This is a good time for the short story in genre circles. Not maybe in business terms—we're yet to develop a twenty-first century business model that allows writers to make a living writing short fiction—but in artistic terms, it's extraordinary. Whether in anthologies like this one, or in magazines or on websites, short stories are being published in staggering numbers. Thousands each year, millions of words, and in amongst this torrent of content is some extraordinary work.
Over the past several years I've been reading through that torrent to compile my year's best annuals (most recently The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year), and as I've done so I've become more and more excited about the idea of publishing my own original anthology series, a series that would be a sort of counterweight to my year's best work. It took me a while, though, to figure out what that series would be like. A number of anthologies are being published at the moment that follow a theme, support a manifesto, or attempt to hark back to some grand moment in the history of science fiction and fantasy; anthologies that, no matter how good they may be, have some stated purpose beyond simply delivering a selection of great stories. That wasn't what I wanted to do.
When I began to sketch out what evolved into the book you're now holding, my intentions were clear. As I've written elsewhere, as an editor I have been greatly influenced by the work of the late, great Terry Carr who was, alongside Damon Knight, one of the best anthologists ever to work in science fiction. Through the 1970s and 1980s he edited two of the great SF anthology series: his Best SF of the Year and Universe. Universe was a truly exceptional anthology series which first appeared in 1971 and ran for seventeen volumes. It collected a broad variety of stories written by some of the best short story writers the field has seen, including Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, R. A. Lafferty, and Gene Wolfe, including some of the best loved stories of the past thirty years. Each volume was short, tightly edited, and yet had a real variety to it. That was something I wanted to emulate: variety without sprawl, respected, well-known writers, and exciting newcomers, and both science fiction and fantasy.
That's why, in the beginning, I was going to call this series Universe. It seemed like a fitting tribute and an appropriate statement of intent. But then some time passed and I accepted that I'm not Terry Carr, that his tastes aren't necessarily mine, and that this isn't 1975, it's 2007. A different time calls for a slightly different approach and for a new name. So, last year my publisher and I put out a call to readers: give us a new name that would fit a series of anthologies that would contain great new science fiction and fantasy stories, something new, something resonant, something interesting. The suggestions poured in. Many were odd or dissonant in some way, some almost fit, but none were quite right. Some were too science fictional, some too fantastical, and some just didn't suggest much at all. And then, when I was ready to give up, Interzone editor Jetse de Vries suggested Eclipse. Some people who've heard it since think it suggests something exclusively science fictional, or that something must be being "eclipsed." I've been told it's negative, because it's either blocking something or being blocked by something. That wasn't what occurred to me, though, when I heard it.
An eclipse is a rare and unusual event. If you look at photos of the sun taken during a lunar eclipse you'll see a strange, dark, eldritch thing. The eclipsed sun becomes a weird, black, negative image of itself, and the landscapes it shines down upon are equally transformed. It seemed to me that wonderful things could happen under the strange skies of an eclipse. I was also struck by the fact that eclipses happen regularly. It seemed a perfect metaphor for a new science fiction/fantasy anthology series: a book published regularly that was filled with stories where strange and wonderful things happen, where reality was eclipsed for a little while with something magical and new. And as time passed and the stories for Eclipse 1 began to arrive, it has seemed more and more appropriate.
So, with thanks to Jetse, welcome to the first volume of Eclipse. This is not a science fiction anthology. Nor is it a fantasy anthology. It's both and it's more. It's a space where you can encounter rocket ships and ray guns, zombies and zeppelins: pretty much anything you can imagine. Most of all, it's somewhere you will find great stories. It does not have an agenda or a plan. There is no test of genre purity that it can pass or fail. There's only the test that every reader applies to any work that they encounter—is it good fiction or not?—and I hope we'll pass that one every time.
Every anthology is a community. Before you move on to the stories, I'd like to thank a few people. This book wouldn't exist without the extraordinary support of Jason Williams, Jeremy Lassen, and the entire Night Shade posse. I'd especially like to thank Marty Halpern for his heroic copyediting and Michael Fusco for his wonderful cover design. I'd also like to thank all of the contributors for their patience, support, and the wonderful stories that you're about to encounter. The path from proposal to publication was a particularly rocky one, and I could never have made it without them. I'd also like to thank my anthology guru and pal, Jack Dann, and my wife, Marianne, who have been there for every difficult moment I went through getting us here. And, last of all, I'd like to thank you for picking up this book and taking it home. I hope this is just the start of a beautiful friendship.
Jonathan Strahan
Perth, Western Australia
July 2007