VanderProjects: Toward 2011 and Beyond
Ann and I have a decent idea now of our joint projects coming out in 2011, along with my solo projects and collaborations. (Ann’s also working hard on Weird Tales, and should have some important announcements about the magazine in January.) Not as many books as in 2009 or 2010, but these are all major undertakings and we’re extremely proud of them.
MARCH
My nonfiction collection Monstrous Creatures (Guide Dog Books) will debut at FogCon in San Francisco. The book collects the last five years of the best of my nonfiction from the New York Times, Washington Post, and elsewhere. Essays, articles, reviews, opinion pieces, interviews with China Mieville and Margo Lanagan, etc. There will be a 50-copy limited edition with additional content, probably previously unpublished, featuring a different cover based around the art by Jeremy Zerfoss pictured below. (Main cover by Eric Orchard.)
MAY
The Steampunk Bible (Abrams Image; created with S.J. Chambers) is a 214-page coffee table book about steampunk in all of its various manifestations, with over 150 full-color images. There are other books on steampunk coming out next year, but they all focus only on the maker/art side of things (and we’ll probably bring some of these to your attention on a SB website). This is the only comprehensive overview.
JUNE
The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities (co-edited with Ann VanderMeer; HarperCollins/Voyager) is, quite simply, a showcase for some of the world’s best imaginations in fiction and art. The conceit of having stories revolve around items in the Dr. Lambshead’s cabinet worked more beautifully than we could have imagined to highlight a variety of traditional and avant garde approaches to fantasy. The full table of contents will be revealed in January, but includes everyone from Ted Chiang to Garth Nix, Holly Black to Helen Oyeyemi, Alan Moore to N.K. Jemisin, Minister Faust to Mike Mignola. An oversized hardcover.
OCTOBER
The Weird (co-edited with Ann; Atlantic/Corvus) is a definitive 750,000-word reprint anthology covering a century of weird fiction. Alfred Kubin, Bradbury, Murakami, Butler, Kafka, Kelly Link, Angela Carter, etc. The cover below is a rough mock-up of the final.
NOVEMBER 2011 – APRIL 2012
Ann and I are currently talking to ChiZine Publications about doing Leviathan 5: The Next Wave, with an open reading period starting in late 2011 and extending into the spring of 2012, for publication in spring of 2013. This anthology, the latest in the World Fantasy Award winning and PKD award finalist series, would focus on weird fiction and fantasy from newer writers. We would do something fairly unprecedented in the history of genre and have between 15 and 25 assistant editors in other countries so that many writers who do not write in English would be able to submit. Up to 30,000 words of the 100,000 words might be fiction newly translated for Leviathan 5. More on this as it develops.
December 23, 2010 at 11:31 am
Quite a variety of projects lined up. Part of me will miss the Vanderfiction, but the other part is very excited about, well, everything here.
December 23, 2010 at 11:41 am
The VanderFiction is underway. It took awhile to get out from under Ambergris. I’m working on Borne, a new post-apocalyptic novel set in the same place as “The Situation” but don’t want to try to pre-sell it and work to a deadline on it. I do have a contract with Subterranean for a novella-in-book-form, and I have an idea for a duology called Komodo–that I wouldn’t mind selling. Also a novel collaboration with Gio Clairval. I might also do one more tie-novel because the project in question intrigues me. The work on the books coming out in 2011 is pretty much done, so I will hopefully be writing fiction muchof next year.
December 23, 2010 at 11:42 am
“wouldn’t mind selling in advance” that is
December 23, 2010 at 4:44 pm
These are some of the only books I’m excited about in 2011. I sincerely hope that you get that 30k of translated fiction for Leviathan 5. Now that would be something truly worth paying for.
December 23, 2010 at 11:43 pm
I am so very excited about “The Weird.” (Everything else, also, but especially that.)
December 24, 2010 at 7:31 am
The Steampunk Bible seems superb! And Thackeray T. Lambshead’s Cabinet of Curiosities premise has me engaged. Will the flash fictions have attached illustrations?
December 24, 2010 at 12:05 pm
The flash fictions? You mean the micro-submissions at the back? Intermittently.
December 24, 2010 at 7:27 pm
Any chances for the full TOC of “The Weird”? The waiting is so hard =)
December 25, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Everything looks wonderful, and I’m very much looking forward to Borne, whatever this “Komodo” thing is, and, now that I’m reading me some Gio Clairval on the side as well, that sounds like a fantastic (in several senses) thing.
In more concrete non-fanboi terms, my pobox received a Monstrous Creatures review copy last week, which I’ve started getting into. I love the introduction, and reading your challege to writers to be bold rather than merely aspire to being technically good, publishable, etc. helps make me feel like I’m doing the right thing, re: some risks on the Bull Spec #4 and #5 fiction. I haven’t been able to read all of MC yet, but from what I’ve read, and the forward skimming I’ve done, I can already tell you’ve (and Guide Dog has) done a tremendous job making these essays and reviews tell a larger story, broken into a few parts. (I’ll be the kid who poops in the sandbox to say I’m not the biggest fan of the cover on MC, but, well, when you stack anything against that Steampunk and Lambshead cover, …)
And I’m glad to be reading fantasy in a time that another Leviathan is in the works. I’m looking forward to those unexpected, imaginative worlds, and have to say that your ambition in being open to a world of languages is awesome. I’ve been reading some fiction from Romania, Russia, and Spain lately, and while my small-town-suspenders are showing (hey, I’ve been to Russia, darn it), they all wake up the senses in different ways, zig when an English/American/Canadian/Australian/etc. author might zag, and bring in themes and assumptions that make the fantastic that much more so.
Happy holidays, too, by the way!
December 26, 2010 at 8:46 pm
The Steampunk Bible looks wonderful. I do hope it has some altered photographs in it as well as some obscure authors, films, and comic book artists in it. I especially hope it is more than Victoriana and includes some Western steampunk. Monstrous Creatures looks interesting as well. Have a happy holiday.
December 26, 2010 at 8:49 pm
…so you just want some obscure stuff in there because it’s obscure? lol
not sure western is stretching much beyond victoriana. best, jeff
May 13, 2011 at 3:51 am
[...] going to end the week with something I am really really looking forward to. This anthology from Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, due in October. Ads by Project Wonderful! Your ad here, right now: $0.60 Share [...]