them now own e-readers or tablet computers.

And, of course, all these people who now own e-readers or tablet computers now want something to read on them.

According to Amazon, e-books are now outselling both hardcover and paperback print books—they’re selling three times as many e-books as hardcovers, 180 of them for every 100 hardcovers sold, and selling 115 e-books for every 100 paperbacks sold. The Association of American Publishers estimates that from January to August of 2010, the sales of e-books were up from $166.9 million in 2009 to $441 million in 2010, an increase of 164.4 percent, which means that e-books now account for 10 percent of all consumer book sales in the United States, up from 3.31 percent in 2009. And these figures were from before the Christmas rush, which saw millions of Kindles, NOOKs, and iPads bought as Christmas presents, with the attendant purchase of e-books to read on them—Barnes & Noble alone reports nearly one million e-books purchased and downloaded just on Christmas Day. At the same time, the AAP report for October shows sales of print books down at $721 million, a 0.9 percent drop from October the year before, and the U.S. Census Bureau preliminary report for October shows bookstore sales of $1.0 billion, down 2.5 percent from October 2009; year-to-date sales were also down 2.5 percent, to $13.3 billion. When comparing print and e-book sales for the first three-quarters of 2010, AAP figures show print trade sales from the five major categories down 7.5 percent, while e-book sales rose 188.4 percent for the same period.

All this has prompted some commentators to predict a publishing apocalypse, where print books go out of existence altogether, physical brick-and-mortar bookstores become extinct, and even the publishing companies themselves die, since now that authors can put e-books together themselves and sell them on online bookstores, they have no need of publishers anymore.

I don’t think that this is likely to happen. Although it’s clear that e-books are cannibalizing the print book market to some extent, with some consumers opting to buy the cheaper e-books rather than the more expensive print editions, that doesn’t mean that people are going to stop buying print books altogether. The fact is that more books, both print and digital, are being sold than ever before. Amazon may be selling 115 e-books for every 100 paperbacks sold—but they’re still selling those 100 paperbacks. Amazon’s Russ Grandinetti has commented that “our print business continues to grow. We see e-books as an additive more than a substitute,” and Scott Lubeck of the Book Industry Study Group has pointed out that “it’s good for readers, and reading is good for publishing.” For the foreseeable future, a sizeable percentage of people are going to prefer print books to e-books, and browsing at physical brick-and-mortar bookstores to shopping for books online, and many writers are not going to have either the inclination or the skill set necessary to publish their own e-books themselves, even though current technology makes that possible (and a certain number will do just that, some successfully, some not; publishing houses won’t be going away anytime soon, though). For that matter, although this is a factor not taken into consideration in most conversations of this sort, even here in the twenty-first century there are still plenty of people who don’t have e-readers, don’t have Internet access, don’t even have computers of any sort, and to ignore them would be to abandon a considerable subset of potential customers. Even people too poor to afford an iPad or a Kindle may still pick up a mass-market paperback from time to time.

The whole either/or thing is a false dichotomy anyway. The truth is, only a very few purists will insist on buying exclusively in one format. Most readers will buy both print books and e-books, choosing one or the other depending on the circumstances.

Nevertheless, as I’ve been predicting for several years now, there are big changes on the horizon (mostly changes for the better, I think, with any luck), and the whole publishing world may look very different a decade from now.

Although I suspect that the boardrooms at many a publishing house were filled with executives panicking over the “sudden surprise” explosion in popularity of e-books that many commentators have seen coming for almost a decade now, the genre publishing world was relatively quiet on the surface in 2010, although the possible collapse of the bookstore chain Borders, which tottered on the brink of bankruptcy throughout the year and filed for chapter 11 on February 16, 2011, could have serious repercussions for the publishing industry as a whole. Random House Publishing Group continued the major structural reorganizations that started in 2008 by merging the Ballantine and Bantam Dell divisions into a single group called Ballantine Bantam Dell, combining the two independent editorial departments into one. Ballantine senior vice president and publisher Libby McGuire will run the new division, overseeing hardcover and mass-market paperback publications from DelRey/Spectra, Ballantine, Bantam, Delacorte, Dell, Villard, and other imprints. Trade paperback publications will continue to be overseen by Jane von Mehren, senior vice-president of trade paperbacks. Nina Taublib, former executive vice-president, publisher, and editor-in-chief of Bantam Dell, has stepped down. Jennifer Hershey has become editor-in-chief of the new Ballantine Bantam Dell group. Eos, the SF imprint of HarperCollins, will be renamed Harper Voyager in January 2011, bringing it into line with the Voyager programs in Australia and the United Kingdom; Diana Gill of Eos will remain executive editor of Harper Voyager in the United States.

Prominent British editor Jo Fletcher, longtime associate publisher of Gollancz, left the company to join Quercus, where she will run her own SF/fantasy/horror imprint, Jo Fletcher Books. Angry Robot Books, the imprint of HarperCollins UK, started in 2009, parted ways with its parent company and became an independent imprint of Osprey Publishing, a nonfiction press that currently specializes in military history and wants to expand into the science fiction and fantasy market; founder and publisher Marc Gascoigne will remain in charge. Ian Randal Strock purchased SF/fantasy imprint Fantastic Books from Wilder Publications; Fantastic Books will now be an imprint of Strock’s Gray Rabbit Publications, and Douglas Cohen, Darrell Schweitzer, and David Truesdale will remain as acquiring editors. Dorchester decided to give up print publishing entirely and become a digital-only publisher, then reversed the decision early in 2011 under a new CEO, and will add a full trade paperback line, Dorchester Trade Publishing, in addition to its e-publishing program.

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It was, thankfully, a quiet year in the long-troubled print magazine market, with even a few minor bits of encouraging news here and there, mostly an increase in subscriptions sold for electronic reading devices like the Kindle, the iPad, and the NOOK. All of the major print magazines survived the year, with the exception of Realms of Fantasy, which had died and been reborn under a different publisher the previous year, and which died again in 2010—only to be reborn again under yet another new publisher, with the editorial staff intact.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction again published a lot of good fantasy this year, but only occasionally a strong SF story. Good stories by Robert Reed, Ian R. MacLeod, Steven Popkes, Paul Park, James L. Cambias, Albert E. Cowdrey, Rachel Pollack, Aaron Schultz, Ian Tregillis, and others appeared in F&SF in 2010. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction mostly remained stable, registering only a slight 2.1 percent loss in overall circulation, from 15,491 to 15,172, with subscriptions dropping from 12,045 to 10,907, but newsstand sales rising from 3,446 to 4,264; sell-through rose from 37 percent to 42 percent. Gordon Van Gelder is in his fourteenth year as editor and his tenth year as owner and publisher.

Asimov’s Science Fiction was once again almost the reverse of F&SF, publishing a lot of good SF, but not as much good fantasy. Good stories by Robert Reed, Geoffrey A. Landis, Michael Swanwick, Tom Purdom, Felicity Shoulders, Allen M. Steele, Steven Popkes, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Rick Wilber, and others appeared in Asimov’s in 2009. For the first time since 2001, Asimov’s Science Fiction registered a gain in overall circulation, up 26.1 percent from 16,696 to 21,057. Subscriptions rose from 13,731 to 17,866, a substantial part of that due to digital copies sold for e-readers through devices such as the Kindle; perhaps electronic subscriptions will be the saving of the print SF magazines after all, as I’ve been suggesting they might be for several years now. Newsstand sales dipped a bit, from 2,965 to 2,781; sell-through stayed steady at 31 percent. Sheila Williams completed her sixth year as Asimov’s editor.

Analog Science Fiction and Fact had a somewhat weak year, although good work by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Michael F. Flynn, Allen M. Steele, Stephen Baxter, Brenda Cooper, Sean McMullen, and others did appear. Analog Science Fiction and Fact registered a 4 percent rise in overall circulation, from 25,418 to 26,440, with subscriptions rising from 21,636 to 22,791, also largely because of digital sales. Newsstand sales dropped from 3,782 to 3,359; sell-through dropped from 34 percent to 32 percent. Stanley Schmidt has been editor there for thirty-three years, and 2010 marked the magazine’s eightieth anniversary.

Interzone is technically not a “professional magazine,” by the definition of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), because of its low rates and circulation, but the literary quality of the work published there is so high that it would be ludicrous to omit it. Interzone also had a strong year, publishing good work by Nina Allan, Lavie Tidhar, Jim Hawkins, Aliette de Bodard, Jay Lake, Mercurio D. Rivera, Matthew Cook, and others. Circulation there seems to have held steady, in the 3,000-copy range. The editors include publisher Andy Cox and Andy Hedgecock. TTA Press, Interzone’s publisher, also publishes the straight horror or dark suspense magazine Black Static, which is beyond our purview here, but of a similar level of professional quality.

Realms of Fantasy managed six issues under new publisher Tir Na Nog publications, who’d acquired them in 2009 after the magazine had been cancelled by longtime publisher Sovereign Media, before dying again in 2010—only to be rescued again by another new publisher, Damnation Books, who plans to resume publishing it in 2011. Founding editor Shawna McCarthy, who has edited the magazine since 1994, will remain editor of Realms of Fantasy in its new incarnation. Good stuff appeared here in 2010 by Jay Lake, Aliette de Bodard, Harlan Ellison, M. K. Hobson, T. L. Morganfield, and others.

The British magazine Postscripts has reinvented itself as an anthology, and is reviewed as such in the anthology section that follows, but I’ll list the subscription information up here, for lack of anywhere else to put it, and, because, unlike most other anthology series, you can subscribe to Postscripts.

If you’d like to see lots of good SF and fantasy published every year, the survival of these magazines is essential, and one important way that you can help them survive is by subscribing to them. It’s never been easier to do so, something that these days can be done with just the click of a few buttons, nor has it ever before been possible to subscribe to the magazines in as many different formats, from the traditional print copy arriving by mail to downloads for your desktop or laptop available from places like Fictionwise (www.fictionwise.com) and Amazon (www.amazon.com), to versions you can read on your Kindle, NOOK, or iPad. You can also now subscribe from overseas just as easily as you can from the United States, something formerly difficult to impossible.

So in hopes of making it easier for you to subscribe, I’m going to list both the Internet sites where you can subscribe online and the street addresses where you can subscribe by mail for each magazine: Asimov’s site is at www.asimovs.com, and subscribing online might be the easiest thing to do, and there’s also a discounted rate for online subscriptions; its subscription address is Asimov’s Science Fiction, Dell Magazines, 267 Broadway, Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10007-2352—$34.97 for annual subscription in the United States, $44.97 overseas. Analog’s site is at www.analogsf.com; its subscription address is Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Dell Magazines, 267 Broadway, Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10007-2352—$34.97 for annual subscription in the United States, $44.97 overseas. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction’s site is at www.sfsite.com/fsf; its subscription address is The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Spilogale, Inc., P.O. Box 3447, Hoboken, N.J. 07030, annual subscription—$34.97 in the United States, $46.97 overseas. Interzone and Black Static can be subscribed to online at www.ttapress.com/onlinestore1.html; the subscription address for both is TTA Press, 5 Martins Lane, Witcham, Ely, Cambs CB6 2LB, England, UK—£42.00 each for a twelve-issue subscription, or there is a reduced rate dual subscription offer of £78.00 for both magazines for twelve issues; make checks payable to “TTA Press.”

