It’s worth noting that in spite of decades of fretting about how fantasy is going to drive all SF from the bookshelves, in the list above the McDonald, the McAuley, the Kessel, the Robinson, the Cherryh, the Corey, the Leckie, the Yoon Ha Lee, the Scalzi, the Baxter, and many others are pure-quill center-core SF.
For a long time, small presses published mostly short-story collections, but in recent years they’ve begun publishing novels as well. Novels by well-known authors published by small presses this year included: Mother Go, by James Patrick Kelly (Audible); The River Bank, by Kij Johnson (Small Beer Press); Infinity Engine, by Neal Asher (Night Shade); Fire, by Elizabeth Hand (PM Press); Upon This Rock: Book 1—First Contact, by David Marusek (A Stack of Firewood Press); The Last Good Man, by Linda Nagata (Mythic Island Press); In Evil Times, by Melinda Snodgrass (Titan); and The Rift (Titan) by Nina Allan.
The year’s first novels included: The Art of Starving, by Sam J. Miller (HarperTeen), Autonomous, by Annalee Newitz (Tor), The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, by Theodora Goss (Saga), Lotus Blue, by Cat Sparks (Talos), Tropic of Kansas, by Christopher Brown (Harper Voyager), Amatka, by Karin Tidbeck (Vintage), The City of Brass, by S. A. Chakraborty (Harper Voyager), Amberlough, by Lara Elena Donnelly (Tor), Hunger Makes the Wolf, by Alex Wells (Angry Robot), Blackwing, by Ed McDonald (Gollancz), Wintersong, by S. Jae-Jones (Thomas Dunne Books), Found Audio, by N. J Cambell (Two Dollar Radio), Aberrant, by Marek Sindelka and translated by Nathan Fields (Twisted Spoon), Weave a Circle Round: A Novel, by Kari Maaren (Tor), The Tiger’s Daughter, by K. Arsenault Rivera (Tor), An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon (Akashic), All Our Wrong Todays, by Elan Mastai (Dutton), An Excess Male, by Maggie Shen King (Harper Voyager), Ghost Garages, by Erin M. Hartshorn (Eimarra), Strange Practice, by Vivian Shaw (Orbit), The Bear and the Nightingale, by Katherine Arden (Del Rey), The Prey of Gods, by Nicky Drayden (Harper Voyager), The Guns Above, by Robyn Bennis (Tor), An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors, by Curtis Craddock (Tor), Knucklebones, by Marni Scofidio (PS Publishing), Starfire: A Red Peace, by Spencer Ellsworth (Tor), The Mercy of the Tide, by Keith Rosson (Meerkat), The Space Between the Stars, by Anne Corlett (Berkley), Three Years with the Rat: A Novel, by Jay Hosking (Thomas Dunne Books), and Witchy Eye, by D. J. Butler (Baen).
None of these seemed to draw any large amount of attention.
The few novel omnibuses available this year included: The Hainish Novels and Stories (Library of America), by Ursula K. Le Guin; The Dosadi Experiment and The Eyes of Heisenberg (Tor), by Frank Herbert; and Armageddon—2419 A.D and The Airlords of Han (Dover), by Philip Francis Nowlan.
Novel omnibuses are also frequently made available through the Science Fiction Book Club.
Not even counting print on demand books and the availability of out-of-print books as ebooks or as electronic downloads from internet sources, a lot of long out-of-print stuff has come back into print in the last couple of years in commercial trade editions. Here’s some out-of-print titles that came back into print this year, although producing a definitive list of reissued novels is probably impossible.
Gollancz reissued Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive, all by William Gibson; Tor reissued Inferno, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, From the Two Rivers: The Eye of the World, Part One, by Robert Jordan, Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi, Whiteout, by Sage Walker, Icehenge, by Kim Stanley Robinson, and The Age of Wonders: Exploring the World of Science Fiction, by David G. Hartwell; Penguin Classics reissued Ice, by Anna Kavan; Baen reissued None But Man, by Gordon R. Dickson, Wolfling, by Gordon R. Dickson, Honor Among Enemies, by David Weber, and Borders of Infinity, by Lois McMaster Bujold; DAW reissued The Storm Lord, Anackire, The White Serpent, Night’s Sorceries, Redder than Blood, Delirium’s Mistress, and Delusion’s Master, all by Tanith Lee; Valancourt Books reissued One, by David Karp; Harper Classics reissued The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman; Dover reissued The Ant-Men, by Eric North, The Mindwarpers, by Eric Frank Russell, Eclipse, by John Shirley, The Ghost Pirates, by William Hope Hodgson, Worlds of the Imperium, by Keith Laumer, and In the Drift, by Michael Swanwick; Fairwood Press reissued Transfigurations, by Michael Bishop; Angry Robot reissued Infernal Devices, Fiendish Schemes, and released Grim Expectations, all by K. W. Jeter; Open Road reissued Bring the Jubilee, by Ward Moore; Pegasus reissued Rosemary’s Baby, by Ira Levin; Chicago Review Press reissued Monday Starts on Saturday, by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky; CreateSpace reissued The Star Rover, by Jack London; Simon & Schuster reissued Gloriana: Or, the Unfulfill’d Queen, by Michael Moorcock and Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury; and Tachyon reissued The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, by Patricia A. McKillip.
Many authors are now reissuing their old backtitles as ebooks, either through a publisher or all by themselves, so many that it’s impossible to keep track of them all here. Before you conclude that something from an author’s backlist is unavailable, though, check with the Kindle and Nook stores, and with other online vendors.
It was a weaker year in 2017 for short-story collections than 2016 had been, although there was still some good stuff.
The year’s best collections included: Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories (Fairwood), by Naomi Kritzer; Lost Among the Stars (WordFire), by Paul Di Filippo; Telling the Map: Stories (Small Beer), by Christopher Rowe; Wicked Wonders (Tachyon), by Ellen Klages; Norse Mythology (Norton), by Neil Gaiman; Dear Sweet Filthy World (Subterranean), by Caitlin R. Kiernan; Down and Out in Purgatory (Baen), by Tim Powers; Up the Rainbow: The Complete Short Fiction of Susan Casper (Fantastic Books); Concentration (PS Publishing), by Jack Dann; and Six Months, Three Days, Five Others (Tor.com Publishing), by Charlie Jane Anders.