So, Michael Chabon is the guest editor for Houghton Mifflin’s ridiculously prestigious Best American Short Stories this year, which is cool. What is also cool is the word that’s going round that three – count ’em, three – genre stories have been picked for his book. Now, you’ve gotta realise, there’s only ever been one genre story by a genre writer in a BASS volume * in the entire history of the series, so this is cool. It is immensely cooler that I know all of the folk involved. Kelly Link, who counts as one of the world’s wonderful people and someone I’d definitely fly across the world just to hang out with, has had her story “Stone Animals” selected. Yay! My Locus colleague, and all round nice guy, Tim Pratt has had his wonderfully fine “Hart and Boot” selected (yay Tim! yay Jay and Deb!). And a third story, which I don’t think has been announced publicly yet, has been selected. Suffice it to say that it’s a story I’d picked to reprint from its online publication in a book I’m doing, so I’m very chuffed for the author. This is all very cool.

* This is, of course, not true. As my fine commenters point out, in addition to the almost completely incomprehensible Harlan Ellison story that I remembered, Theodore Sturgeon and Judith Merrill both made the BASS. Doesn’t make this any less cool, but my late night recollection was wrong, incorrect, off the mark.