News - BFS - A Celebration

...As the British Fantasy Society gear up for September's FantasyCon, they have announced the publication of The British Fantasy Society - A Celebration. Edited by our good friends Paul Kane and Marie O'Regan (both established UK genre writers), the anthology collects the work of Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub, Brian Aldiss, Robert Silverberg, Robert Holdstock, Christopher Fowler, Michael Marshall Smith, Mark Chadbourn, Juliet E. McKenna, Kim Newman, Mark Morris, Chaz Brenchley, Simon Clark, Peter Crowther, Richard Christian Matheson, John Connolly, Stephen Gallagher and Graham Joyce. With an introduction by Stephen Jones, the volume also includes recollections and memories of the BFS over the years. Fans of Harry D'Amour will be delighted to find the short story Lost Souls included in the collection. All profits from the sale of this book will be split between supporting the BFS and The ‘Black Dust’ Noabakazulu Charity Project, one of the charities supported by 2006’s FantasyCon, where the trade paperback will be launched in September and where four of the contributors (Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Ramsey Campbell and Juliet E. McKenna) are Guests of Honour. Head over to The British Fantasy Society for more details of contributors and ordering... Paul Kane and Marie O'Regan: "After putting together the BFS calendars for the last couple of years and because of the great reaction we got from people about them – especially the snippets of fiction from bestselling authors we included – we really wanted to do something bigger this year. So we came up with the idea of doing a sort of ‘Celebration of the British Fantasy Society’ book which would include not just fiction, but authors’ comments about the society and remembrances of FantasyCons gone by (so, for example, you have Clive remembering back to the FCons in the eighties and his experience of them) or even comments about the stories themselves (as Brian Aldiss and Richard Christian Matheson do with theirs). It was incredibly difficult to come to a decision about authors. Our original ‘shortlist’ was something of a misnomer and would have resulted in a book about four times as big as the one we finally ended up with, and it’s a huge one as it is. But in a lot of cases it came down to who we could get hold of at the time, who kindly said yes, and who we could fit in, as we only had a certain budget for the book. We knew right from the start that we wanted it to be unlike anything on the market at the moment. As the BFS is about promoting imaginative fiction in all its forms, we wanted a blend of horror, sf and fantasy stories, so that there’d be something in it for everyone – and in some cases the lines between the three are blurred anyway. The weird thing was that authors who normally write in one genre have tried their hand at others for this book; for instance there’s a hard-edged sf story from Stephen Gallagher and a supernatural tale from Juliet McKenna. "We also wanted as much original material as possible, and where people could only let us have reprints we asked if they could be rarely seen ones wherever possible. As we’re both huge fans of Clive and Harry D’Amour, the choice of ‘Lost Souls’ was a bit of a no-brainer really. We asked Clive and he very kindly said yes, go ahead. And of course we wanted to get as many of the FCon 2006 Guests of Honour in the book for the launch during that weekend, so we have Clive, Neil Gaiman (with a story that’s never been reprinted since it was first published), Juliet and of course Ramsey Campbell in there too. We were also very fortunate to get Stephen Jones (long-time friend of Clive’s and editor of books like Clive Barker’s Shadows in Eden and Clive Barker’s A-Z of Horror) to introduce the anthology, and a very heartfelt one it is – Stephen has, after all, been associated with the BFS almost since the beginning. "Because the BFS does a lot of good work for charity too, we’d also decided that there should be some charitable aspect to the book. So all the profits from the book will be split between supporting the BFS and one of the FCon charities this year: The ‘Black Dust’ Noabakazulu Charity Project, actually suggested to us by Bob Wardzinski of Talking Dead Books. The last piece of the puzzle was the cover, though, and we have Dominic Harman to thank for this. Because it was a particularly hectic year for him work-wise last year he hadn’t been able to be involved in our Horror Calendar, but still wanted to help out somehow. He produced a stunning wraparound cover for us that matches the mood of the book so well. We’d also like to thank Peter Crowther - another fiction contributor - for all his help and advice during the preparation and printing stage of the book, plus another huge thank you to the authors who wrote or donated material for it. It’s all gone together to make a truly unique publication that we’re very proud of having been involved with." For Revelations, 9 July 2006 Search Revelations | Home page This page has been created for information and entertainment purposes only. All quotes remain the copyright of the original owners.