By Bryan A. Hollerbach
Photograph by Scott Rovak
If there were an American Idol for sci-fi and fantasy authors, Rich Horton would be Simon Cowell. “I think this year it was right at about 1,750 stories that I read,” remarks Rich Horton, “about 10 million words of fiction.”
That equates to a novella a day, a statistic that should impress even the most jaded bibliophile. Even more impressive, midsummer saw the publication of the fruits of Horton’s reading: two anthologies, Fantasy: The Best of the Year and Science Fiction: The Best of the Year. The former comprises 19 tales from such talents as Peter S. Beagle and Neil Gaiman; the latter is made up of 15 stories from luminaries including Joe Haldeman and Howard Waldrop. Each of the handsome trade paperbacks marks the start of a series and tops 300 pages—250,000 words of fiction apiece, Horton estimates.
For years now, the soft-spoken Webster Groves resident has been reviewing fantasy and sci-fi for various periodicals, among them Locus, the genre equivalent of Time. “I read between 1,500 and 2,000 stories a year,” he calculates. “That’s from about 40 magazines, 20 online sources, another 30 or 40 original anthologies—books of new stories—and a variety of purely random things.” He compiles spreadsheets of his reading, and they inspire best-of lists he posts on the Web—lists that themselves prove inspirational.
Those lists, for example, led Horton to approach Prime Books, an imprint of Maryland’s respected Wildside Press. “An anthology of simply the best stories that had appeared only online could be interesting,” he told an editor at Prime, observing that the importance of Internet publishing for fiction is burgeoning. His editor-to-be at Prime disagreed but made a counterproposal—and thus were born the two anthologies.
As you might expect, Horton’s tastes range widely. “Among newer writers,” he says, “I just love Kelly Link’s work, which is mostly fantasy.” Other favorites include such genre giants as Ursula K. Le Guin; the late, great Theodore Sturgeon; and Gene Wolfe, one of whose lapidary tales graces the fantasy anthology.
That eclecticism should prove useful; Horton’s two anthologies will enjoy stiff, if collegial, competition. In sci-fi alone, similar volumes appear each year from Gardner Dozois, David G. Hartwell and Jonathan Strahan, Horton’s own editor at Locus. “It’s sort of daunting,” Horton says. “I feel honored, quite seriously honored, to be in the company of people like Gardner Dozois” (whose sci-fi annual has been published for almost a quarter-century). There’s minimal overlap in the anthologies’ content, adds Horton, so they’re all worth reading.
Prime must concur; already various online booksellers are listing his 2007 anthologies for preorder. Horton, meanwhile, is already combing the newest issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction and assessing the latest addition to the Amazon Shorts program of downloadable fiction. After all, he’ll soon have another 600 pages to fill.
