Updated Thursday 2 January 2003

Best Books of 2002 — Lists | Tally

Thu 2 Jan:
Barnes & Noble has posted these staff favorites of SF, fantasy, and horror books, listed in this order (though not explicitly numbered):

• The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson (Bantam)
• The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde (Viking)
• The Hour Before Dark, Douglas Clegg (Leisure)
• The Scar, China Miéville (Ballantine Del Rey)
• Guardian, Joe Haldeman (Ace)
• Coyote, Allen Steele (Ace)
• One More for the Road, Ray Bradbury (HarperCollins/Morrow)
• Exile's Honor, Mercedes Lackey (DAW)
• The Saga of Seven Suns, Book 1: Hidden Empire, Kevin J. Anderson (Warner Aspect)
• The Visitor, Sheri S. Tepper (HarperCollins/Eos)

In addition, several SFF titles are listed on the Ages 9-12 list, implicit ranking indicated:

• 1: Summerland, Michael Chabon (Miramax Books/Hyperion Books for Children)
• 4: Coraline, Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)
• 5: The Thief Lord, Cornelia Funke (Scholastic)
• 10: Abarat, Clive Barker (Joanna Cotler Books/HarperCollins)

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Fri 20 Dec:
Amazon UK has posted Best of 2002: SF & Fantasy as follows:

• The Salmon of Doubt, Douglas Adams (Macmillan UK)
• The Saga of Seven Suns: Hidden Empire, Kevin J. Anderson (Simon & Schuster/Earthlight)
• Elfsorrow: Legends of the Raven, James Barclay (Orion/Gollancz)
• Abarat, Clive Barker (HarperCollins UK/Joanna Cotler Books)
• The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara: Antrax, Terry Brooks (Earthlight)
• Effendi: The Second Arabesk, Jon Courtenay Grimwood (Simon & Schuster/Earthlight)
• The Golden Fool, Robin Hobb (HarperCollins/Voyager)
• The Scar, China Miéville (Macmillan UK)
• The Standing Dead, Ricardo Pinto (Transworld/Bantam UK)
• Night Watch, Terry Pratchett (Transworld/Doubleday UK)
• Redemption Ark, Alastair Reynolds (Orion/Gollancz)
• The Usurper's Crown, Sarah Zettel (HarperCollins/Voyager)

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Online January webzine has posted these best Science Fiction/Fantasy titles, selected and annotated by Gabe Chouinard:

• Altered Carbon, Richard Morgan (UK: Orion/Gollancz)
• Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers, Kage Baker (Golden Gryphon Press)
• Everyone in Silico, Jim Munroe (Four Walls Eight Windows)
• Fallen Dragon, Peter F. Hamilton (Warner Aspect)
• The Luck of Madonna 13, E.T. Ellison (Wynderry Press)
• The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, Jeffrey Ford (Morrow)
• Things That Never Happen, M. John Harrison (Night Shade Books)
• White Apples, Jonathan Carroll (Tor)

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Fri 6 Dec: The New York Times Sunday Book Review for December 8th has the editors' choice of best books of the year, as well as extensive lists of notable books in fiction, children's, mysteries, science fiction, and nonfiction. The SF titles, presumably selected by regular SF reviewer Gerald Jonas, are:

• Across the Nightingale Floor, Lian Hearn (Riverhead Books)
• Appleseed, John Clute (Tor)
• The Longest Way Home, Robert Silverberg (HarperCollins/Eos)
• Preternatural³, Margaret Wander Bonanno (Tor)
• Skin Folk, Nalo Hopkinson (Warner Aspect, Dec 2001)
• Solitaire, Kelley Eskridge (HarperCollins/Eos)
• The Watch, Dennis Danvers (HarperCollins/Eos)
• The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson (Bantam)

Included on the fiction list are:

• The Translator, John Crowley (Morrow)
• Baudolino, Umberto Eco (Harcourt)
• The Secret, Eva Hoffman (PublicAffairs)
• The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (Little, Brown)

The children's list includes:

• Feed, M.T. Anderson (Candlewick Press)
• The Thief Lord, Cornelia Funke (Scholastic)
• Madlenka's Dog, Peter Sis (Frances Foster/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

