Staffer's Musings: Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Ed...

There's a nice review of my anthology Fast Forward 1 up on  Staffer's Musings,where they write:

"Haunting stories like Bacigalupi's Small Offerings and George Zebrowski's Settlements confront our ability to sustain humanity.  A Smaller Government by Pamela Sargent parodies the U.S. government, while Jesus Christ, Reanimator by Ken MacLeod takes on faith.  Vanity is a popular subject reflected in p dolce by Louise Marley and The Hour of the Sheep by Gene Wolfe.  There are very few failures in the anthology....Perhaps the most thought provoking work in the book is Anders' introduction which I have quoted from liberally.  He provides a thought provoking discussion about where the genre has been, is going, and will find itself in the years ahead.  It's well worth a read all on its own and can be read on-line in its entirety (here).  Anders was recently awarded a Hugo for his editing prowess and as far as I can tell from Fast Forward 1 and the dozens of other Pyr titles I've read, it is well deserved. ...In the mood for a science fiction anthology? Definitely pick this one up"

High Praise for Fast Forward 1 and 2

From Derek Johnson's SF Site review. I am somewhat speechless:

In 2007 Lou Anders edited Fast Forward 1,one of the strongest original anthologies that science fiction has seen -- so strong, in fact, that after one closed the book one wondered if Anders would be able to match both the quality and the ambition of that volume in his next. After all, the anthology's very title indicated that Anders wanted to actually incorporate the Campbellian vision into a genre that, for all of its rhetoric about being a literature of the future, too often looks fondly over its shoulder at the trails blazed in the past. Even Dangerous Visions fought to bring the genre up to the speed of the present more than chart a path to the future. But Anders did it; Fast Forward not only met the challenge to look forward, but succeeded. And with Fast Forward 2,his follow-up anthology, Anders not only continues to forge ahead and actually push science fiction into the future, but also position himself as one of the genre's most dynamic and influential editors. A reader looking for the best in contemporary science fiction will find not a wasted story in Fast Forward 2's pages. This is the Stuff.

We Has Pyr Kindle

That's right. After what for me has been an interminably long period of "hurry up and wait," I woke up this morning to discover that our very first Pyr Kindle books have miraculously appeared. Five titles are available for download in the Kindle store. Oddly, it contains a second book in a series and a third book in a series, but I think these are just the first few to appear. There are a lot more coming in back of this, and the conversion process is on Amazon's end, so I expect we'll see more pop up in the near future as they get to them (and I'll report here as I see them.) And of course I'm happy to see that Fast Forward 1 is in this initial list of offerings.

The books:

Silver Screen

Starship: Pirate

Going Under (Quantum Gravity, Book 3)

Infoquake (Volume I of the Jump 225 trilogy)

Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge

Fast Forward 2: "True Names" Podcast

I'm very happy to announce that my anthology Fast Forward 2 is set for an October 2008 publication date. I delivered the manuscript to my production manager just a few weeks ago. I think it's even stronger than Fast Forward 1, which is saying something since FF1 saw seven stories reprinted nine times in four “Year’s Best" anthologies!

One of the highlights of the second volume will undoubtedly be a 32,000 word collaboration between Benjamin Rosenbaum and Cory Doctorow. "True Names" is a tale of galactic wars between vast, post-Singularity intelligences that are competing to corner the universe’s supply of computation before the heat-death of the universe. The title is, of course, a homage to Vernor Vinge’s famous story of the same name. Writing on his blog, Rosenbaum says that "This story came out of a conversation at the Hugo Loser's party at Worldcon 2002 -- the part about 'the second law of thermodynamics as the ultimate party-spoiler in a transhuman utopia of self-spawning consciousness'; it acquired shades of Jane Austen, Voltaire, megamillion year ideological warfare, gender theory, coming-of-age story, and musical theater along the way."

