Goodness, it’s that time of the year again!

As we batten down the hatches and distract ourselves from the outside world by getting excited about the wonderful new books coming out in 2022, we can also distract ourselves with the wondrous older books being reissued, brought back into print, and translated into English for the first time. Here’s my list of the stuff I’m currently most excited about.

After a busy year for the Gollancz SF Masterworks series last year, production seems to be slowing down this year. However we can still look forward to Gwyneth Jones’ Life, which is being inducted into the series in February. Long-time readers will know that Jones is one of my favourite writers, and I’m delighted to see more of her work coming back into print. Additionally, the Masterworks will help bring us more John M. Ford back in print, with Growing Up Weightless receiving the treatment in September. Speaking of Ford, Tor will be publishing his final novel Aspects, which until now has remained unpublished. Long may the John M. Ford renaissance continue! Tor Essentials also seem to be having a quieter 2022, but will be reissuing M. J. Locke aka Laura Mixon’s Up Against It in April. Mixon has written some excellent post-cyberpunk SF so I am very much looking forward to reading more of her work. 

Handheld Press will continue in its mission to unearth essential and overlooked women writers of Weird fiction. This year we can look forward to Australian novelist and playwright Helen de Geurry Simpson’s weird short fiction collected in The Outcast and the Rite in May, and British historical novelist D. K. Broster’s weird short fiction in From The Abyss, coming in August. Wakefield Press also have another exciting year of weird and experimental fiction in translation coming up. I am particularly excited about The Impersonal Adventure by Marcel Béalu, Bruges-La-Morte by Belgian symbolist Georges Rodenbach, and The Messengers by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, all of which sound gloriously surreal and strange. Another highlight will be legendary Belgian weird fiction writer Jean Ray’s novel The City of Unspeakable Fear. 

Some exciting titles are coming from non-genre imprints as well. Penguin Classics will be issuing The Tale of Princess Fatima, Warrior Woman: The Arabic Epic of Dhat al-Himma in English for the first time. The only Arabic epic named for a woman, this promises to be an exciting and fascinating text. Penguin Modern Classics will be issuing Beautiful Star by legendary Japanese author Yukio Mishima in April. Mishima considered Beautiful Star, a bonkers science fiction extravaganza, his finest novel, yet this will be the first time it is translated into English. Penguin Modern Classics will also be reissuing Joanne Greenberg’s I Never Promised You A Rose Garden, a semi-autobiographical novel about the author’s struggles with schizophrenia mediated through her own personal fantasy world. Faber Essentials will be issuing Kay Dick’s They, a dystopian masterpiece that has been lost for forty years. With early reviewers likening They to John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids and the works of Anna Kavan, I am incredibly excited to read this one!

Last but most definitely not least, Influx Press will be continuing their much-needed programme to bring the works of British weird fiction writer Joel Lane back into print. March will see Lane’s classic debut novel, From Blue To Black, back in print for the first time in far too long, and will be followed in October by Lane’s chilling novella The Witnesses Are Gone. 

All in all, it’s shaping up to be another excellent year for classics and exciting lesser known works coming back into print!