by Kevin J. Anderson
WHEN I WAS A KID, THE UNIVERSE OPENED UP FOR ME with thought-provoking and imaginative space adventures about colonies on other planets, alien intelligences, time travel, and mind-bending scientific inventions.
My real world was nowhere near as exciting. In fact, it was quite mundane, and I think I was the only dreamer for miles around. As a boy I lived in a speck-on-the-map small town in southeastern Wisconsin, not the sort of place that would inspire big thinking and lots of creativity. Sure, it was a charming laid-back environment straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, with red barns and cornfields, where nobody locked their doors and where all of the neighbors were related to me somehow. Franksville, Wisconsin, was a place with absolutely no imagination, and no excitement.
Anyone who longed for adventure beyond the stars had to travel vicariously.
And that’s where the library came in, with its science fiction section, which comprised the top half of one tall set of metal bookshelves. At the time, reading four entire shelves of books—each book sporting a little rocketship logo surrounded by an atom symbol—seemed a daunting task. Like the characters I watched on Star Trek (which my young imagination didn’t think was nearly as good as Lost in Space, because it had more monsters), I decided to embark on a five-year mission “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Or at least where no kid in my town had gone before. I wanted to read all the science fiction, every book in the world (and surely my library had them all on that one set of shelves). Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke—yes, I started at the beginning of the alphabet.
But even that was too slow a delivery system. I needed more science fiction. And faster.
I discovered that the way to get the most science fiction ideas delivered like a triple espresso was to read big SF anthologies. My small-town library had every volume of Nebula Award winners and an entire set of the Orbit anthology series edited by Damon Knight. But a lot of those stories were too artsy and esoteric for my 12-year-old tastes. I didn’t know anything about the New Wave movement or experimental writing; I just wanted great stories. I was in the Age of Wonder.
Then I discovered the story collections of Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov. Asimov would take an idea and run with it. Bradbury blew my mind in collection after collection, The Golden Apples of the Sun, The Illustrated Man, R Is for Rocket, S Is for Space, The Martian Chronicles. Best of all, I discovered several giant SF anthologies edited by Groff Conklin: A Treasury of Science Fiction, The Big Book of Science Fiction, Great Short Novels of Science Fiction. These were massive tomes chock-full of adventures taken from the pages of the best pulp magazines—Amazing Stories, Astounding Science Fiction, Thrilling Wonder Stories—the true breeding ground of the genre.
During the summer when I was reading those anthologies, I might have slept in small-town Wisconsin, but my mind really lived in the wildest frontiers of space and time. That’s when I really fell in love with short stories.
And it wouldn’t do just to read them. I decided to start writing stories of my own and sending them to magazines. I began to get those published, nearly 150 of them so far.
Even though some of the magazines are still around, today’s true breeding ground for the best short SF stories is in anthologies. And the most fertile land for new anthologies comes out of the indie presses. Some anthologies are assembled along traditional lines, such as those from my own WordFire Press, but others are more of a co-op venture with ambitious indie writers and publishers throwing a party with their imagination. Bridge Across the Stars is one such book.
Here, you’ll find a wide selection of big SF stories, big ideas and big adventures written by well-established veterans such as Maya K. Bohnhoff and Will McIntosh to extremely successful Indie authors such as Lindsay Buroker, David VanDyke, Jason Anspach, Daniel Arenson, and Patty Jansen. You’ll read great tales by emerging talents like Rhett C. Bruno, Craig Martelle, Chris Pourteau, Ann Christy, Chris Dietzel, David Bruns, Steve Beaulieu, Josi Russell, Lucas Bale, and Felix R. Savage. Turn your imaginations loose.
To find these great stories, you don’t have to do your searching like I did. You have the stories right here in your hands. (But wouldn’t it be cool if someone actually discovered this collection on a shelf in the science fiction section of a tiny, small-town library?)
Oh, one other thing about all those big anthologies that I read as a kid. I remember many of them had Forewords, where the editor talked about the stories themselves and his process in choosing them.
I never read the Forewords. I just dove right into the stories.
So what are you reading this for? Turn the page and get started on the real fiction!