For those wanting a preview, Rosenbaum and Doctorow have begun podcasting "True Names" here on Cory's site. Now here's a peak at the rest of the TOC:

Introduction: The Age of Accelerating Returns - Lou Anders
Catherine Drewe - Paul Cornell
Cyto Couture - Kay Kenyon
The Sun Also Explodes - Chris Nakashima-Brown
The Kindness of Strangers - Nancy Kress
Alone With An Inconvenient Companion - Jack Skillingstead
True Names - Cory Doctorow & Benjamin Rosenbaum
Molly’s Kids - Jack McDevitt
Adventure - Paul McAuley
Not Quite Alone in the Dream Quarter - Mike Resnick & Pat Cadigan
An Eligible Boy - Ian McDonald
SeniorSource - Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Migration - Karl Schroeder and Tobias S. Buckell
Long Eyes - Jeff Carlson
The Gambler - Paolo Bacigalupi

Excited?

Stargate, FF1, and Me

Today is the day that Joseph Mallozzi, he of Stargate fame, kicks off his book group discussion about my own anthology, Fast Forward 1.He is currently aggregating questions from his readers, answers by Yours Truly to be posted later this week.

Update 2/19/08: Joe returns today with a huge, story-by-story analysis of his thoughts on FF1, and then opens the blog up for comments, which are up to 50 so far. Here's the permalink.

Update 2/20/08: Joe returns with his thoughts here and here. Comments somewhere over 100 now. Much insightful being said.

Fast Forward 1 : The "Bestestest" Book!

David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer have announced the table of contents for their upcoming Year's Best SF 13, and I am rather thrilled to be able to tell you now what I've been sitting on for a month, which is that no less than FIVE stories from my own anthology, Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge, have made the book!

This brings the count of stories from Fast Forward 1 to 7 tales, being reprinted a total of 9 times, across the 4 major Year's Best titles forthcoming this year. The breakdown:

Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition,ed. Rich Horton:
"Wikiworld," Paul Di Filippo
"Jesus Christ, Reanimator," Ken MacLeod

The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year, Volume 2ed. Jonathan Strahan:
"Jesus Christ, Reanimator," Ken MacLeod

The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection,ed. Gardner Dozois:
"Sanjeev and Robotwallah," Ian McDonald

Year's Best SF 13,ed. David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer:
"Aristotle OS," Tony Ballantyne
"Plotters and Shooters," Kage Baker
"No More Stories," Stephen Baxter
"They Came From the Future," Robyn Hitchcock
"Sanjeev and Robotwallah," Ian McDonald

I'm sufficiently thrilled that I hope I can be forgiven for rerunning this:

“…so good that I suggest Pyr wait a year and republish it with the title Best Science Fiction of 2007. This is an important book that can move science fiction one step closer to the 'literature' shelf, if it so desires....Anders has coaxed such incredible goodness out of these writers that if you only read one or two stories a month, it’s better than a year’s subscription to most of the genre magazines out there...With a deep bench of talent and a perfectly paced setlist, Lou Anders has made made a book that truly represents its own theme. Fast Forward has the potential to be the future of short-form science fiction.” -Bookgasm.com

2007: The Best of the Year (Locus Online)

Jeff Vandermeer has posted his 2007: The Best of the Year list over on LocusOnline. I'm thrilled to see a these Pyr mentions.

From the Best Novels list:

"On the science fiction side, Ian McDonald reaffirmed his excellence with Brasyl,which contains three separate narrative strands describing the Brazil of past, present, and future. The novel is a tour de force of storytelling momentum, with a level of invention that represents a master at the top of his form. McDonald is an amazing stylist, yes, but here it’s all about motion. He does a wonderful job of including his trademark detailed and inventive description while making sure nothing in this complex, often beautiful novel is static."

and

"Kay Kenyon's Bright of the Sky,after a slow first seventy pages, knocked my socks off with its brilliant evocation of a quest through a parallel universe that has a strange river running through it. Unique in conception, like Larry Niven's Ringworld, this is the beginning to what should be an amazing SF-Fantasy series."

