Ian Randal Strock buys Fantastic Books

By Kit Hawkins
From SFScope - September 8, 2010
Ian Randal Strock is buying Fantastic Books from Warren Lapine. Strock expects the transition to be seamless, since he's been working as the publisher of the line since early this year.
Lapine founded Fantastic Books as a speculative fiction imprint of his much larger Wilder Publications. Originally, the plan was to bring out-of-print sf titles back into print through print-on-demand publishing. Under Strock's leadership, however, the company has expanded into original publications. Several single-author collections have already been published (including Lou Antonelli's Fantastic Texas, Scott William Carter's The Dinosaur Diaries, and Sarah Totton's Animythical Tales). Fantastic's first original novel, T. Jackson King's Little Brother’s World, will debut in a matter of days. And now the imprint will be a much larger part of a much smaller company, as Strock brings it under the umbrella of his own Gray Rabbit Publications LLC.
According to Strock, "The transfer of ownership, to the outside world, should be nearly invisible; mostly just an accounting change. There will be a different mailing address, and a different name signing the checks and contracts, but most everything else will look the same.
"Fantastic Books, under the Gray Rabbit aegis, will be exhibiting at this weekend's Brooklyn Book Festival, as we've planned for several months now. We'll also be at the World Fantasy Convention in October, and several other sf conventions in the coming months."
Acquiring Editors Douglas Cohen, Darrell Schweitzer, and Dave Truesdale are staying on in those capacities, and Strock expects to give them the go-ahead to start acquiring new books in the very near future. But until they say so publicly, the company is not open to unsolicited submissions.
Strock is the editor and publisher of SFScope.

GUD issue No. 6 is published

I also got my check in the mail today, which is even better. Here is the blurb from their web site (http://www.gudmagazine.com/) The links in the TOC are to the story previews:

#

Issue 6 bounds onto the scene with a bright and blooming selection of prose, poetry, and art. Whether it's old tales retold with a new face, like an irreverent version of Sleeping Beauty, or a tale of renewal on the Wheel of Life, Issue 6 has a fresh feel to it. We're stepping through doors into unexpected places, washing our brains clean of memories, and getting a shiny coat of paint.
As always, GUD brings you the cream: haunting stories, evocative poetry, and art that you'll want to frame and hang on the wall. Issue 6 has a fantastic alternate history from Lou Antonelli that'll make you look at US/Irish connections in a whole new way. Issue 6 has weird and wonderful art from Andy B. Clarkson. Issue 6 has poetry from Rose Lemberg and Jim Pascual Agustin. Issue 6 has...way too much to summarise.

Table of contents ~
As the Wheel Turns by Aliette de Bodard
Salad Days by E. H. Lupton
How to Recover From a Hundred-Year Sleep by Sue Williams
Dispatches From The Troubles by Lou Antonelli
The Naming Braid by Lindsey Duncan
In The Garden of Rust and Salt by Ferrett Steinmetz
Annicca by Ian McHugh
Who You Talking To, Zone? by Bob Tippee
The Last Butterfly by Lavie Tidhar
What Happens in Vegas by Caroline M. Yoachim
Hateful by Lydia Ondrusek
Maisy's Many Souls by Matthew Sanborn Smith
Doors by Rajan Khanna

It's all in GUD Issue 6. Come get it.BUY NOW—$3.50 PDF, $12 Print

Success!

Completed my project to reorganize files and pull material that will help with "Texas and Other Planets". Shuffled a lof of books and files, but I'm much better positioned to deal with genre issues for the rest of the year.

Up to my elbows

I'm spending this Labor Day weekend up to my elbows in paperwork and boxes in my office at home, pulling files and records as I get ready to assemble the introduction for "Texas and Other Planets".

The necessity of dragging up old records has pretty much compelled me to finally get after a major reorganization of my files. It's a dusty, sloppy job, but it was needed, and it is producing results.

For instance, old emails which I printed and saved show my first exchanges with authors and editors as I started to submit. I found the first form rejection from Asimov's, stamped with the date of Nov. 12, 2002. I've also dug out the rejections where Gardner wrote me critiques and encouragement.

OK, back to work.

Photo from ArmadilloCon

Posted on the photo gallery at the blog "A Dimly Lit Shadow of Doubt" is a photo and description of the panel on self-promotion:http://pic.geekitude.com/v/sf/armadillocon2010/P1100130HooverFaustEudalyAntonelliSm.jpg.html

Latest review

Tangent 0n-line has reviewed Science Fiction Trails No. 5, which includes my short story "A Djinn for General Houston: http://www.tangentonline.com/print--other-reviewsmenu-263/225-annual/1414-science-fiction-trails-5-2010-annual
http://www.tangentonline.com/print--other-reviewsmenu-263/225-annual/1414-science-fiction-trails-5-2010-annual
In case you don't want to bother with the link, here's the pertinent part about me:

"The first reprint, by Lou Antonelli, is arguably the best story in the issue, but we don’t review reprints, so I’ll just say this concerns a “magic lamp” from the future, General Santa Anna, and a decidedly different “djinn” from the usual. (It’s really science, not magic, but remember Clarke’s Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”)"

"Djinn" was originally published a few years ago in Surprising Stories.

Back from Austin

Got back home about 10:30 p.m. last night, got up at 5:30 and spent a full day at work. Any hopes I had of knocking off early died when a board I cover, which meets at 3 p.m. and which has been known to meet for only 15 minutes to a half hour, had the longest meeting I've ever seen in my three years on the job here. I had to cut out with the meeting still in progress or I wouldn't have gotten my rental car returned to Enterprise by 5 p.m.

Saw Jayme Blaschke at ArmadilloCon, he has agreed to write the introduction for "Texas and Other Planets". I spoke to Gardner Dozois in the phone, and he has agreed to write a blurb.

The hotel where the con was held had a strange layout - all the meeting rooms are in the basement, and the main banks of elevators did not go down there. They come out in the ballrooms. As a result, the most direct route from the lobby to the con was up and down a steep marble staircase. The only elevator to that lower level was in the corner of the atrium and went down to the pool outside on the patio. I think everybody will remember this as "The Con in the Basement".

That was the one down side. The con itself was great - the programming was excellent. People were picked who could talk intelligently on the appropriate subjects. I think the con-goers really enjoyed themselves.

I shared a room with Bill Ledbetter and Adrian Simmons. That worked out well for all of us. We all drove in separately - Bill from the Dallas area, Adrian from Norman, Oklahoma, and myself from Mount Pleasant. Since I was a last-minute addition, I slept on a guest cot, but it was actually quite cozy. The con-goer I had shared a room with in the past couldn't make it this year.

I may blog later on details, but I need to get to bed.