The Official SF Site Best SF and Fantasy of 2007

SFSite has released their Editors' Choice - The Official SF Site Best SF and Fantasy Books of 2007, and Ian McDonald's Brasyltops the list at number one. They say, "Wrap your head around this book if you want to see what truly ingenious science fiction can look like."

Meanwhile, Kay Kenyon's Bright of the Skymade their "The Near Misses and Honourable Mentions."

Brasyl: Best of the Best

Visions of Paradise aggregated the "Best of the Year" mentions from some twenty sources, including SF Site, Fantasy Magazine, Bookgasm, SFF World, Fantasy Book Critic, Strange Horizons, Locus Online, Locus Magazine, as well as award nominations for the BSFA, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards. They then listed the books which received the most mentions, to produce a "best of the best" list. The result - Ian McDonald's Brasylis the clear leader with 16 out of 20 mentions! Here is the full list, which also includes Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself with seven mentions and Kay Kenyon's Bright of the Skywith five.

Update 2/24/08: Locus Online has updated their 2007 SF/F/F Books on Year's Best Lists, with the result that Brasyl comes in 2nd after Harry Potter (no shame there) with 8 mentions, and Kay Kenyon 's Bright of the Sky now appears on four.

SFFWorld's Favorite Books of 2007

SFFWorld’s readers have voted for their favorite books of 2007, and I'm thrilled that Before They Are Hangedtops the list (this refers to the UK edition, as the US edition was just released). What's more, Joe Abercrombie appears twice, with The Blade Itselftying with the wonderful Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora at # 5. Here's the full list:

1. Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie (105 points)
2. The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (96 points)
3. Reaper’s Gale by Steven Erikson (63 points)
4. Renegade’s Magic by Robin Hobb (54 points)
5. The Lies of Locke Lamora* by S. Lynch & The Blade Itself* by J. Abercrombie (41 points)
6. The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien (32 points)
7. Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch (31 points)
8. The Thousandfold Thought* by R. Scott Bakker (28 points)
9. The Orphan’s Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice by Catherynne M. Valente

Also delighted to see that The Devil's Right Hand author Lilith Saintcrow praises The Blade Itself on her blog, Writer on the Dark Side: "This is fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, but without the complete lack of verite most fantasy is infected with... There’s wizards, mythology, kings, princes, a self-absorbed nobleman, ancient legends, fencing–all written so well I was grinding my teeth with envy whenever I HAD to put the book down. This is a fantastic start to a trilogy, and I can’t wait to get the next two books so I can see what happens next. There are some tropes, true, but they’re handled so deftly and characterised so beautifully they take on the status of old friends instead of worn-out archetypes. In short, I can’t say enough good things about this book, and I highly recommend it."

Thank you, Lilith. Wait till you get to book two!

Yet Another Best of 2007

SFSite has posted their "Best SF and Fantasy Books of 2007: Readers' Choice" and I'm delighted to see Joe Abercrombie's Before They Are Hangedat number five (here for the UK edition, as our edition was just released this month and hasn't found its way into all venues yet), as well as, not surprisingly, Ian McDonald's Brasylat number three.

Of the latter, they say, "McDonald masterfully explores some key sfnal concepts and pivotal alternative science. Wrap your head around this book if you want to see what truly ingenious science fiction can look like."

Locus Online: 2007 SF/F/H Books on Year's Best Lists

Locus Online has tabulated the science fiction, fantasy and horror books that have appeared on various year's best lists, inluding Amazon.com, Publishers Weekly, Time Magazine, Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, Library Journal, Salon.com, New York Times, and Los Angeles Times, as well as genre publications SF Site, Bookgasm, Fantasy Magazine, and Strange Horizons. Also tabulated are Jeff VanderMeer and Claude Lalumière's essays for Locus Online. The present the 12 most cited works, and I'm very proud to see both Ian McDonald's Brasyl(appearing on five lists) and Kay Kenyon's Bright of the Sky(3 lists). Of course, if they'd included the recent American Library Association’s Reading List Awards, then those numbers would have been 6 and 4!

ALA's Reading List Awards

Via SFSignal: The American Library Association's first Reading List Awards for genre fiction has been announced. The list, chosen by a council of "ten librarians who are experts in readers' advisory and collection development" includes two Pyr titles: Ian McDonald's Brasyland Kay Kenyon's Bright of the Sky.

