
There were, frankly, very few SF anthologies published this year. After my own Godlike Machines , the best of these was Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern’s Is Anybody Out There? , which had an excellent story from Pat Cadigan and very good work from Alexander Irvine and others. 2010 also seemed to have more high profile “bestseller” anthologies than we’ve seen for a while. Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio delivered Stories , while Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin edited Warriors and Songs of Love and Death . All three were mixed genre, and often the non-genre stories were the highlights. Although it was somewhat uneven, the best of these anthologies was Stories, which had outstanding stories by Elizabeth Hand and editor Gaiman, alongside fine work from Joe R. Lansdale, Jeffrey Ford and Tim Powers. Warriors featured strong work from Joe Haldeman, Howard Waldrop and both editors Dozois and Martin, while Songs of Love and Death had good work from Carrie Vaughn, Neil Gaiman and others. 2010 saw the World Science Fiction Convention travel to Australia and a number of strong anthologies were published by Australian small presses to coincide with the event. Easily the best of these was Alisa Krasnostein’s Sprawl , a suburban fantasy anthology from Twelfth Planet Press which featured excellent work by Peter M. Ball, Angela Slatter, Thoraiya Dyer and others. Also of interest were Tehani Wesseley’s Worlds Next Door and Liz Grzyb’s Scary Kisses .
I could go on and talk about reprint anthologies, collections and such but I’m running long as it is, so instead I’ll simply say it was another fine year and let you get to reading the wonderful stories that feature in this year’s book. As always, I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I’ve enjoyed compiling them. See you next year!
