The Best American Fantasy series has undergone a series of important changes, starting with the publisher. Underland Press has acquired BAF and will publish the third volume, Real Unreal, in January of 2010. Real Unreal will contain work by, among others, Stephen King, Lisa Goldstein, Peter S. Beagle, and John Kessel, as chosen by guest editor Kevin Brockmeier with assistance from series editor Matthew Cheney.

This will be the final volume to be edited by Cheney, whose duties as series editor will be taken up by co-founders Ann and Jeff VanderMeer in future volumes. Cheney will remain in an advisory capacity to the VanderMeers, who previously served as guest editors for volumes one and two of the series.Jeff VanderMeer is excited about the future of the series.

“Going forward, it will be great to assist the new guest editors in realizing their own visions for their years. Best American Fantasy is the only fantasy ‘year’s best’ that has a different editor every year selecting the stories,” said VanderMeer. “That keeps the series fresh and relevant, while negating traditional hierarchies and ideas of privilege within genre. No one set of tastes can rule for more than one year.”

Privilege and bias have been hot topics of discussion in recent years—especially when it comes to anthologies. Cheney said that diversity in the BAF series begins with the kind of literature considered for inclusion.

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In what I thought was a great way to promote Wofford College’s “Shared Worlds” fantasy writing camp for young people‚ Jeff VanderMeer rounded up some of speculative fiction’s best writers to contribute their thoughts on what they thought were the most “fantastic” real world cities. Elizabeth Hand‚ China Mieville‚ Ursula LeGuin‚ Michael Moorcock and Nalo Hopkinson all weighed in on the topic‚ and you can read their contributions here.

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I like to describe myself as a lifelong fan of the fantastic in the arts, but really, it all started for me in fourth grade.

My buddy Jason Thornton brought a new sort of game to school called Dungeons & Dragons. You didn’t need a board to play it, and with just a handful of funny-looking dice and a little imagination anyone could become a powerful wizard, master thief, swordsman or demon-smiting priest. It didn’t matter then that the only dwarves I knew hung around with Snow White, and that I preferred the kind of elves who lived in trees and baked cookies, or that I didn’t know J.R.R. Tolkien from H.R. Puffenstuff: being unfamiliar with  fantasy tropes added to the feeling of exploration. I was hooked from game one and spent the rest of that year begging my parents for my own copy of the Dungeons & Dragons rules, which became my gateway into a new world of fantasy fiction, movies and more.

I loved everything about the game, but one of the very best parts was the artwork. The early stable of Dungeons & Dragons artists was great, but in my mind the very best of the bunch was Erol Otus. There was something psychedelic, witchy even, about his work that held my eye then and still does today. The men and monsters in his paintings weren’t quite fully representational. Something was different about them: they were cartoonish in a way that both delighted and threatened, like a child’s cartoon gone awry. Maybe it was the bright colors or the way that he depicted even the most terrible of creatures with their own personalities that suggests this description. Whatever it is that Otus did, it stayed with me for decades. To this day, nothing says “adventure” like an Erol Otus painting. 

Dungeons & Dragons was only the beginning of a long and fruitful career for Otus. Since those days, he’s made a good living as a video game designer and freelance illustrator. I was recently able to spend a few minutes with the artist to discuss his career.

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Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds: The Art of Fantasy is a study of the evolution of fantasy fiction, beginning with its earliest predecessors to the work of then contemporary practitioners. Published in June 1973 as part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, it is an ambitious title magnificently flawed by the hubris of its author.

The book’s first chapters on the careers of Lord Dunsany, R. A. Eddison, Mervyn Peake, William Morris and other early masters are extremely valuable, providing both biographical information and establishing a timeline for the evolution of fantasy settings from the mundane (earthly kingdoms and lost civilizations) to entirely original secondary worlds. Carter’s strong editorial voice and legendary ego are both at their most subdued during these first chapters. Unfortunately, both are soon enough loosed with disastrous results.

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Felix Gilman returns once again to the streets of Ararat in Gears of the City, a novel that Agony Column’s Rick Kleffel calls “A dark, dank and delightful combination of rip-roaring adventure.” In this sequel to 2007’s Thunderer, that novel’s priest protagonist Arjun is lost to himself, his memory shattered and his place uncertain in a city now abandoned of its once ubiquitous gods. Drawn into a quest to find a missing woman, Arjun learns that his destiny may be intertwined with that of Ararat itself.

I recently asked the author to share seven reasons why you should read Gears of the City if you haven’t yet. Read his response after the jump.

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Mike Allen: Hey! Matt! Got too much time on your hands? You want something to blog about? Well‚ I got something for you.

Matt Staggs: What? Who the hell are you?

MA: My name is Legion.

Or at least, there are legions of guys with my name. But I’m the only one that writes sf. (I’m surely the only one nominated for a Nebula Award.) And I’m the only one I know of publishing poetry. I’m even crazy enough to combine the two, sf and poetry, which some people swear should never be mixed, just like the silly folks in the old Reese’s Cup commercials.

You might think that’s strange, that someone would want to devote their time to writing so-called “speculative poetry.” But you know what? I don’t care.

I even publish a little magazine that’s full of this crazy soup. And I’ve been doing it for ten years.

