Yours Truly

A Conversation with James Enge

Tor.com has just uploaded my conversation with James Enge, author of the just-released Swords & Sorcery novel, Blood of Ambrose.I’m fascinated by Enge’s world building, and his views on fantasy fiction in general. Check out the whole post, but here’s a taste:

Morlock, as suits his ornery nature, was born out of annoyance. I’d just been rereading Wells’ The Time Machine and I was annoyed because I thought (and still think) that Wells stacked the deck unfairly against the Morlocks. Somehow this merged with a longstanding grievance I have against Tolkien: JRRT worked too hard to make elves the good guys, often at the expense of dwarves. And—because I was reading a lot of Arthurian source material at the time—I realized that “Morlock” looked like a lot of names in Arthurian legend: Morgan, Morgause, Morholt, Mordred. And so this character named Morlock Ambrosius was born, who was supposed to be to Merlin something like what Mordred was to Arthur.

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Podcast: Lou Anders and Rick Kleffel Discuss the New Fantasy

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I’m up on Rick Kleffel’s Agony Column podcast talking about what Rick calls “The New Fantasy,” and covering works by Joe Abercrombie, Tom Lloyd, Joel Shepherd, James Enge, Justina Robson, Mark Chadbourn, Matthew Sturges, Chris Roberson and others. We even discuss Doctor Who‘s latest casting announcement and the effect Obama may have on genre fiction. Here’s the direct link, and the show is available via iTunes as well (it’s episode 555).

Rick writes:

“What’s darker, grittier and sells better than expected in days such as these which are already dark and gritty enough without the help of excellent fantasy writers? Well, it’s what I’m going to call for want of a better term, The New Fantasy, and since Lou Anders of Pyr Books is publishing a boatload of it in the upcoming months, I thought I’d give him a call. Lou Anders is a lucky guy. His job is to read a bunch of great fiction and then publish it, and as it happens — or at least as he observes and I concur — fiction does well during recessions. So what’s going to happen to the fiction market during a full-blown, we’re-wearin’-barrels Depression? Looks like it’s boom times for genre fiction. Lou and I explored The New Fantasy and talked about Pyr’s and other publishers current and upcoming titles.”

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Fast Forward 2: Best of the Year

In the just-released December issue of Locus, Gardner Dozois breaks down 2008’s best sf anthologies in his column, “Gardnerspace”.

“This has been an almost unprecedented year for the number of first-rate original SF anthologies published, at least since the heyday of Orbit, New Dimensions, and Universe in the ’70’s. …I’d have to say that the three strongest original SF anthologies of the year were Lou Anders’ Fast Forward 2,Jonathan Strahan’s Eclipse 2, and Strahan’s The Starry Rift…. Of these, I think I’d give a very slight edge to Fast Forward 2.“

Meanwhile, at Strange Horizons, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro writes:

“Fast Forward 2 proves itself that rare beast among anthologies of the imagination: one whose content actually provides a materialization of its own theoretical blueprint.”

Lots of nice things said about each of the individual stories. And (I must add) a very well-written review too, with paragraphs like:

“Catherine Drew” by Paul Cornell is wildly inventive. Its Hero, Hamilton, speaks in a way (“‘You’ve got a problem, Miss Drewe,’ he said”) that captures the essence of this alternate-history spy thriller in a British Empire-dominated future. The plot, propelled not so much by a single McGuffin as by a combustible gas of intelligent deceptions and counter-deceptions, makes as much sense as it needs to:

‘Is that the mission, sir?’
‘No. We’ve created and are ready to plant chaotic information of an unbreakable nature strongly suggesting that this has already happened…’ (p. 22)

The alternate history milieu expertly justifies not only the background but the feel of the world that Cornell creates, yet is never so startling as to prove distracting from Hamilton’s exploits. Shaken, not stirred? More like vacuum-decompressed.

