Summary: Jim Baen's Universe, 2007

The was the first full calendar year for Jim Baen's Universe. It continues to be a promising outlet for online fiction, definitely overall in the spirit of Baen the book publishers, though by no means is their fiction restricted to "Baen authors" or to military fiction or to strictly stories that could be parts of Baen novels.

They published a total of 63 new stories this year, for about 442,000 words of new short fiction. There was also a reprint (Ian Creasey's "Demonstration Day" appeared in the late lamented Oceans of the Mind in 2003), so just about 450,000 words of regular "new fiction". (They also published stories marked as "classics" each issue.) There were 2 novellas, 19 novelettes, and 43 short stories, of which 3 were "short-short". They also publish the occasional serial. The total number of new stories was much the same as last year, but the word count was lower. Note that there were only four issues last year, but they were much bigger. The per issue word count has been decreased, but it is still very generous, especially counting the classics, the serials, and some entertaining non-fiction (regular columns by editors Eric Flint and Mike Resnick, another column by Barry Malzberg, and other nonfiction).

This remains a good source of online SF and Fantasy -- consistently enjoyable. I will say that I didn't see quite as many really top stories as last year -- I suspect last year there may have been an extra attempt to make an initial splash.

Novellas

The two novellas were both enjoyable without being knockouts: L. E. Modesitt's "The Lord Protector's Daughter" (August), nice traditional fantasy about a young woman whose newly discovered powers come in handy against her nasty Uncle; and Sharon Lee and Steve Miller's "Misfits" (December), a story about the hero and heroine of their first novel, Agent of Change: Val Con and Miri, and their encounter with a disgraced but ultimately heroic weatherman on an isolated planet.

Novelettes

I had three novelettes marked as particularly good this year. These were Garth Nix's "Sir Hereward and Master Fitz Go to War Again" (April), in which a mercenary and his puppet assistant visit a town dominated by a dangerous "godlet"; John Barnes's "An Ocean is a Snowflake, Four Billion Miles Away" (August), thoughtful planetary adventure about a couple of rivals documenting a comet impact on Mars; and Elizabeth Bear's "Cryptic Coloration" (June), urban fantasy in the world of her recent series (including this year's Whiskey and Water): a trio of college girls get into trouble involving a cockatrice.

Other nice novelettes came from Wil McCarthy ("Marklord Pete". February), K. D. Wentworth ("Midnight at the Quantum Café", April), Elizabeth Bear again ("The Rest of Your Life in a Day", October), and Nancy Kress ("Laws of Survival", December).

Short Stories

My favorite short stories were from Chet Gottfried ("Dinosaur Eggs $6", April), Carrie Vaughn ("Swing Time", June; and "Free Space", August); Wil McCarthy ("The Necromancer in Love", October); and Howard Andrew Jones ("The Waters of Eternity", October). "Dinosaur Eggs $6" mordantly tells the story of a man finding some dinosaur eggs for sale cheap that might be real -- but there's always a catch!. "Swing Time" is a sweet story about dancing through time, basically -- a man and a woman illegally time travelling -- mostly to places where there's dancing, while "Free Space" is about a brave woman standing up to her corrupt bosses on a colony planet. "The Necromancer in Love" is about the danger inherent in trying to bring back a loved one from the dead. "The Waters of Eternity" is one of Jones's Arabesque tales of Dabir and Asim -- Dabir being a sort of detective in old Arabia, and Asim his faithful sidekick. Here they attempt to find a mysterious fountain which may bring life to a dying girl -- or which may have much darker effects.

Statistics

Gender: 23 of 64 stories were by women (that is, 22 plus two half-and-half collaborations), a scoche more than 1/3: about 36%. 

SF/Fantasy: Jim Baen's Universe has a modest bias towards SF: 40 of the 64 total stories (not counting classics) were SF, about 62%. (I use their categorizations: they list stories as "Science Fiction Stories", "Fantasy Stories", and "Introducing Stories by New Authors". In the last case, I assigned the stories to genre myself.) I am pretty sure at least a couple of stories they label Fantasy I would have labeled SF, however.