It’s the end of the year and various awards will be open for nominations and so on soon. There is a lot of wonderful fiction out there and, having been busy during 2020, I’ve been lucky enough to help what I think are some really excellent works of fiction that I think are worthy of your consideration.
It was a year when I edited three new anthologies, one novel and three novellas for Tor.com Publishing, four stories for Tor.com, and acted as reviews editor for Locus for the 18th consecutive year.
As a podcaster, I think 2020 was in some ways a whole new thing. Depending on how you look at it, Gary K. Wolfe and I produced and hosted either 178 episodes of The Coode Street Podcast, or we produced 26 episodes of Coode Street and 152 episodes of a new short podcast, Ten Minutes with…” I prefer to see it as the latter.
Fiction edited in 2020
Anthologies
As a guide, fiction in Made to Order is science fiction, the fiction in The Book of Dragons is science fiction and fantasy, and are relevant for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards. The novellas range from science fiction to weird fantasy.
Novels
Novellas
Novelette
- Lucky’s Dragon, Kelly Barnhill (The Book of Dragons)
Where the River Turns to Concrete, Brooke Bolander (The Book of Dragons)
- The Long Walk, Kate Elliott (The Book of Dragons)
- Brother Rifle, Daryl Gregory (Made to Order)
- Pox, Ellen Klages (The Book of Dragons)
- A Whisper of Blue, Ken Liu (The Book of Dragons)
- Idols, Ken Liu (Made to Order)
- Maybe Just Go Up There And Talk To It, Scott Lynch (The Book of Dragons)
- Cut me another quill, Mister Fitz, Garth Nix (The Book of Dragons)
- Habitat, KJ Parker (The Book of Dragons)
- Fairy Tales for Robots, Sofia Samatar (Made to Order)
Short story
- Yuli, Daniel Abraham (The Book of Dragons)
- Except on Saturdays, Peter S. Beagle(The Book of Dragons)
- A Glossary of Radicalization, Brooke Bolander (Made to Order)
- Hikayat Sri Bujang, or, The Tale of The Naga Sage, Zen Cho(The Book of Dragons)
- Dancing with Death, John Chu (Made to Order)
- The Last Hunt, Aliette de Bodard(The Book of Dragons)
- We Don’t Talk About the Dragon, Sarah Gailey(The Book of Dragons)
- Sonnie’s Union, Peter F. Hamilton (Made to Order)
- The Endless, Saad Z Hossein (Made to Order)
- The Nine Curves River, R.F. Kuang(The Book of Dragons)
- An Elephant Never Forgets, Rich Larson (Made to Order)
- We Continue, Anne Leckie & Rachel Swirsky(The Book of Dragons)
- Sin Eater, Ian R. Macleod (Made to Order)
- Small Bird’s Plea, Todd McCaffrey(The Book of Dragons)
- Hoard, Seanan McGuire (The Book of Dragons)
- Camouflage, Patricia A McKillip(The Book of Dragons)
- The Translator, Annalee Newitz (Made to Order)
- The Hurt Pattern, Tochi Onyebuchi (Made to Order)
- Chiaroscuro in Red, Suzanne Palmer (Made to Order)
- Bigger Fish, Sarah Pinsker (Made to Order)
- A Guide for Working Breeds, Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Made to Order)
- Polished Performance, Alastair Reynolds (Made to Order)
Editor, Short-Form (Hugos)/Professional Achievement (WFA)
- Jonathan Strahan (Made to Order: Robots and Rebellion; The Book of Dragons; The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Volume 1; Anthropocene Rag; Prosper’s Demons, The Tindalos Asset; The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water; Tor.com stories; Locus [reviews editor]
Best Fancast/Podcast
I hope you’ll consider supporting the talented people that I’ve worked with during the year.
The second “Ten Minutes with…” chat for 2021 is with Max Gladstone, the acclaimed author of the Craft Sequence, the Empress of Forever and, with Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War.
Last year Coode Street sat down with people from all over the world to talk about what they were reading, what they were up to, and how they were coping with strange times. We did it every day, which we probably never will again, and along the way found out it was fun and interesting to check in for a short chat. We’re continuing that during 2021.
Welcome to Season 12 of The Coode Street Podcast. This year we’re repeating our commitment to bring you at least twenty-six hour-long episodes where our hosts, Gary K. Wolfe and Jonathan Strahan, talk about science fiction and stuff with little or no coherent purpose and occasionally interact with interesting people. There will also be additional episodes and bits and pieces, but they’ll come in due time.