From the Best Anthologies list:

" Another first volume of a new original series, the Lou Anders-edited Fast Forward 1 featured thought-provoking speculative takes on making sense of our (post)modern world by, among others, Ken MacLeod, Gene Wolfe, and Nancy Kress. Consistently interesting, this SF anthology fills a gap, as most of the current spate of anthologies seems skewed toward the fantasy side of things."

And from Notable Reprints:

"...The Blade Itselfby Joe Abercrombie, a rough-and-tumble, bold new voice in the heroic fantasy ranks."

All good to read!

Stargate, the People and Me

So, congratulations to Joseph Mallozzi, as Stargate: Atlantis has just won The People's Choice Award.

And thank you to Joseph Mallozzi's fans, as Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edgewas just chosen by his people as their choice as the SF selection in his book club. Which is very nice.

Here are the relevant bits.

Meanwhile, as readers of this blog will know, I often bemoan the discrepancies between SF literature and cinema, so I'm delighted to know that Joseph is such an avid and informed reader of science fiction and fantasy books. If everyone in Hollywood were like him, we'd have a much different industry.

Fast Forward 1: An Encouraging Glimpse of the Future

Aaron Hughes, over on Fantastic Reviews, has some thoughts on my anthology, Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge.Aaron begins by rounding up some recent notable anthologies, and then says that Fast Forward 1, "...may prove more important than any of these, because it is the first in a planned series of unthemed original anthologies - something that has not been done effectively since Patrick Nielsen Hayden's Starlight series from 1996 to 2001. It is nice to see Pyr, a relatively new SF publisher, using the original anthology format to showcase its brand of literary yet entertaining SF."

Aaron particularly likes the book's novella, as he writes, "For my money, the single best story in Fast Forward 1 is 'Sideways from Now' by John Meaney, a British author who is fast becoming one of my favorites. 'Sideways from Now' combines familiar SF tropes such as telepathy and alternate universes, but weaves them together in very original ways, blending two disparate styles." Aaron goes on to make comparisons to Meaney's story-within-a-story to the New Weird, then adds, "At 69 pages, 'Sideways from Now' is the longest story in the book, but so richly layered that it is difficult to believe Meaney was able to contain the tale in as few pages. I will certainly be nominating this story for a Hugo Award, for it is inconceivable that there could be five better novellas published this year."

Aaron also likes stories by Stephen Baxter, Elizabeth Bear, Robert Charles Wilson, Paul Di Filippo and others, and concludes, "this book demonstrates what a variety of authors and stories science fiction can encompass. By its wide array of different approaches to the future, Fast Forward 1 gives us an encouraging glimpse into the future of science fiction."

He also made an interesting observation, which may be relevant to recent discussions of the decline of digest magazines and the rise of several new annual, unthemed SF volumes in Fast Forward's wake: "There is precedent for original anthologies filling the void when print magazines suffer a period of decline. When multiple digests folded in the late 1960's and early 70's, anthologies such as Orbit, Universe, New Dimensions, and Dangerous Visions picked up the slack. (Notably, stories from original anthologies received over 40 Hugo nominations in the 1970's, after print magazines had accounted for all but one of the short fiction nominations before 1968.)"

Some Fantastic Evening

The Summer 2007 issue of Some Fantastic is now online, available here as a downloadable PDF. Wherein whose pages you will find, Jessica Darago reviews my anthology Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge,which she describes as having an overall tone of "cheerful pessimism." Jessica praises Paul Di Filippo's "Wikiworld" as "a geektastic, giggle-inducing romp...a standout even in such a solid collection of stories," and is kinder on some of the "nostalgic" stories in the anthology than others have been. With what I hope is an acknowledgment of my desire to remain respectful of SF's historic roots, she says, "Even the future got started in the past." She calls out stories by Elizabeth Bear, Ken MacLeod, Stephen Baxter and others, and hasn't an unkind word for the book. Finally, Jessica concludes, "Fast Forward will be an interesting anthology series to watch. It is an ambitious project with a savvy, tasteful editor and could easily become the bedrock publication for Pyr."

Naturally, I won't presume to debate her.

