Thursday, June 01, 2006

Fast Forward TOC

All the stories for my upcoming anthology, Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge are now in. Fast Forward is an unthemed, all original, all science fiction anthology, due from Pyr February 07. I'll be assembling the book for the rest of the month, including penning what I hope will be a substantive introduction, but today I've been obsessing over the Table of Contents. I love putting TOC's together and take them as seriously as I used to take making mix tapes back before you could just drop and drag and burn. Back in the day when it could take you a whole afternoon to make a mix, there was a real art to it. You couldn't just put any old song next. You had to find the right one to follow the previous tune, and you could spot an amateur immediately if they put two songs by the same artist back to back on a tape. So, what's offered below isn't final in terms of its order (though I have a sense that it's close), but here are the authors and their stories. I'm guessing there's one or two surprises, and there are also certainly stories - like Ian McDonald's "Sanjeev and Robotwallah" - that will make fans of the respective existing worlds they are set in very happy:

Robert Charles Wilson - YFL-500
Justina Robson - The Girl Hero's Mirror Says He's Not the One
Paolo Bacigalupi - Small Offerings
Robyn Hitchcock - They Came From the Future
Kage Baker - Plotters and Shooters
Tony Ballantyne - Aristotle OS
Elizabeth Bear - The Something-Dreaming Game
Stephen Baxter - No More Stories
A.M. Dellamonica - Time of the Snake
Larry Niven & Brenda Cooper - The Terror Bard
Louise Marley - p dolce
Ken MacLeod - Jesus Christ, Reanimator
Mike Resnick & Nancy Kress - Solomon's Choice
Ian McDonald - Sanjeev and Robotwallah
Pamela Sargent - A Smaller Government
Mary A. Turzillo - Pride
Robyn Hitchcock - I Caught Intelligence
George Zebrowski - Settlements
Gene Wolfe - The Hour of the Sheep
John Meaney - Sideways from Now
Paul Di Filippo - Wikiworld

5 comments:

Peter Hollo said...

Great lineup (again), Lou! I'm only just now reading Futureshocks (great, of course), but can't wait for this one ;)

Cheers,
Peter

RobB said...

Looks like a real nice line-up. Wolfe, Baker, Robson, Resnick, very impressive.

The art of the mix-tape. I would spend a good amount of time planning or mapping out out the tape before even turing on the stereo system.

The opening song is always important, and finding a pattern is always nice, too.

Tim Akers said...

Paolo and Justina and Bear, MacLeod, McDonald...Wolfe. Hole. Ee. Shit.

Jess Nevins said...

Robyn Hitchcock?

Jebus, Lou. What a collection of authors!

Lou Anders said...

Thanks, all.
I hope it lives up to the expectations, but I think it will. I can't wait to unleash stories like "The Girl Hero's Mirror Says He's Not the One" on the world.
Re: Mix tapes - I used to drop in unexpected songs, like old Muppet tunes, or really short clips - like that They Might Be Giants CD that ended with 50 thirty-second songs...