Most of these magazines are also available in various electronic formats through Fictionwise, or for the Kindle and other handheld readers.

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The print semiprozine market continues to contract, vulnerable to the same pressures in terms of rising postage rates and production costs as the professional magazines are. In 2009, Subterranean, Fantasy Magazine, Apex Magazine, and Zahir all transitioned from print formats to electronic-only online formats, and I suspect that most of the surviving print semiprozines will sooner or later go the same route themselves.

The most prominent of the surviving print semiprozines, in terms of the quality of the fiction they publish, may be Weird Tales, Black Gate, and Electric Velocipede. Weird Tales is a fine-looking magazine, with a coolness quotient higher than most other magazines in the field, but they again managed only two of their scheduled four quarterly issues in 2010, as they had in 2009, and they need to work on the reliability of their publishing schedule if they’re to become a major player. Ann VanderMeer is now the editor, promoted from fiction editor at the beginning of 2010, and Weird Tales published good work this year by Ian R. MacLeod, Aidan Doyle, Catherynne M. Valente, and others. The sword and sorcery magazine Black Gate managed only one issue this year, although it was a double issue, even huger than their issues usually are, featuring strong stuff by James Enge, Robert J. Howe, Michael Jasper, Jay Lake, and others; the longtime editor is John O’Neill. Electric Velocipede, edited by John Klima, managed only one of its scheduled four issues in 2010, with interesting work by Cyril Simsa, Daniel Braum, and others.

The longest running of all the fiction semiprozines, and the most reliably published, one of the few that kept to its announced publishing schedule, is the Canadian On Spec, which is edited by a collective under general editor Diane L. Walton. Once again, I found the fiction here mostly kind of bland, although there was interesting work by Toni Pi, Marissa K. Lingen, and Tina Connolly that did appear. Another collective-run SF magazine with a rotating editorial staff, Australia’s Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, which is usually a bit livelier than On Spec, published seven issues this year, running good stuff by Karl Bunker, Janeen Samuel, Ferrett Steinmetz, and others.

There were two issues of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, the long-running slipstream magazine edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant. The Australian magazine Aurealis, edited by Stuart Mayne, who is stepping down in 2011, also produced two issues, as did Ireland’s long-running Albedo One, and the fantasy magazine Shimmer. The small British SF magazine Jupiter, edited by Ian Redman, produced all four of its scheduled issues in 2010. Fantasy magazine Tales of the Talisman put out four issues, the long-running Space and Time Magazine produced three, and a new start-up SF magazine, Bull Spec, produced two. There were single issues of Neo-opsis, Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Sybil’s Garage, the South African magazine Something Wicked, Space Squid, and Tales of the Unanticipated.

There’s not much of the print critical magazine market left—many of them have either died or moved onto the Web in electronic format, something I suspect will happen to most of them sooner or later. One of the hearty survivors, the best of them and certainly your best bet for value, is the newszine Locus: The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field, a multiple Hugo winner, which for more than thirty years has been an indispensable source of news, information, and reviews. Sadly, founder, publisher, and longtime editor Charles N. Brown died in 2009, but Locus has continued strongly and successfully under the guidance of a staff of editors headed by Liza Groen Trombi, and including Kirsten Gong-Wong, Amelia Beamer, and many others. The New York Review of Science Fiction, a critical magazine edited by David G. Hartwell and a staff of associate editors, is another hearty perennial, which has been reliably publishing a variety of eclectic and sometimes quirky critical essays on a wide range of topics for many years now.

Most of the other surviving print critical magazines are professional journals more aimed at academics than at the average reader. The most accessible of these is probably the long-running British critical zine Foundation.

Subscription addresses follow:

Locus, The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field, Locus Publications, Inc., P.O. Box 13305, Oakland, CA 94661, $72.00 for a one-year first-class subscription, twelve issues; The New York Review of Science Fiction. Dragon Press, P.O. Box 78, Pleasantville, NY 10570, $40.00 per year, twelve issues, make checks payable to “Dragon Press”; Foundation, Science Fiction Foundation, Roger Robinson (SFF), 75 Rosslyn Avenue, Harold Wood, Essex RM3 ORG, UK, $37.00 for a three-issue subscription in the United States; Weird Tales, $20.00 in the United States, $40 elsewhere for four issues, go to Wildside Press, www.wildsidemagazine.com/Weird-Tales to subscribe; Realms of Fantasy, $19.95 for a yearly (six issues) subscription in the United States, overseas $34.95, go to www.rofmag.com for subscription information; Black Gate, New Epoch Press, 815 Oak Street, St. Charles, IL 60174, $29.95 for a one-year (four issues) subscription; Aurealis, Chimaera Publications, P.O. Box 2164, Mt. Waverley, VIC 3149, Australia (Web site: www.aurealis.com.au), $59.75 for a four-issue overseas airmail subscription, checks should be made out to Chimaera Publications in Australian dollars; On Spec, The Canadian Magazine of the Fantastic, P.O. Box 4727, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6E 5G6, for subscription information, go to the Web site www.onspec.ca; Neo-opsis Science Fiction Magazine, 4129 Carey Rd., Victoria, BC, V8Z 4G5, $25.00 for a three-issue subscription; Albedo One. Albedo One Productions, 2 Post Road, Lusk Co., Dublin, Ireland, $32.00 for a four-issue airmail subscription, make checks payable to “Albedo One” or pay by PayPal at www.albedo1.com; Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306, Easthampton, MA 01027, $20.00 for four issues; Electric Velocipede, Spilt Milk Press, see Web site www.electricvelocipede.com for subscription information; Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, see Web site www.andromedaspaceways.com for subscription information; Tales of the Talisman, Hadrosaur Productions, P.O. Box 2194, Mesilla Park, NM 8804-2194, $24.00 for a four-issue subscription; Jupiter, 19 Bedford Road, Yeovil, Somerset, BA21 5UG, UK, £10 for four issues; Greatest Uncommon Denominator, Greatest Uncommon Denominator Publishing, P.O. Box 1537, Laconia, NH 03247, $18 for two issues; Sybil’s Garage, Senses Five Press, 76 India Street, Apt A8, Brooklyn, NY 11222-1657, no subscription information available but try the Web site www.sensesfive.com; Shimmer, P.O. Box 58591, Salt Lake City, UT 84158-0591, $22.00 for a four-issue subscription; Space Squid, no subscription address available, but you could try squish@spacesquid.com; Something Wicked, no subscription address available, try www.somethingwicked.co.za; Bull Spec, P.O. Box 13146, Durham, N.C. 27709, doesn’t seem to be available for subscription, but find it in your local book or comic shop or online at www.bullspec.com.

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The online world of electronic magazines becomes more important with every passing year. Already they’re a more reliable place to find quality fiction than most of the semiprozine market, and they’re giving the top print professional magazines a run for their money too, and sometimes beating them. It was a year of relatively few changes in the online market. Jim Baen’s Universe died after its April issue, a major disappointment; on the other hand, a new magazine, Lightspeed, was founded, and has already established itself as a major source of good fiction.

The best stuff on the Internet this year was probably to be found at Subterranean Magazine (www.subterraneanpress.com), edited by William K. Schafer, with one issue guest-edited by Jonathan Strahan. Lots of superior work, both science fiction and fantasy, appeared there this year by Damien Broderick, Hannu Rajaniemi, Maureen McHugh, Rachel Swirsky, K. J. Parker, Ted Chiang, Lucius Shepard, Kage Baker, Mike Resnick, and others. Subterranean is particularly to be commended for publishing several strong novellas, a rare length in the Internet world, where most stories tend to be short.

Clarkesworld (www.clarkesworldmagazine.com), edited by Sean Wallace and publisher and editor Neil Clarke, also had a good year, publishing strong SF, fantasy, and slipstream stories by Peter Watts, Robert Reed, Brenda Cooper, Yoon Ha Lee, Jay Lake, Eric Brown, and others. Sean Wallace stepped down as editor in November 2010.

Sean Wallace is also stepping down as editor of Fantasy Magazine (www.fantasy-magazine.com), as is co-editor Cat Rambo; they will be replaced by John Joseph Adams, who is also editing Lightspeed. Fantasy Magazine ran good stuff this year, mostly straight genre fantasy, with a little slipstream thrown in and even the occasional SF story, by Lavie Tidhar, Sarah Monette, Rachel Swirsky, Tony Pi, Aidan Doyle, Eilis O’Neal, Matthew Johnson, An Owomoyela, Jay Lake, Shannon Page, and others.

The above-mentioned John Joseph Adams, already a prolific anthologist, launched a new SF e-zine, Lightspeed (www.lightspeedmagazine.com), early in 2010, and will edit both Lightspeed and Fantasy Magazine at the same time, as well as his numerous anthologies, which will make him a busy fellow. Lightspeed hit the ground running, and has already established itself as a major new SF market, publishing good stories by Yoon Ha Lee, Carrie Vaughn, Ted Kosmatka, Jack McDevitt, Alice Sola Kim, and others.

The long-running e-zine Strange Horizons (www.strangehorizons.com), one of the longest-established fiction sites on the Internet, ran good stuff this year, their usual mix of SF, fantasy, slipstream, and soft horror by Lavie Tidhar, Theodora Goss, Samantha Henderson, John Kessel, Sandra McDonald, and others. Longtime editor-in-chief Susan Marie Groppi, stepped down (although she, Jed Hartman, and Karen Meisner will continue as fiction editors), to be replaced by Niall Harrison.

Tor.com (www.tor.com) has established itself as one of the coolest and most eclectic genre-oriented sites on the Internet, a Web site that regularly publishes SF, fantasy, and slipstream, as well as articles, comics, graphics, blog entries, print and media reviews, and commentary. It’s become a regular stop for me, even when they don’t have new fiction posted. The fiction at Tor.com this year seemed a bit weaker overall than in recent years, perhaps the result of running too many excerpts from upcoming novels that Tor wanted to push and too many “special interest” promotions like its months devoted to paranormal romance and steampunk, but it still published good stuff by Jay Lake, Ken Scholes, Eileen Gunn, Michael Swanwick, Kij Johnson, and others, and remains a fascinating place to visit. Liz Gorinsky joined Patrick Nielsen Hayden as co-editor of fiction.

