It was a busy year.  In addition to travelling to England to attend Loncon 3 and Washington DC to attend World Fantasy Convention 2014, I managed to guest edit an issue of Subterranean magazine, co-edit a collection of stories, and edit three anthologies of my own.  I’m pretty proud of them, and delighted that my friend and colleague Gardner Dozois has been so kind when talking about Reach for Infinity and Fearsome Magics.

My 2014 projects were:

1. Special issue of Subterranean Online, Subterranean Press, January 2014
2. Minding the Stars: The Early Jack Vance Volume 4, Terry Dowling & Jonathan Strahan eds., Subterranean Press, May, hc
3. The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 8, Jonathan Strahan ed., Solaris Books, April 2014, tp
4. Reach for Infinity, Jonathan Strahan ed., Solaris Books, London, June 2014, tpb.
5. Fearsome Magics: The New Solaris Book of Fantasy Vol. 2, Jonathan Strahan ed. Solaris Books, London, October 2014, tp

I was also fortunate enough to be nominated for some awards during the year.  I was deeply honoured to be presented with the Aurealis Peter McNamara Award for Professional Achievement, and to be nominated for the Hugo, World Fantasy, Aurealis, Ditmar, and Locus Awards. Along the way, Gary and I also snuck out 40 episodes of the podcast! Oh, and I edited and curated the reviews section for another 12 monthly issues of Locus and compiled their Short Fiction Recommended Reading List. I would have done more, had it not been for the day job.

I’ll be a little quieter in 2015 than I was in 2014. Personal issues kept me occupied when I wasn’t working, and I frankly didn’t spend enough time pitching books (which I  need to work on quite furiously at the moment). This means 2015 will only see two anthologies and a collection I’ve worked on come out.  Those books will be:

1. Grand Crusades The Early Jack Vance Volume 5, Terry Dowling & Jonathan Strahan eds., Subterranean Press, 2015, hc
2. The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 9, Jonathan Strahan ed., Solaris Books, April 2015, tp
3. Meeting Infinity, Jonathan Strahan ed., Solaris Books, London, September 2015, tpb.

I really wish I’d been able to fit in another fantasy book in the Fearsome series, but that wasn’t to be.  I’m also a little saddened that Grand Crusades will almost certainly be the final Jack Vance book I do (only, I should add, because we’ve done them all!).

I expect to deliver The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine on time at the end of January and Meeting Infinity in March.  I’ve been incredibly lucky to work with two great publishers – Solaris Books and Subterranean Press – on most of these projects and look forward to doing many more (if only Bill would bring back the magazine!) While I hope to work with additional publishers in 2015 and 2016, I’m very happy and grateful for what I do get to do in the field.

My thanks to all of the writers who wrote for me on the projects above (it was a pleasure and honour to deal with all of you and I hope to work with you all again soon) and a privilege to work with  Jonathan Oliver and  Ben Smith at Solaris, Bill Schafer and Yanni Kuznia at Subterranean, and Liza at Locus.

While the New Year has begun, I’d like to wish everyone in the field the best of 2015s where everyone has books coming out and they all do brilliantly!

The Coode Street Podcast is a truly international effort, with Gary in Chicago and Jonathan in Perth, and listeners the world over.  2014 was great year for the podcast. Our audience was up more than 30%, which is gratifying, and we managed to get 40 (of a possible 52!) episodes out.  We recorded our 200th episode live in London with Stan Robinson, Bob Silverberg and Jo Walton, and then backed it up with only our second ever live podcast from World Fantasy with Caitlin Kiernan and Peter Straub.

It has been a huge year here on the the Street. So many amazing and so many sad things that I’m not going to summarise them all right now.

For the moment, just a quick wish from the Antipodes that you and your loved ones have a happy, safe and healthy holiday season, and that the year ahead is the best ever!

Time to go listen to the greatest Christmas song of all time. See you on the other side!