Friday, April 11, 2008

The Best of Me

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Roland has asked for the table of contents for Subterranean Press's forthcoming The Best of Michael Swanwick collection.  And of course I'm only too happy to oblige:


The Best of Michael Swanwick

The Feast of Saint Janis
Ginungagap
Trojan Horse
A Midwinter's Tale
The Edge of the World
Griffin's Egg
The Changeling's Tale
North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy
Radio Waves
The Dead
Mother Grasshopper
Radiant Doors
The Very Pulse of the Machine
Wild Minds
Scherzo With Tyrannosaur
The Rabble Taggle Gypsy-O
The Dog Said Bow-Wow
Slow Life
 Legions in Time
 Triceratops Summer
From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled . . . 


Which, all modesty aside, is a pretty good lineup and one that includes almost all my favorite stories.

It looks like Subterranean is going to print the stories in the order I provided them, which is to say in strict chronological order.  I was slightly tempted to reverse the last two stories, making the final one "Triceratops Summer," so that the volume would end on a elegiac note.  But if you start cheating on small things, you'll go on to cheating on your taxes, and from there it's a small hop, skip, and jump to that inevitable moment when you find yourself firing a Glock out a tenement apartment window and shouting, "You'll never take me alive, coppers!"  So I thought I'd best stick with the straight and narrow.

Also, this way the very last word in the book is "Goodbye." 


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3 comments:

  1. Thanks a lot! It seems like a great collection, really.

    Meanwhile, I asked you in an earlier post, but you didn't answer - are there any reprints of your novels planned for the future? Either in the US, or in the UK? Cause they're... well, they're a bit out of print, aren't they? I only got TIDD, DB and Stations of the Tide.

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  2. I placed my order for the volume; looks excellent!

    And the artwork on the cover ain't half bad either!

    So that makes three Swanwick's purchased this year. Since I'm in central NJ, I'll have to make it to one of the Philly events and get my growing Swanwick bookshelf additions signed!

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  3. Roland, you're absolutely right. Except for the recent books, I'm completely out of print. It's an artifact of leaving one publishing house for another.

    When I can find some spare time, I'm going to have to have a talk with my agent about this.

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