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The Year’s Best SF & Fantasy 2009, edited by Rich Horton

The Year’s Best SF & Fantasy 2009, edited by Rich Horton

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years-best-2I’m supposed to be putting the finishing touches on BG 14, figuring out how to use Google Ad words, and about a million other things tonight. But man, I am beat.

Besides, the copy of Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2009 I ordered finally arrived a few weeks ago, and it’s been sitting there on my desk, unopened. That’s just criminal. So I packed it in early tonight, and curled up with it in the big green chair.

As we’ve established here already, Rich Horton is some kind of crazy person.  It all started with his newsgroup at SFF Net, where he was reviewing every single magazine in the entire universe.  Or as close as damn is to swearing, as they used to tell me while growing up in Nova Scotia.

Then he began compiling lists of his selections of the best short fiction of the year, and we started reprinting them on the BG website (in 2005, 2006 and 2007.)

In between, he knocked out detailed articles exploring the rich history of the SF & Fantasy genres for virtually every issue of Black Gate, starting with Building the Fantasy Canon: the Classic Anthologies of Genre Fantasy: Part One, (BG 2) and continuing with things like an exploration of The Big Little SF Magazines of the 1970s (BG 10), and Fictional Losses: Neglected Stories From the SF Magazines (BG 11).

Now he’s turned his talents to something closer to home: making books.  He’s become an anthologist of note, with over half a dozen Best SF and Best Fantasy volumes to his credit, chiefly from Prime Books.  This year Prime has re-launched the series, with a snappy new cover design and a big bump in size and page count (to 540 pages).  This is a hefty volume, with 37 short stories, detailed author biographies, and Honorable Mentions.

There are a great many Best of the Year books in the genre, but so far this is my favorite.  More later as I make my way through the book.

Rich Horton reviews Black Gate 13

Rich Horton reviews Black Gate 13

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black-gateissue-13-coverEvery year, uberreviewer Rich Horton sets out to summarize the year in genre short fiction at his newsgroup on SFFNet.

Note I didn’t say “survey,” or “overview.”  Rich reads every story in every single magazine in the field — and more than a few outside it — and discusses each publication in detail.  It’s a process that takes months (not including reading time). As he put it in his final post last year:

I read various issues of 36 print magazines, 29 electronic sources, 50 original anthologies, 14 story collections with original pieces, 12 single story chapbooks, and a few other miscellaneous spots. I read a total of 2325 stories: 69 novellas, 434 novelettes, and 1823 short stories… word count total, a bit over 13.5 million.

Is he crazy? (That’s not a rhetorical question. The answer is probably yes.) But until he’s institutionalized, the rest of us benefit greatly from both his stamina and his superior taste.

How do we know his taste is superb? Because he likes Black Gate, for one thing.

…

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Locus reviews Black Gate 13

Locus reviews Black Gate 13

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The June issue of Locus, the Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field, contains this review from Contributing Editor Rich Horton, in his Locus Looks at Short Fiction column:

Black Gate‘s Spring issue is as ever stuffed with entertaining adventure fantasy, the best story this time being the longest, “St. George and the Antriders,” Mark Sumner’s concluding tale in a series about marauding antriders in an alternate 19th century Central America. Here Mr. Brown and the resourceful landowner Miss Marlowe lead a band of refugees back to the capital city where they find the corrupt governorship of the territory as menacing as the antriders.

Recommended Stories (all magazines, June)

“St. George and the Antriders,” Mark Sumner (Black Gate Spring ’09)

No online link, but Locus is available at finer bookstores everywhere, and you can buy single copies at www.locusmag.com.

A Review of Gentleman of the Road

A Review of Gentleman of the Road

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Gentlemen of the Road - cover
By Rich Horton

There’s been much talk in all kinds of circles about Michael Chabon’s appreciative stance on genre fiction. Last year there was even more talk about his most recent novel, Gentlemen of the Road, amongst fans of fantasy, and, more particularly, readers of heroic fiction. The talented Rich Horton decided to take a look for himself, and share his opinion with you.

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Rich Horton’s Virtual Best of the Year — 2007

Rich Horton’s Virtual Best of the Year — 2007

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This is it, the list you’ve been waiting for. Rich Horton’s picks for the best science fiction, fantasy, and space opera stories of the year is always a Black Gate reader’s favorite, and this time he’s truly outdone himself. Rich pored over 2343 stories — that’s over twelve million words — and from that massive mountain of tales chose the very best of the bunch for your edification. The result? A resource that you can use to acquire and read all of the very top novellas, novelettes, and short stories that were published in the field during the last year.

So whenever you start running low on reading material during 2008, pop back over here and take a gander at The List. Our resident reviewing superstar has put in all of the hard work so you won’t have to.

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A Review of Skin Hunger

A Review of Skin Hunger

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When an unabashed work of fantasy gets shortlisted for a National Book Award, Black Gate‘s Rich Horton sits up and takes notice. The volume in question is titled Skin Hunger, Book One of a series called A Resurrection of Magic. Penned by talented writer Kathleen Duey, it’s filled with witches, magic, ove and loss. Horton judges it an intriguing page-turner that acts as a promising introduction to Duey’s fictional world.

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A Review of Jade Tiger

A Review of Jade Tiger

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Since 1999 Jenn Reese has made a name for herself writing fantasy tales at times whimsical, contemplative, and moving for markets as diverse as Strange Horizons, Flypaper, and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress book anthologies. Now we finally have a novel from her, one with plenty of romance and exotic, kung-fu crime fighting to keep you reading. Black Gate’s Rich Horton gives you the details.

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A Review of The Spriggan Mirror

A Review of The Spriggan Mirror

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Lawrence Watt-Evans utilized the Internet in novel fashion to bring the latest entry in his Ethshar series to readers. Black Gate‘s Rich Horton tells you all about how he did it, what it may hint about the future of publishing, and whether the book itself lives up to the previous volumes in Watt-Evans’ fantasy saga.

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Rich Horton’s Virtual Best of the Year: 2006

Rich Horton’s Virtual Best of the Year: 2006

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Black Gate Contributing Editor Rich Horton presents his annual look back at the finest genre short fiction of last year, selected from a reading list of nearly 2000 stories appearing in well over a hundred magazines, e-zines and anthologies — from Aeon to Zoetrope.

Join one of the most accomplished reviewers in the field for a fond look back at 2006, and a preview of the contents of three major upcoming anthologies containing the very best it had to offer: Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2007, Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2007, and the new Space Opera, showcasing the finest in modern space adventure.

Rich also unveils his choices for the Best Online SF/F of 2007, and finally his picks for Hugo nominations for short story, novelette, and novella.

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Rich Horton’s Virtual Best of the Year: 2005

Rich Horton’s Virtual Best of the Year: 2005

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For years Rich Horton, Contributing Editor to Locus and Black Gate and one of the most accomplished reviewers in the genre, has been preparing exhaustive summaries of the Year in Short Fiction, complete with his choices for the Best of the Year in a wide variety of categories.

This year Black Gate is pleased to present Rich Horton’s Virtual Best of the Year: 2005, a retrospective of the very best the field had to offer in the last twelve months. From a reading list of over 100 different sources and 1750 stories — the collected output of the finest print and online magazines, collections and anthologies, from Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine to Electric Velocipede to The New Yorker — Rich selects the fiction that really matters.

Join us for a fond look back at 2005 from one of the genre’s most respected critics.

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