Thursday, July 17, 2008

Damn You, Travelling Salesman! Damn You to Hell!

I'm reaching the end of the collected Hugo winning short fiction. Next week I'll be wrapping up the last stories in the official collections and I have the 30th Nebula collection which contains all of the next year's winners but after that point things get murky.

So what I did was use isfdb.org's database of stories and publications to assemble a list of the anthologies where these winners are. The theory was that I would be able to do locate the optimal books to acquire so I could get the rest of the stories.

At this point I'd like to state my annoyance that no one has licked that pesky P=NP problem yet. There's a million dollars there, guys. What are you waiting for?

Let's just say that my theory has not panned out. Here is my starting list for trying to select the anthologies. I avoided single author anthologies except in cases where more than one story in that anthology won or that anthology was the only place where I given story appeared.

I'll ask you for forgiveness that my notes are rough. And so far I'm not taking into account important factors such as price and quality of the collection which is just going to tie this problem up in worse knots.

The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirteenth Annual Collection
  • The Death of Captain Future - 1996 Hugo Novella
  • Think Like a Dinosaur - 1996 Hugo Novelette
  • The Lincoln Train - 1996 Hugo Short Story
The Space Opera Renaissance
  • The Death of Captain Future - 1996 Novella
The Hard SF Renaissance
  • Think Like a Dinosaur - 1996 Hugo Novelette
  • Bicycle Repairman - 1997 Hugo Novelette
  • Taklamakan - 1999 Hugo Novelette
  • Different Kinds of Darkness - 2001 Hugo Short Story
  • Fast Times at Fairmont High - 2002 Hugo Novella (first few chapters of Rainbows End)
Nebula Awards 31
  • Think Like a Dinosaur - 1996 Hugo Novelette
  • The Lincoln Train - 1996 Hugo Short Story
  • Last Summer at Mars Hill - 1995 Nebula Novella
  • Solitude - 1995 Nebula Novelette
  • Death and the Librarian - 1995 Nebula Short Story
The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction: The Fiftieth Anniversary Anthology
  • Last Summer at Mars Hill - 1995 Nebula Novella
  • Solitude - 1995 Nebula Novelette
  • A Birthday - 1996 Nebula Short Story
  • Lifeboat on a Burning Sea - 1996 Nebula Novelette
  • We Will Drink a Fish Together - 1998 Hugo Short Story
War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches
  • The Soul Selects Her Own Society: Invasion and Repulsion: A Chronological Reinterpretation of Two of Emily Dickinson's Poems: A Wellsian Perspective - 1997 Hugo Short Story
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection
  • Bicycle Repairman - 1997 Hugo Novelette
  • The Flowers of Aulit Prison - 1997 Nebula Novelette
Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology
  • Bicycle Repairman - 1997 Hugo Novelette
  • Daddy's World - 2000 Nebula Novelette
  • The Dog Said Bow-Wow - 2002 Hugo Short Story
Nebula Awards 32
  • A Birthday - 1996 Nebula Short Story
  • Lifeboat on a Burning Sea - 1996 Nebula Novelette
  • Da Vinci Rising - 1996 Nebula Novella
Quartet: Four Tales from the Crossroads
  • Blood of the Dragon - 1997 Hugo Novella
New Dreams for Old
  • The 43 Antarean Dynasties - 1998 Hugo Short Story
  • Travels with My Cats - 2005 Hugo Short Story
Nebula Awards 33
  • Sister Emily's Lightship - 1997 Nebula Short Story
  • Abandon in Place - 1997 Nebula Novella
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Sixteenth Annual Collection
  • The Very Pulse of the Machine - 1999 Hugo Short Story
  • Taklamakan - 1999 Hugo Novelette
  • Oceanic - 1999 Hugo Novella
In the Upper Room and Other Likely Stories
  • macs - 2000 Nebula Short Story
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection
  • Daddy's World - 2000 Nebula Novelette
  • Story of Your Life - 1999 Nebula Novella

