As you may or may not know, the SFBC has been doing a 50th Anniversary Collection for the past five years -- we started in 2003 (the 50th anniversary of the club's founding in 1953) with a series of eight great books of the 1950s, and have had series each year since then to cover the decades following.

Well, we're running out of history now, since in 2007 we're doing books from the 1990s, and it's a little early to do the best books of the 2000s in 2008. So the series either needs to end or do something different.

And that's what I wanted to ask you folks about -- what different thing could we do? (Note that suggestions that a reasonable number of people might buy with their own money will be preferred -- yes, it would be nice to have the eight-volume definitive collection of Great SF Poetry, but the SFBC is a commercial enterprise and needs to be able to sell books to continue operations.)

We've thought about going backwards, and doing a series of the great SF books of the '40s -- or maybe just eight books from the period before 1950 (probably only going back to Verne and/or Wells). But I'm sure there are other possibilities.

All suggestions will be considered, though ones along the lines of my Great SF Poetry example may be mocked...

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

The SFBC is reprinting Mary Gentle's wonderful novel Rats and Gargoyles any minute now, but it has several pieces of art in it, and the US publisher doesn't have files for them anymore. My printer is trying to scan them from an old copy of the book, but so far the results are not good. I would prefer to have the art in this book not look like a muddy mess, if at all possible, but my options are few right now.

I'm hoping the art might exist out in the world somewhere in a more useful form. So, if you are Mary Gentle, have ever been Mary Gentle, are in contact with Mary Gentle, or otherwise might have art files from Rats and Gargoyles, please e-mail me ASAP at andrew dot wheeler at doubledayent dot com.

Thanks.

Update, 2/23: Mary Gentle has gotten in touch with me; thanks to everyone who helped. (It sounds like quite a number of you did know her.)

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 08:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Obsessive SFBC stalkers might remember the name Austen Farrell; he was our Editorial Assistant for about two years, but he left us in the last summer of 2006 to move up to Boston. (And I still think that, if he was really devoted, he could have made that commute work, but perhaps I'm being unrealistic.)

The SFBC labored without an assistant for many months, mostly for budgetary reasons (as far as I know), but, finally, with the new year, we were given permission to interview and hire.

Our new Editorial Assistant started today, so I thought to mark the occasion with a photo of the full SFBC Editorial staff. (The photo was taken in a conference room at Stately SFBC HQ by my colleague and neighbor, Gary Jansen of the Quality Paperback Book Club.)

I'll also point out that, in my infinite modesty, I picked the photo in which only I looked like an idiot (I seem to grimacing for no good reason), since my colleagues looked good. That's just the kind of man I am.

From left to right, your SFBC Editors are:

• Ellen Asher, Editor-in-Chief
  
• Ashley Van Winkle, Editorial Assistant
• Andrew Wheeler, Senior Editor
• Jay Franco, Altiverse Editor (and also, in his secret identity, Editor of the Military Book Club) 

Edit, 2/13: A slightly smaller picture size will, I hope, bring the elusive Mr. Franco into view...

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 08:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

"Except the Queen," the novella by Jane Yolen and Midori Snyder from Marvin Kaye's World Fantasy Award-winning anthology The Fair Folk, will be expanded into a novel for Ace Books, reports Chasing Ray.

Of course, if you don't want to wait a year or two for the "Except the Queen" novel, you could get Fair Folk now and get the original novella, along with five other great novellas (including my favorite of the bunch, the very creepy "UOUS" by Tanith Lee), from the SFBC...

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sometime later today, the SFBC blog will be packing up its things, shoving its hat back on its head, shouldering a hobo's bindle, and moseying off, singing a jaunty song as it goes. You see, the server we're on is making us move along, to a new server where the railroad bulls all have sore feet and the streams run with whiskey.

The Forces That Be tell me that I need to refrain from blogging for the entire long weekend, while the blog is riding the rails and settling into an abandoned barn at the new server. They expect that everything will go smoothly -- no guard dogs are expected, and the chalk signs on the new server tell us there's a kind housewife who makes a great cherry pie -- so it should all be transparent to you. (And that's the way it always is with hobos, right? You don't even notice that they're there, or when they're gone.)

