Time to start planning your Science Fiction/Fantasy reading for 2004. It is a large domain with a few gems to be found amongst the garbage, like most creative writing genres. Rather than troll through garbage to unearth the gems why not benefit from the work of others and focus on these gems from 2003. Here is the list, courtesy of Locus Online.

Ilium, Dan Simmons (Eos)
The Fortress of Solitude, Jonathan Lethem (Doubleday)
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla, Stephen King (Donald M. Grant)
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J. K. Rowling (Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Books)
Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood (Doubleday/Talese)
Pattern Recognition, William Gibson (Putnam)
The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger (MacAdam/Cage)