Black Gate

We wrap up our look at the best books of 2016 with one final stop: John DeNardo’s annual end-of-the-year project, in which he assembles the most prestigious Best of the Year lists and distills them down into one mega-list of the very best of 2016. He drew from seven Best of the Year lists, produced by:

Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Publishers Weekly
Washington Post
The Guardian
NPR
Kirkus Reviews

The result is a list of the six most acclaimed SF & Fantasy books of the year (plus thirteen honorable mentions). John’s ultra-list contains no less than three debut novels — including Charlie Jane Anders’ All the Birds in the Sky, and Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit — and a linked collection of stories from Lavie Tidhar, Central Station.

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Publishers Weekly is pretty darned discerning in their list of the very best SF/Fantasy/Horror of 2016. Where the Amazon list is fairly comprehensive (20 titles) and B&N splits theirs up into three separate lists — SF & Fantasy novels, Horror, and Anthologies & Collections — PW has a single list for all the categories, and only six novels manage to make the cut.

Nonetheless, they do manage to highlight some terrific titles neglected by other lists, such as Fredric Durbin’s latest novel A Green and Ancient Light (Saga Press, June). Here’s what they say.

In a deliberately blurred time and place, a young boy sent to live with his grandmother while his father is at war finds solace in her splendid garden and the magical woods. Things take a turn for the strange and complicated when they provide help and shelter to an injured enemy soldier. Durbin works true magic with understated, gripping narration and a heartstopping emphasis on love and compassion.

Their list also includes Meg Elison’s The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (47North, October), which won the Philip K. Dick Award last year in its original small press edition.

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Andrew Liptak, the weekend editor at The Verge, has produced his own list of The 11 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels of 2016, and it’s a very fine list indeed — solidifying the consensus around some of the strongest titles of 2016 (Charlie Jane Anders’ All the Birds in the Sky, N.K. Jemisin’s The Obelisk Gate, sequel to her Hugo Award winning The Fifth Season), and adding several overlooked titles to the discussion (Ken Liu’s The Wall of Storms, Ben H. Winters’ Underground Airlines, and one that’s not even a novel — Ann and Jeff Vandermeer’s Big Book of Science Fiction, one of my favorite books of the year).

Andrew’s list also makes fine reading for those, like me, who delight in the subtle art of the plot summary. Here he is on Malka Older’s Infomocracy (Tor.com, June).

In a year with a contentious election, it would seem that reading a book about a futuristic election might be a bit much. That’s not the case with Malka Older’s Infomocracy. Set in the indeterminate future, the world is divided into small districts, and the party that controls the most districts controls policy for the entire planet. Infomocracy is a intellectually stimulating thriller that follows a handful of characters who work for various political parties and election systems. The story hinges on how a voting public receives and interprets information — and how parties manipulate that perception. It’s a book that’s all too relevant in 2016.

Here’s his summary for Allen Steele’s Arkwright (Tor Books, March).

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