Free The Mammoth Book of Best New Science Fiction 22nd Annual Collection by Gardner Dozois

but there were none of them this year and, as a result, fewer stand-alone reprint anthologies of exceptional merit. The best of the reprint anthologies was probably Steampunk (Tachyon), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, which featured good reprint stories by Michael Chabon, James Blaylock, Joe R. Lansdale, Ian R. MacLeod, Neal Stephenson, Mary Gentle, Ted Chiang, and others. Also good was Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse (Night Shade Books), edited by John Joseph Adams, which featured stories about the you-know-what and its aftermath by George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Gene Wolfe, Octavia Butler, and others. If you like zombies (which were so frequently encountered this year, even in the science fiction anthologies, that they seemed to be taking over the field), you’ll want The Living Dead (Night Shade Books), edited by John Joseph Adams and packed full of zombie stories by Dan Simmons, Michael Swanwick, George R. R. Martin, Stephen King, Andy Duncan, and others. Another attempt at subgenre definition and canon-forming was The New Weird (Tachyon), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, a mixed anthology of reprint stories (the best by M. John Harrison, Clive Barker, and Jeff Ford), some original material, critical essays, and transcribed blog entries which had some good stuff in it but which ultimately left me just as confused as to what exactly The New Weird consisted of when I went out as I’d been when I went in. Good work was also to be found in The Best of Jim Baen’s Universe II (Baen), edited by Eric Flint and Mike Resnick, and Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Volume Two (Tor), edited by Edmund R. Schubert and Orson Scott Card, volumes of stories from two of the most prominent ezines.
    Otherworldly Maine (Down East), edited by Noreen Doyle, was a mixed reprint (mostly) and original anthology which featured strong reprints by Edgar Pangborn, Stephen King, Elizabeth Hand, and others, as well as good original work by Gregory Feeley, Lee Allred, and Jessica Reisman. Just exactly what qualifies one to be a Savage Humanist is a bit unclear, in spite of a long analytical introduction, but The Savage Humanists (Robert J. Sawyer Books), edited by Fiona Kelleghan, features good reprint stories by Tim Sullivan, Greg Frost, John Kessel, James Patrick Kelly, Kim Stanley Robinson, and others. When Diplomacy Fails (Isfic Press), edited by Mike Resnick and Eric Flint, is a reprint anthology of military SF by Harry Turtledove, Gene Wolfe, David Weber, Tanya Huff, Resnick and Flint themselves, and others. The Best of Abyss & Apex: Volume One (Hadley Rille Books), edited by Wendy S. Delmater, is drawn from the website of the same name. And a perspective on SF from another part of the world is given by The Black Mirror and Other Stories : An Anthology of Science Fiction from Germany and Austria (Wesleyan University Press), edited by Franz Rottensteiner.
    Reprint fantasy anthologies included Tales Before Narnia (Del Rey), edited by Douglas A. Anderson; and The Dragon Done It (Baen), edited by Eric Flint and Mike Resnick, a mixed reprint (mostly) and original anthology of fantasy/mystery crosses. There was a big retrospective reprint horror anthology, Poe’s Children : The New Horror (Doubleday), edited by Peter Straub, featuring reprints by Elizabeth Hand, Stephen King, Melanie and Steve Rasnic Tem, Straub himself, and others.
    Reissued anthologies of merit this year included T he Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume 2B (Tor), edited by Ben Bova; The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy (Running Press), edited by Mike Ashley; A Science Fiction Omnibus (Penguin Modern Classics), edited by Brian W. Aldiss; and The Reel Stuff (DAW), edited by Brian Thomsen and Martin H. Greenberg. There were almost no SF-and-fantasy-oriented reference books this year, with the closest approach probably being Lexicon Urthus: A Dictionary for the Urth Cycle, Second Edition (Sirius Fiction), by Michael Andre-Driussi. There were a number of