So this is probably my last post before the blog skips town. But I'll see you next week, on the other side, at the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in 2003, it was the SFBC's 50th Anniversary. (Hurray! Go, us!) And we celebrated in various ways -- we had special giveaways and threw a party at Worldcon and so on -- but one of the things we did to publicize the fact that the club was eligible to join AARP was to compile a list of The 50 Most Significant SF & Fantasy Books, 1953-2002. (Which I finally found on our website; it's not linked on the current-member side anywhere I could find.)

It was a fun list to put together -- we butted heads here over the last few slots, and some of the placement in the top 10, but they were great discussions -- and then I was interviewed by USA Today about the list, but eventually the hoorah was over.

But suddenly the list has popped back up -- the webmaster of epic-fantasy.com posted it, along with a note from the webmaster obsessing about the fact that very few recent books were on the list. James Nicoll (a SFBC reader, noted online fan, and all-around interesting fellow) noticed that, reposted the list over at his place, and sparked more discussion.

One thing I will point out is that the top ten is ranked, but the books below that are in alphabetical order by title; we thought it was silly to spend that much time arguing to determine that , say Stormbringer was #22 and Ringworld was #25.

Update: the list seems to have turned into a meme, though those infected by the meme are under the impression that the list is of novels (it isn't) and that it was put together by Time magazine (they take credit for everything!). I noticed it at Keith R.A. DeCandido's blog, but it's probably all over the place right now.

Further Update: Sherwood Smith has some interesting thoughts about the list (and influential books in general). Also, the list has turned into a full-blown meme, though many still seem to think it came from Time.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

One or two people asked me about SFBC's originals while I was at World Fantasy, so I figured that counts as a groundswell. (And this entry will give me something to point people to, when it's 1 AM at a convention and I can barely remember my own name, let alone detailed publishing histories.)

The SFBC had done reprint anthologies pretty regularly in the '80s, with Alan Ryan's Ghosts and several books edited by David Hartwell and several more edited by Marvin Kaye. But we hadn't published anything completely original -- made up of entirely new material -- before the late '90s, and even the reprint anthologies were some time in the past by then.

Enter Tanith Lee. She had a story she wanted to write, and an idea for an anthology to be built around that story. The book she envisioned would be called The Vampire Sextette -- it would have six original novellas (three by male writers and three by female), all about sex and music and vampires. She told Marvin Kaye about the idea, and asked him to edit it. I'm not sure if Marvin tried to sell it to any other publishers, but he did pitch it to Ellen Asher (then, as now, Editor-in-Chief and all-around Queen Bee of the SFBC). Ellen liked the idea but thought the theme was a little too much of a muchness, and so the "music" part of the theme was made optional.

The Vampire Sextette was published in August of 2000, and contained stories by Tanith Lee (of course), Nancy A. Collins, Kim Newman, S.P. Somtow, Brian Stableford, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. Ace brought out a trade (bookstore) edition in 2002.

Marvin enjoyed doing Vampire, so he wanted to do another book along the same lines. After some back-and-forth with ideas, it turned into The Dragon Quintet, which was published in April of 2003 and contained stories by Orson Scott Card, Mercedes Lackey, Tanith Lee, Elizabeth Moon, and Michael Swanwick. Dragon also sold into the trade, to Tor Books, where it has had multiple editions (hardcover in 2004, trade paperback in 2005, mass-market paperback in 2006).

(Marvin then tried to sell Ellen on a book to be called The Ghost Quartet, but she didn't think it was right for the SFBC. It's currently contracted with Tor, though at least one of the stories is probably very long overdue at this point.)

Ellen thought having the number of stories being in the title was overly limiting, and convinced Marvin that his next anthology should be about elves, and have a different kind of title. That book eventually became The Fair Folk, published January of 2005, with stories by Craig Shaw Gardner, Tanith Lee, Megan Lindholm, Patricia A. McKillip, Kim Newman, and Jane Yolen & Midori Snyder. Fair Folk has just won the 2006 World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology, and the trade edition will be published in February 2007 as an Ace trade paperback.