Kirkus Reviews Special Edition on Sci-Fi & Fantasy

Via David Anthony Durham's blog, I've just learned that the Kirkus Reviews Special Edition on Sci-Fi & Fantasy is out. You can download the whole twelve page document here, which, I'm very proud to say, features Yours Truly quoted in the opening paragraph, and then leads off with a review of my own anthology, Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge. The document is comprised of these combination review/interviews, with the various authors saying a few words about their books mixed in with the reviewers' opinions. In addition to such impressive folk as Kevin J. Anderson, Kage Baker, Jim Butcher, and M John Harrison, our own Justina Robson says a few words about crafting her urban fantasy, Keeping It Real. My favorite quote, on the anything goes nature of her Quantum Gravity universe: "It's good to be very serious, but the really important stuff you just have to let all hang out."

It's a Small World After All & the Future of Short Fiction

The wonderful Small World Podcast, which features "interviews with people from all walks of life from all over the planet," has just uploaded an interview with yours truly. We cover a host of subjects, including:

• how Pyr began and how Pyr is different from other science fiction/fantasy imprints;
• Pyr books like Keeping It Real, Crossover, Brasil, and Fast Forward 1
  
• publishers that have a following;
• where the name Pyr came from;
• the artwork that appears on the covers of Pyr books;
• the emerging themes in science fiction in the 21st century;
  
• how the SciFi channel almost missed the boat with Doctor Who;
• the escapsim/literature debate;
• and the subversive nature of science fiction, including how Star Trek addressed racism

You can follow the link above or download an mp3 directly here. I promise I tried to keep this one work safe, but apparently I failed once again.

Also recommended, their previous podcast with the band The Good Listeners, which turned me on to a new band.

Meanwhile, Ryun Patterson has just posted his thoughts on my own Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge over on Bookgasm:

“…so good that I suggest Pyr wait a year and republish it with the title BEST SCIENCE FICTION OF 2007. This is an important book that can move science fiction one step closer to the “literature” shelf, if it so desires…Anders has coaxed such incredible goodness out of these writers that if you only read one or two stories a month, it’s better than a year’s subscription to most of the genre magazines out there...With a deep bench of talent and a perfectly paced setlist, Lou Anders has made made a book that truly represents its own theme. Fast Forward has the potential to be the future of short-form science fiction.”

Me & Mr. Mann: FF1 and Solaris

Strange Horizons reviewer David Soyka does an interesting thing, which is that he has just written a dual review of both my own Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge and the George Mann edited anthology, The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction 2007, also the first in a new, unthemed SF-only series.

Soyka starts out setting the stage, quoting Christopher Priest's criterion for good science fiction and then saying:

"What with the various yearly 'best of' collections, on top of those calling themselves paraspheres, new wave fabulists, new weird, post-cyberpunk, slipstream, and even, god help us, interstitial fictions, what's an editor to do to distinguish his or her particular anthology on the crowded shelves of what we used to just call science fiction and fantasy? You can't just put together a bunch of stories you think are really cool. There's got to be either a theme (e.g., alien sex, feminism, award winners) or a declaration of some movement (see above) in which the editor's selections herald some brave new genre."

He stops short of saying it outright, though seems to intimate that amid all of the splintering/blurring of the field noted above, a return to "core SF" could constitute a movement in itself. In the recent PW article, one of the unused quotes from the thousand three hundred plus words I sent them, was the notion that Fast Forward and The Solaris Book, along with the planned Eclipse series edited by Jonathan Strahan (forthcoming from Night Shade Books) suggested that "with the continuing decline in sales of the digest magazines, this resurgence of SF anthologies as a source for original science fiction short stories is definitely worth noting."

I was also glad to see Soyka's comment that, "The poems add a nicely different pacing if you read the stories in sequence, which I tend to do because I always assume there's some editorial intention for story placement." Almost no one I know reads anthologies in order, yet the structure of the book is something I agonize over. Like the now-lost art of a good mix tape, everthing is right where it needs to be in relation to everything else!

