See Where It All Began!
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
After almost two years of work, Before They Were Giants is finally away to the printer, and I couldn’t be more excited about it!
 Illustration by Kieran Yanner |
If I haven’t already filled your ear about it on the messageboards, the story behind the book is as follows. Back in the early days of Planet Stories, I came to Erik with a proposal for an anthology: What if we could get 15 of the biggest living superstars in science fiction and fantasy to give us their first published SF stories, along with interviews in which they critiqued their own stories, discussed things they know now about writing that they wish they had known then, told anecdotes surrounding the stories’ publication, and offered general advice to aspiring authors? Erik took the bait, and so began the long march toward the collection that would eventually be known as Before They Were Giants.
By far the most astonishing thing about working on this book was discovering how open, friendly, and approachable many of my favorite speculative fiction authors are. When the dust settled and I looked around, I was positively flabbergasted by the caliber of authors who were willing to sign onto the project, from Ben Bova and Cory Doctorow to China Miéville, Nicola Griffith, and William Gibson. And while I confess that the final author list directly reflects my own literary tastes, every author in the book is a master of the genre in one way or another, and reading through their interviews and advice—not to mention their maiden efforts, which run the gamut from humorous magical realist vignettes to post-apocalyptic satellite repair—is precisely the sort of thing that I always find fun, educational... and most importantly, inspiring.
As we get closer to actually shipping the book to subscribers and bookstores, I’ll probably be posting more about the project, including select excerpts from stories and author interviews. But for now, I just wanted to crow a little bit about what is, for me personally, the most exciting Planet Stories book to date. (Well, that and to show off the absolutely phenomenal cover by Kieran Yanner!)
James L. Sutter
Fiction Editor