2010 books

42) Alastair Reynolds, Deep Navigation, 2010
Even though he has two other short story collections out already, this NESFA collection is probably the best place in which to go back to Reynolds's beginnings as a published author, and there's also no overlap with the other two collections. It also comes up-to-date with two stories from 2009, one of which is a new 'Revelation Space' tale. I can't help but be impressed with the ease with which he puts across a great variety of complex ideas, as well as with their overall diversity, although there is one story here, 'Soirée', that clearly doesn't match the rest for quality. Favourites are the Sidewise Award-winning 'The Fixation' from 2007, a fairly standard alternate universe story but something with a rare sensawunda thing going for it too; 'Tiger, Burning' is a too-clever-by-half homage to everyone's favourite Shakespearean space opera, and 'On the Oodnadatta' – dating back to 1998 – a mad, funny rough-house of a story set in the Australian outback that dovetails several tropes into a seamless mix. I'd also like to see this collection eventually become more widely available as a Gollancz edition, as happened to Zima Blue.