When Fair Folk was gestating, I decided that original anthologies looked like fun, and that I wanted to get in on it as well. So I contacted Robert Silverberg about a project that I thought he'd be interested in, and that became Between Worlds. Between Worlds was published August 2004, and contained stories by Stephen Baxter, James Patrick Kelly, Nancy Kress, Mike Resnick, Walter Jon Williams, and Silverberg himself. (It hasn't sold to a trade publisher yet -- so, if you want it, make me an offer!)

Also around the same time, Mike Resnick asked Ellen if we were looking at general proposals for original anthologies. She said sure, and soon signed up Down These Dark Spaceways. That was published in May of 2005, and contained stories by Catherine Asaro, Joe Haldeman, Jack McDevitt, Robert Reed, Robert J. Sawyer ("Identity Theft," which won the 2004 UPC Award and was a Hugo and Nebula finalist), and Resnick himself. (Again, no trade sale yet -- talk to me!)

Gardner Dozois then also talked to us, and we set up two anthologies with him. The first to be finished was One Million A.D., which was published January 2006, and contained stories by Greg Egan, Nancy Kress, Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Robert Silverberg, and Charles Stross. (Trade rights are available...)

The second Dozois anthology was co-edited with Jack Dann, and turned into Escape from Earth: New Adventures in Space, stories specifically aimed at a Young Adult audience. That was published in the SFBC's Worldcon issue of 2006, with stories by Kage Baker, Orson Scott Card, Joe Haldeman, Geoffrey A. Landis, Elizabeth Moon, Allen M. Steele, and Walter Jon Williams.

In between those was Marvin Kaye's first SF anthology for the SFBC, Forbidden Planets, which was published in June 2006. It had stories by Julie E. Czerneda, Alan Dean Foster, Nancy Kress, Jack McDevitt, Robert Reed, and Allen M. Steele. 

As I write this, Resnick has just turned in the follow-up to Down These Dark Spaceways, which is currently titled Alien Crimes. That's scheduled to be published by the SFBC in April of 2007, and has stories by Gregory Benford, Pat Cadigan, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Harry Turtledove, Walter Jon Williams, and Resnick himself (again).

Also in the pipeline is Marvin Kaye's next anthology, with the working title Wizards (which probably will change). That is likely to come out in late 2007, and is expected to have stories by Peter S. Beagle, Tanith Lee, Patricia A. McKillip, Kim Newman, Holly Phillips, and Margaret Weis with Bob Krammes. (I doubt any of those stories are written yet, so things could change.)

Gardner Dozois's next SFBC anthology will be Galactic Empires, which also may come in late 2007 (or early 2008). It's expected to have stories by Stephen Baxter, Elizabeth Bear, Peter F. Hamilton, Ian McDonald, Robert Reed, and Alastair Reynolds.

And I've been talking with other editors about further potential projects, which I'll update here as they become real. We're aiming to do about three or four original anthologies a year, as long as the response is good.

Any thoughts about good themes for future anthologies?

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 04:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Subterranean Press talks to Cherie Priest about her new novel Wings to the Kingdom.

The Agony Column features a podcast interview with Scott Smith about his new novel The Ruins.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This started out as a reply to Johan Larson's comment on this post, but it got out of hand, so I'm turning it into its own post. 

Actually, we've been doing originals for a number of years now -- the first all-new-material book was The Vampire Sextette edited by Marvin Kaye (back in 2000), but both Kaye and David Hartwell edited a number of anthologies for the SFBC starting in the '80s. In those older books, all of the stories were reprints, but the anthologies themselves were new, so they weren't quite as "original" as the recent batch.

The originals we've done since The Vampire Sextette are:

• The Dragon Quintet edited by Marvin Kaye (2003)
• Between Worlds edited by Robert Silverberg (2004)
• The Fair Folk edited by Kaye (2005)
• Down These Dark Spaceways edited by Mike Resnick (2005)
• One Million A.D. edited by Gardner Dozois (2006)
• Forbidden Planets edited by Kaye (2006)
• Escape From Earth: New Adventures in Space edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (2006)

And in the pipeline right now are two more: Alien Crimes edited by Resnick (a follow-up to Down These Dark Spaceways, with more of a "police procedural" slant) and Wizards edited by Kaye.