[Continued after the jump.]

From left to right: Mark Tremble, Alex Hong, Aidan Doyle, Stephen Turner, Brendan Carson, MacLaren North, Steve Mitchell, Ben Julien,Trent Jamieson (week 5 instructor), Angela Slatter, Suzanne Willis, Su Lynn Cheah, Angie Rega, Amanda le Bas de Plumetot, Lisa Bennett, Liz Adkins, Stephanie Wong, Tracy Meszaros.

Robert Hoge and Kate Eltham run Clarion South, the Antipodes’ answer to Clarion East and West. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Eltham and Hoge have quickly established their own signature brand of the classic six-week workshop. It has become an invaluable opportunity for emerging Australian science fiction and fantasy writers to achieve significant creative and professional growth. Recently, Tor.com interviewed the two about Clarion South, the latest iteration of which ended just a few weeks ago. Instructors were: Sean Williams (two weeks), Margo Lanagan, Jack Dann, Trent Jamieson, and Jeff VanderMeer.

Relevant links:
Clarion South website
Clarion South fund drive to offset unexpected costs
Student Aidan Doyle’s What I Learned at Clarion
Instructor Jeff VanderMeer’s posts on Clarion South and Australian fiction, both at Omnivoracious (parts one, two, and three) and his own blog (a teacher’s view, including links to student journals).

[Interview after the jump.]

Thanks in part to bestselling books and blockbuster television shows and movies from the likes of Stephenie Meyers and Charlaine Harris, vampires are hotter than ever. And by “hot” I do mean hot. Never at any point in popular history have these otherwise gruesome creatures been more imbued with sexual allure, sometimes even made all the more conspicuous by its absence—Twilight’s abstinent bloodsuckers, anyone?

However, that doesn’t mean that they’ve always been that way. The vampire myths that most of us are familiar with—those of Eastern Europe—have always depicted these creatures as somewhat less desirable. Rather than seduce you, the Vampir or Vrolok or Strigoi of Eastern Europe was more likely to consume you. As a matter of fact, the vampires of Europe’s past had far more in common with what we now think of as zombies rather than the sexual creatures we thrill to on page and screen.

Ancient vampires were often depicted as shambling, bloodsucking corpses that preyed upon family members and former loved ones with no sign of remorse or awareness of their former lives. Their skin was described as ruddy or even purple from stolen blood and their bodies swollen, corpulent even. As if this wasn’t bad enough, they smelled terrible, too.

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Something’s causing ordinary people to abruptly explode with homicidal rage in David Moody’s novel Hater. The phenomenon is inexplicable, unpredictable and growing more widespread with every passing day. As government and military authorities struggle to maintain control in the face of escalating violence, low-level civil servant Danny McCoyne and his family seek shelter, only to learn they can trust no one; not even each other.

Hater is a fast-moving, tense piece of fiction that yanks readers out of their armchairs and flings them with maximum force into a paranoid world of bloody, explosive violence. It’s just the kind of thing that you would expect from Moody, whose Autumn series already ranks highly with fans of apocalyptic fiction.

I recently asked the author to share seven reasons why readers should give Hater a chance.

[Read his answers after the jump:]

I’ve always liked monsters, and it all started with Morgan Freeman. Sure, he might be better known now for his roles in movies like Wanted and The Dark Knight, but when I was a kid he was Vincent the Vegetable Vampire on The Electric Company, an educational program on public television.

Vincent was a strange guy, even by educational vampire spokesperson standards. He sang odes to the joys of bathing in caskets (captured for posterity at YouTube-don’t click unless the idea of a topless Morgan Freeman vamping it up in a coffin full of suds does it for you), and offered children amusing couplets like “I’m Vincent, the Vegetable Vampire. In the nighttime, when tomatoes start to scream, it’s only Vincent the Vegetable Vampire creeping in the garden of your dreams.”

With characters like these lurking in the periphery of acceptable children’s programming is it any wonder that I developed an affinity for monsters? Decades later, it’s still there.

I love collecting bestiaries, encyclopedias and other tomes devoted to mythological beasts, and I’m always happy to snap up a new one when opportunity presents itself. One of my more recent acquisitions is Fantastical Creatures Field Guide, a slender volume by artist and writer Aaron Lopresti.

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One of the benefits of working as a book publicist is that I get to spend time with a lot of talented authors. For a longtime science fiction and fantasy fan like me, getting the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the field’s best and brightest minds is almost payment enough for the work I do.

The most recent title I’ve been working with is the World War II era satire Shambling Towards Hiroshima. Written by James Morrow, Hiroshima is the story of B-Movie actor Syms Thorley, approached by the U.S. government to don a rubber monster suit and star in a film that simulates the destruction of a miniature Japan. Thorley’s handlers hope that the Japanese will be frightened into surrendering and spare the U.S. from having to unleash its real weapon: giant, fire-breathing mutant iguanas.

Morrow, the author of Towing Jehovah, has never been afraid to court controversy, but even I had more than a few questions about what brought him to address such a terrible episode in history and how he thought others might react to the novel. I thought that these questions might be best addressed in the medium of a short interview, which Morrow granted permission for me to reproduce here.

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