Soyka points out that the two anthologies share five authors (Tony Ballantyne, Stephen Baxter, Paul Di Fillipo, Mary A. Turzillo, and Mike Resnick). That, along with certain shared sensibilities, does lend justification to comparing and contrasting these offerings from me and Mr. Mann. In fact, when I read The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction for myself, I was struck by the similarities in our tastes. With one or two exceptions (I don't care for "creepy" as much as George does), it felt almost like "a Lou anthology." Plus, I really like George so I don't mind sharing review space with him! Fortunately, we both come off well in the end.

Which I wasn't sure we were going to! Soyka seems to front-load his criticisms, making me almost surprised when I got to his final paragraph, where he says, "Both collections are worthwhile additions to your shelves, particularly since both comprise original work. They also both succeed, regardless of differently articulated philosophical approach, in Conklin's aspiration, to 'offer a selective survey of the almost incredibly rich vein of ideas that the science fiction imagination habitually explores; and that is all it is intended to do. If it encourages you to further reading in this exciting field—why, so much the better' (Thirteen Great Stories of Science Fiction pp. 8-9). But if I had to choose between the two, I'd favor Fast Forward over Solaris because there are more stories that consistently satisfy Priest's second criterion: they make us think about our life in new ways. Put another way, the windows open more frequently to more diverse and interesting views."

Hey, I don't mind winning by a neck - it gives me something to tease George about when I see him at BEA - but really, why choose between the two when you can read both! That way everybody wins, right? And I wouldn't mind seeing some more joint reviews like this. After all, Mr. Mann and I both plan subsequent volumes. And hopefully, as Conklin says a good anthology should, both these works will encourage further reading in this exciting field.

Chronological Dissonance on FF1

The blog Chronological Dissonance likes Fast Forward 1. They call out stories by Paolo Bacigalupi, Kage Baker, Stephen Baxter, A.M. Dellamonica, Ken MacLeod, Ian MacDonald ("One of my three favourite stories in the book"), Mary A. Turzillo, John Meaney and Paul Di Filippo. And I love their concluding remarks:

"If Sturgeon's Law (ninety percent of everything is crud) is true, then there are nine other anthologies filled with dreck, because this one is excellent. I look forward to more Fast Forward anthologies."

Also worth noting: A previous story in the world of A.M. Dellamonica's "Time of the Snake," caleld "The Town on Blighted Sea," is available online at Strange Horizons. And, of course, Paul Di Filippo's "Wikiworld" is still online here.

Hell Yes It's Cool: FF1 on AICN

Ain't It Cool News has recently launched a book review section, where reviewer Adam Balm plans to "take fandom back to its root" by acting as a pointer to good SF. In his second review, he tackles Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge, which I'm most happy to say he likes. Adam proclaims that "Pyr's going to be an interesting bird to watch, coming out of nowhere in the last year to fast becoming one of the big names in the industry, no small feat in a field made up of big publishers getting even bigger, as the market is getting smaller," and goes on to say of FF1 that "probably half the stories here would be fitting entries in a 'Year's Best' anthology." He calls out stories by Paolo Bacigalupi, Stephen Baxter, Ken MacLeod, Justina Robson, John Meaney, with a special place for Paul Di Filippo's "Wikiworld" (online here), of which he says, "Without a doubt, THE stand-out story (as has been mentioned at Boing Boing and other reviews) is Paul Di Filippo's 'Wikiworld'.... Honestly I haven't had this kind of vertigo after reading a short since Charle's Stross's 'Lobsters' in 2001, the first entry of what would become his Accelerando magnum opus. I really want to see Di Filippo explore this world he's created some more. This is too good for just one short."

In addition to FF1, Adam reviews The Antagonist by Gordon R. Dickson and David W. Wixon, and presents an introductory essay on his reasons for taking up the reviewer's role along with his opinions on the current state of science fiction. (He sees SF as being at a bit of a crossroads, a fractured field competing with fantasy and slipstream.) Something I said is falsely attributed to Damon Knight - I hate it when we're mixed up! (JK) - and he finds parallels between my introduction and one John W. Campbell's wrote for his own 1952 Astounding Science Fiction Anthology which I now need to hunt up.

