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Science Fiction: The Best of the Year (2006 Edition) Rich Horton CONTENTS The Year in Science Fiction by Rich Horton Triceratops Summer by Michael Swanwick Bank Run by Tom Purdom A Coffee Cup/Alien Invasion Story by Douglas Lain The Edge of Nowhere by James Patrick Kelly Heartwired by Joe Haldeman The Fate of Mice by Susan Palwick The King of Where-I-Go by Howard Waldrop The Policeman's Daughter by Wil McCarthy Bliss by Leah Bobet Finished by Robert Reed The Inn at Mount Either by James Van Pelt Search Engine by Mary Rosenblum "You" by Anonymous by Stephen Leigh The Jenna Set by Daniel Kaysen Understanding Space and Time by Alastair Reynolds CONTRIBUTORS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS **** SCIENCE FICTION: THE BEST OF THE YEAR ( 2006 Edition) EDITED BY RICH HORTON ALSO FROM PRIME BOOKS Horror: The Best of the Year (2006 Edition) edited by John Betancourt & Sean Wallace Fantasy: The Best of the Year (2006 Edition) edited by Rich Horton SCIENCE FICTION: THE BEST OF THE YEAR 2006 EDITION Copyright © 2006 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Please see end of this book for individual story copyright information. Distributed by Diamond Book Distributors. Prime Books is an imprint of Wildside Press, LLC 9710 Traville Gateway Dr. #234 Rockville MD 20850 ISBN-10: 0809556499 www.prime-books.com CONTENTS The Year In Science Fiction, by Rich Horton Triceratops Summer, by Michael Swanwick Bank Run, by Tom Purdom A Coffee Cup/Alien Invasion Story, by Douglas Lain The Edge of Nowhere, by James Patrick Kelly Heartwired, by Joe Haldeman The Fate of Mice, by Susan Palwick The King of Where-I-Go, by Howard Waldrop The Policeman's Daughter, by Wil McCarthy Bliss, by Leah Bobet Finished, by Robert Reed The Inn at Mount Either, by James Van Pelt Search Engine, by Mary Rosenblum "You" by Anonymous, by Stephen Leigh The Jenna Set, by Daniel Kaysen Understanding Space and Time, by Alastair Reynolds The Year in Science Fiction by Rich Horton There are two obvious ways of looking at the state of the SF field in any given year. One is to try to assess the quality and concerns of the stories produced: are there any obsessive themes? Was it a particularly special year for great stories? Did any authors spring out of nowhere to suddenly become major? Or did any seem to exert outsize influence through some combinations of quantity and quality of stories? The other way is more practical in a sense: how is the field doing economically? Are the magazines healthy? Are book sales healthy? Is readership expanding? This latter way is less interesting to me, but it seems the short fiction scene deserves a brief look, if only to mostly mildly echo cries of "doom and gloom." The magazines are at best stable: circulation continues to drift down, and some new starts of the past couple years didn't survive long, most notably Paizo Publishing's somewhat media-oriented relaunch of Amazing. A bit more optimistically, Andy Cox stamped his personality more thoroughly on Interzone, and after a slow start in 2004 he managed six quite strong issues in 2005. The first year of Asimov's under Sheila Williams's editorship was a solid year, with much continuity maintained from Gardner Dozois's reign. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction had a good year, and Analog had one of its best recent years. More distressing was the loss of the best-ever online source of new science fiction: Ellen Datlow's Sci Fiction, which has been closed down after another strong year. Smaller 'zines often tend to publish fantasy, horror, or slipstream, but there are a few that publish lots of science fiction: in particular I would mention Electric Velocipede, the Australian publication Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and two electronically distributed magazines, Challenging Destiny and Oceans of the Mind. Bu