Well, I’ve posted the final contents for Eclipse on the main Eclipse page. I’m delighted that Eileen Gunn, Bruce Sterling, and Garth Nix now complete the book. I think it’s come together remarkably well, especially given where things were a while ago. I’ve got to write some story notes and get the manuscript in pretty darn quick, but it’s almost a wrap. This puppy will be on the shelves in October. I hope to do something to promote it at World Fantasy in November. I’ll keep you clued in about that.
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Meta
ECLIPSE, in stellar terms, is most often thought of as a noun, as in ‘solar’ or ‘lunar.’
Not so in sf. Matter of fact, ECLIPSE is the definitive VERB of science fiction: “to be better and stronger, to surpass.”
Suddenly, after how many years, Philip K. Dick is the sf ‘flavor of the month.’ What took everyone so long to catch up with him?
Imagine PKD pounding frantically on his typewriter. Do you think for a moment he sought to pull even with Clarke or Asimov? Not a chance! PKD was out to ECLIPSE the world. Just now too many are finding out he did.
The series is called Eclipse because ‘strange and wondrous things happen during an Eclipse’. It’s not an expressly SFnal book. In fact, of the 15 stories, only three or four would qualify as SF.
“Philip K. Dick is the sf ‘flavor of the month.’ What took everyone so long to catch up with him?”
Death becomes him.
He’s been flavor of the last decade actually; just continues to entrance the mainstream –if only he had been alive to enjoy it!
I was talking to some friends just yesterday, and noted that apparently movies based on his stories have now grossed over $1 Billion at the box office. It would, indeed, have been nice if he could have enjoyed. I certainly think he would have struggled to believe it.
Stan Lee is also enjoying a resurgence for work he created forty years ago. Seems it takes the rest of the world that long to catch up with what we ‘fanboys’ have known all along.
Think anyone’s going to be celebrating today’s sf two generations hence? The mind boggles!
Asking what SF writers will be celebrated 40 years from now is almost as difficult a question as asking what SF writers are celebrated now. Do you mean by everyday SF fans (positing that they still exist, of course), by the American public (ditto), by the dominant world culture (and what will that be?) or by one or another of the groups that arbit high or popular culture. (I’m confident that, whatever happens to the rest of the planet, there will still be numerous groups prepared to tell everyone else what’s culturally worthwhile.)
If I had to put my money on a single horse, I’d lose. But, if we’re talking visionaries, I might put a bit on Butler, a bit on Gibson, a bit on Sterling, a bit on Vinge, and a bit on Doctorow. I bet I’d still lose, because I think the SF writers of right now who will look hot in 40 years are writers of color who can barely sell what they’re writing.
Time will tell. I can’t.
Eileen Gunn
PS: Thanks for the shout-out, Jonathan.
Eileen makes excellent points. Nearly 200 years ago, the smart money had Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetry lasting forever. The idea that the novel written by his teenage wife would ‘eclipse’ every poem he ever wrote no one saw coming.
Nearly 200 years ago, the smart money had Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetry lasting forever.
It hasn’t?