Babel Clash

There’s a big difference between working with reprints and working with original fiction, so let me just pick one—the reprint anthologies—to focus on.
For a reprint anthology, the first thing you have to settle on is the theme.  I base my decision to do a theme on a couple of factors:

1. It is one of my favorite sub-genres.
2. There is a wealth of material fitting the theme to choose from.
3. Of the stories fitting the theme, several are excellent stories by well-known writers.
4. The theme is currently popular, or I have reason to believe it will be popular by the time the book comes out.
5. There are not many similarly-themed anthologies in print.
6. Of the similarly-themed anthologies that do exist, few collect the best of that theme in one volume, and no such anthology had been done recently.

For me personally, items 1 and 2 are essential. Items 3 and 4 are also essential because if you want to continue editing anthologies, you need them to sell, and even with a good sales track record, a publisher will be hesitant or unable to commit to a project that doesn’t seem like it is commercial enough to warrant their investment of time and money in publishing it. Items 5 and 6 would also be true in an ideal situation, but not necessarily a requirement.

Once the theme is selected, I research. What I try to do is scour the annals of sf history searching for all the stories that fit the theme. I try to be as comprehensive in my research as possible, because I don’t want to miss anything that should have been considered for inclusion. I think of these theme anthologies as “best of” type books, in that I’m focusing on a particular sub-genre or theme and presenting the stories that I consider to be the cream of the crop (with certain qualifiers, such as “of the last 30 years” etc.).

To help me do that, I’ve been soliciting recommendations online. A bit of crowdsourcing, you might say. What I’m using now is powered by Google Docs; I just create a form that lets you enter a recommendation and when you submit it, it’s entered into a spreadsheet. Obviously, some of these type of recommendations turn out to be false leads, but I may have missed out on some really good stories had I not done that. It’s possible I would have found them anyway, but it certainly saved me a lot of time hunting.

Now, of course, I do a lot of research otherwise, both online, and via reference books, and by talking to friends and colleagues. Sometimes I have certain authors in mind who I’m thinking must have written a story on a particular theme, and I go hunting around for the appropriate story that way. I also have a few intern-types who help me out by reading certain collections, anthologies, or magazines for me to let me know if there are stories in them that fit any of the themes I’m working on (or are close enough that I should take a look and decide myself). Another good source of research is short fiction reviews; a good review will tell me enough about a story to let me know if it’s something I need to hunt down or not—not based on the reviewers opinion of the story, but by their description of what the story’s about.

At some point, the process becomes all about reading. Just reading any and all of the relevant stories I’ve been able to get my hands on. (Well, okay, it becomes all about reading and tracking down the stories.) As I read things, I make notes in a spreadsheet to keep track of what I’ve already read, and I give things a rating on a scale of 1-10 indicating how much I liked each one, so that when I go back later, I can see which stories I need to re-read and which ones I just didn’t like enough to consider including.

I also make notes about any sub-themes relevant to each story. While editing The Living Dead, for instance, I was making notes regarding the type of zombies featured in each story, because I wanted to showcase the diversity of the zombie trope, and not overload the book with all one kind of zombie, or neglect to include variations on the theme I deemed important to include. In the Holmes anthology, meanwhile, I was noting which stories were straight mysteries and which were hybrids of mystery and fantasy, science fiction, or horror.

The reason for doing this is because I think anthologies are all about diversity and balance. An anthology that isn’t diverse enough in its examination of the theme may get boring by the time you’ve read 30-something stories that vary only slightly from the baseline. Ideally what you want is a good percentage that sticks close to the baseline, some that explores one extreme of the sub-genre, then some that explores the other end of the spectrum, so that ideally you showcase the full range of what the your anthology’s theme is capable of.

As I progress in my reading, I start to sketch out a table of contents and try to get word counts on as many stories as possible so that I can see how much room I have to work with, and can start considering which stories may be on the longlist but won’t make the final cut. Wastelands was about 150,000 words, while The Living Dead, By Blood We Live, and The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes were all around 230,000. So that’s the goal I’m shooting for, not a certain number of stories. The Living Dead was originally going to be about the size of Wastelands, but I was finding so much good stuff that it seemed impossible to do the definitive type of book we were shooting for unless we had more space. The Living Dead 2 is going to be about the same length, and whereas the first one had 34 stories, it looks like the sequel will have about 45 (though its contents are still settling), so it’s all about word count rather than number of stories. Despite all that space, it can be quite difficult to narrow down your selections to just those stories that will make it into the anthology. In every anthology I’ve done so far, I had to refrain from using quite a number of excellent stories I really would have liked to include.