Abyss & Apex, (www.abyssapexzine.com), edited by Wendy S. Delmater, which seems to run more SF than many of the other sites, had good stuff by Alan Smale, Lavie Tidhar, Michael Swanwick, Caren Gussoff, Bud Sparhawk, and others.

Apex Magazine (www.apexbookcompany.com/apex-online), returned after a hiatus for a redesign with a new fiction editor, Catherynne M. Valente, although Jason Sizemore remains as the owner and editor-in-chief. They featured good work by Theodora Goss, Saladin Ahmed, Peter M. Ball, Amal El-Mohtar, and others.

An e-zine devoted to “literary adventure fantasy, Beneath Ceaseless Skies (www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com), edited by Scott H. Andrews, published good stuff by Richard Parks, Yoon Ha Lee, Ann Leckie, Marissa Lingen, and others.

Ideomancer Speculative Fiction (www.ideomancer.com), edited by Leah Bobet, published interesting work by Megan Arkenberg, Ilan Lerman, LaShawn M. Wanak, and others.

The flamboyantly titled Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show (www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com), edited by Edmund R. Schubert under the direction of Card himself, had good work by Peter S. Beagle, Jason Sanford, and others.

New SF/fantasy e-zine Daily Science Fiction (http://dailysciencefiction.com) tackled the perhaps overly ambitious task of publishing one new SF or fantasy story for the entire year. Unsurprisingly, most are undistinguished, but there were some good ones by Lavie Tidhar, Tim Pratt, Jeff Hecht, Mary Robinette Kowal, and others.

New SF e-zine M-Brane (www.mbranesf.com) produced twelve issues this year, with seventy-four original stories.

Fantasy magazine Zahir (www.zahiirtales.com) moved from a print incarnation to an online venue this year, publishing twenty-four original stories.

A mix of science fact articles and fiction is available from the e-zine Futurismic (http://futurismic.com) and from Escape Velocity (www.escapevelocitymagazine.com). The futurist Web site Shareable Futures (http://shareable.net/blog/shareable-.futures) has been publishing stories set in futures with nonconventional economic systems by writers such as Bruce Sterling and Benjamin Rosenbaum.

Shadow Unit (www.shadowunit.org) is a Web site devoted to publishing stories drawn from an imaginary TV show, sort of a cross between CSI and The X-Files. I continue to find this an unexciting idea, but top professionals such as Elizabeth Bear, Emma Bull, and others are involved in producing scripts for it, so you might want to check it out.

The Australian popular-science magazine COSMOS (www.cosmosmagazine.com) is not a SF magazine per se, but for the last few years it has been running a story per issue selected by fiction editor Damien Broderick (and also putting new fiction not published in the print magazine up on their Web site). Broderick is stepping down, but is being replaced by Cat Sparks, and since she’s also an SF professional, I assume that this policy will continue under her as well.

Below this point, it becomes harder to find center-core SF, and most of the stories are slipstream or literary surrealism. Sites that feature those, as well as fantasy (and, occasionally, some SF) include Rudy Rucker’s Flurb (www.flurb.net), Revolution SF (www.revolutionsf.com), CovoteWild (www.coyotewildmag.com); Heliotrope (www.heliotropemag.com); and the somewhat less slipstreamish Bewildering Stories (www.bewilderingstories.com)

There’s also a lot of good reprint SF and fantasy stories out there on the Internet too, usually available for free. On all of the sites that make their fiction available for free, Strange Horizons, Tor.com, Fantasy, Subterranean, Abyss & Apex, and so on, you can also access large archives of previously published material as well as stuff from the “current issue.” Most of the sites that are associated with existent print magazines, such as Asimov’s, Analog, Weird Tales, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, make previously published fiction and nonfiction available for access on their sites, and also regularly run teaser excerpts from stories coming up in forthcoming issues. Hundreds of out-of-print titles, both genre and mainstream, are also available for free download from Project Gutenberg (http://promo.net/pg/), and a large selection of novels and a few collections can also be accessed for free, to be either downloaded or read on-screen, at the Baen Free Library (www.baen.com/library/). Sites such as Infinity Plus (http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/) and The Infinite Matrix (www.infinitematrix.net/) may have died as active sites, but their extensive archives of previously published material are still accessable.

If you’re willing to pay a small fee for them, an even greater range of reprint stories becomes available. Perhaps the best, and the longest-established place to find such material is Fictionwise (www.fictionwise.com), where you can buy downloadable e-books and stories to read on your PDA, Kindle, or home computer; in addition to individual stories, you can also buy “fiction bundles” here, which amount to electronic collections; as well as a selection of novels in several different genres—you can also subscribe to downloadable versions of several of the SF magazines here, including Asimov’s, Analog, F&SF, and Interzone, in a number of different formats. A similar site is ElectricStory (www.electricstory.com), where in addition to the fiction for sale you can also access free movie reviews by Lucius Shepard, articles by Howard Waldrop, and other critical material.

There are plenty of other reasons for SF fans to go on the Internet, though, than just finding fiction to read. There are also many general genre-related sites of interest to be found, most of which publish reviews of books as well as of movies and TV shows, sometimes comics or computer games or anime, many of which also feature interviews, critical articles, and genre-oriented news of various kinds. The best such site is easily Locus Online (www.locusmag.com), the online version of the newsmagazine Locus, where you can access an incredible amount of information—including book reviews, critical lists, obituary lists, links to reviews and essays appearing outside the genre, and links to extensive database archives such as the Locus Index to Science Fiction and the Locus Index to Science Fiction Awards—it’s rare when I don’t find myself accessing Locus Online several times a day. As mentioned earlier, Tor.com is giving it a run for its money these days as an interesting place to stop while surfing the Web.

Other major general interest sites include SF Site (www.sfsite.com), SFRevu (www.sfrevu.com), SFcrowsnest (www.sfcrowsnest.com), SFScope (http://sfscope.com) io9 (http://io9.com), Green Man Review (www.greenmanreview.com), The Agony Column (http://trashotron.com/agony), Science Fiction and Fantasy World (www.sffworld.com), SFReader (www.sfreader.com), SFWatcher (www.sfwatcher.com), Salon Futura (www.salonfutura.net), which runs interviews and critical articles; and Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist (http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com). A great research site, invaluable if you want bibliographic information about SF and fantasy writers, is Fantastic Fiction (www.fantasticfiction.co.uk). Reviews of short fiction as opposed to novels are very hard to find anywhere, with the exception of Locus and Locus Online, but you can find reviews of both current and past short fiction at Best SF (www.bestsf.net/), as well as at pioneering short-fiction review site Tangent Online (www.tangentonline.com), which has gone intermittently in and out of hiatus, but which seems to be up and running at the moment. Other sites of interest include: SFF Net (www.sff.net) which features dozens of home pages and “newsgroups” for SF writers; the Science Fiction Writers of America page (www.sfwa.org); where genre news, obituaries, award information, and recommended reading lists can be accessed; SciFiPedia (www.scifipedia.com), a Wiki-style genre-oriented online encyclopedia; Ansible (http://news.ansible.co.uk), the online version of multiple Hugo-winner David Langford’s long-running fanzine Ansible; Book View Cafe (www.bookviewcafe.com) is a “consortium of over twenty professional authors,” including Vonda N. McIntyre, Laura Ann Gilman, Sarah Zettel, Brenda Clough, and others, who have created a Web site where work by them—mostly reprints, and some novel excerpts—is made available for free.

An ever-expanding area, growing in popularity, are a number of sites where podcasts and SF-oriented radio plays can be accessed: at Audible (www.audible.com), Escape Pod (http://escapepod.org, podcasting mostly SF), StarShipSofa (www.starshipsofa.com), Pseudopod (http://pseudopod.org, podcasting mostly fantasy), and PodCastle (http://podcastle.org, podcasting mostly fantasy). There’s also a site that podcasts nonfiction interviews and reviews, Dragon Page Cover to Cover (www.dragonpage.com).

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There were plenty of anthologies published in 2010, from both trade publishers and small presses, and although most of them didn’t stick out as particularly outstanding, most of them had a few good stories a piece. (The decision to postpone the latest volume of Jonathan Strahan’s anthology series Eclipse until next year probably weakened the year’s anthology market.) The strongest SF anthology of the year was almost certainly Godlike Machines (SFBC), edited by Jonathan Strahan, although being published exclusively by the Science Fiction Book Club (which had delayed publishing it for at least a year) probably limited the number of people who saw it; one of the year’s best novellas, by Alastair Reynolds was here as well as strong novellas by Stephen Baxter, Greg Egan, and Sean Williams. The Fred Pohl tribute anthology, Gateways (Tor), edited by Elizabeth Anne Hull, was somewhat weaker than had been hoped, although it did feature good stories by Cory Doctorow, Joe Haldeman, Vernor Vinge, Gene Wolfe, and others. The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF (Robinson; published in the United States by Running Press under the title The Mammoth Book of the End of the World, apparently because Americans are presumed to be too stupid to know what “apocalyptic” means), edited by Mike Ashley, was not only one of the year’s best reprint anthologies, but also featured a spine of first-rate original stories by Alastair Reynolds, Kage Baker, Robert Reed, and others. Is Anybody Out There? (DAW Books), edited by Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern, featured good work by Pat Cadigan, Jay Lake, Alex Irvine, Matthew Hughes, and others. Postscripts has transformed itself from a magazine into an anthology series; this year’s volume, The Company He Keeps, Postscripts 22/23 (PS Publishing), struck me as being not as memorable as other recent issues had been, although there were interesting stories by Lucius Shepard, Don Webb, Jack Deighton, Holly Phillips, and others. Shine (Solaris), edited by Jetse de Vries, an admirable attempt to create “anthology of optimistic SF” created in reaction to the prevailing pessimism and gloom of much modern SF, didn’t entirely succeed, although it did feature ambitious stories by Lavie Tidhar, Gord Sellar, Eric Gregory, Alastair Reynolds, and others. The Dragon and the Stars (DAW Books), edited by Derwin Mak and Eric Choi, was an anthology of stories (mostly fantasy) inspired by Chinese culture, with interesting work by Tony Pi, Emily Mah, Brenda W. Clough, Ken Liu, and Choi himself.

There were several big cross-genre anthologies this year that featured mystery, mainstream, and romance as well as SF and fantasy. They included Stories (William Morrow), edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, which featured good work by Neil Gaiman, Elizabeth Hand, Joe R. Lansdale, Lawrence Block, and others, and—noted without comment—Warriors (Tor) and Songs of Love and Death (Gallery Books), both edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.

