SF/fantasy author and editor Marvin Kaye told SCI FI Wire that his forthcoming Science Fiction Book Club anthology, Forbidden Planets, is the very first all-SF collection he's edited. "Forbidden Planets is a new science fiction anthology whose title pays homage to the 1956 film classic [Forbidden Planet, directed by Fred M. Wilcox]," Kaye said in an interview. "[I] invited [the authors] to write novellas about worlds [that are] difficult and dangerous to visit."

The book will contain six original novellas: "Mid-Death" by Alan Dean Foster, "Walking Star" by Allen Steele, "JQ211F, and Holding" by Nancy Kress, "Rococo" by Robert Reed, "Kaminsky at War" by Jack McDevitt and "No Place Like Home" by Julie E. Czerneda.

The novellas are in the tradition of past "forbidden planet" stories, including "Coventry" by Robert A. Heinlein and "A Planet Named Shayol" by Cordwainer Smith, which Kaye said featured the most hellish world he'd encountered in SF before the worlds described in Forbidden Planets.

Kaye said that SF is a major part of our literary culture, and it's easy to see why someone would want to w**k in the field. But that wasn't always the case. "Back in the 1950s, one might feel compelled to defend the decision to w**k in the SF field, and there were reasons," he said. "For one thing, educators of an older generation from many of the SF aficionados were underexposed to the power and significance of its best literary efforts. This was not helped by the kind of SF being fashioned in the film industry. Much of what was being produced was for SF buffs, very old, outdated stuff. But then the situation began to turn, [and] Forbidden Planet [was] one of the earliest U.S. films to bring dignity to the genre in the public mind."

Fantasy is the most important literary genre, Kaye added (he considers SF to be a subcategory of fantasy). "It is intricately intertwined with literature of every age and culture," he said. "It provides necessary myths and archetypes to each respective society. Or it can hold up a fun-house mirror to the face of mankind, serving up its homilies as foils to that which is being observed, dissected, satirized."

Science Fiction Book Club will publish Forbidden Planets in June. Meanwhile, Kaye is currently editing two magazines for Wildside Press: H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror and Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine.

/sci fi wire