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Dec
27
The Jack Vance Treasury due out early 2007 from Subterranean Press
Posted in: UKSFBN Talks To on 27th December 2006 by Sandy Auden
Jack Vance has sold The Jack Vance Treasury [Amazon], a retrospective collection edited by Jonathan Strahan and Terry Dowling, to Subterranean Press.
We caught up with co-editor Jonathan Strahan and popped a few questions at him to find out more…
UKSFBN: Why did you decide to start the project in the first place?
JS: There were several reasons. First, I've loved Jack's short stories for many years. I was given a book that contained 'The Last Castle' and 'The Dragon Masters' by my father when I was a boy. I fell in love with the stories, and later realised it was also my father, who wasn't an SF reader, reaching out to me. Second, I think it's important to take a writer like Jack to a new audience. That's my hope for this book. That it'll be well-received by lovers of Jack's work, but that it'll also be an introduction to his work for new readers. And, finally, Terry and I have always wanted to work together. This was a great project to do that.
UKSFBN: I'm not being sarcastic here but usually there's only one editor for this kind of thing. Why are you doing this together?
JS: Each of us brings something to the assembling of the Treasury. While I've read and loved some Vance, Terry is a Vance expert and a very close friend of the family. He has the kind of encyclopedic knowledge and love of the work that allows us to be comprehensive and careful in our selections. I, on the other hand, am much less familiar with Jack's work. I'm the devil's advocate, the one who gets to say, I understand your passion, but this book is for the new reader. It has to speak to new readers, as well as lovers of Vance's work. It creates a nice tension when making story selections, making sure they're both the best of Vance's oeuvre, and guaranteed not to be museum pieces.
UKSFBN: Has this project produced anything unusual for its editors?
JS: This one is a little different from some of the other books I've worked on. It's more like being a DJ planning a set, than doing anything hands on as an editor. The stories are all finished, classics of the field: all we really need to do is pick them and sequence them. There's also been some work on interstitial material, which Terry has really taken the lead with and has done a fantastic job.
UKSFBN: What sort of things will be included in the short prefaces to the stories?
JS: Well, in addition to an original preface Jack has written for the book, a guest introduction, and an introduction that we're doing, we're doing a lot of research, finding comments Jack has made, notes he has written, and using those as Afterwords to the stories. Given that Jack's always been happiest letting his work speak for itself, it's great to be able to add some additional perspective for this book.
The Jack Vance Treasury will be released early 2007 by Subterranean Press.
Visit Jonathan Strahan's blog here.
Source: Jonathan Strahan
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Tagged With: book news | interview | Jack-Vance | Jonathan-Strahan | science fiction | short fiction | Subterranean-Press | Terry-Dowling
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[...] The nice folk over at the UK SF Book News Network have done a short interview with me about The Jack Vance Treasury. It’s due out in January, which means we should be seeing final copies very soon. I’ve also pretty much done the last things (except a final proofread) for Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling. I’ve seen a cover rough for the book, and expect galleys in a few months. The book is due out in August 2007, which is cool. I’ll have a few things out ’round then. [...]