Interesting small press anthologies, usually mixing SF, fantasy, and slipstream, included Conflicts (NewCon Press), edited by Ian Whates, with solid work by Una McCormack, Chris Beckett, Keith Brooke, Neal Asher, and others; The Immersion Book of SF (Immersion Press), edited by Carmelo Rafala, featuring good stories by Lavie Tidhar, Gord Sellar, Chris Butler, Aliette de Bodard, and others; Panverse Two (Panverse Publishing), edited by Dario Ciriello, featuring two excellent novellas by Alan Smale and Michael D. Winkle; Clockwork Phoenix 3 (Norilana), edited by Mike Allen, which had interesting work by John C. Wright, Cat Rambo, John Grant, Gregory Frost, C.S.E. Cooney, and others; Destination: Future (Hadley Rille), edited by Z. S. Adani and Eric T. Reynolds, with Elizabeth Bear, Caren Gussoff, K. D. Wentworth, Sandra McDonald, and others; and Music for Another World (Mutation Press), edited by Mark Harding

Pleasant but minor science fiction anthologies included Darwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow (Douglas & McIntyre), edited by Zsuzsi Gartner, Sky Whales and Other Wonders (Norilana), edited by Vera Nazarian; Steampunk’d (DAW Books), edited by Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg; Timeshares (DAW Books), edited by Jean Rabe and Martin H. Greenberg; and a mixed SF/romance anthology, Love and Rockets (DAW Books), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes.

The best original fantasy anthology of the year was Swords and Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery (Eos), edited by Lou Anders and the ubiquitous Jonathan Strahan, which featured good work by Joe Abercrombie, K. J. Parker, Steven Erikson, Garth Nix, C. J. Cherryh, and others. Also first rate was a mixed reprint/original anthology edited by John Joseph Adams, The Way of the Wizard (Prime Books), with nice stuff by Lev Grossman, Nnedi Okorafor, Christie Yant, Charles Coleman Finlay, and others. Also good is Legends of Australian Fantasy (HarperCollins Australia), edited by Jack Dann and Jonathan Strahan, which features a powerful novella by Garth Nix and good stuff by Sean Williams, Isobelle Carmody, and others; a YA anthology The Beastly Bride: Tales of the Animal People (Viking), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling, which has good stuff by Peter S. Beagle, Lucius Shepard, Tanith Lee, Ellen Kushner, Gregory Frost, and others; and a mixed original/reprint anthology of updated fairy tales, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (Penguin), edited by Kate Bernheimer.

Pleasant but minor original fantasy anthologies included A Girl’s Guide to Guns and Monsters (DAW Books), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes; She Nailed a Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror (Dybbuk Press), edited by Tim Lieder; Alembical 2 (Paper Golem), edited by Arthur Dorrance and Lawrence M. Schoen; Jabberwocky 5 (Prime Books), edited by Sean Wallace and Erzebet Yellowboy; and More Stories from the Twilight Zone (Tor), edited by Carol Serling.

There were at least three dedicated original zombie anthologies this year (plus at least one reprint anthology), The New Dead (St. Martin’s Press), edited by Christopher Golden, The Living Dead 2 (Night Shade Books), edited by John Joseph Adams (partly reprint), and Zombies vs. Unicorns (Margaret K. McElderry Books), edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier, two anthologies of werewolf stories, Full Moon City (Simon & Schuster), edited by Darrell Schweitzer and Martin H. Greenberg, and Running with the Pack (Prime Books), edited by Ekaterina Sedia, two books of comic vampire stories, Blood Lite II: Overbite (Gallery Books), edited by Kevin J. Anderson, and Fangs for the Mammaries (Baen), edited by Esther M. Friesner, a book of ghost stories, Haunted Legends (Tor), edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas, a book of Lovecraftian stories, Cthulhu’s Reign (Tor), edited by Darrell Schweitzer and Martin H. Greenberg, a paranormal romance anthology, Death’s Excellent Vacation (Ace), edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner, and an anthology of superhero stories, Masked (Simon & Schuster), edited by Lou Anders.

A long-running series featuring novice work by beginning writers, some of whom may later turn out to be important talents, continued under editor K. D. Wentworth, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XXVI (Galaxy).

There were a lot of stories this year about either the end of the world or life in a severely ecologically challenged future, as well as stories about future Great Depressions and the resultant dystopias they generate—perhaps not surprising in a year where writers had a bad “economic downturn” and the spectacle of a catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to inspire them.

(Finding individual pricings for all of the items from small presses mentioned in the Summation has become too time-intensive, and since several of the same small presses publish anthologies, novels, and short-story collections, it seems silly to repeat addresses for them in section after section. Therefore, I’m going to attempt to list here, in one place, all the addresses for small presses that have books mentioned here or there in the Summation, whether from the anthologies section, the novel section, or the short-story collection section, and, where known, their Web site addresses. That should make it easy enough for the reader to look up the individual price of any book mentioned that isn’t from a regular trade publisher; such books are less likely to be found in your average bookstore, or even in a chain superstore, and so will probably have to be mail-ordered. Many publishers seem to sell only online, through their Web sites, and some will only accept payment through PayPal. Many books, even from some of the smaller presses, are also available through Amazon.com. If you can’t find an address for a publisher, and it’s quite likely that I’ve missed some here, Google it.)

Addresses: PS Publishing, Grosvener House, 1 New Road, Hornsea, East Yorkshire, HU18 1PG, England, UK, www.pspublishing.co.uk; Golden Gryphon Press, 3002 Perkins Road, Urbana, IL 61802, www.goldengryphon.com; NESFA Press, P.O. Box 809, Framingham, MA 01701, www.nesfa.org; Subterranean Press, P.O. Box 190106, Burton, MI 48519, www.subterraneanpress.com; Old Earth Books, P.O. Box 19951, Baltimore, MD 21211-0951, www.oldearthbooks.com; Tachyon Publications, 1459 18th St. #139, San Francisco, CA 94107, www.tachyonpublications.com; Night Shade Books, 1661 Tennessee Street, #3H, San Francsisco, CA 94107, www.nightshadebooks.com; Five Star, 295 Kennedy Memorial Drive, Waterville, ME 04901, www.gale.cengage.com/fivestar; NewCon Press, via www.newconpress.co.uk; Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., #306 Easthampton MA 01027, http://smallbeerpress.com; Locus Press, P.O. Box 13305, Oakland, CA 94661, www.locusmag.com; Crescent Books, Mercat Press Ltd., 10 Coates Crescent, Edinburgh, Scotland EH3 7AL, www.mercatpress.com; Wildside Press/Borgo Press, 9710 Traville Gateway Dr., #234, Rockville, MI 20850, or go to www.wildsidepress.com for pricing and ordering; EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, Inc. and Tesseract Books, Ltd., P.O. Box 1714, Calgary, Alberta, T2P 2L7, Canada, www.edgewebsite.com; Aqueduct Press, P.O. Box 95787, Seattle, WA 98145-2787, www.aqueductpress.com; Phobos Books, 200 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10003, http://phobosweb.com; Fairwood Press, 5203 Quincy Ave. SE, Auburn, WA 98092, www.fairwoodpress.com; BenBella Books, 10300 N. Central Expressway, Suite 400, Dallas, TX 75231, www.benbellabooks.com; Darkside Press, 13320 27th Ave. NE, Seattle, WA 98125, www.darksidepress.com; Haffner Press, 5005 Crooks Rd., Suite 35, Royal Oak, MI 48073-1239, www.haffnerpress.com; North Atlantic Books, 2526 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berkeley, CA, 94704; Prime Books, P.O. Box 36503, Canton, OH, 44735, www.primebooks.com; MonkeyBrain Books, 11204 Crossland Drive, Austin, TX 78726, www.monkeybrainbooks.com;; Wesleyan University Press, University Press of New England, Order Dept., 1 Court St., Lebanon NH 03766-1358, www.wesleyan.edu/wespress;; Agog! Press, P.O. Box U302, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia, www.uow.ed.au/~rhood/agogpress; Wheatland Press, via www.wheatlandpress.com; MirrorDanse Books, P.O. Box 546 Chatswood NSW 2057, Australia, www.tabula-rasa.info/MirrorDanse; Arsenal Pulp Press, 101-211 East Georgia Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6A 1Z6, www.arsenalpulp.com; DreamHaven Books, 2301 East 38th Street, Minneapolis, MN 55406; Elder Signs Press/Dimensions Books, order through www.eldersignspress.com; Chaosium, via www.chaosium.com; Omnidawn Publishing, order through www.omnidawn.com; CSFG, Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild, www.csfg.org.au/publishing/anthologies/the_outcast; Hadley Rille Books, via www.hadleyrillebooks.com; ISFiC Press, 707 Sapling Lane, Deerfield, IL 60015-3969, or www.isficpress.com; Suddenly Press, via suddenlypress@yahoo.com; Sandstone Press, P.O. Box 5725, One High St., Dingwall, Ross-shire, IV15 9WJ, UK, www.sandstonepress.com; Tropism Press, via www.tropismpress.com; Science Fiction Poetry Association/Dark Regions Press, www.sfpoetry.com, checks to Helena Bell, SFPA Treasurer, 1225 West Freeman St., Apt. 12, Carbondale, IL 62901; DH Press, via diamondbookdistributors.com; Kurodahan Press, via Web site www.kurodahan.com; Ramble House, 443 Gladstone Blvd., Shreveport, LA 71104; Interstitial Arts Foundation, via www.interstitialarts.org; Raw Dog Screaming, via www.rawdogscreaming.com; Three-legged Fox Books, 98 Hythe Road, Brighton, BN1 6JS, UK; Norilana Books, via www.norilana.com; coeur de lion, via www.coeurdelion.com.au; PARSEC Ink, via http://parsecink.org; Robert J. Sawyer Books, via wwww.sfwriter.com/rjsbooks.htm; Rackstraw Press, via http://rackstrawpress; Candlewick, via www.candlewick.com; Zubaan, via www.zubaanbooks.com; Utter Tower, via www.threeleggedfox.co.uk; Spilt Milk Press, via www.electricvelocipede.com; Paper Golem, via www.papergolem.com; Galaxy Press, via www.galaxypress.com.; Twelfth Planet Press, via www.twelfhplanetpress.com; Five Senses Press, via www.sensefive.com; Elastic Press, via www.elasticpress.com; Lethe Press, via www.lethepressbooks.com; Two Cranes Press, via www.twocranespress.com; Wordcraft of Oregon, via www.wordcraftoforegon.com.

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If print books are about to disappear, to be replaced by e-books, as argued by some commentators, there was no sign of it in 2010. In fact, in spite of the recession, the number of novels published in the SF/fantasy genres increased for the fourth year in a row.

