Size / / /

If it's a new year, it must be time for the sf field's metrics of recognition to start kicking into high gear. Nominations are open for the Hugo Awards (deadline March 26th) and BSFA Awards (deadline 14th January), the Locus Recommended Reading list will be along in a month or so, and the tables of contents for the various Year's Best volumes are starting to appear.

So far, Strange Horizons has had five stories selected as six reprints in three volumes:

  • In The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection, ed. Gardner Dozois:

  • In The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Five, ed. Jonathan Strahan:

  • And in The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2011 Edition, ed. Rich Horton:

You can find the full tables of contents of these volumes here, here and here, respectively. Horton, as is his wont, has also been posting summaries of all the various sf magazines on his livejournal; his summary for Strange Horizons is here.

And Sean Wallace has been doing some interesting number-crunching, tracking the number of stories from online venues that have been reprinted in Year's Best volumes over the past few years; here are the numbers for these three series:

Dozois, 2006: 6/30 = 20%

Dozois, 2007: 6/28 =21%

Dozois, 2008: 2/32 = 6%

Dozois, 2009: 1/30 = 3%

Dozois, 2010: 6/32 = 19%

Dozois, 2011: 10/33 = 30%

Strahan, SF/F: 2007: 2/24 = 8%

Strahan, SF/F: 2008: 1/24 = 4%

Strahan, SF/F: 2009: 2/28 = 7%

Strahan, SF/F: 2010: 4/29 = 14%

Strahan, SF/F: 2011: 14/29 = 48%

Horton Fantasy 2006: 6/19 = 32%

Horton Fantasy 2007: 1/16 = 6%

Horton Fantasy 2008: 2/19 = 11%

Horton SF 2006: 5/15 = 33%

Horton SF 2007: 2/12 = 17%

Horton SF 2008: 2/18 = 11%

Horton, SF&Fantasy, 2009: 7/37 = 19%

Horton, SF&Fantasy, 2010: 5/30 = 17%

Horton, SF&Fantasy, 2011: 16/28 = 57%

There's a lot more analysis to be done here, and some missing data (some of which I will try to find the time to provide), and some fluctuation within the available data: but it'll be interesting to see whether the record high representation for online venues in all three series this year is a blip (helped by, for instance, Strahan's guest editor stint at Subterranean online) or whether it will be sustained over the next few years.



Niall Harrison is an independent critic based in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. He is a former editor of Strange Horizons, and his writing has also appeared in The New York Review of Science FictionFoundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, The Los Angeles Review of Books and others. He has been a judge for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and a Guest of Honor at the 2023 British National Science Fiction Convention. His collection All These Worlds: Reviews and Essays is available from Briardene Books.
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