And the nonfiction list includes:

• L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz, Katharine M. Rogers (St. Martin's)

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Washington Post's Book World for Sunday, December 1, compiles "raves" from its reviewers over the past year. The following Science Fiction & Fantasy titles are choices, 2 each, by Fiona Kelleghan, Paul Di Filippo, Gregory Feeley, and Farah Mendlesohn respectively:

• The Alchemist's Door, Lisa Goldstein (Tor)
• Chindi, Jack McDevitt (Ace)
• The Great Escape, Ian Watson (Golden Gryphon Press)
• Spaceland, Rudy Rucker (Tor)
• The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson (Bantam)
• Zuntig, Tom La Farge (Green Integer Books)
• A Scattering of Jades, Alexander C. Irvine (Tor)
• Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang (Tor)

The main fiction list includes these titles:

• From a Buick 8, Stephen King (Simon & Schuster/Scribner) Selected by Max Winter
• Wetware, Craig Nova (Shaye Areheart) selected by Michael Dirda
• The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (Little, Brown) selected by Maria Russo

And the biography list includes a selection by Michael Swanwick:

• Mervyn Peake: My Eyes Mint Gold, Malcolm Yorke (Overlook Press)

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The San Francisco Chronicle Book Review for Sunday, November 17, listed best-of-the-year selections in various categories, including these for science fiction, selected by Michael Berry:

• Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers, Kage Baker (Golden Gryphon Press)
• The Mount, Carol Emshwiller (Small Beer Press)
• The Alchemist's Door, Lisa Goldstein (Tor)
• A Scattering of Jades, Alexander C. Irvine (Tor)
• Everything's Eventual, Stephen King (Simon & Schuster/Scribner)
• The Scar, China Miéville (Ballantine Del Rey)
• Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, Christopher Moore (Morrow)
• The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson (Bantam)
• Hominids, Robert J. Sawyer (Tor)
• Ruled Britannia, Harry Turtledove (New American Library)

The following genre titles are included among the children's fiction selections:

• City of the Beasts, Isabel Allende (HarperCollins)
• Summerland, Michael Chabon (Miramax Books/Hyperion Books for Children)
• The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer (Simon & Schuster/Atheneum)

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Amazon.com's Best of 2002 collection include this list for science fiction, ranked in order:

1. The Scar, China Miéville (Ballantine Del Rey)
2. The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson (Bantam)
3. Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang (Tor)
4. The Golden Age, John C. Wright (Tor)
5. Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
6. City of Saints and Madmen, Jeff VanderMeer (Prime)
7. The Sky So Big and Black, John Barnes (Tor)
8. White Apples, Jonathan Carroll (Tor)
9. Dune: The Butlerian Jihad, Brian Herbert, & Kevin J. Anderson (Tor)
10. Kiln People, David Brin (Tor)

Genre titles on other lists include, on the Teens list:

5. The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer (Simon & Schuster/Atheneum)
6. Stravaganza: City of Masks, Mary Hoffman (Bloomsbury USA)

On the Children's Books (Ages 9-12) list:

3. The Thief Lord, Cornelia Funke (Scholastic)
4. Coraline, Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)

The Top 50 Editors' Picks of all books includes the following:

9. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (Little, Brown)
20. Coraline, Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)
21. Baudolino, Umberto Eco (Harcourt)
23. The Scar, China Miéville (Ballantine Del Rey)
27. Summerland, Michael Chabon (Miramax Books/Hyperion Books for Children)
37. The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson (Bantam)

Amazon has no separate horror list this year. Also provided are lists of Customers' Favorites (i.e. year-to-date bestseller) lists. Genre titles on the Top 50 list include Jean M. Auel's The Shelters of Stone at #9, LaHaye & Jenkins' The Remnant at #19, and Stephen King's Everything's Eventual at #24. Leading the SF & Fantasy Customers' Favorites is R.A. Salvatore's Star Wars: Episode II, Attack of the Clones. The Customers' Favorites lists will be updated in January with complete 2002 sales data.

