We all need a cause…and there are many good ones. My latest is not the most serious in the world, and certainly doesn’t address any of our globe’s many injustices, but it’s my cause and I’ll blog if I want to.

Earlier this year Tor Books – a fine company that publishes many excellent books – published Gene Wolfe’s new novel, The Knight. It was published to much acclaim, and shortly Tor will publish its sequel, The Wizard, which contains the conclusion of the story of Sir Able of the High Heart. This is a good thing.

However, it’s widely known that The Knight and The Wizard were conceived as a single work, The Wizard Knight, and are not really two novels at all. There was, no doubt, an excellent reason for such surgery, and Wolfe is such an accomplished writer that he makes the separation seems entirely natural and intended. But, it does have one no doubt completely unintended side-effect. It robs the book of some of its impact, and perhaps makes it less likely to get the attention it deserves.

When seen as a single nearly 900 page fantasy novel it quickly becomes clear that The Wizard Knight is one of the finest novels of 2004, and one of the finest fantasy novels of the past decade or more – a book that also comfortably stands alongside Susanna Clarke’s debut, Stephen King’s ‘Dark Tower’ closer and Neal Stephenson’s enormous slices of the past as one of the best ‘big’ novels of the year. To underscore this fact, Gary Wolfe will be reviewing The Wizard Knight in the November issue of Locus (in addition to our coverage of The Wizard).

And so to my cause: I’m exhorting awards juries and reviewers to recognise that, though split in two, The Wizard Knight is a single book that should be considered as such. By all means acknowledge the publishing realities, but this book deserves serious attention and should be on the major award short lists for next year. Let’s all think outside the box on this one.

Niall Harrison, over at Coalescent, is reviewing Lucius Shepard’s enormous new 300,000 word short story collection Trujillo, story by story, here. Also, Ellen Datlow has just published Howard Waldrop’s latest story “The Wolf-Man of Alcatraz“, which you should check out.

This morning has been a bit of a blue morning. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been listening to a cd of acoustic reworkings of old Stephen Cummings songs and some old Elvis Costello country music, or because colliding deadlines are leaving me a bit out of sorts.

It’s probably not a good thing, but I find that when I get towards the end of a project I start second-guessing a lot of my decisions. Suddenly something that looked perfect three months ago looks decidedly dodgy. I get through it, and things look fine once I’m done, but right at the end-point it’s not much fun. I’m guessing that’s where I’m at with the annual anthologies today. As I posted yesterday, we’re reaching the endgame and suddenly I’m wondering did I miss something, and was that piece I liked in February really as good as I thought it was? For me, I think this is a natural part of the process, but it can be a bit hard on my unfortunate collaborators, and I almost always end up very happy with what we’ve done (for example, I went through this last year, and I think we ended up doing a good job on last year’s ‘year’s best SF’).

I’m hoping I’ll be feeling a little perkier though. It’s a beautiful day outside – cool and sunny – and I’m meeting up with my friend Russell for lunch, so things should pick up in the afternoon. I just have to learn not to brood.

In the meantime, let me direct your attention to the estimable John Klima’s latest issue of Electric Velocipede. I picked up issue 7 of the ‘Pede in Boston and it features cool stories by Liz Williams, Christopher Rowe, Chris Roberson and Steve Nagy. I think it costs about the price of a cup of a coffee and a couple staples, so don’t hesitate. It’s a neat ‘zine.

Niall Harrison has set up a Livejournal community, Short Form, for the discussion of new short SF and fantasy. If it lives up to the last Short Form, Scott Card’s review zine, it should be a valuable thing indeed.

The year is hurtling to a close, and with it the reading period for Science Fiction: Best of 2004 and Fantasy: Best of 2004. With a little luck, Karen and I’ll have final tables of contents for both books in a week, and I can then get down to the job of writing introductions and story notes, and debating sequencing. Once that’s done, it’ll be on to Locus‘s annual recommended reading, which I need to get under way shortly, back to my own reviewing (ha!), and some work on other anthology projects. In the mean time, a call to readers of the blog. If you have any 2004 stories to recommend that we consider for the year’s bests, now’s the time. Drop me an email using the address on the right side of this page, post to the comment field, or post to my NightShade message board. I will follow up on recommendations. I’d also like to thank everyone who’s helped so much this year, letting us see material early and so on. It’s never easy meeting these deadlines, and we couldn’t do it without your help.