All in all, I was impressed with the review and hope that AICN keeps Adam Balm long employed, as shortening the gap between media SF and literary SF is a personal crusade of mine. Meanwhile, I love that he describes FF1 as "a kind of time capsule of where hard science fiction is, in the first decade of the second millennium," though the line that really made me laugh was his description of Justina Robson as "she reminds me of a hard SF Neil Gaiman if Neil Gaiman was even more of a woman. " Add this to Cheryl Morgan's comment some time ago that Robson was "William Gibson with chocolate" and you can see just how special Robson is. Finally, on the question of SF's relevance in 2007, I agree with Adam that "while the world might change, that tool for making sense of that change does not change."

Fast Forward Has Been Boing'd

Very happy to say that last night Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge was reviewed by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing. Cory called the book "wonderful...some stupendous stories," praising stories by Kage Baker, Elizabeth Bear, Ken MacLeod, Ian McDonald, Gene Wolf, Pamela Sargent, George Zebrowski, Robert Charles Wilson, Mary A. Turzillo, and Justina Robson.

But Cory especially liked "Wikiworld" by Paul Di Filippo, which he calls, "one absolute knock-out story ... that is among the most exciting pieces of fiction I've read in years... a vividly imagined, funny and weird story about a world run on gifts, wikis, rough consensus and running code."

And guess what? As Cory notes in his review - "Wikiworld" is online in its entirety for you to read! So what are you waiting for?

Update: Warren Ellis writes to say he thought "Wikiworld" was "Fucking brilliant." So, seriously, what are you waiting for?

Fast Forward Fast Approaching

My next anthology, Fast Forward 1: Future Fiction from the Cutting Edge, is due to ship from the printer tomorrow, and I am all giggly. For one thing, I think this is the best anthology I've produced to date (it's the fifth, though the two magazines used similar brain cells), and for another - it might also be the best looking (many thanks to John Picacio and Jackie Cooke). Only a few trusted freinds and colleagues had read it as of a few weeks ago, and they all concurred. But now the reviews are starting to come in and I'm happy to say it's so far, so good.

In addition to the PW review ("Outstanding!"), we have Neth Space:

"Lou Anders has a very ambitious goal – to start a new anthology series in the tradition of past landmarks like Damon Knight’s Orbit and Frederik Pohl’s Star SF. I have not read those series, but it’s safe to say that Anders is on the right track with Fast Forward 1...Short stories are always difficult for me to review, and collections even more so. Certain stories always exceed those around them, and others can be total failures. Anders has done well to avoid the failures, though some are as forgettable as the page number. Of course others still keep me awake at night. Fast Forward 1 is better than most – 7.5/10."

And FantasyBooksSpot.com:

"....a great anthology, filled with numerous and diverse stories and is bound to please any fan of science fiction."

And Alternative-Worlds.com:

"All the entries are strong with the best being those concentrating on everyday people dealing with commonplace technology like Paul Di Filippo’s 'Wikiworld' and Justina Robson’ 'The Girl Hero’s Mirror Says He’s Not the One' (in Mappa Mundi world) and those bringing the past into the future such as Tony Ballantyne’s 'Aristotle OS' and Ken McLeod’s 'Jesus Christ, Reanimator.' This is a fun collection that forecasts where technology will take humans including those left behind struggling with yesterday’s artifacts."

More as I know it!

Update: And here it is, the website the Eternal Night has posted an interview with Yours Truly, where we talk about the usual things and maybe a few unusual, along with the introduction I wrote for the anthology, "Welcome to the Future," where readers of this blog won't be surprised to find me proselytising the cause of SF yet again.

Fast Forward - Full Jacket Spread

Feast your eyes on this!

Art is by the amazing John Picacio, design by Jackie Cooke.

Not the last minute addiiton of the PW quote.

Ooh and ah at the bold statement this illustration makes.

Update: There's a really good interview with John Picacio, which also happens to display the above illustration sans text, over at SFRevu.