My pals Jeff and Ann VanderMeer have released the table of contents for their forthcoming anthology, Best American Fantasy. I’m going to be fascinated to see how the world reacts to this one. It’s a pretty obvious, and understandable, attempt to link into the whole ‘Best American” series that Houghton Mifflin publish. Those books are incredibly successful, and it’d be nice to see this one do as well for Jeff and Ann. I’ll also be interested to read the book, when it hits the shelves. The stories that I’ve read – especially the Link and Hand stories – are very good. The other thing that’s interesting about the book is that I’m not aware of any other book taking specifically this angle: trying to identify an “American fantasy” that crosses mainstream and genre boundaries. Very interesting.

Well, we got a really nice handful of entrants. I want to thank everyone who had a go at creating a promotional item for The Last Colony. The winner is Pixelfish for this flash movie . It’s very cool, and a staggering amount of work. If the winner could email me postal details at jstrahan(at)iinet(dot)net(dot)au, I’ll get the ARC in the mail!

Over at the Eos Blog, Dianna Gill gives a sneak peek at The New Space Opera. The book is racing towards production, and should be out in stories by the start of June. This one goes back a long way, so I’m pretty excited about it.

I am currently listening to Neil Young Live at Massey Hall 1971. I am currently reading Gene Wolfe’s Pirate Freedom. I am currently watching Life on Mars. The Neil Young concert is awesome, though the DVD is crap and I’m struggling with perhaps listening to too much of Young’s distinctive voice. The Wolfe is beautifully written, but if anything I’m struggling more rather than less with the details that have been bothing me all along. After two episodes of Season 1, I’m completely knocked out by Life on Mars, which is some of the best television I’ve seen in a while. What else? I’m about to accept the first story for a new anthology project, and am working on my taxes. Yay.

Back in the autumn of 1999 I made a suggestion to some friends. The World Science Fiction Convention was coming to town. It’d be held in Melbourne in September, and perhaps we should do something? What I suggested to Jeremy Byrne, Russell Farr, Bill Congreve, and the late Peter McNamara was that Eidolon, Ticonderoga, Mirrordanse, and Aphelion should come together to publish a collection of Terry Dowling’s best short fiction. The plan was that we’d co-edit and co-publish the book (as mp books), all five of us selecting the stories, that we’d get an introduction and a cover, and that it would only ever be available at the 1999 WorldCon.  In the end, Jack Dann agreed to write an introduction, and Nick Stathopolous did a wonderful cover, and the book Antique Futures: The Best of Terry Dowling appeared to not inconsiderable acclaim.

I wouldn’t swear to it, but if memory serves we printed and sold 100 copies of the book at the WorldCon. We may have done a small second printing, I don’t recall, but I’m pretty certain no more than 200 copies were ever published.  For that reason, I’m both surprised and pleased to see a review of the book appear just recently. It makes me wonder if we should reprint the book, expand it to cover up to 2007. Who knows?  We might. Or maybe one of those nice big American publishers could. It’s a good book, and there should be more copies in existence.