Woo-hoo!

Fast Forward 1 : The "Bestestest" Book!

David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer have announced the table of contents for their upcoming Year's Best SF 13, and I am rather thrilled to be able to tell you now what I've been sitting on for a month, which is that no less than FIVE stories from my own anthology, Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge, have made the book!

This brings the count of stories from Fast Forward 1 to 7 tales, being reprinted a total of 9 times, across the 4 major Year's Best titles forthcoming this year. The breakdown:

Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition,ed. Rich Horton:
"Wikiworld," Paul Di Filippo
"Jesus Christ, Reanimator," Ken MacLeod

The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year, Volume 2ed. Jonathan Strahan:
"Jesus Christ, Reanimator," Ken MacLeod

The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection,ed. Gardner Dozois:
"Sanjeev and Robotwallah," Ian McDonald

Year's Best SF 13,ed. David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer:
"Aristotle OS," Tony Ballantyne
"Plotters and Shooters," Kage Baker
"No More Stories," Stephen Baxter
"They Came From the Future," Robyn Hitchcock
"Sanjeev and Robotwallah," Ian McDonald

I'm sufficiently thrilled that I hope I can be forgiven for rerunning this:

“…so good that I suggest Pyr wait a year and republish it with the title Best Science Fiction of 2007. This is an important book that can move science fiction one step closer to the 'literature' shelf, if it so desires....Anders has coaxed such incredible goodness out of these writers that if you only read one or two stories a month, it’s better than a year’s subscription to most of the genre magazines out there...With a deep bench of talent and a perfectly paced setlist, Lou Anders has made made a book that truly represents its own theme. Fast Forward has the potential to be the future of short-form science fiction.” -Bookgasm.com

Metatemporal Detective: Best of 2007

Claude Lalumière has posted his SF, Fantasy, and Horror in 2007: Recommended Reading list for LocusOnline.

One of ours pops up under Collections:

"Michael Moorcock's The Metatemporal Detective(Pyr) is good pulp-fuelled fun, filled with stories that deftly pastiche many modes of popular fiction, though these tales might be somewhat arcane for readers not overly familiar with Moorcock's multiverse and his recurring cast of dimension-hopping characters and doppelgangers."

2007: The Best of the Year (Locus Online)

Jeff Vandermeer has posted his 2007: The Best of the Year list over on LocusOnline. I'm thrilled to see a these Pyr mentions.

From the Best Novels list:

"On the science fiction side, Ian McDonald reaffirmed his excellence with Brasyl,which contains three separate narrative strands describing the Brazil of past, present, and future. The novel is a tour de force of storytelling momentum, with a level of invention that represents a master at the top of his form. McDonald is an amazing stylist, yes, but here it’s all about motion. He does a wonderful job of including his trademark detailed and inventive description while making sure nothing in this complex, often beautiful novel is static."

and

"Kay Kenyon's Bright of the Sky,after a slow first seventy pages, knocked my socks off with its brilliant evocation of a quest through a parallel universe that has a strange river running through it. Unique in conception, like Larry Niven's Ringworld, this is the beginning to what should be an amazing SF-Fantasy series."

From the Best Anthologies list:

" Another first volume of a new original series, the Lou Anders-edited Fast Forward 1 featured thought-provoking speculative takes on making sense of our (post)modern world by, among others, Ken MacLeod, Gene Wolfe, and Nancy Kress. Consistently interesting, this SF anthology fills a gap, as most of the current spate of anthologies seems skewed toward the fantasy side of things."

And from Notable Reprints:

"...The Blade Itselfby Joe Abercrombie, a rough-and-tumble, bold new voice in the heroic fantasy ranks."

All good to read!

SciFiNow: Best of 2007

Just got the news that SciFiNow magazine, one of Britain's premiere sf media mags, has released their Best Books of 2007. And among the list, Ian McDonald's Brasyl,and Michael Moorcock's The Metatemporal Detective.

Here's the full list:

1) Halting State (Stross) - ORBIT
2) Stealing Light (Gibson) – TOR UK
3) Brasyl (McDonald) – PYR/GOLLANCZ
4) The Metatemporal Detective (Moorcock) - PYR
5) Helix (Brown) - SOLARIS

Congratulations to Ian and Mike! We're very proud.