Once I’ve decided which of the stories I felt were best and best represented the theme of the anthology, I make my final selections and send out contracts and payments and all that kind of business-stuff that probably won’t interest anyone but writers. For my reprint anthologies, almost all of the stories will be reprinted as they originally appeared, though on occasion I will ask an author to make some changes to a story before reprinting it. I do this rarely, and will only really consider doing mild editing, not the heavier editing I might consider on a previously unpublished story. In order to get electronic versions of the stories, I often have to scan and optical character recognition software to digitize the texts so that I can send an RTF file to the publisher for typesetting. More recent stories are often available in electronic format already, and I can get those from the author, but the author’s own manuscripts are often the unedited versions they submitted rather than the final versions that appeared in print, and so might have slight changes or errors from the published text, so they have to be gone over to ensure the text I’m using is correct.

Once I’ve selected my final table of contents, I go about ordering the stories, which is kind of a strange combination of science and art. The first and last stories in an anthology are kind of “honor positions” in that the stories are placed there for being among the best in the book. I usually also try to place a very strong story right in the middle of the book, and then I go about ordering the other stories, shuffling them around until I get something that feels right.

And finally, I write the introduction to the book, setting the stage for the stories that follow, and write the individual story introductions (the header that precedes each story). Starting with the Holmes anthology, I recruited my colleague David Barr Kirtley—who loves header notes—to help me write them, as I always found them to be an incredibly draining task to complete. (That’s why Dave has that “with” credit on the title page of the Holmes anthology.)

I say finally, though that’s just the end of assembling the anthology. Then you have to start selling it. Which is probably an entirely different post, but it speaks a bit to your question of the secret of my success. I’ve setup websites for each of my anthologies—if you go to my website www.johnjosephadams.com, you’ll find links to each of the individual anthology websites—that offer up several free stories so you can sample the anthology before you buy it, along with interviews with many of the authors in which they discuss the background behind and inspirations for their stories.

If I have any secret to anthology success, it’s either there in what I’ve laid out above, or I have it, and I don’t even know what it is. So I think that answers both of your questions!

Thanks again for having me here on Babel Clash.

John, we would like to thank you again for joining us on Babel Clash.

Our next guest is Patrick Lee, author of The Breach, a debut Thriller with some Science Fiction elements.

This week’s topic revolves around the use of suspense in Science Fiction and Fantasy. The best Thrillers move at a rocket fast speed, but in Science Fiction & Fantasy, the pace of the action may slow as the writer builds new worlds and new cultures.

So with that in mind, Patrick, how do you balance world-building with the action and pace of a Thriller?

John, thank you for joining us on Babel Clash.  It’s been fun.  Before you go, would you like to take this opportunity to circle back to a pair of topics that we discussed briefly but you expressed interest in covering later?

First, how do you go about putting together your anthologies?  Second, what’s the “secret” to success for your anthologies?  Perhaps these topics aren’t so different.

If you’d prefer, just let us know anything else that you’d like us to keep an eye out for in 2010.

Enjoy the holidays!

Although I’m very excited about launching Lightspeed, readers can still expect to see a steady stream of anthologies from me. In 2010, I’ll have The Living Dead 2 (Night Shade Books) released in September, and The Way of the Wizard in November (Prime Books).

The Living Dead 2 is full of more zombie goodness; it’s about 50% original, 50% reprints. I’m still putting the final touches on it, so I’m not sure what the final percentage breakdown will be. But chances are if you’re strictly a zombie reader, you won’t have read these reprints before. Everything I currently have earmarked for inclusion have never previously appeared in a zombie anthology, and there’s no duplication with any of the other recent zombie anthologies that have come out since The Living Dead. And of course the originals are all-new and never appeared anywhere previously.

The Way of the Wizard is also about 50/50, and as the title indicates, is about wizards. It’s also in progress, so I’m not sure about the exact percentages and I can’t say who will be in it as of yet.

Other things I have lined up for the future include The Mad Scientists’s Guide to World Domination (Tor Books) and Brave New Worlds (Night Shade Books).The former is an all-original anthology will feature stories of mad scientists and evil geniuses , from their point of view, rather than the point of view of the good guys. The latter is another reprint anthology, this time focusing on dystopian fiction–think 1984, Fahrenheit 451, and, of course, Brave New World, etc. Publication date is not certain for either of these yet. Mad Scientists will probably be out sometime in 2011, while Brave New Worlds will likely be a 2012 release.

I’ve got a couple other things for which I haven’t signed contracts yet, so I shouldn’t mention them, but suffice to say there’s a few other projects in there that will probably be announced in the coming months. But of course, there will also be Lightspeed–not only online but in anthology form as well, so 2011 should see publication of volume one of that in June, if all goes to plan.

