When I came into this business in the late 1980s, there were “good” anthologies and “bad” anthologies. The “good” anthologies were “original” anthologies that published a variety of stories, usually without a theme. The “good” anthologies were also edited by the premier editors in the business (we all knew who they were). Occasionally someone could sneak into that category of premier editor by editing an anthology (or series of anthologies) that received excellent reviews.
That’s how I became one of the premier editors in the field at the ripe old age of 29. I edited Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine, it got excellent reviews, and suddenly, I was the hottest editor in the business.
Most editors aren’t so lucky. They edit anthologies that never get reviewed. Back in the late 1980s, those anthologies were “theme” anthologies—a group of stories written around the same idea (say, pirates, or vampires). Everyone in the field understood that these anthologies weren’t very good, because no story written to demand could be anything other than mediocre. Of course, the people who made these judgments rarely (never) read the theme anthologies.
Times change. During the 1990s, Mike Resnick did a series of award-winning critically acclaimed theme anthologies. Then the premier editors ran into a stumbling block: Publishers didn’t want hodgepodge anthologies. They only wanted theme anthologies. Theme anthologies, believe it or not, are easier to sell.
So the premier editors started editing theme anthologies. But because the premier editors put the anthologies together, they had to be good, right?
Slowly, the distinction between “good” anthologies and “bad” anthologies became blurred. The die-hards continued to argue that theme anthologies in general were bad, but an occasional theme anthology by a premier editor was just fine. Those die-hards continued to make their judgments without reading the theme anthologies by unknown or “non-premier” editors.
When people read the theme anthologies, they discovered something: the same percentage of good to mediocre stories occurred in those anthologies as in the anthologies edited by the premier editors.
Why? Because theme anthologies work. At their very best, they stretch writers to try something new, something the writer has never tried before.
I have written for theme anthologies since 1991, when Ed Gorman asked me into an anthology called Invitation to Murder. Back in those dark days, I had no idea there were such things as “good” anthologies and “bad” anthologies. All I knew were two things: 1) Ed Gorman was a hell of a writer; and 2) he liked my work well enough to ask me into an invitation-only anthology.
That story led to more than a hundred others, all written for theme anthologies. All of those stories stretched me as a writer. Not once had I considered the topic to be easy or to be something I would have approached on my own.
Some of those stories are in this volume. When Joe Haldeman asked me to participate in his anthology, Future Weapons of War, I accepted. Then I looked at the topic. I didn’t want to write a story that might inspire someone to create a new and more deadly weapon.
I struggled with that ethical conflict for days. I almost left the anthology, something I have never ever done. Then I decided to try.
What I wrote came out of that ethical conflict. The story, “Craters,” garnered some of the best reviews of my career. It also got reprinted in “The Year’s Best Science Fiction Twenty-Five,” edited by Gardner Dozois.
I can guarantee I would never ever have gone to the dark places that “Craters” took me into without the request for a story from Joe Haldeman.
Five of the nine stories in this volume came about because of an invitation into a theme anthology. All five are either award winners or have been reprinted in year’s best collections. Two are award winners that also appeared in year’s best collections.
Three of the remaining four stories are award winners. These stories appeared in the science fiction magazines. Two of them were cover stories. I adore the sf magazines—after all, I used to edit one. I try to write at least one story per magazine per year which is, in my own way, my own private attempt at a theme anthology.
Because science fiction stretches me as well. When I attended Clarion Writers Workshop in 1985, my fellow workshoppers told me to give up writing science fiction and to only write fantasy. According to them, I didn’t have the background to write true science fiction, and I couldn’t get that background without going back for an advanced degree in one of the sciences, something I didn’t want to do.
Those voices haunt me every time I sit down to write science fiction. As so many young writers are at the first major workshops they attend, I was quite vulnerable and ready to believe every negative thing everyone told me. The flip side to that is that the vulnerable young writer (in this case, me) refuses to believe all the good things that she gets told.
So the fact that Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm (and Joe Haldeman, Michael Bishop, Algis Budrys, and Elizabeth A. Lynn) told me I was on the right path and I should keep writing what I was writing meant a lot less than the negative comments from my peers.
However, those positive comments from the professional writers kept me writing science fiction. Thank heavens. Many other young writers quit when they receive the kinds of criticism I received twenty-four years ago.
But the negative comments do serve one purpose. They make me even more rigorous with my science fiction than I might have been if I hadn’t attended Clarion in 1985. Two of the three novellas in this volume, “Recovering Apollo 8,” and “Diving into the Wreck,” combine some hard science with extrapolation. I consulted friends, scientists, and texts to make sure I got the details right.
Those stories have received great critical and popular acclaim. Both won the Asimov’s Readers Choice award—an award I value highly because the readers of the magazine vote based on which story they like, not on who edited the volume or who their friends are.
That reader acclaim means a lot to me because it gets to the core of science fiction writing. Heck, it gets to the core of all fiction writing.
It doesn’t matter if the anthologies are “good” or “bad” based on some weird critical bias. It doesn’t matter if the magazines are “genre” or “literary.”
What matters is whether or not the readers have enjoyed the work. Did the story take them away from their daily worries, even for an hour? Did the story make them want to read another? Will they remember the story?
I strive for these things every time I write a story because I appreciate them as a reader. I love short fiction and I’m proud to be a short fiction writer.
I have included nine of my best stories from the past eleven years. I hope they give you hours of reading pleasure.
And for those of you who like to know how stories came about, I’ve included an afterword with a little bit about each story. It surprises me how many came about because an editor said, “Hey, Kris, write me a story about this particular topic.”
I did. And here they are.
Enjoy.
—Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Lincoln City, OR