According to the newsmagazine Locus, there were a record 3,056 books “of interest to the SF field” published in 2010, up 5 percent from 2,901 titles in 2009, and 69 percent of those were new titles, not reprints. (It’s worth noting that this total doesn’t count the previously mentioned e-books, media tie-in novels, gaming novels, novelizations of genre movies, or print-on-demand books—all of which would swell the total by hundreds if counted.) The number of new SF novels was up 14 percent to 285 as opposed to 2009’s 232. The number of new fantasy novels was up by 7 percent, to 614 titles as opposed to 2009’s total of 572. Horror novels remained the same at 251 titles. Paranormal romances were up 13 percent to 384 titles from 2009’s 339, second in numbers only to fantasy (although sometimes it can be difficult and even subjective to make some of these judgment calls regarding categorization—once a novel about vampires would have been considered to be a fantasy novel, now it’s probably counted under paranormal romance instead, and could even show up under horror, depending on who was doing the categorizing).

As usual, busy with all the reading I have to do at shorter lengths, I didn’t have time to read many novels myself this year, so I’ll limit myself to mentioning the novels that received a lot of attention and acclaim in 2010. These include: The Dervish House (Pyr), by Ian McDonald; Zendegi (Night Shade Books), by Greg Egan; Not Less Than Gods (Tor), by Kage Baker; The Bird of the River (Tor), by Kage Baker; Blackout/All Clear (Spectra), by Connie Willis; Hull Zero Three (Orbit), by Greg Bear; Coyote Destiny (Ace), by Allen Steele; Deceiver (DAW Books), by C. J. Cherryh; Starbound (Ace) by Joe Haldeman; Chill (Ballantine Books), by Elizabeth Bear; Terminal World (Gollancz), by Alastair Reynolds; Surface Detail (Orbit), by Iain M. Banks; Kraken (Del Rey), by China Miéville; The Folding Knife (Orbit), by K. J. Parker; Directive 51 (Ace), by John Barnes; Brain Thief (Tor), by Alexander Jablokov; Cryoburn (Baen), by Lois McMaster Bujold; Who Fears Death (DAW Books), by Nnedi Okorafor; The Technician (Tor), by Neal Asher; Echo (Ace), by Jack McDevitt; New Model Army (Gollancz), by Adam Roberts; Dreadnought (Tor), by Cherie Priest; The Wolf Age (Pyr), by James Enge; Dragon Haven (Eos), by Robin Hobb; The Restoration Game (Orbit), by Ken MacLeod; Behemoth (Simon Pulse), by Scott Westerfeld; Sleepless (Ballantine Books), by Charlie Huston; Hespira (Night Shade Books), by Matthew Hughes; The Fuller Memorandum (Ace), by Charles Stross; The Trade of Queens (Tor), by Charles Stross; The Evolutionary Void (Del Rey), by Peter F. Hamilton; The Sorcerer’s House (Tor), by Gene Wolfe; For the Win (Tor), by Cory Doctorow; Ship Breaker (Little, Brown and Company), by Paolo Bacigalupi; Discord’s Apple (Tor), by Carrie Vaughn; Mockingiay (Scholastic Press), by Suzanne Collins; and I Shall Wear Midnight (HarperCollins), by Terry Pratchett.

Small presses are active in the novel market these days, where once they published mostly collections and anthologies. Novels issued by small presses this year included: Zendegi (Night Shade Books), by Greg Egan; Hespira (Night Shade Books), by Matthew Hughes; and The Habitation of the Blessed (Night Shade Books), by Catherynne M. Valente.

The year’s first novels included: The Quantum Thief (Gollancz), by Hannu Rajaniemi; The Loving Dead (Night Shade Books), by Amelia Beamer; Clowns at Midnight (PS Publishing), by Terry Dowling; The Native Star (Spectra), by M. K. Hobson; The Bookman (Angry Robot), by Lavie Tidhar; Bitter Seeds (Tor), by Ian Tregillis; Redemption in Indigo (Small Beer Press), by Karen Lord; How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (Pantheon Books), by Charles Yu; Passion Play (Tor), by Beth Bernobich; Shades of Milk and Honey (Tor), by Mary Robinette Kowal; The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Orbit), by N. K. Jemisin; Tome of the Undergates (Pyr), by Sam Sykes; The Dream of Perpetual Motion (St. Martin’s Press), by Dexter Palmer; Meeks (Small Beer Press), by Julia Holmes; The Last Page (Tor), by Anthony Huso; Noise (Spectra), by Darin Bradley; Crossing Over (Viking), by Anna Kendall; Spellwright (Tor), by Blake Charlton; A Book of Tongues (CZP), by Gemma Files; Sixty-One Nails (Angry Robot), by Mike Shevdon; Black Blade Blues (Tor), by J. A. Pitts; and The Girl with Glass Feet (Henry Holt), by Ali Shaw. Of these, The Quantum Thief drew the best notices, generating the same kind of buzz that 2009’s The Windup Girl got, although The Loving Dead and Bitter Seeds also drew their share of attention.

Historical or mainstream novels that add strong fantastic elements to the mix included: Black Hills (Little, Brown and Company), by Dan Simmons; Kings of the North (Forge), by Cecelia Holland; Under Heaven (Viking Canada), by Guy Gavriel Kay; A Dark Matter (Doubleday), by Peter Straub; and Zero History (Putman), by William Gibson. Ventures into the genre, or at least the ambiguous fringes of it, by well-known mainstream authors, included: The Passage (Ballantine Books), by Justin Cronin; The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack (Prometheus Books), by Mark Hodder; The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Random House), by David Mitchell; and Luka and the Fire of Life (Random House), by Salman Rushdie.

It was a strong year for individual novellas published as chapbooks: Subterranean published Blue and Gold, by K. J. Parker; Bone and Jewel Creatures, by Elizabeth Bear; The Lifecycle of Software Objects, by Ted Chiang; The God Engines, by John Scalzi; The Last Song of Orpheus, by Robert Silverberg; and The Taborin Scale, by Lucius Shepard. PS Publishing brought out Cloud Permutations, by Lavie Tidhar, Seven Cities of Gold, by David Moles; The Baby Killers, by Jay Lake; and Quartet and Triptych, by Matthew Hughes. Fairwood Press published The Specific Gravity of Grief, by Jay Lake. Aqueduct Press published Tomb of the Fathers, by Eleanor Arnason. PM Press brought out Mammoths of the Great Plains, by Eleanor Arnason. Drollerie Press published The Big Bah-Ha, by C.S.E. Cooney. Silverberry Press brought out Pink Noise, by Leonid Korogodsky. Cemetery Dance published Blockade Billy, by Stephen King. Little, Brown published The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner, by Stephenie Meyer.

Novel omnibuses this year included: Young Flandry (Baen), by Poul Anderson; Darkshade (Night Shade Books), by Glen Cook; The Ware Tetralogy (Prime Books), by Rudy Rucker; Virga; Cities of the Air (Tor), by Karl Schroeder; Flaming Zeppelins: The Adventures of Ned the Seal (Tachyon Publications), by Joe R. Lansdale; A Matter of Magic (Orb Books), by Patricia C. Wrede; Riverworld (Tor), by Philip José Farmer; Century of the Soldier (Solaris Books), by Paul Kearney; The Many Deaths of the Black Company (Tor), by Glen Cook; Beast Master’s Planet (Tor), by Andre Norton; Search for the Star Stones (Baen), by Andre Norton; The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds (Everyman’s Library), by H. G. Wells; and Damned If You Do in the Nightside (Solaris Books), by Simon R. Green. (Omnibuses that contain both short stories and novels can be found listed in the short-story section.)

Not even counting print-on-demand books and the availability of out-of-print books as electronic downloads from Internet sources such as Fictionwise, a lot of long out-of-print stuff has come back into print in the last couple of years in commercial trade editions. Here’s some out-of-print titles that came back into print this year, although producing a definitive list of reissued novels is probably impossible. Tor reissued: The Currents of Space, by Isaac Asimov; The Word for World Is Forest, by Ursula K. Le Guin; A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge; The Dark Design, by Philip José Farmer; Dream Park, by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes; Hawkmoon: The Jewel in the Skull, by Michael Moorcock; Hawkmoon: The Runestaff, by Michael Moorcock; Hawkmoon: The Mad God’s Amulet, by Michael Moorcock; Hawkmoon: The Sword of the Dawn, by Michael Moorcock; and associational novel The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike, by Philip K. Dick. Orb reissued: Our Lady of Darkness, by Fritz Leiber; The World Inside, by Robert Silverberg; Slant, by Greg Bear; Moving Mars, by Greg Bear; Mysterium, by Robert Charles Wilson; and Spiritwalk and Muse and Reverie, by Charles de Lint. Baen reissued: The High Crusade, by Poul Anderson and The Rolling Stones, by Robert A. Heinlein. Eos reissued: Creatures of Light and Darkness, by Roger Zelazny. Roc reissued: Sailing to Sarantium and Lord of Emperors, by Guy Gavriel Kay. Night Shade Books reissued: Starfishers and Stars’ End: The Starfishers Trilogy, Volume Three, by Glen Cook. Orbit reissued: Fallen Dragon, by Peter F. Hamilton. Aqueduct Press reissued: Dorothea Dreams, by Suzy McKee Charnas. Melville House reissued: The Castle in Transylvania, by Jules Verne. Ad Stellae reissued: This Star Shall Abide, by Sylvia Engdahl. Pazio Publishing reissued: Steppe, by Piers Anthony. Create Space reissued: Dreambaby, by Bruce McAllister.

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It was another strong year for short-story collections, especially for career-spanning retrospective collections. The year’s best nonretrospective collections included: The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories (Night Shade Books), by Walter Jon Williams; Journeys (Subterranean Press), by Ian R. MacLeod; The Sky That Wraps (Subterranean Press), by Jay Lake; On the Banks of the River of Heaven (Prime Books), by Richard Parks; Deep Navigation (NESFA Press), by Alastair Reynolds; Leviathan Wept (Subterranean Press), by Daniel Abraham; Recovering Apollo 8 (Golden Gryphon Press), by Kristine Kathryn Rusch; The Third Bear (Tachyon Publications), by Jeff VanderMeer; Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories (Lethe Press), by Sandra McDonald; The Ammonite Violin and Others (Subterranean Press), by Caitlin R. Kiernan; The Mysteries of the Diogenes Club (MonkeyBrain), by Kim Newman; Occultation (Night Shade Books), by Laird Barron; The Juniper Tree and Other Blue Rose Stories (Subterranean Press), by Peter Straub; What Will Come After? (PS Publishing) by Scott Edelman; Atlantis and Other Places (Roc), by Harry Turtledove; A Handful of Pearls and Other Stories (Lethe Press), by Beth Bernobich; What I Didn’t See and Other Stories (Small Beer Press), by Karen Joy Fowler; Diving Mime, Weeping Czars, and Other Unusual Suspects (Fairwood Press), by Ken Scholes; Through the Drowsy Dark (Aqueduct Press), by Rachel Swirsky; The Poison Eaters (Big Mouth House), by Holly Black; and Full Dark, No Stars (Scribner), by Stephen King.