If there’s a secret to my anthology success–and I will not confirm that there is one–it would behoove me not to reveal it, now wouldn’t it? If I’m to achieve world domination, I suppose it’s inevitable that I will attract an arch enemy, so I probably shouldn’t make it easier for him to attack me.

No, but seriously. That’s a long answer, so I’m going to beg off again and promise to post about it later.

As for Avatar, I really want to go see it, but I’m not sure how it will work out this weekend. There’s a particular theater in New York that I want to see it at, because it’s the best IMAX theater I’ve been to (and not all IMAX screens are created equal). And given that everything I’ve heard about Avatar is that it has the most amazing visuals ever, I definitely want to see it in the best venue possible.

I’ve kind of decided that in general, IMAX is probably what’s going to save movie theaters from going the way of the dinosaur. I mean, I have a ginormous HDTV at home and blu-ray etc., and given how expensive movies are and how annoying it can be dealing with all the people in the audience, whether it be the crowded environment or crying babies or ringing cell phones, it just generally seems like a better idea to watch stuff in my home theater instead. IMAX, however, does seem like it’s an order of magnitude better than anything else, to the extent that it seems worth it to me to actually go to the theater for that. And that goes double for a spectacle like Avatar.

John,

With the focus on Lightspeed, will we continue to see more of your anthologies?  From Wastelands to the Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, you’ve edited some of the bestselling and most noteworthy collections that we’ve seen in awhile.  If more are forthcoming, can you offer any hints to the topics?

Also, what’s your secret to putting together such great collections?

OK, off topic, but I’m curious.  Will you go see Avatar this weekend?

Lightspeed Magazine grew out of my discussions with Sean Wallace of Prime Books. He and I had worked together on a couple of anthologies—Seeds of Change and Federations—and he was quite pleased with how they turned out, and often expressed to me how he wished I had more opportunities to publish original fiction. I wanted those opportunities too, and when Sean mentioned to me he was thinking of starting an all-science fiction online magazine to compliment his other magazine—the all-fantasy Fantasy Magazine—I was very interested, and excited to leap at the opportunity when he asked me if I’d be interested in editing it. Once I came on board, he and I worked together to lay out the framework of what the magazine would be and how it would operate.

Lightspeed will be different from other online magazines in many ways; one of the most basic is that it will be publishing a broad range of science fiction, but science fiction exclusively, no fantasy. All of the other online magazines—Strange Horizons, Intergalactic Medicine Show, etc.—publish a mix of both, and others, like Futurismic, while they publish SF exclusively, they have a very narrow focus (all near-future SF). Now I love fantasy, but a lot of SF readers don’t, and so I think having another magazine that focuses exclusively on SF is good for readers and good for the industry. If we count the print magazines, there’s only one magazine that does exclusively publish science fiction—Analog—F&SF obviously publishes both (as it’s name indicates) and Asimov’s publishes its fair share of fantasy as well, despite only mentioning “science fiction” in its title. Of fantasy and science fiction, SF has always been nearest and dearest to my heart, so if I had to choose to focus on one or the other, it definitely would be SF, which makes Lightspeed ideally suited to my tastes.

Another thing we’ll be doing that no one else is doing currently is publishing a mix of originals and reprints. Our target audience is going to be the readers out there who like and enjoy science fiction, but maybe don’t read all the other short fiction magazines, or the best of the year annuals, and so I aim to keep the magazine very accessible to new readers (and hopefully interesting to hardcore aficionados as well). But since we’re targeting new or casual readers of short fiction or science fiction in general, part of the reason for mixing the reprints and originals is to show them where science fiction comes from, where it is now, and where it’s going.

We’re currently planning to publish two original stories per month/issue, along with two reprints and four original pieces of non-fiction. We intend for the non-fiction to tie-in closely with the fiction, to give each issue a cohesive feel to it. So if we run a story about robots, there might be an article about current developments in robotics, or maybe something more fun like an article comparing famous robots from fiction and film to debate which would win in a fight. My colleague Andrea Kail, who worked for many years on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, will be editing the non-fiction, and will be drawing on her television industry experience to line up geek celebrity interviews and otherwise help us reach out to a more mainstream audience than we would reach with short fiction alone.