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Book Magazine's Best of 2002 lists in the Nov/Dec issue (most of them are not online) include these titles as best SF novels:

• White Apples, Jonathan Carroll (Tor)
• The Mount, Carol Emshwiller (Small Beer Press)
• The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde (Viking)
• Across the Nightingale Floor, Lian Hearn (Riverhead Books)
• The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson (Bantam)

The children's book list consists of Lemony Snicket's latest and these four:

• Summerland, Michael Chabon (Miramax Books/Hyperion Books for Children)
• Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident, Eoin Colfer (Hyperion/Talk Miramax Books)
• The Thief Lord, Cornelia Funke (Scholastic)
• Coraline, Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)

The YA list includes:

• City of the Beasts, Isabel Allende (HarperCollins)

And the general novels and collections lists include:

• Everything's Eventual, Stephen King (Simon & Schuster/Scribner)
• The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (Little, Brown)

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Publishers Weekly's Year in Books pages summarize trends in each category, as well as listing top-10 selections. Those for science fiction are:

• Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers, Kage Baker (Golden Gryphon Press)
• Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
• Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang (Tor)
• The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories, Jeffrey Ford (Golden Gryphon Press)
• Fool's Errand, Robin Hobb (Bantam Spectra)
• The Birthday of the World and other stories, Ursula K. Le Guin (HarperCollins)
• The Scar, China Miéville (Ballantine Del Rey)
• The Amazing Dr. Darwin, Charles Sheffield (Baen)
• The Visitor, Sheri S. Tepper (HarperCollins/Eos)
• City of Saints and Madmen, Jeff VanderMeer (Prime)

PW's fiction list includes the following; Crichton's book will be published November 25.

• Prey, Michael Crichton (HarperCollins)
• Everything's Eventual, Stephen King (Simon & Schuster/Scribner)
• From a Buick 8, Stephen King (Simon & Schuster/Scribner)
• Hunted Past Reason, Richard Matheson (Tor)
• The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (Little, Brown)

PW's children's list includes:

• Feed, M.T. Anderson (Candlewick Press)
• The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer (Simon & Schuster/Atheneum)
• Coraline, Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)

And the 8 titles on PW's mass market include:

• Fires of the Faithful, Naomi Kritzer (Bantam Spectra)
• Trauma, Graham Masterton (Signet)
• Reunion in Death, J.D. Robb (Berkley)

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Borders Best of 2002: Science Fiction & Fantasy list doesn't explicitly rank its choices, but the books are listed in this order, with the second ten implied runners-up.

• Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang (Tor)
• The Years of Rice and Salt, Kim Stanley Robinson (Bantam)
• Kushiel's Chosen, Jacqueline Carey (Tor)
• The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time, Douglas Adams (Harmony Books)
• Dark Light, Ken MacLeod (Tor)
• Requiem for the Sun, Elizabeth Haydon (Tor)
• The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara: Morgawr, Terry Brooks (Ballantine Del Rey)
• Shadow Puppets, Orson Scott Card (Tor)
• White Apples, Jonathan Carroll (Tor)
• The Scar, China Miéville (Ballantine Del Rey)
• The Impossible Bird, Patrick O'Leary (Tor)
• The Witch Queen, Jan Siegel (Ballantine Del Rey)
• Night Watch, Terry Pratchett (HarperCollins)
• Isolde: Queen of the Western Isle, Rosalind Miles (Crown)
• The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde (Viking)
• Hominids, Robert J. Sawyer (Tor)
• The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, Maria Tatar, ed (Norton)
• The Sky So Big and Black, John Barnes (Tor)
• The Birthday of the World and other stories, Ursula K. Le Guin (HarperCollins)
• Solitaire, Kelley Eskridge (HarperCollins/Eos)

Borders' fiction list includes:

• Baudolino, Umberto Eco (Harcourt)
• The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (Little, Brown)

While the Kids' Books lists include:

• Abarat, Clive Barker (Joanna Cotler Books/HarperCollins)
• Summerland, Michael Chabon (Miramax Books/Hyperion Books for Children)
• The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer (Simon & Schuster/Atheneum)
• Coraline, Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins)
• Zathura, Chris Van Allsburg (Houghton Mifflin)