It’s a time for friends birthdays. It was Gardner Dozois’ birthday on Sunday. He just turned 59. And my friend Rob Hood turned 55 today. Happy birthday to them both!!

Well, the day is at hand. You can now pre-order both Science Fiction: The Very Best of 2005 and Fantasy: The Very Best of 2005 directly from Locus Press. All of the hard work from Liza, Tim, Kirsten, Amelia, Karlyn and CHARLES has really paid off. I think the books look terrific, and hope you agree. Many thanks to the fabulous John Picacio for the cover art too. This has been a real community effort, with all of the contributors and everyone from Locus pitching in to make it happen. I’m proud of the books, think they look good, and they’re starting to get great reviews which is very encouraging. If you think you might be interested, you cancan now pre-order or if you’re attending LAConIV you can buy copies direct from the Locus table.

So kids, there are a lot of anthologies out there. More and more all the time. So, you need something you can depend on, something cool and great to read, something with dependably high standards. Deb Layne and Jay Lake have been delivering the goods for five years or so with the Polyphony series of anthologies. Deb’s just posted the table of contents for Polyphony 6. If the idea of new stories by Robert Reed, Howard Waldrop and Steve Utley (authors of Custer’s Last Jump!!), Pam Sargent, Barry Malzberg, Tim Pratt, Nina Hoffman, and top notch Aussies like Jack Dann, Ben Peek and Anna Tambour gets you interested, go order one now! This sort of book deserves your support, so go do it. Now. Go. Really.

The Locus reviews for this year’s various year’s bests aren’t out yet, but the first reviews are showing up. Many thanks to Sean Wallace who just sent on a copy of the Publishers Weekly starred review for Science Fiction: The Very Best of 2005.

Science Fiction: The Very Best of 2005
Jonathan Strahan. Locus (www.locusmag.com), $17.95 paper (340p) ISBN 0-978-62100-9. Cover by John Picacio.
Given the existence of two long-running “best of the year” SF anthologies edited by Gardner Dozois and David Hartwell, one might wonder at the need for yet another such volume. Still, veteran Strahan (Fantasy: The Very Best of 2005) shows excellent taste in his 14 selections, starting with Michael Swanwick’s charming “Triceratops Summer,” in which a glitch at a research facility temporarily transports dinosaurs to the modern world. Other high points include James Morrow’s “The Second Coming of Charles Darwin,” in which evangelicals send an AI disguised as a tortoise back in time to destroy all evidence of evolution on the Galápagos Islands; Bruce Sterling’s “The Blemmye’s Stratagem,” which concerns an alien living on Earth at the time of the Crusades; Susan Palwick’s “The Fate of Mice,” in which an intelligent lab mouse must decide where his loyalties lie; and last but not least, Ian McDonald’s powerful “The Little Goddess,” in which a girl in a far-future Nepal becomes the latest incarnation of a deity. (Sept.)

For those who are interested, Hachette Livre Australia has set up a teaser site for The Arrival.