It was an even stronger year for retrospective career-spanning collections. They included: Fritz Leiber: Selected Stories (Night Shade Books), by Fritz Leiber; Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Jack Vance (Subterranean Press), by Jack Vance; The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson (Night Shade Books), by Kim Stanley Robinson; Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle (Subterranean Press), by Peter S Beagle; Young Flandry (Baen), by Poul Anderson; Sir Dominic Flandry; The Last Knight of Terra (Baen), by Poul Anderson; Captain Flandry: Defender of the Terran Empire (Baen), by Poul Anderson; The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny: Volume Five—Nine Black Doves (NESFA Press), by Roger Zelazny; The Collected Stories of Roger Zelazny: Volume Six—The Road to Amber (NESFA Press), by Roger Zelazny; The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson, Volume 3: The Saturn Game (NESFA Press), by Poul Anderson; Who Fears the Devil?: The Complete Tales of Silver John (Planet Stories), by Manly Wade Wellman; The Best of Joe R. Lansdale (Tachyon Publications), by Joe R. Lansdale; The Best of Larry Niven (Subterranean Press), by Larry Niven; Amberjack: Tales of Fear and Wonder (Subterranean Press), by Terry Dowling; Detour to Otherness (Haffner Press), by Henry Kutner and C. L. Moore; The Early Kuttner, Volume One: Terror in the House (Haffner Press), by Henry Kuttner; The Stories of Ray Bradbury (Everyman’s Library), by Ray Bradbury; Shirley Jackson: Novels and Stories (Library of America); Selected Short Stories of Lester Del Rey, Robots and Magic Volume 2 (NESFA Press), by Lester Del Rey; An Empire Unacquainted with Defeat: A Chronicle of the Dread Empire (Night Shade Books), by Glen Cook; The Very Best of Charles de Lint (Tachyon Publications), by Charles de Lint; The Last Hieroglyph (The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Vol. 5) (Prime Books), by Clark Ashton Smith; With Folded Hands … and Searching Minds: The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson, Volume Seven (Haffner Press), Jack Williamson; and Case and the Dreamer: Volume XIII: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon (North Atlantic Books), by Theodore Sturgeon.

Small presses again dominated the list of short-story collections. Subterranean, Night Shade Books, and NESFA Press had particularly strong years.

A wide variety of “electronic collections,” often called “fiction bundles,” too many to individually list here, are also available for downloading online, at sites such as Fictionwise and ElectricStory, and the Science Fiction Book Club continues to issue new collections as well.

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As is often the case, the most reliable buys in the reprint anthology market may have been the various “Best of the Year” anthology series. This is an area in constant flux—this year alone, we lost at least two Best Of series, maybe three, and added a brand-new one. Science fiction is being covered by three anthologies (actually, technically, by two anthologies and by two separate half anthologies): the one you are reading at the moment, The Year’s Best Science Fiction series from St. Martin’s Press, edited by Gardner Dozois, now up to its Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection; the Year’s Best SF series (Eos), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, now up to its fifteenth annual volume; by the science fiction half of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Five (Night Shade Books), edited by Jonathan Strahan; and by the science fiction half of The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, Edition 2010 (Prime Books), edited by Rich Horton (in practice, of course, these books probably won’t divide neatly in half with their coverage, and there’s likely to be more of one thing than another). 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 2010: The Year’s Best SF and Fantasy Selected by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (Roc), edited by Bill Fawcett. In 2010, a similar series began, covering the Hugo winners, The Hugo Award Showcase: 2010 Volume (Prime Books), edited by Mary Robinette Kowal, but it died after a single volume. There were three Best of the Year anthologies covering horror: The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Two (Night Shade Books), edited by Ellen Datlow; The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 21 (Running Press), edited by Stephen Jones; and a new series, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2010 (Prime Books), edited by Paula Guran. The popularity of fantasy remains high, particularly in the novel market, but coverage of it by Best of the Year volumes continues to shrink. When the long-running Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, and Gavin Grant Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series died early in 2009, Ellen Datlow found a new home for her horror best half almost immediately, but the Link and Grtist Fantasy Best half has yet to find a new home, and must be considered to be gone. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer’s Year’s Best Fantasy series was supposed to have transmogrified from a print publication into a version available as a download or a print-on-demand title from Tor.com, but I haven’t seen any sign of it being actually available, and wonder if it isn’t gone too. That left fantasy to be covered by the fantasy halves of Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year and Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy (plus whatever stories fall under the “Dark Fantasy” part of Guran’s anthology), and by Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy, Volume 3 (Underland Press), edited by Kevin Brockmeier and Matthew Cheney—but it’s just been announced that that series is dying as well. There was also The 2010 Rhysling Anthology (Science Fiction Poetry Association), edited by Jamie Lee Moyer, which compiles the Rhysling Award-winning SF poetry of the year.

The most prominent of the year’s stand-alone reprint anthologies was probably The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction (Wesleyan University Press), edited by Arthur B. Evans and five others from the staff of academic journal Science Fiction Studies, an attempt at a definitive canon-forming book that gives a retrospective overview of the development of science fiction from 1844 to 2008, starting with Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells, passing through the Usual Suspects, and ending up with writers like Greg Egan, Geoff Ryman, Charles Stross, and Ted Chiang. Another retrospective, this time of the Alternate History subgenre, is The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories (Robinson, Constable & Robinson), a mixed reprint (mostly) and original anthology edited by Ian Watson and Ian Whates. Digital Domains: A Decade of Science Fiction & Fantasy (Prime Books), edited by Ellen Datlow, collects some of the best fiction that Ellen has published in the online magazines that she’s edited over the last few years, and the similar Unplugged: The Web’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy: 2008 (Wyrm Publishing), edited by Rich Horton, is also devoted to stories published in online venues. A retrospective look back over the history of the burgeoning subgenre of steampunk (there were at least three anthologies featuring it this year) is given in Steampunk Prime (Nonstop Press), edited by Michael Ashley, and in Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded (Tachyon Publications) a mixed reprint (mostly) and original anthology edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer.

A similar retrospective anthology for fantasy, a bit less inclusive than the Wesleyan anthology, is The Secret History of Fantasy (Tachyon Publications), edited by Peter S. Beagle, which features authors such as Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Maureen McHugh, Michael Swanwick, and others. Wings of Fire (Night Shade Books), edited by Jonathan Strahan and Marianne S. Jablon, is a mixed reprint (mostly) and original fantasy anthology about dragons, featuring Ursula K. Le Guin, George R. R. Martin, Lucius Shepard, Roger Zelazny, and others. The self-explanatory People of the Book: A Decade of Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy (Prime Books), edited by Rachel Swirsky and Sean Wallace, is a reprint anthology featuring Peter S. Beagle, Theodora Gross, Neil Gaiman, Janet Yolen, Michael Chabon, and others.

Other good reprint anthologies include The End of the World: Stories of the Apocalypse (Skyhorse Publishing), edited by Martin H. Greenberg (one of two big End-of-the-World anthologies this year; do you think the universe is trying to tell us something?), Before They Were Giants: First Works from Science Fiction Greats (Paizo Publishing), edited by James L. Sutter; an anthology of cat fantasy/horror stories, Tails of Wonder and Imagination (Night Shade Books), edited by Ellen Datlow; a mixed reprint (mostly) and original anthology of military SF, Citizens (Baen Books), edited by John Ringo and Brian M. Thomsen; an anthology of Deal-With-the-Devil stories, Sympathy for the Devil (Night Shade Books), edited by Tim Pratt; Realms 2: The Second Year of Clarkesworld Magazine (Wyrm Publishing), stories from the e-zine, edited by Nick Mamatas and Sean Wallace; and an anthology of stories drawn from the now-defunct Talebones magazine, The Best of Talebones (Fairwood Press), edited by Patrick Swenson.

The big retrospective reprint horror anthology this year is Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror (Tachyon Publications), edited by Ellen Datlow, but there was also The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror (Running Press Book Publishers), edited by Stephen Jones, and Zombies: The Recent Dead (Prime Books), edited by Paula Guran. There were also several original zombie anthologies, an all-zombie single-author collection—Scott Edelman’s What Will Come After—and numerous zombie stories scattered through 2010’s magazines, e-zines, and anthologies (the best of which were probably “The Naturalist,” by Maureen McHugh and “The Crocodiles,” by Steven Popkes), as well as a TV show about them, so fans of the shuffling dead have a lot to be thankful for this year. I think there were actually more zombie stories than vampire stories in 2010, in spite of the continuing popularity of Twilight and True Blood.)

The most prominent genre-oriented nonfiction book of the year was almost certainly the biographical study Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: 1907–1948: Learning Curve (Tor), by William H. Patterson, Jr. This huge book is only the first half of an exhaustive (sometime too exhaustive) work that will almost certainly stand as the comprehensive biography of SF giant Robert A. Heinlein, especially as many of the sources that Patterson tapped are no longer available to be interviewed. SF fans will find it fascinating, of course, for its look at the early years of Heinlein’s writing career and the pulp magazine era of the forties, but the lengthy sections on Heinlein’s stint at the Naval Academy and as an active-duty sailor, and on his abortive career as a political campaign manager are interesting in their own right, providing a detailed look back at the America of the early twentieth century, a place so different in mores, customs, and lifeways from America in the twenty-first century that it might as well be an alien world.

Another exhaustive biography of a major genre author is supplied by C. M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary (McFarland), by Mark Rich. Kornbluth is a complex, fascinating, and immensely talented figure now in danger of being forgotten, certainly a worthwhile figure for a biological study and critical reassessment if there ever was one. Unfortunately, clouds of controversy have swirled around the book from its release, mostly for the intensely unflattering portrait it paints of Kornbluth’s friend and lifelong collaborator Frederik Pohl, which have caused Pohl to vehemently deny the veracity of many of Rich’s “facts”—all of which has cast something of a shadow over what by rights should have been one of the preeminent genre nonfiction books of the year.

