Following on from my posts on forthcoming titles from Tachyon and Golden Gryphon, I’ll try to get something here on PS Publishing, Sub Press and Night Shade soon. It’s not bias, it’s laziness that prevents me being even-handed. I’ll try to fix that.

I was talking to the good people at HarperCollins Australia, who advise me that a mass market paperback edition of The Locus Awards will be published in July of 2005, which is wonderful news. That means my 2005 publishing schedule currently looks like this:

February
Science Fiction: Best of 2004 (with Karen Haber, ibooks)
Fantasy: Best of 2004 (with Karen Haber, ibooks)

May
Best Short Novels: 2005 (Science Fiction Book Club)

July
The Locus Awards (with Charles Brown, HarperCollins Australia)

I don’t think I’ll have anything else out during ’05 – I’m certainly not preparing anything else for publication just yet – but you never know. Life is full of surprises.

I’ve spent a lot of time – too much time – looking at books from small presses and the books that they produce. One that looks definitely to be on the improve, and expanding, is Jacob Weisman’s Tachyon. They’ve been around for a long time, but just in this last year have improved their production and design, increased their publication schedules, and produced some very interesting books by Leslie What, James Morrow, Eileen Gunn and others.

Their list of upcoming titles is impressive, and includes:

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, James Tiptree, Jr. (collection, 12/04)
I Live with You (and You Don’t Know It), Carol Emshwiller (collection, 04/05)
Strange Itineraries: The Collected Stories, Tim Powers (collection, 07/05)
Greetings, Terry Bisson (collection, 07/05)
Cultural Breaks, Brian Aldiss (collection, 08/05)

The best thing you can say about a small press (and the worst thing about mainstream publishing, is that the small press publisher is producing books they shouldn’t be able to produce because they’re coming out from majors. That’s true of this crop. The Tiptree is a staggeringly brilliant book, the Emshwiller, Powers and Bisson should be coming out from majors, and if the Aldiss actually is a career retrospective for his 80th birthday (as the description on the Tachyon site suggests), then it’s a major book that should be getting series coverage. Kudos to Jacob and the gang.

This isn’t quite a naked advertisement, but… I’ve long been a fan of the work published Gary Turner and his industrious colleague Marty Halpern at Golden Gryphon. I thought the early books brought out by Jim Turner for the company were wonderful, and that the best of the books they’ve produced since are some of the best in the field. I was interested, therefore, to get one of Marty’s regular email updates outlining their publishing schedule through 2007. Just as some of their books appeal to me more than others, the same will no doubt be true for you, but they’re sure to be amongst the best books out there. So, check ’em out.

2005
38. Wild Galaxy, William F. Nolan (collection, April)
39. Live! From Planet Earth, George Alec Effinger (collection, May)
40. Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories, Gregory Frost (collection, June)
41. From the Files of the Time Rangers, Richard Bowes (fix-up, Fall)
42. The Fiction Factory, Jack Dann (collection, Fall)
43. The Cuckoo’s Boys, Robert Reed (collection, Fall)

2006
44. The Empire of Ice Cream, Jeffrey Ford (Collection)
45. Black Pockets and Other Dark Thoughts, George Zebrowski (Collection)
46. Sleeping Policemen, Dale Bailey & Jack Slay Jr. (covel)
47. Harvest of Changelings, Warren Rochelle (novel)
48. A Very Little Madness, M. Rickert (collection)
49. The Jennifer Morgue, Charles Stross, (novel)
50. The Golden Gryphon, Marty Halpern & Gary Turner eds. (anthology)

2007
51. Threshold Shift, Eric Brown, (collection)
52. California Somewhere, Lucius Shepard, (novel)

It’s not official yet, but things are looking good for me to edit a second volume of the “Best Short Novels” anthology series for the good people at The Science Fiction Book Club. Editing last year’s volume was a joy, and opening a box of copies of the first book I’d ever edited solo was a special thrill, so I’m really excited that this looks like happening.

Of course, because it’s a project I’m working on, it has to be done yesterday – I’m guessing it’ll have to be delivered in something like 50 days – so I thought I’d take the opportunity to ask readers of this blog to recommend any novellas (stories between 15k and 40k) that they thought were particularly good. You can make a recommendation using the comments feature below, the email address in the sidebar, or over at my Night Shade message board. There are a few restrictions. I am biased towards SF for the book, can’t take straight horror, and can’t consider any stories originally published by The SF Book Club during the year, but anything else is fair game.

For what it’s worth, I’ve seen some great novellas this year, and think the book should be terrific.