New Treasures: Reach For Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan
Reach For Infinity makes me very happy.
A while back, I wrote a blog post titled “Is the Original SF and Fantasy Paperback Anthology Series Dead?“, in which I lamented the death of the great genre anthologies like Orbit, New Dimensions, and Universe, and noted that no modern publisher had the courage to launch one these days. None except Solaris that is, which recently started several excellent new anthology series — including Jonathan Strahan’s terrific Infinity line, beginning with Engineering Infinity (2010) and Edge of Infinity (2012).
I’m thrilled to see at least one publisher willing to take the risk… and more importantly, to pull it off. Kudos to Jonathan Strahan and his editors at Solaris for making the impossible look easy. These books deserve your support and they’re a fantastic and inexpensive way to introduce yourself to some great writers. Check them out — and start with Reach For Infinity, the third in the series, now on sale.
Humanity Among the Stars
What happens when we reach out into the vastness of space? What hope for us amongst the stars?
Multi-award winning editor Jonathan Strahan brings us fourteen new tales of the future, from some of the finest science fiction writers in the field.
The fourteen startling stories in this anthology feature the work of Greg Egan, Aliette de Bodard, Ian McDonald, Karl Schroeder, Pat Cadigan, Karen Lord, Ellen Klages, Adam Roberts, Linda Nagata, Hannu Rajaniemi, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Ken MacLeod, Alastair Reynolds and Peter Watts.
Reach For Infinity was published by Solaris on May 27, 2014. It is 346 pages, priced at $9.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition.
John, I’m always a bit puzzled when you give these sorts of pessimistic assessments of the anthology nowadays. Perhaps you’re familiar with the sales numbers, especially versus novels, when you say these things.
Anecdotally, I buy quite a few anthologies regularly. Editor names like Datlow, Adams, Strahan, and Lockhart are more familiar to me than current author names. I’m constantly on the look for new upcoming anthologies.
To name a few that I’m looking forward to: Fearsome Magics coming out from Solaris and edited by Jonathan Strahan, Monstrous Affections edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant (I assume from Small Beer Press), Nightmare Carnival edited by Ellen Datlow (I don’t know the publisher), and Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume One edited by Laird Barron (again, don’t know the publisher).
Is it really such a daring endeavor to publish an anthology nowadays? If so, there are quite a few courageous editors and publishers out there.
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