80! Memories and Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin (Aqueduct Press), edited by Karen Joy Fowler and Debbie Notkin, is an assemblage of critical articles, appreciations, poems, and even some fiction put together in honor of the eightieth birthday of SF writer Ursula K. Le Guin. All of it is worth reading, but the best piece here is a partial biography of Le Guin by Julie Phillips, the writer who did the biography of Alice Sheldon (“James Tiptree, Jr.”) a few years back, and that’s good enough to encourage hopes that Phillips will take a crack at a full-dress biography of Le Guin one of these days. I Am Providence: The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft (Hippocampus Press), by S. T. Joshi, takes a critical and biographical look at horror giant H. P. Lovecraft. Conversations with Octavia Butler (University Press of Mississippi), edited by Conseula Francis, is a collection of interviews conducted with the late author fron 1980 to just before her tragic death. Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Brabury Interviews (Stopsmiling Books), edited by Sam Weller, is a similar collection of interviews with Bradbury, nonfiction essays by Michael Moorcock are collected in Into the Media Web: Selected Non-Fiction, 1956–2006 (Savoy Books), by Michael Moorcock, and Understanding Philip K. Dick (University of South Carolina Press), by Eric Carl Link, adds another title to the ten-foot shelf of critical studies of Philip K. Dick (a writer almost completely ignored by academic critics during his lifetime, by the way—as were H. P. Lovecraft and C. M. Kornbluth, for that matter). Critic Gary K. Wolfe examines a wide range of authors in Bearings: Reviews 1997–2001 (Beccon Publications), Paul Kincaid and Niall Harrison offer a critical overlook of genre in Britain in British Science Fiction & Fanasy: Twenty Years, Two Surveys (Odd Two Out), L. Timmel Duchamp edits a nonfiction anthology of sixteen essays by well-known writers in Narrative Power: Encounters, Celebrations, Struggles (Aqueduct Press), and Bud Webster reviews some of the most prominent fiction anthologies in the field in Anthopology 101: Reflections, Inspections and Dissections of SF Anthologies (Merry Blacksmith Press).

Two perhaps contrasting perspectives on the genre’s ability as a predictive medium are offered in Visions of Tomorrow: Science Fiction Predictions That Came True (Skyhorse Publishing), by Thomas A. Easton and Judith K. Dial and The Wonderful Future That Never Was (Hearst Books), by Gregory Benford and the editors of Popular Mechanics magazine.

Of interest to those who lean toward the media side of the field may be The Science of Doctor Who (John Hopkins University Press), by Paul Persons, and Firefly: Still Flying: A Celebration of Joss Whedon’s Acclaimed TV Series (Titan Books), by Joss Whedon.

An entertaining attempt at creating a modern Bestiary, of creatures drawn from myth and folklore, is The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals (Tachyon Publications), by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer.

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After a strong year last year, 2010 seemed to be a somewhat weaker year in the art book market. The best, and certainly the most varied, was the latest in a long-running “Best of the Year” series for fantastic art, Spectrum 17: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art (Underwood Books), edited by Cathy Fenner and Arnie Fenner. Also worthwhile were two other varied collections of SF art, Sci-Fi Art Now (Collins Design), edited by John Freeman, and EXPOSÉ 8: The Finest Digital Art in the Known Universe (Ballistic Publishing), edited by Daniel P. Wade. Evocative and painterly views of scenes from fantasy books by J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard were available in Middle-Earth: Visions of a Modern Myth (Underwood Books), by Donato Giancola and Sword’s Edge: Paintings Inspired by the Works of Robert E. Howard (Underwood Books), by Manuel Sanjulian, and scenes from Star Wars were on display in Star Wars Art: Visions (Abrams), edited by anoymous. There were collections of paintings by Bob Eggleton, Dragon’s Domain (Impact), by Bob Eggleton, and Jack Gaughan, Outermost (Nonstop Press), edited by Luis Ortiz, a collection by Daniel Merriman, Taking Reality by Surprise (Monarch Editions), two collections of work by William Stout, Inspriations (Flesk Publications) and Hallucinations (Flesk Publications), and there was also a collection by comics artist Neal Adams, The Art of Neal Adams (Vanguard Productions), by Neal Adams. Studies of pulp art included Savage Art: 20th Century Genre and the Artists that Defined It (Underwood Books), edited by Tim Underwood, Arnie Fenner, and Cathy Fenner, and Shameless Art: 20th Century Genre Art and the Artists That Defined It (Underwood Books), edited by Tim Underwood, Arnie Fenner, and Cathy Fenner. A collections of paintings that double as instructional books included Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (Andrews McMeel Publishing), by James Gurney, and OtherWorlds: How to Imagine, Paint and Create Epic Scenes of Fantasy (Impact Books), by Tom Kidd.

As you can see, Underwood Books had probably the strongest year in this area.

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According to the Box Office Mojo site (www.boxofficemojo.com), nine out of ten of the year’s top-earning movies were genre films of one sort or another, if you accept animated films and superhero movies as being “genre films.” (The exception was The Karate Kid, in tenth place.) The year’s top five box-office champs were all genre movies by that definition, as were fourteen out of the top twenty earners, and roughly thirty-seven out of the top 100, more or less (I might have missed one here or there).

For the first time since 2004, when Shrek 2 pulled it off, the year’s number one box office champ (not counting 2009’s Avatar, which still pulled in more this year than any of the 2010 films) was an animated film, Toy Story 3. It and the second-place finisher, Tim Burton’s “reimagined” Alice in Wonderland, earned more than a billion dollars apiece worldwide, with a steep drop-off to the film in the third spot, the superhero movie Iron Man 2, which earned “only” $622,056,974 worldwide.

Unlike last year, there were few SF movies (as opposed to fantasy movies, superhero movies, and animated films), even bad SF with junk science like last year’s Avatar, Star Trek, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, let alone smaller-budgeted more “serious” movies such as Moon and District 9. The most notable exception, and the one that seemed to get the most critical respect, was the Philip K. Dick–like Inception, about manipulating people’s dreams for your own purposes, which also did well at the box office, finishing in sixth place. The low-budget alien invasion movie, Monsters, got a surprising amount of critical respect, although it barely made a ripple on the box-office charts. The soap-opera vampire romance The Twilight Saga: Eclipse came in at fourth place, and the more traditional fantasy movie Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 at fifth place (the new version of Clash of the Titans, another fantasy movie, finished in fourteenth place, still probably good enough to earn it a sequel). The rest of the top ten were rounded off by other animated films: Despicable Me in seventh place, Shrek Forever After in eighth, and How to Train Your Dragon in ninth (this was a big year for animated films, with Tangled coming in at tenth place, and Megamind and Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’ Hoole further down in the pack).

This shouldn’t surprise anybody—genre films (with the inevitable disclaimer, “of one sort or another”; often they’re superhero movies) have dominated the box office top ten for more than a decade now. You have to go all the way back to 1998 to find a year when the year’s top earner was a nongenre film, Saving Private Ryan.

In spite of the presence of some immense-earning Mega-Movies, it seemed like a lackluster year in some respects, with little getting much critical respect except for Inception (and even there, reviews were sharply mixed), and, to some extent, Toy Story 3 and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. Even at the box office, it was far from a year of universal success. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Wolfman, Jonah Hex, The Book of Eli, The Last Airbender, Yogi Bear, and (probably the most critically savaged movie of the year) Gulliver’s Travels were all disappointments to one degree or another, and attempts to establish viable new franchises such as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief were all failures. The “superhero” satire Kick-Ass was famously controversial for a short while for its scenes of extreme ultraviolence committed by an eleven-year-old girl, but in spite of all the tongue-clicking in Time and Newsweek, could only make it to sixty-seventh place on the box office list.

Although 2010 was still the second-highest grossing year of all time for the movie industry, estimated attendance was the lowest in fifteen years, 1.27 billion people, down 8 percent from the previous year. Does this mean that fewer people were paying more money to see movies? With the boom in movies released in 3-D and IMAX, for more expensive ticket prices, that’s quite possible. The increased accessibility of movies on the Internet and through services such as Netflix and On Demand, often only a few months after they come out in first release, plus the continuing recession, may be discouraging some people from going to the theater—although at 1.27 billion, that’s still a lot of people buying tickets!

Most of the buzz so far in 2011 (although we’re only a few weeks into it as I write these words) is for the upcoming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, the last of the Harry Potter franchise. The promised sequels to Avatar, Star Trek, 2012, and Transformers are still promised, as are film versions of Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, John Wyndham’s Chocky, and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation; no doubt some of these will show up sooner or later, although it’s hard to tell which (bet on Avatar; it’s made far too much money for there not to be a sequel, perhaps more than one of them). There’ll be a new Twilight movie, Breaking Dawn, which I believe will be split into two parts, as was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. So far, 2011 looks like it’s going to be a big year for Independence Day clones, aliens attacking all over the place, and will perhaps see a big resurgence in superhero movies, with Captain America and The Green Hornet, and Thor looming on the horizon like a thundercloud.

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It was a lackluster year for SF and fantasy shows on television.

Lost ended with an anticlimactic everybody-goes-to-Heaven-and-leaves-almost-all-of-the-major-questions-unanswered-behind-them finale that disappointed most Losties, outraged many, and soured some retrospectively on the series to the point where they wouldn’t even buy the DVD. Heroes, FlashForward, The Prisoner, and Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica the Great White Hopes of last season, all died, and Stargate Universe will follow them into oblivion after running its last few episodes early this year. The long-running Smallville is finally coming to an end, and will run its final episode in the spring. The long-running Medium is also ending, and the new vampire show The Gates closed its gates and returned to the quiet of its grave.

Fringe, The Event, and V all returned, but are wobbling in the ratings, and may not last out the year.

Supernatural, Vampire Diaries, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Chuck, and zombie show The Walking Dead are returning, as are the SF comedies Eureka and Warehouse 13. Doctor Who and Primeval are returning, and a Torchwood spin-off, Torchwood: The New World, set in the United States, will be starting up. There will also be an American version of the BBC show, Being Human, about a vampire, a ghost, and a werewolf living together in the same apartment (which always sounds to me like the setup for a joke: “A vampire, a ghost, and a werewolf walk into a bar…”) Merlin is returning, and will be joined by another Arthurian fantasy series, Camelot. Two live-action superhero shows, No Ordinary Family and The Cape, started up; The Cape has already died.

Movie director Steven Spielberg will be making his first foray into series television with two new shows: Terra Nova, in which scientists escape through time from a doomed and ruined Earth to attempt to restart the human race in a prehistoric era, and Falling Skies, in which embattled guerilla militiamen battle alien invasion forces who have destroyed much of the Earth and killed most of the people. (Guess that Spielberg doesn’t envision much of a future for humanity.)

Blood and Chrome, a new prequel to Battlestar Galactica, is coming up, as are a slew of animated superhero shows, including Young Justice, following the adventures of the young sidekicks of Justice League characters, Green Lantern: The Animated Series, and Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

Most of the quality work on television seems to be being done on HBO these days, from the campy fun of vampire show True Blood to nongenre dramatic series such as Boardwalk Empire and Big Love. Coming up from them is the long-awaited miniseries versions of George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. A miniseries version of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars is supposed to be coming up from AMC.

