Before They Were Giants

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First Works from Science Fiction Greats

If you're reading this blog, there's a high likelihood you enjoy writing. After all, most of us gamers read voraciously—whether it's novels, comics, or gaming supplements—and the desire to create and transcribe your own ideas is a natural outflow of that. From aspiring novelists to Game Masters writing up their campaign notes to players keeping detailed campaign journals on messageboards, gamers are an extremely literate group, and it only makes sense that any number of us could go on to become quality authors. Except for one thing.

Writing is hard. Like, really hard. And worse, it's intimidating—the more you read, the easier it is to feel like there's no way you could possibly match the masters on your bookshelf. So why even try?

With Before They Were Giants, my new anthology from Planet Stories, I've tried to combat that perception. In this book, I've collected the first-ever short stories from 15 of science fiction and fantasy's coolest and most influential authors (or influential on me, anyway), showing how folks like William Gibson, China Miéville, Larry Niven, and Piers Anthony all got their start, back when they were just fans themselves. In addition, all the stories come complete with new interviews from their authors, critiquing the stories, offering advice and anecdotes, and expounding on what they know now that they wish they'd known when they were first beginning to write. Many of these stories are so rare that they've never been reprinted, lost in back issues of out-of-print magazines. (China Miéville's first effort, for instance, was not "Looking For Jake," as all my internet research showed, but rather a story he'd published long before that, which not even the internet knew about. Such undiscovered gems are the sorts of things that make an editor's heart beat faster.)

In putting this anthology together, it's been my hope to satisfy the die-hard fans (who need every story by their favorite author), the casual reader (because hey, if they weren't my favorite authors, they wouldn't be in the book!), and particularly the aspiring writers, who can use the advice and encouragement of these groundbreaking authors to take their own first steps into greatness. But frankly, I think the best way to talk about this book is to let the contents speak for themselves. In alphabetical order, the stories are:

• Piers Anthony: "Possible to Rue"
• Greg Bear: "Destroyers"
• Ben Bova: "A Long Way Back"
• David Brin: "Just a Hint"
• Cory Doctorow: "Craphound"
• William Gibson: "Fragments of a Hologram Rose"
• Nicola Griffith: "Mirrors and Burnstone"
• Joe Haldeman: "Out of Phase"
• China Miéville: "Highway 61 Revisited"
• Larry Niven: "The Coldest Place"
• Kim Stanley Robinson: "In Pierson's Orchestra"
• Spider Robinson: "The Guy with the Eyes"
• R. A. Salvatore: "A Sparkle for Homer"
• Charles Stross: "The Boys"
• Michael Swanwick: "Ginungagap"

It's been 2 years in the making, but I couldn't be prouder. I hope you'll find the book as inspiring as I have.

James Sutter
Fiction Editor
Paizo Publishing