Short fiction anthologies come in many flavors: some contain original fiction and some are comprised of reprints; they can be themed or non-themed; they may restrict themselves to a certain sub-genre of speculative fiction… But one thing they all have in common is that it’s Editors that put them together.
Continuing from Part 1 last week, we asked a handful of Editors the following question:
Q: Can you describe what goes on behind the scenes – from conception to publication — when creating a short fiction anthology?
Read on to see their illuminating responses (and check out Part 3 when you’re done!) …
James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel
James Patrick Kelly is the author of a slew of novels and short stories including
Burn,
Look Into the Sun,
Strange But Not A Stranger,
Think Like A Dinosaur And Other Stories, and
The Wreck of the Godspeed. His numerous short works include the Hugo Award-winning “Think Like A Dinosaur” and “Ten to the Sixteenth to One”. He is also co-editor with John Kessel of three anthologies:
Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology,
Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, and the upcoming
The Secret History of Science Fiction. He also writes a column for
Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.
John Kessel teaches literature at North Carolina State University. He has published numerous books and short stories over the years and he is a Nebula Award winner for his story “Pride and Prometheus.” His latest book is the short story collection
The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories. John is also co-editor with James Patrick Kelly of three anthologies:
Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology,
Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, and the upcoming
The Secret History of Science Fiction.
We have edited three reprint anthologies; the genesis of each was different. Jacob Weisman at Tachyon Publications approached Jim to do a slipstream book and he enlisted John as his co-editor; the result was Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology. We proposed a book about post-cyberpunk and Jacob greenlighted Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology. And it was Jacob and the perspicacious Bernie Goodman who suggested the idea for The Secret History Of Science Fiction; the book is due out next month.
We’ve a long history of collaboration and we’ve shared a similar vision for these reprint anthologies. In each of them we were trying to put forward an argument about the recent history of the genre. So we first had to gather our thoughts about slipstream and post-cyberpunk and the divide between mainstream and genre sf. Creating reprint anthologies like these involves figuring out what we think about a subject, or what we can credibly say about it. Selecting the stories has involved a couple of methods: (1) we decided on who we wanted in the book and then read intensively for stories that best illustrated our thesis, and (2) we decided what kind of stories we wanted and then cast the net widely to see who might have written the sort of thing we needed to support our thesis. In each of the books we have had some disagreements that have involved negotiations between us, and the final table of contents has been affected by practical considerations that made the end result different from our initial intentions.
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Mythic Delirium has posted the 
The final story from Mythic Delirium 0.1 (with cover art by 
Mike Allen 
Mike Allen has posted the 
Editor Mike Allen has 
