These are not good times, nor are they good days. Setting aside issues of climatic change, the collapse of democracy in the United States, and now the fear and reaction surrounding the hard line right wingers running our government, things are little better in any other sphere of life. As the ‘holiday season’ (forgive me if I say Christmas occasionally) approaches, it’s hard to feel celebratory.

It seems to me that books published around the end of the year, especially late December or early January, really run the risk of being completely overlooked. And, if those books are published other than in the general trade, the likelihood of being overlooked seems to increase markedly.

With that in mind, I thought I’d draw your attention to One Million A.D. , a new science fiction anthology edited by Gardner Dozois. It’s to be published by The SF Book Club in January (well, the website says it ships 31 December, so I’m calling it January), and features SF novellas by Greg Egan, Nancy Kress, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Robert Silverberg, and Charles Stross. While I would be amazed if there wasn’t a trade edition of the book at some time, I can’t imagine a more convincing argument for making the commitment and joining the Book Club *. And, hey, they’ll be publishing my third best novellas anthology soon, and have a cool looking Marvin Kaye antho coming up too. All good stuff.

* Note: You can only join the Club if you’re in North America. Non-USians might try amazon.com or a similar reseller, who usually end up offering SFBC titles for reasonable prices.