If you have ever felt that it is difficult to keep up with all the excellent short fiction being published in a wide variety of outlets, this one’s for you: Locus is launching a new anthology series, Locus Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year, and the first volume is already fully funded on Kickstarter. The anthologies will be based on the annual Locus Recommended Reading Lists.
According to the Kickstarter text, “There’s been a steady decline in the number of Best Of anthologies being published over the past few years. These compilations are a longstanding tradition in SFF and are so important in guiding readers to new authors, by showcasing a top-tier selection of science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories, novelettes, and novellas. They also do something no single magazine issue, no algorithm, and no individual critic can do: they shape the memory of a year in literature.”
This anthology will be edited by Jonathan Strahan and include Thomas Ha’s Locus Award-winning and Hugo Award-nominated short story “In My Country”; Somto Ihezue’s Nebula and Locus Award-winning novelette “We Begin Where Infinity Ends”; and work by Isabel J. Kim, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Sarah Pinsker, B Pladek, Esther Alter, and more. The “more” depends somewhat on whether the magazine reaches its stretch goals. The initial baseline goal has been met, but if all the stretch goals are reached, they say, the book “expands to nearly 200,000 words (~600 pages), includes all of our selected stories, AND allows us to double the amount we’re able to pay authors.”
You can learn more (and see all the perks for the Kickstarter) here.