And then, in a final summation about the purpose of SF:

“What it should do, above all else, is tell stories well, so well that they cannot be disregarded, so well that they cannot but be taken seriously. Fortunately for us, Fast Forward 2 arrives with gifts that do just that. May it be followed by plenty of equally riveting and well-produced sequels.”

What a nice start to my Monday.

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Podcast: Yours Truly at SciFi Dimensions

John C. Snider interviews me for the SciFiDimensions Podcast. You can hear in streaming from his website, or you can search iTunes for “SciFiDimensions.” I’ve not listened to it yet, so no idea how I come off, but it felt like a very thorough interview at the time. We talk about Fast Forward 2,Pyr, the art of John Picacio, and many more topics besides. He’s a good interviewer, (and hit me with a curve ball out of the gate. Not that I’m saying that’s a criteria for a good interview!) He also interviews Tim Lasuita, licensing director for Jack Lake Productions, a Canadian company involved in reprinting Classics Illustrated. Cool!

John also reviews Fast Forward 2 on his blog.

There’s no theme to the Fast Forward series, other than excellence in storytelling. The stories in FF2 cover the spectrum of sub-genres, from near-future parables to far-future space opera, from post-cyberpunk to hard SF; from cautionary tales a la The Twilight Zone to uplifting vignettes that affirm the best in human nature. With such a wide selection of styles and themes, it should come as no surprise that not every entry will appeal to every reader. At the very least, FF2 is like a Whitman Sampler; a little something for everyone, and if you find a story you like, it’ll be from a writer with plenty of other work you can chase down later.

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Lou is Omnivoracious

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Over on Amazon’s Omnivoracious blog, an interview with Yours Truly conducted by the great Jeff Vandermeer and regarding Fast Forward 2. Here’s a taste:

Amazon.com: When you edit an original anthology series where you solicit stories only, how do you protect against mediocre material creeping in?

Lou Anders: The very wise Jacob Weisman, editor and publisher of Tachyon Publications, once said that when selecting illustrators for book covers, you shouldn’t pick based on the best work in an artists portfolio, but based on their worst. Because, he said, you had to be willing to live with the worst piece in the portfolio if that is what they hand in. That’s one of the most helpful pieces of publishing advice I’ve ever encountered, and it rules all of my own cover art decisions at Pyr. But it also has applications to editing invite-only anthologies. As much as I’d like to, I can’t do open-reads anthologies and still fulfill my job as Editorial Director of the Pyr science fiction and fantasy line. There just aren’t enough hours in the year. But I love the short form and I want to always work in it, and so I must do invite-only. Therefore, I believe very strongly that the moment of editorial discernment falls at the point of the invitation. The best piece of general business advice anyone can give you is this hire people smarter than you are and listen to them. I believe, firmly, that I am working with some of the best writers in the business, and I trust them to deliver. I avoid mediocre material by avoiding mediocre writers!

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Mind Meld: The Future of Written Science Fiction

SF Signal is back with another one of their “Mind Meld” round tables, this one on the future of written science fiction. The respondents this time around include Jeff VanderMeer, Liz Williams, Allen Steele, Mark Newton, Jay Lake, Elizabeth Bear, Paul Di Filippo, Sean Williams, Chris Roberson, Dot Lin, Alexis Glynn Latner, and Yours Truly.

I particularly liked Jeff Vandermeer’s assertion that:

“…the real challenge is writing near future SF. Stross I believe said near future sf is impossible. I respectfully say that is bullshit. To be relevant that is exactly what SF needs and how SF is falling down on the job right now. SF can do escapism just fine right now. But dealing with things head on? Not so well. SF has to get down in the nitty gritty of the horrible position we are in right now or it runs the risk of being just as irrelevant as the next medieval based fantasy trilogy. Yes it is hard to do. Who ever said writing was supposed to be easy? Show some guts.”