In recent years, I've also edited a couple of semi-originals -- Off the Main Sequence: The Other Science Fiction Stories of Robert E. Heinlein and Black Seas of Eternity: The Best of H.P. Lovecraft -- which were new collections of existing work.

And then there's Quantico by Greg Bear, which isn't a SFBC Original, but we were the first US edition, and we'll be the only US edition for a while yet.

So I guess the general answer to your question is: yes, we are doing a lot more originals lately. I think the members like them -- I know we like doing them -- but I'd love to hear people's opinions on the subject.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 09:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Just in case I wasn't clear the first time:

sending in old SFBC coupons will not work. Using an ad from 1978 will not magically transport your letter back to 1978, like a James Blaylock story. You're just sending us something worthless, and you won't be enrolled in the club, under that old offer or any new offer.

Yes, I just got another moldy old coupon (from Analog, probably in the mid-70s) in today's mail. Somehow I doubt these people are reading the blog in the first place, but I feel the need to vent anyway.

I repeat: only current SFBC coupons are honored. If you're reading this, you can go to our web site, pick a bunch of books, and join immediately. If you don't find old Antony Boucher anthologies there, it's because we don't have them. If you'd like to join the club and ask for some books, we'd love to hear about it -- we're in the business of selling books. But we can't enroll you under the offer from 1968 and give you the five books you would have picked then; if we had a time machine, believe me, we'd be in a much more lucrative line of work.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

One thing I didn't mention in all of my Worldcon blogging was how I was carrying all of the various junk I was lugging around -- most days I had Scar Night by Alan Campbell (which will be a SFBC Selection in January, by the way), a magazine or two, the pocket program, my digital camera, and whatever else I had bought or people had given to me along the way. Luckily, I brought a bag -- I was testing out the new SFBC backpack. (Below is a photo I took the other day of the one I took to Worldcon, so you can see what it looks like after use.)

We did a backpack because our intrepid marketing manager, Theresa Romeo, noticed that a lot of people at Boskone (her first convention, early this year) were carrying them, and she thought it would be a nice choice for our next piece of logo merchandise., to join the baseball hat and recent T-shirt.

It fared pretty well -- I'm tough on bags (I went through at least half a dozen straps for my first messenger bag in the ten years I had it, among other repairs), and it held up to all of my abuse. The cell phone holder on the strap, which I'd thought was a silly affectation, was actually very useful and got my phone out of my pocket.

So, if you're looking for a smallish backpack for convention-going, school, or whatever, I can honestly say the SFBC backpack is a good bet. It's not one of those gargantuan rolling backpacks, and it only has one shoulder strap, but it can hold two books and a small stack of other things, and I found it very handy at Worldcon. I hope you will, too. 

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 07:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've just heard from one member who accidentally threw out the "Editor's Choice" Flyer that came with the Worldcon magazine, and who wanted to know what the books were. One request is good enough for me, so here are the things Ellen Asher and I wanted to draw special attention to this time:

The Unexpected Dragon
Summer’s ambitions may be modest, but just watch her take the little bit of magic she inherits to give herself a much more interesting life than she ever expected.
     -Ellen Asher


One Million A.D.
This SFBC original ended up even better than I’d hoped: the Stross and Reed stories are easily award-caliber, and the rest aren’t far behind.
     -Andrew Wheeler
 

Seeker
Jack McDevitt knows just how to keep the pages turning, and here he does it with a pair of adventurers who are great company wherever they take us.
     -Ellen Asher

Counting Heads
A high-speed dive into a deeply-textured, utterly real future; this is the kind of novel I thought no one by the young William Gibson could write.
     -Andrew Wheeler

Night Train To Rigel
Yes, it really is a train, though not one that Amtrak could operate – so board it with Frank Compton for a wild adventure among the stars.
     -Ellen Asher

Anansi Boys
As funny as a meringue pie in the face, and just as sweet, light, airy and tasty. Gaiman has now proven he can do anything at all he wants to, and do it perfectly.
     -Andrew Wheeler
 