The Guild of Xenolinguists
  • Reading the Bones - 1998 Nebula Novella
Sister Emily's Lightship and Other Stories
  • Sister Emily's Lightship - 1997 Nebula Short Story
  • Lost Girls - 1998 Nebula Novelette
Black Cats and Broken Mirrors
  • Thirteen Ways to Water - 1998 Nebula Novella
Tales of Old Earth
  • The Very Pulse of the Machine - 1999 Hugo Short Story
  • Scherzo with Tyrannosaur - 2000 Hugo Short Story
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection
  • 10 to 16 to 1 - 2000 Hugo Novelette
The Winds of Marble Arch (anthology)
  • The Winds of Marble Arch - 2000 Hugo Novella
  • The Soul Selects Her Own Society: Invasion and Repulsion: A Chronological Reinterpretation of Two of Emily Dickinson's Poems: A Wellsian Perspective - 1997 Hugo Short Story
A Science Fiction Omnibus
  • Story of Your Life - 1999 Nebula Novella
Stories for an Enchanted Afternoon
  • Millennium Babies - 2001 Hugo Novelette
This is My Funniest: Leading Science Fiction Writers Present Their Funniest Stories Ever
  • The Dog Said Bow-Wow - 2002 Hugo Short Story
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection
  • The Dog Said Bow-Wow - 2002 Hugo Short Story
Year's Best SF 7
  • The Dog Said Bow-Wow - 2002 Hugo Short Story
Stories of Your Life and Others
  • Story of Your Life - 1999 Nebula Novella
  • Hell Is the Absence of God - 2002 Hugo Novelette and 2002 Nebula Novelette
The Locus Awards: Thirty Years of the Best in Science Fiction and Fantasy
  • Hell Is the Absence of God - 2002 Hugo Novelette and 2002 Nebula Novelette
The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection
  • The Cure for Everything - 2001 Nebula Short Story
Stranger Things Happen
  • Louise's Ghost - 2001 Nebula Novelette
The Dog Said Bow-Wow
  • The Dog Said Bow-Wow - 2002 Hugo Short Story
  • Slow Life - 2003 Hugo Novelette
  • Legions in Time - 2004 Hugo Novelette
Report to the Men's Club and Other Stories
  • Creature - 2002 Nebula Short Story
Science Fiction: The Best of 2003
  • Legions in Time - 2004 Hugo Novelette
  • A Study in Emerald - 2004 Hugo Short Story
  • The Cookie Monster - 2004 Hugo Novella
  • The Empire of Ice Cream - 2003 Nebula Novelette

Nebula Awards Showcase 2005
  • The Empire of Ice Cream - 2003 Nebula Novelette
  • What I Didn't See - 2003 Nebula Short Story
Magic for Beginners
  • The Faery Handbag - 2005 Hugo Novelette and 2005 Nebula Novelette
  • Magic for Beginners - 2005 Nebula Novella
Never collected
  • ...Where Angels Fear to Tread - 1998 Hugo Novella - only in Asimov's Science Fiction, October/November 1997
  • The Cost of Doing Business - 1999 Nebula Short Story - Amazing Stories, Winter 1999
  • Mars is No Place for Children - 1999 Nebula Novelette - Science Fiction Age, May 1999
  • The Ultimate Earth - 2001 Hugo Novella and 2001 Nebula Novella - Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2000
  • Goddesses - 2000 Nebula Novella - Sci Fiction (July 5, 2000) Website
  • Coraline - 2003 Hugo Novella and 2003 Nebula Novella - Published as a book
  • Falling Onto Mars - 2003 Hugo Short Story - Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July/August 2002
  • Bronte's Egg - 2002 Nebula Novella - The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 2002
That only goes up to about 2004 since there reaches a point where if a story wasn't published originally in an anthology then its too soon for it to make the rounds.

The mess isn't as bad as some but it's annoying at the level of just getting the stories and worse when I'm trying for collections printed in hard cover by preference. I'm going to be thinking on this for a while.