Tachyon Publications are set to publish Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s anthology, Steampunk, in a couple weeks.  As part of the run up to publication, Jeff was featured on ABC Radio National today.  You can hear the interview here (Jeff is featured at the midpoint of the program, following an interview with author Isabel Allende). It’s well worth checking out. I’ve also had a chance to see the book, and you should consider picking up a copy. Ann and Jeff did a great job with The New Weird, and Steampunk is every bit as good.

…is that some bits of history get caught for you. I don’t know if I’d have remembered this:

Sunday, January 26, 2003

So, Sophie took her first ever unassisted step today. It was 10.28am.

I’m now listing over 50 anthologies on the 2008 anthologies page. I’m amazed at the number of anthologies coming out, and the number that hope to be series.  There is something happening out there in publishing. I’ve heard different theories about what, but nothing completely covers it. There is a contraction in the marketplace, with people turning from magazines to anthologies, but I’m not sure how pronounced it is.  The one thing I do think – and this harks to the recent SF Signal mindmeld piece, is that lovers of short fiction are probably going to end up having to pay more to get their fix.  If there are fewer readers and a smaller market, but the cost of production isn’t changing much, then increased prices seem inevitable.

You can pre-order Ellen Datlow’s new Edgar Allen Poe bicentennial anthology, Poe, from amazon at the moment. The cover looks great, and the list of contributors mentioned on the Solaris blog looks great. It’s listed on Amazon as being out at the very end of 2008, so is really a 2009 book. Once I get this year’s year’s best put to bed, I can’t wait to read it.

Amended:

You can see the table of contents here.

Had a mostly pleasant weekend.  Helped the family with moving some stuff around the place, and then didn’t do anything useful on the various book projects.  This is both a good and a bad thing, of course.  It’s good to take a little breather, let yourself unwind and not thing about things too much.  It does mean, though, that you’re not getting much done.  I didn’t. So, this week is Godlike Machines week here at Casa Coode Street. Five of the six stories are in my hands, accepted and wonderful. One isn’t, but it’s coming.  I’m working on the introduction and story notes, and on doing some minor line edits.  The book is due with the publisher 30 April, so that’s like nine days.  Then, if everything goes to plan, it goes into the email and I get to focus on the next book in the pipeline. Of course, that’s if everything goes to plan.

I was glad no fish died, and I spent a little time reading Shaun Tan’s Tales from Outer Suburbia. It’s a beautiful, warm, slightly whimsical book of illustrated stories.  It’s nothing much like The Arrival, and I feel like I’ve seen artwork from it coming out for several years now, but I loved it. Why?  There is something about Shaun’s storytelling which is both kind and slightly whimsical. His stories aren’t filled with violence and darkness, even when they’re kind of dark, but rather with a sort of gentle wonder. In this case, the stories are about the gentle wonder of finding something strangely out of context which somehow still makes sense: a deepsea diver walking under a suburban underpass, an exchange student small enough to fit in an eggcup, a water buffalo that sits at the end of the street pointing to the solution to your problems.  It’s wonderful stuff. You should check it out.