And I particularly liked Chris Roberson’s exact opposite reaction:

“I’d love to see more people playing what Rudy Rucker calls the ‘power chords’ of science fiction. He describes these as ‘those classic SF topes that have the visceral punch of heavy musical riffs.’ The list includes: Blaster guns, spaceships, time machines, aliens, telepathy, flying saucers, warped space, faster-than-light travel, immersive virtual realities, clones, robots, teleportation, alien-controlled pod people, endless shrinking, the shattering of planet Earth, intelligent goo, antigravity, generation starships, ecodisaster, pleasure-center zappers, alternate universes, nanomachines, mind viruses, higher dimensions, a cosmic computation that generates our reality and, of course, the attack of the giant ants. I want more of that stuff. The good stuff, the fun stuff. The mind-expanding thought-experiments and heady adventure stories.”

And I loved Jay Lake’s analogy, which explains how I can reconcile both of the above:

“Literature is like rock and roll…new movements come along, but the old ones never die. Reader tastes change, writers and publishers adapt, or they don’t. I for one hope to keep writing what I love, and keep adapting at the same time.”

Amen.

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Podcast: Yours Truly in Agony (Again)

The incredibly-well read and well-spoken Rick Kleffel and I discuss space opera today on the Agony Column podcast. Rick was enthused by reading Brian Greene’s Icarus at the Edge of Timeand Peter F. Hamilton’s Pandora’s Star,neither of which I’ve read, but both of which sound right up my alley. So we talked about these works, about John Meaney’s Nulapeiron Sequence, about Kay Kenyon’s The Entire and the Rose series, about the general qualities of space opera, and about the differences between Star Wars and Star Trek, and whether Trek is space opera or military SF. Here’s the direct link to the mp3, and you can also subscribe via iTunes.

Which you should. Rick is an amazing interviewer, asking really insightful questions, and his podcast covers a wide range of book-related topics. He covers enough works of a science fiction nature that I can justify my time as keeping me informed about the rest of the field, and enough works outside it that I don’t get myopic. For example: My favorite in recent weeks, his interview with Charles Bamforth, 30 year head of research for Bass and the author of Grape vs. Grain: A Historical, Technological, and Social Comparison of Wine and Beer.And here’s the direct link for that.

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Mind Meld: Is it Time for Star Wars to Go?

SF Signal is back with another Mind Meld, this one asking, “Is it time for Star Wars to go on hiatus for a long while, or is there hope the new, live-action TV series will breathe new life into the series?”

Answers are from such notables as Keith R.A. DeCandido, John C. Wright, Pete Tzinsky, John Hemry, Bruce Bethke, Jeff Patterson, Jeanne Cavalos, Andrew Wheeler, and Yours Truly. My favorite response comes from Andrew Wheeler, who says, “Actually, ‘The Star Wars Franchise’ is one of those wonderful fannish constructions, which has always existed more fully in the collective consciousness than in reality (and even more so in the rationalizations of a million fans talking at once). Consider Boba Fett — the biggest badass in the galaxy, on the basis of about five lines of dialogue and some battered old armor. Fett’s image was almost entirely constructed by the fans’ desires and dreams, goaded on by the fact that his action figure was a rare giveaway when they were mostly young and impressionable.”

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Podcast: Lou on Writing Excuses

At the recent World Science Fiction Convention, I was honored to be a guest on Writing Excuses, the podcast of writing advice hosted by Brandon Sanderson, Howard Taylor, and Dan Wells. The episode is available on iTunes and elsewhere, and here is the direct link. Their description:

So what exactly does an editor, do, anyway? We’ve already talked about the process of submitting to an editor; today we talk about the millions of vital things that happen after an editor says “I want to buy your book.” Not only that, but we get to hear it all straight from the mouth of Lou Anders, the Hugo-nominated editor from Pyr Books, who this year alone helped create a Hugo-nominated book and two Campbell-nominated authors. In other words: when this man talks about editing, you listen.

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