SFSite's Best of 2007

Greg L. Johnson of SFSite has posted his Best of 2007 list, a list of "the ten science fiction and fantasy books that I liked the most in 2007." And wouldn't you know it, Pyr takes the # 2 and # 1 spot.

Greg's #2 choice for 2007 is Ian McDonald's Brasyl,of which he says, "With wit and stunning imagery, Ian McDonald takes us to a near-future, and a distant past, that is as strange as any alien world. ...a story that masterfully blends history, character, Portuguese street slang and cosmological speculation, meeting both the requirements of hard SF and literary style along the way."

And coming in at #1, Kay Kenyon's Bright of the Sky,which "lies somewhere between Gene Wolfe's The Book of the Sun and Karl Schroeder's Ventus, and was, for me, the one book of the year that, once I started reading, was impossible to put down."

Congratulations to both Ian and Kay!

Bookgasm's 5 Best Sci-Fi Books of 2007

Bookgasm has just announced their 5 Best Sci-Fi Books of 2007. Ryun Patterson has chosen Ian McDonald's Brasylas the # 1 title of the year. He says:

"Holy wow. Once I started reading Brasyl, I knew I would never see the world quite the same way again... Brasyl shows that Pyr has serious chops in acquiring new material in addition to picking up previously published gems. Read the review if you want more, but my first recommendation is this: Close your browser, put your computer to sleep, go to the bookstore, buy Brasyl, take off the dust jacket without reading it, and clear your calendar. You’re in for a treat. Along with McDonald’s River of Gods,it is easily one of the best books of the last 10 years."

Meanwhile, Joel Shepherd's two 2007 Cassandra Kresnov novels, Breakawayand Killswitch,tie for # 5.

"There’s not a lot about these books that I haven’t already said in my pair of breathless reviews, and while one probably would have made the list on its own merits, having two of these tomes in the span of a year really takes the cake. Pyr books has been knocking down doors in both publishing original fiction and bringing foreign work to North America, and Shepherd's Cassandra Kresnov series demonstrates the second half of this equation wonderfully. Why weren’t these books brought over sooner? How many other authors and ideas are just waiting to get picked up, gussied up with holy-cow-amazing cover art by the likes of Stephan Martiniere, and unleashed upon the unsuspecting North American public? More, I hope."

Brasyl: Amazon's Best Books of 2007

Amazon has posted their Best Books of 2007 - Top 10 Editors' Picks: Science Fiction & Fantasy list. And Ian McDonald's Brasylis NUMBER TWO on the list. Why tremendously welcome news, this is perhaps not surprising given that Brasyl previously appeared in their Best Books of the Year So Far: Hidden Gems list, though that list was not restricted to genre (or even to fiction), whereas this one is for SF&F titles.

Why, one might be forced to conclude that Brasyl is one of the best books of the year period, in and out of genre, wouldn't one? Certainly Amazon agrees, as they wrote that "with Brasyl he has proven once again that he should be reckoned as one of the finest of all our novelists." Whereas the Washington Post said, "Ian McDonald's Brasyl, with its three storylines, is as close to perfect as any novel in recent memory." Then there's the Quill Award nomination, and, of course, Salon.com's Recommended Summer Reading List. And, at this point, I would be remiss not to mention the sample chapters online, wouldn't I?

A very big congratulations to Ian from everyone at Pyr/Prometheus!

Bright of the Sky: PW's Best Books of the Year 2007

This week's Publishers Weekly Cover Story is their Editor Picks for PW's Best Books of the Year 2007.

According to PW, three thousand books are published daily in the U.S., and PW reviewed more than 6,000 of them in 2007, in print and online. From that astounding number, they've culled a best books list covering their favorites in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, comics, religion, lifestyle and children's—150 in all. (That's right, only 150 total books from 6,000 reviewed titles.) And in the SF/Fantasy/Horror category PW selected only seven titles, one of which, we are very pleased to say, is our very own Bright of the Sky: Book One of The Entire and the Rose!

Congratulations to Kay Kenyon from everyone at Pyr/Prometheus! We couldn't be happier!

PW says, "Deft prose, high-stakes suspense and skilled, thorough world building lift this first in a new far-future SF series involving a mishap in interstellar space that sends a family into a parallel universe." Remember, you can read an excerpt from Bright of the Sky here. And feel free to drop by Kay's Journal and congratulate her here.