My esteemed collaborator Gardner Dozois is set to edit a new anthology, The Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Best Science Fiction Short Novels, for St Martins Press. Despite the somewhat unwieldy title (I don’t envy the book designer getting that on the spine ), it should be a cool book, presenting a selection of the 100 plus novellas he’s reprinted in his The Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology series. It’s a follow-on from Best of the Best : 20 Years of the Year’s Best Science Fiction which was published last year. There’s some discussion about the new book over at the Asimov’s forums. From a purely selfish perspective, I’d love to see more in the story notes on why Gardner picks the stories for the new book, why he thinks they’re important and have stood the test of time. It would be very interesting.

I enjoy the annual write-ups on the Clarke Awards that Adam Roberts does for InfinityPlus. I don’t always agree with what he says, but he’s always interesting and we agree often enough that I keep reading. The latest instalment is up, so you should go check it (and its predecessors) out. Happily, I agree with his recommendation this time out. The Ryman novel is extraordinary. As a quick aside, did anyone else notice Ryman’s new novel slip out without so much as a whisper?

• The Arthur C Clarke Shortlist 2006: Kazuo Ishiguro, Ken MacLeod, Alastair Reynolds, Geoff Ryman, Charles Stross, Liz Williams
• The Arthur C Clarke Shortlist 2005: Ian McDonald, China Miéville*, David Mitchell, Richard Morgan, Audrey Niffenegger and Neal Stephenson
• The Arthur C Clarke Award shortlist, 2004: Stephen Baxter, Greg Bear, William Gibson, Gwyneth Jones, Neal Stephenson*, Tricia Sullivan
• The Arthur C Clarke Award shortlist, 2003: David Brin, M John Harrison, China Miéville, Elizabeth Moon, Christopher Priest*, Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Arthur C Clarke Award shortlist, 2002: Paul McAuley, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Connie Willis, Justina Robson, Peter F. Hamilton, Gwyneth Jones *

…is the sound of a grown man sobbing. They didn’t televise the 5th ODI in South Africa, did they. Bastards. And what was the score? The highest ODI total in history, is all.  4/433!!!!   And Punter got 164 of 105 balls. You think Smith is worrying about the Aussies choking?

This September Gollancz in the UK will publish a new Stephen Baxter collection, Resplendent. The book is listed as being the final volume of Baxter’s Destiny’s Children sequence, much as the collection Phase Space was a pendant collection to the Manifold sequence. I pretty much overlooked a lot of early Baxter, and only started reading him actively once Phase Space was published. The stories in Resplendent were published between 1999 and 2006, and I’ve read most of them. I don’t know how they’ll read as book, but there are some very good SF stories here. One of the collections of the year. Be sure to check it out.

The contents of Resplendent are:

• Cadre Siblings
• Reality Dust
• Silver Ghost
• On the Orion Line
• In the Un-Black
• The Ghost Pit
• The Cold Sink
• Breeding Ground
• The Great Game
• The Chop Line
• The Dreaming Mould
• Conurbation 2473
• All in a Blaze
• Riding the Rock
• Lakes of Light
• Between Worlds
• Mayflower II
• Ghost Wars

Oh, and for what it’s worth, I’d love to see a ‘Best of Stephen Baxter’ collection. Given that most of his collections are in print, I doubt it could ever happen, but it’d be a good book.

Well, according to fellow members of the FictionMags mailing list, today is the 80th Anniversary of the day that Amazing Stories first went on sale. The magazine his US newsstands on 10 March 1926 and, at some level, modern science fiction began. I’m almost surprised no-one got a commemorative anthology out.