Additionally, we’ll be exploring a variety of income streams, rather than relying on advertising alone, in an effort to subsidize the cost of the magazine. Lightspeed’s content will be released twice-weekly (one fiction, one non-fiction piece) throughout the month, but we’ll be selling an ebook edition that will go on sale at the beginning of the month and will let you not only download all of the stories in a convenient and portable edition, but it will let you get the whole month’s worth of stories all at once, rather than waiting. Other than that, we’ll be experimenting with and exploring the possibilities of various new media like iPhone apps, and podcasts (which may not be a money-making venture, but can help us broaden our reach). Although there will be no print edition of Lightspeed, we will not be ignoring traditional media altogether; once a year we’ll be publishing a Lightspeed anthology, which will collect all of the fiction that appeared in the magazine over the course of a calendar year. (Because we’re launching in June, this will likely cover fiction published from June 1 through May 31, rather than a calendar year’s worth of fiction.)

And of course the primary way in which Lightspeed will be different than every other magazine—it’ll be edited by me!

Verging away from the Sherlock Holmes topic momentarily, can you tell us more about Lightspeed?

You’re starting a new online SF magazine called Lightspeed in 2010.  Can you tell us a little bit more about how this idea came about, when to expect it and how it will stand out from other SF pages?

Although Sir Arthur Conan Doyle always had a rational solution for each of Sherlock Holmes’s cases—even the one called “The Case of the Sussex Vampire”—the Victorian/Edwardian age in which Holmes lives feels like the supernatural would be very much at home. It’s funny that Holmes never enountered a case involving the supernatural if you consider the fact that many Victorians believed in many different kinds of paranormal phenomenon, such as fairies—a subject which Doyle himself believed in wholeheartedly.

While I am a rationalist by nature, and Holmes’s devotion to reason is one of the things I love about him, I guess I like the possibility of the supernatural happening, as that adds another layer of difficulty for the great detective. That’s why I assembled The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes as I did—I mixed straight mystery Holmes stories with those tinged with the fantastic, so that when you’re investigating the cases along side Holmes, you won’t know if it’ll have a supernatural explanation or a perfectly rational one. That’s why I called it the “Improbable Adventures” of Sherlock Holmes, because it plays with the idea behind Holmes’s most famous maxim: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” So the anthology asks: what happens when Holmes can’t eliminate the impossible?

So the possible supernatural aspect of the storyline that the trailer hints at doesn’t bother me at all; I’m more troubled by the way it appears as though Holmes is portrayed as quite a different character than the one we know and love. Now, I’m open to liberties being taken, but there’s so much different in the trailer that I’m a bit wary about the film. But I remain optimistic and am planning to see it in the theater when it opens. It does look like it’ll be full of action and fun, and perhaps that’s what’s needed to interest a new generation in the adventures of the great detective.

Based on what little of the new Holmes movie that we’ve seen in the trailer, it appears as if the supernatural plays some part.  Now, that may all turn out to be smoke & mirrors, but it does look to involve the occult in some way.  So, what’s your preference on the good doctor and the supernatural?  Do you prefer a game committed to deductive reasoning and cold, hard logic. or does a healthy dose of mysticism pose a suitable challenge for the genius detective?

John, after reading and editing so many Holmes stories, will you approach the movie with a different set of expectations?

Also, to all, feel free to jump over to the Borders Ink Facebook page and weigh in on which big December film you’re more excited to watch:  Sherlock Holmes or Avatar.

Here’s the link: Sherlock Holmes vs. Avatar on Facebook

Who is the better detective: Sherlock Holmes or Batman?—now that is an interesting question. Of course, phrased that way—who is a better detective—I think the answer obviously is Holmes. After all, Holmes relies purely on his own intellect to solve his cases while Batman has a wealth of technology at his fingertips to enhance his abilities.

But if you were to take a slightly different approach to the question and say: “Who is the better crimefighter?” I’d have to give that to Batman. Now, Holmes is clearly excellent in this more broadly-defined category as well, in that he certainly does a lot to fight crime and is quite good at foiling plots and catching wrongdoers and putting hem behind bars. But Batman is a more well-rounded crime fighter in that he can do, well, a lot more fighting. Admittedly, as I’ve said before, Holmes has mad fighting skills too, but in this case I’m sure he’d be outclassed. Batman is a pure fighting machine; he’s just a regular guy and he takes on superpowered villains! (Though of course I could imagine Holmes using his intellect to come up with clever ways of defeating even the worst of Batman’s foes, especially if he had Batman’s gadgets at his disposal.) So, while I’d give the honor of “best crimefighter” to Batman, this was by no means a blowout; in fact, it was a really, really close call.

As for your other question about how I put my anthologies together…that’s a more complicated answer, so I’ll save that for another post. But I will say that no, I haven’t done any comic book-related anthologies as of yet, though I’d love to. You hear that D.C.? You listening Marvel? YOU GUYS—I’M AVAILABLE.