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The 68th World Science Fiction Convention, Aussiecon 4, was held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, from September 2 to September 6, 2010. The 2010 Hugo Awards, presented at Aussiecon 4, were: Best Novel (tie), The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi and The City and the City, by China Miéville; Best Novella, “Palimpsest,” by Charles Stross; Best Novelette, “The Island,” by Peter Watts; Best Short Story, “Bridesicle,” by Will McIntosh; Best Related Book, This is Me, Jack Vance! (Or, More Properly, This is “I”), by Jack Vance; Best Professional Editor, Long Form, Patrick Nielsen Hayden; Best Professional Editor, Short Form, Ellen Datlow; Best Professional Artist, Shaun Tan; Best Dramatic Presentation (short form), Doctor Who: “The Waters of Mars”; Best Dramatic Presentation (long form), Moon; Best Graphic Story, Girl Genius, Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm, by Kaja and Phil Foglio, art by Phil Foglio; Best Semiprozine, Clarkesworld; Best Fanzine, StarShipSofa: Best Fan Writer, Frederik Pohl; Best Fan Artist, Brad W. Foster; plus the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer to Seanan McGuire.

The 2009 Nebula Awards, presented at a banquet at the Hilton Cocoa Beach Oceanfront Hotel in Cocoa Beach, Florida, on May 15, 2010, were: Best Novel, The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi; Best Novella, The Women of Nell Gwynne’s, by Kage Baker; Best Novelette, “Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast,” by Eugie Foster; Best Short Story, “Spar,” by Kij Johnson; Ray Bradbury Award, District 9, by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell; the Andre Norton Award to The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente; the Solstice Award to Tom Doherty, Terri Windling, and Donald A. Wollheim, the Author Emeritus Award to Neil Barrett, Jr.; and the Grand Master Award to Joe Haldeman.

The 2010 World Fantasy Awards, presented at a banquet at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Columbus, Ohio, on October 31, 2010, during the Nineteenth Annual World Fantasy Convention, were: Best Novel, The City and the City, by China Miéville; Best Novella, “Sea-Hearts,” by Margo Lanagan; Best Short Story, “The Pelican Bar,” by Karen Joy Fowler; Best Collection (tie), The Very Best of Gene Wolfe/The Best of Gene Wolfe, by Gene Wolfe and There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales, by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya; Best Anthology, American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny: From Poe to the Pulps/From the 1940s to Now, edited by Peter Straub; Best Artist, Charles Vess; Special Award (Professional), to Jonathan Strahan, for editing anthologies; Special Award (Nonprofessional), to Susan Marie Groppi, for Strange Horizons; plus the Life Achievement Award to Terry Pratchett, Peter Straub, and Brian Lumley.

The 2009 Bram Stoker Awards, presented by the Horror Writers Association were: Best Novel, Audrey’s Door, by Sarah Langan; Best First Novel, Damnable, by Hank Schwaeble; Best Long Fiction, The Lucid Dreaming, by Lisa Morton; Best Short Fiction, “In the Perches of My Ears,” by Norman Prentiss; Best Collection, A Taste of Tenderloin, by Gene O’Neill; Best Anthology, He Is Legend: An Anthology Celebrating Richard Matheson, edited by Christopher Conlon; Nonfiction, Writers Workshop of Horror, by Michael Knost; Best Poetry Collection, Chimeric Machines, by Lucy A. Snyder; plus Lifetime Achievement Awards to William F. Nolan and Brian Lumley.

The 2010 John W. Campbell Memorial Award was won by The Windup Girl, by Paolo Bacigalupi.

The 2010 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for Best Short Story was won by Shambling Towards Hiroshima, by James Morrow.

The 2009 Philip K. Dick Memorial Award went to Bitter Angels, by C. L. Anderson.

The 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award was won by The City and the City, by China Miéville.

The 2010 James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award was won by Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales, by Greer Gilman and Ooku: The Inner Chambers, volumes 1 & 2, by Fumi Yoshinaga (tie)

The 2010 Sidewise Award went to 1942, by Robert Conroy (Long Form) and “The Fixation,” by Alastair Reynolds (Short Form).

The 2010 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award went to Mark Clifton.

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Dead in 2010 or early 2011 were:

JAMES P. HOGAN, 69, author of Inherit the Stars. The Gentle Giants of Ganymede, and many others; E. C. TUBB, 90, veteran British SF writer, author of more than 1340 novels, including, his best-known, the thirty-two-volume Dumarest series of space operas; MARTIN GARDINER, 95, author, mathematician, and puzzle-maker, who wrote long-running mathematics columns for Scientific American and Asmiov’s Science Fiction; ARTHUR HERZOG III, 83, mainstream author who also wrote some books with SF elements, such as The Swarm; MERVYN JONES, 87, author of twenty-nine novels, including some SF; PATRICIA WRIGHTSON, 88, author of twenty-seven children’s and Young Adult books; STEPHEN GILBERT, 97, Irish SF and horror writer; three-time Edgar-winner and mystery mainstay, JOE GORES, 79, author of Hammett and 32 Cadillacs; ELISABETH BERESFORD, 84, British children’s author, creator of the long-running series about The Wombles; JOHN STEAKLEY, 59, SF writer, author of Armor; WILLIAM MAYNE, 82, author of more than 100 children’s books, some with SF elements; FRANK K. KELLY, 95, veteran writer; JIM HARMON, 76, author of more than forty stories in the fifties and sixties, most for Galaxy and Worlds of If; GEORGE EWING, 64, SF writer, contributor to Asmov’s and Analog; MELISSA MIA HALL, 54, SF/horror writer and anthologist, a friend; JEANNIE ROBINSON, 62, author, dancer, and choreographer, wife of SF writer Spider Robinson, a friend; F. GWYNPLAINE MacINTYRE, 62, prolific short-story writer who was a mainstay of Asimov’s during the George Scithers years, and also sold to Amazing, Weird Tales, and elsewhere; MARY HUNTER SCHAUB, 66, SF and fantasy writer, author with Andre Norton of The Magestone; JENNIFER RARDIN, 45, urban fantasy writer, author of Once Bitten, Twice Shy; REBECCA NEASON, 55, fantasy and media novel writer; JOHN SCHOENHERR, 74, Hugo-winning SF cover artist and nature illustrator who did some of the most famous covers ever for Analog, including the cover for the serialization of Frank Herbert’s Dune; FRANK FRAZETTA, 82, famous fantasy artist, Hugo and World Fantasy Award–winner, best known for his covers for Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian and for covers for many books by Edgar Rice Burroughs; ROBERT McCALL, 90, artist perhaps best known for the movie poster for 2001: A Space Odyssey, although he also worked on Disney’s Epcot Center and the National Air and Space Museum, as well as for Life magazine; AL WILLIAMSON, 79, comic artist; GEORGE H. SCITHERS, 80, founding editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction, who also served as editor for Amazing and Weird Tales and was a prominent agent and fanzine editor, winner of a Hugo and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Fantasy Convention; RALPH M. VICINANZA, 60, perhaps the most successful and prestigious literary agent in the history of SF, certainly of the last several decades, who at one time or another was the agent for most of the prominent authors in the field, and who helped establish and expand the overseas market for American SF; LARRY ASHMEAD, 78, who at one time or another was a major book editor at Doubleday, Simon & Schuster, Lippincott, and Harper & Row; BOB GUCCIONE, 79, publisher of Penthouse, probably best known in the field for launching the prestigious magazine OMNI; ELAINE KOSTER, 69, literary agent and publisher, who was responsible for helping to launch the career of Stephen King; EVERETT F. BLEILER, 90, bibliographer and scholar, compiler of The Checklist of Fantastic Literature: A Bibliography of Fantasy, Weird and Science Fiction Books Published in the English Language, as well as, with T. E. Ditky, the editor of The Best Science Fiction Stories, the first annual Year’s Best anthology series, winner of the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award; DONALD H. TUCK, 89, Hugo-winning Australian bibliographer, compiler of A Handbook of Science Fiction and Fantasy and The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy through 1968: A Bibliographic Survey of the Fields of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction through 1968; NEIL BARRON, 76, bibliographer and scholar, author of one of the standard SF references, Anatomy of Wonder; JERRY WEIST, 61, author, bookseller, and collector, author of the Hugo-winning Ray Bradbury: An Illustrated Life; GLEN GOODKNIGHT, 69, founder of the Mythopoeic Society; GLENN LEWIS GILLETTE, 64, SF writer who edited the SFWA e-newsletter for many years; LESLIE NIELSEN, 84, film and television actor, best known to genre audiences for starring in the classic film Forbidden Planet, although they’re likely to also know him from later movies like Airplane! and The Naked Gun; ANNE FRANCIS, 80, Nielsen’s costar from Forbidden Planet, who also did much television work, including episodes of The Twilight Zone; KEVIN McCARTHY, 96, film actor, best known to genre audience for starring in the original version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers; PATRICIA NEAL, 84, film actor, best known to genre audiences for costarring in the original The Day the Earth Stood Still; PETER POSTLETHWAITE, 64, British film actor, perhaps best known to genre audiences from Inception and The Lost World: Jurrasic Park; HAROLD GOULD, 86, film and television actor, perhaps best known to genre audiences from his appearances in episodes of The Twilight Zone, Lois & Clark, The Outer Limits, and The Ray Bradbury Theater, although I have little doubt that many of them would also remember him from The Sting; TONY CURTIS, 85, film actor, one of the most famous leading men of the fifties and sixties, his connection with the genre is fairly tenuous, although no doubt many will remember him from The Vikings and The Great Race, which had slight fantastic elements; JAMES GAMMON, 70, gravel-voiced film and television actor who appeared in The Milagro Beanfield War, Silverado, and TV’s The Wild Wild West and Batman, and did voiceover work in The Iron Giant; STEVE LANDESBERG, 74, television actor, best known as the eccentric detective in Barney Miller; BLAKE EDWARDS, 88, film director, perhaps best known for Victor Victoria and the Pink Panther movies; DINO DE LAURENTIIS, 91, film producer, best known to genre audiences for Dune, Barbarella, Conan the Barbarian, and an awful version of King Kong; ASENATH HAMMOND, 60, longtime fan and blogger, ex-wife of SF artist Rick Sternbach, a friend; ANNETTE STITH, widow of SF writer John E. Stith; MARY E. STUBBS, 87, widow of Harry Stubbs, who wrote SF as “Hal Clement”; BETTY BOND, 94, widow of SF writer Nelson Bond; EILEEN PRATCHETT, 88, mother of fantasy writer Terry Pratchett; NATHAN DATLOW, 93, father of editor Ellen Datlow; AVERY LEEMING NAGLE, 85, mother of SF writer Pati Nagle; GAIL ZETTEL 74, mother of SF writer Sarah Zettel; GARDNER McSWIGGIN, 82, uncle of editor Gardner Dozois.