The Best of Crank!, Bryan Cholfin, ed. (Tor 8/98) The off-beat best of a magazine noted for its consistently challenging fiction. The all-star roster includes authors Karen Joy Fowler, Brian Aldiss, Jonathan Lethem, Michael Bishop, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

Nebula Awards 32, Jack Dann, ed. (Harcourt Brace 4/98, $13.00, tp) This gathering combines sometimes gloomy speculations on the future of SF with some fine fiction that should keep readers from despair.

Clones, Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois, eds. (Ace 4/98, $5.99, pb) This reprint anthology of nine classic stories by Ursula K. Le Guin, Greg Egan, Joe Haldeman, and other notable writers, shows the SF take behind today's scare headlines.

Sirens and Other Demon Lovers, Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling (HarperPrism 9/98) Original tales of erotic dark fantasy fill this anthology, written by an impressive group of authors including Storm Constantine, Edward Bryant, Michael Swanwick, and Neil Gaiman.

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Eleventh Annual Collection, Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, eds. (St. Martin's 7/98) The definitive ''Year's Best'' of the fantasy and horror fields returns with its annual overviews of the fields, along with summaries of the year in comics and media, the latter by Locus's own Edward Bryant.

The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois, ed. (St. Martin's 6/98) The heavyweight year's best anthology with 28 stories and over 600 pages, plus Dozois!e s always valuable, and sometimes provocative, summation of the year in SF.

Lord of the Fantastic: Stories in Honor of Roger Zelazny, Martin H. Greenberg, ed. (Avon Eos 8/98) An original anthology of 23 stories, with an impressive array of authors paying tribute to Zelazny through stories and personal notes.

Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction, Nicola Griffith & Stephen Pagel, eds. (Overlook 9/98) This second anthology in the groundbreaking gender-bending series brings together 21 all-original SF stories featuring gays and lesbians as the Alien Other.

The Road to Science Fiction, Volume 5: The British Way, James Gunn, ed. (White Wolf/Borealis 4/98, $14.99, tp) This latest in Gunn's world- and time-spanning series of anthologies, presenting the history of SF, turns to the Brits, from Wells to Watson.

The Road to Science Fiction, Volume 6: Around the World, ed. by James Gunn (White Wolf 8/98) Gunn expands his series of teaching anthologies with this sampling of non-English-language SF. A wide-ranging overview for those who believe SF is more than a single-language phenomenon.

Year's Best SF 3, David G. Hartwell (HarperPrism 6/98, $6.50, pb) The strictly-all-SF contender among the ''year's best'' anthologies weighs in with 22 stories.

Starlight 2, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, ed. (Tor 10/98) The second volume in what promises to be an influential anthology series (the first won the World Fantasy Award), with 13 provocative, all-original stories.

Arrowdreams: An Anthology of Alternate Canadas, Mark Shainblum & John Dupuis, eds. (Nuage 3/98, C$19.95, tp) Anthology of a dozen SF stories featuring alternate versions of key events in Canadian history.

Alternative Alices, Carolyn Sigler, ed. (University Press of Kentucky, 4/98, $34.00, hc) Anthology of ''visions and revisions of Lewis Carroll's 'Alice' books,'' from the 1860s to the 1920s.

The Fantasy Hall of Fame, Robert Silverberg, ed. (HarperPrism 3/98, $14.00, tp) This anthology of works chosen by SFWA members is billed as ''The Official Fantasy Hall of Fame'' – and seems to live up to its billing, from A (Poul Anderson) to Z (Roger Zelazny).

Legends, Robert Silverberg, ed. (Tor 9/98) Eleven of the biggest names in fantasy, including Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin, Terry Pratchett, and Robert Jordan, contribute novellas set in their most popular worlds – a must for fans of fantasy series.

The Year's Best Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume Two, Jonathan Strahan & Jeremy G. Byrne (Voyager Australia 5/98, A$14.95, pb) A year's best from the land down under, home of a surprising number of first-caliber writers. Here's your chance to sample the best, including Greg Egan, Terry Dowling, Lucy Sussex, and more.

The Playboy Book of Science Fiction, Alice K. Turner, ed. (HarperPrism 6/98, $23.00, hc) Impressive anthology of fiction previously published in Playboy, by a stellar group of writers including Ray Bradbury, J.G. Ballard, Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen King, and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Eternal Lovecraft: The Persistence of HPL in Popular Culture, Jim Turner, ed. (Golden Gryphon 9/98) This anthology gathers together a wide range of Lovecraft-inspired stories by some of the genre's most noted authors, including Harlan Ellison, Gene Wolfe, and Stephen King.

Leviathan, Volume Two, Jeff VanderMeer & Rose Secrest, eds. (Ministry of Whimsy 8/98) The second volume in an anthology series dedicated to the surreal and the fantastic, this has four cutting-edge novellas, by Richard Calder, Stepan Chapman, L. Timmel Duchamp, and Rhys Hughes.

A Magic Lover's Treasury of the Fantastic, Margaret Weis, ed. (Warner Aspect 1/98, $13.99, tp) Reprint anthology of fantasy stories (some with elements of SF) by Bradley, Card, Feist, Le Guin, Silverberg, Vance, Zelazny, and many other noted writers in the field.