I’ve been giving some thought to what I’d recommend for the Hugo Awards this coming year. Nominations are open and there is an ocean of stuff to consider. I’m still not sure exactly what is going to make my final ballot but, of the limited number of novels I read this year the ones mentioned below really stood out.

The novel of the year for me, and it wasn’t even close really, was Guy Gavriel Kay’s River of Stars. A follow-on of sorts to Under Heaven, it’s   a deeply moving historical fantasy recasting events from Northern Song Dynasty China, the fall of the city of Kaifeng, and the stories of the great general Yue Fei and poet Li Qingzhao. Gripping from the first pages to the last, Kay has not written a better book. Extraordinary.

If there was a competitor for book of the year it was Neil Gaiman‘s The Ocean at the End of the Lane which, almost unexpectedly, proved to be his most personal, most complete and most accomplished novel yet. Returning to the Hempstock family first met in The Graveyard Book, Gaiman constructed a story that was at once charming and nuanced, dark and moving, and his most grown-up novel. I say it was unexpectedly his most accomplished novel because I didn’t expect him to surpass The Graveyard Book, but he has and handily.

I was swept up in the excitement when Charles Stross’s ‘Accelerando’ sequence of stories was setting SF alight in the mid-2000s and am a great fan of his Laundry novels, but I had my doubts about Saturn’s Children so I approached second “Freyaverse’ novel Neptune’s Brood with some trepidation but was won over by this slower-than-light space opera which engagingly combines Spanish Prisoner scams, space bound cathedrals and other Strossian craziness.  It belongs amongst the best books of the year and will almost certainly make my final ballot.

After a comparatively quiet couple of years Nalo Hopkinson published two novels in fairly quick succession. The best of these, Sister Mine, took us to a magical Toronto where two sisters work their way through a tangled mess of family issues.  I read a lot of fiction during 2013 and this fine novel really stayed with me.

The year was also remarkable for two strong debuts: one science fiction and fantasy.  Anne Leckie’s Ancillary Justice was first in a military SF series exploring gender and personality, while Sofia Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria is an enchanting tale of travel, books and self-discovery.  Both are strong contenders for any Hugo ballot.

While I’m considering these books for my Hugo ballot, there are a number I still have to read. Sitting on my bedside table at the moment are Stephen Baxter’s Proxima (which my pal James really liked), Paul McAuley’s Evening’s Empires, and Christopher Priest’s The Adjacent.  Any of them could sneak on to my final ballot, especially given that personally I prefer to nominate SF for the award.  I’ll add a number of these, especially the Kay, Gaiman, and Samatar novels are going to be strong World Fantasy Award contenders.

One hope I have for the Hugos is that the British contingent who will be attending Loncon 3 nominate and vote in numbers. I’d love to see the Hugos reflect the strength of British SF this year.

I am delighted to announce the table of contents for The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 8. This year’s book covers stories first published in 2013, and should be out in stores from new publisher Solaris(!) in May.

As always, there’s still a lot to do – the cover needs to be finalised (some design elements are under discussion), copyedits to be done, the running order may change and so and so forth – but this is the essence of the book you’ll see later this year.  I am particularly excited because this is the first year the book will be published in the UK and Australia.

• Introduction, Jonathan Strahan
• “Some Desperado”, Joe Abercrombie (Dangerous Women)
• “Zero for Conduct”, Greg Egan (Twelve Tomorrows)
• “Effigy Nights”, Yoon Ha Lee (Clarkesworld)
• “Rosary and Goldenstar”, Geoff Ryman (F&SF)
• “The Sleeper and the Spindle”, Neil Gaiman (Rags and Bones)
• “Cave and Julia”, M. John Harrison (Kindle Singles)
• “The Herons of Mer de l’Ouest”, M Bennardo (Lightspeed)
• “Water”, Ramez Naam (An Aura of Familiarity)
• “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling”, Ted Chiang (Subterranean)
• “The Ink Readers of Doi Saket”, Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Tor.com)
• “Cherry Blossoms on the River of Souls”, Richard Parks (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
• “Rag and Bone”, Priya Sharma (Tor.com)
• “The Book Seller”, Lavie Tidhar (Interzone)
• “The Sun and I”, K J Parker (Subterranean)
• “The Promise of Space”, James Patrick Kelly (Clarkesworld)
• “The Master Conjurer”, Charlie Jane Anders (Lightspeed)
• “The Pilgrim and the Angel”, E. Lily Yu (McSweeney’s 45)
• “Entangled”, Ian R Macleod (Asimov’s)
• “Fade to Gold”, Benjanun Sriduangkaew (End of the Road)
• “Selkies Stories are for Losers”, Sofia Samatar (Strange Horizons)
• “In Metal, In Bone”, An Owomoyela (Eclipse Online)
• “Kormack the Lucky”, Eleanor Arnason (F&SF)
• “Sing”, Karin Tidbeck (Tor.com)
• “Social Services”, Madeline Ashby (An Aura of Familiarity)
• “The Road of Needles”, Caitlín R Kiernan (Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales)
• “Mystic Falls”, Robert Reed (Clarkesworld)
• “The Queen of Night’s Aria”, Ian McDonald (Old Mars)
• “The Irish Astronaut”, Val Nolan (Electric Velocipede)

Joe Lansdale has reported on Twitter that the wonderful colorful gonzo Neal Barrett Jr has died. He was eighty-five years old. I didn’t have the chance to meet him, or to thank him for his wonderful books and stories, but he wrote two or three of the best books I’ve ever read.

His novel The Hereafter Gang is one of the great novels of the ’90s, a story of love, growing up, crime czars, proctologists, Western outlaws, dog-fighting aviators and trout-fishing Huns.  it is a totally essential book.  The same could be set for his collection Perpetuity Blues, which unbelievably is fourteen years old now. I remember reading it for review for Locus in 2000 and calling it “the first ‘must buy’ of the new millennium.” If anything I undersold it’s weird, gonzo magnificence.  I think this was the last, or one of the last, books edited by Jim Turner and it shows. Every story is wonderful. And finally, and especially if you can’t get Perpetuity Blues, a comprehensive collection of his short fiction was published not long ago.  Other Seasonsgives a great overview of the variety of work Barrett did over a long and prolific career.

A person is remembered by their friends. A writer is remembered by his or her readers. I know I’ll be re-reading Neal Barrett for the rest of my life.  In fact, now that he’s joined the hereafter gang, it might be time to re-revisit Doug, Sue Jean and the rest of the gang. Vale, and thank you.

Madeline Ashby, who is clearly fabulous, has written about her eligibility for the Campbell Award.  It would appear,  because of an earlier publication, she actually is ineligible.  I think she would have made a worthy nominee and winner, but admire her posting about it.

Given Madeline is not eligible for the Campbell, I’d suggest considering her  second novel, iD: The Second Machine Dynasty for  Best Novel or story “Social Services” for Best Short Story.

While I’m disappointed she can’t be on the Campbell ballot,  I’m glad she has work out there that can be considered in these and other categories.