Solstice Wood
Pat McKillip has the true storyteller’s art of spinning tales that are both surprising and inevitable, and this is a shining example.
     -Ellen Asher

The Big Over Easy
Keep your eye on this guy: Fforde is well on his way to not just being “the next Pratchett,” but just as funny, real and heartfelt as the best of Pratchett.
     -Andrew Wheeler

Dead By Day
Sookie Stackhouse is one of the most charming and resourceful of the young women who’ve gotten involved with our fanged friends, and you’ll love watching her deal with them.
     -Ellen Asher

The Masque Of Mañana
The universe is a dizzying, crazy, heartless, mixed-up place. But Sheckley will make you love it because of all that.
     -Andrew Wheeler

Platinum Pohl
Fred Pohl has been one of the great masters of the short story for over fifty years, and the stories collected here are as compellingly readable now as they were the day they were written.
     -Ellen Asher

The Anubis Gates
This is a great fantasy novel that owes nothing to anyone else, that makes its own world out of discarded pieces of history and myth and breathes life into it from page one.
     -Andrew Wheeler

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've gone back to linking books to the SFBC member site; I just noticed that some books were on the member side and not on the non-member side. (I'm trying to get that fixed, since it could be a more general problem.)

I don't expect this blog is going to get so much traffic that I'll be signing up lots of new members through it, so linking to the member side makes more sense. If you're not a member, and you click on a link, you'll go to our non-member side, and you can search for that book there; it's a bit clunky and slower than I'd like, but I think, as a policy, if I'm going to make things easier for any one set of people, it should be the club members.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This blog is still fairly new, and I'm trying to figure out what works here and what doesn't. There are some things I can do that I haven't done yet, so I wanted to ask you readers what you're looking for.

Some of the things I could post here:

• excerpts from our exclusive interviews
• "Author's Notes" from writers about their new books in the SFBC
• lists of books (perhaps weekly) that the SFBC just acquired

Do any of those things sound interesting? Is there anything else you'd like to see in this blog? Post any thoughts in the comments, no matter how unlikely they might seem

You can also use the comments to ask any other questions you might have about this blog -- I'm hoping to fine-tune things, and I'd like your input on what you like and don't like, want and don't want.

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

The first time someone asks me to do something complicated or difficult, I'll probably make excuses, or say that I'll look into it. But nothing will happen.

If a second person asks, I probably will look into it, but I'm not likely to do much about it.

But if people keep asking, and especially if it looks like a really useful change, I might actually do it.

All this is to explain why, finally, I've started making my links for books point to the non-member side of the SFBC site (and not to the same book on the members-only side) over the past few days. It's a bit more complicated on my end, but I think it will be more useful to everyone. (If there's someone out there who's a member, please let me know what happens when you click on one of those links. It might get you the member page, or it might not; I really don't know.) So click away; even if you're not a member, you should get a description of the book and a picture of the US cover. If that makes you want to join the club, so much the better for me...

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I've just been going through a pile of "white mail," among which were these requests. Any of these have wider appeal?

• Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life and Tarzan Alive by Philip Jose Farmer
• an omnibus of Terry Pratchett's "Night Watch" books
• Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson's The Illuminatus! Trilogy
• the "Codex Alera" series by Jim Butcher
• They Thirst by Robert R. McCammon
• The Stories of Ray Bradbury

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

I'm in the middle of answering a bunch of SFBC member e-mails, and I thought it might be fun to list some of the things these members are asking for. (I may do this regularly, if I have enough mail and get a decent response here.)

Please feel free to chime in on any suggestions you think are particularly good...or particularly bad:

• the "Dumarest" series by E.C. Tubb
• posters of SFBC magazine covers
• a big hardcover book of SFBC art
• more "Forgotten Realms" books
• a single-volume "anthology" of all of Poul Anderson's van Rijn stories (don't those "stories" include at least half-a-dozen novels? how big would such a book be?)
• all of Glen Cook's old series, in omnibus form
• L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth series -- all ten volumes

What do you say -- are any of those good ideas?

Posted by Andrew Wheeler at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Posted by Andy Wheeler at 07:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Andy Wheeler at 09:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)