It wasn’t long before his daughters insisted he write them down, and in 1966 he started to do just that. The stories were set in and around the real Watership Down, a grass-covered hill in Hampshire, England. He began with the words “Once there were two rabbits called Hazel and Fiver”. Richard Adams, a British civil servant in the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, created stories to tell his daughters on car rides. Watership Down (1972) turned out to be nothing like the movies I’d seen and much more than just a book about rabbits. The point being, when my friend Karl told me about an exciting book he’d just read about the adventures of rabbits, it sounded like something I’d like. I had, of course, also seen Bambi (1942), an animated movie that gave voice to its animal characters, unlike the live-action ones. There was Run, Cougar, Run (1972), Nikki, Dog of the North (1961), and my favorite, The Incredible Journey (1963). When I was young I watched numerous live-action animal movies on The Wonderful World of Disney (Sunday nights on NBC, right after Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom). Once There Were Two Rabbits… Watership Down by Richard Adams Once There Were Two Rabbits… Watership Down by Richard Adams Check out the entire 35-minute interview here. It was a lively and enormously entertaining discussion with one of the most wildly read and keen-eyed observers of the industry, a woman who’s demonstrated an uncanny talent for spotting and showcasing some of the most talented new writers working today. I sat down with Paula this morning to talk about her new book, and discovered she had a lot to say - lively anecdotes from a two-decade career, what it is about horror that keeps her coming back, how the pandemic has affected modern horror, the best new novels of the past few years, and the amazing writers we should all be paying more attention to. She began with Dark Echo, one of the first email newsletters, which she created in 1994 her 49th anthology, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: Volume Two, will be published by Pyr Books on October 19th. Paula Guran is one of the most accomplished editors in the business. The Nexus of Horror: An Interview With Paula Guran The Nexus of Horror: An Interview With Paula Guran It’s that last one we’re going to look at today, with one of the final volumes: Ghosts, published by Signet in 1988. These include The Great Science Fiction Stories (25 volumes in 23 years), Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction (10 volumes in 8 years), and Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Fantasy (12 volumes in 9 years). But he doesn’t get a lot of credit for one of his greatest talents, a skill in short supply even today: The man knew how to sell anthologies.Īfter some of his early SF anthologies became enduring top-sellers, often remaining in print for decades (including The Hugo Winners, Volume I and II, Before the Golden Age, and Where Do We Go From Here), publishers discovered that the name Isaac Asimov on the cover of an anthology almost guaranteed it would sell.Īsimov exploited this heavily for the remainder of his career, lending his fame to many important anthology series, often co-created with frequent collaborators Martin H. He was a world famous polymath, a marvelous science explainer and popularizer, and a pretty darned skilled writer of science fiction. Isaac Asimov’s Magical Worlds of Fantasy 10: Ghosts (Signet/New American Library, 1988). Waugh Vintage Treasures: Isaac Asimov’s Magical Worlds of Fantasy 10: Ghosts edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Vintage Treasures: Isaac Asimov’s Magical Worlds of Fantasy 10: Ghosts edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. You can support this podcast series through its Patreon page. We discuss how he changed his production process to be able to continue recording and producing through the pandemic. I interviewed my friend about this latest project (Episode 4 of which goes live today). While Derelict took place on a derelict spaceship, Fathom takes place deep under the sea. So he got to work on a prequel series, Fathom. Then the pandemic hit, and that shut down production of the podcast, but not Mitchell’s drive to create more adventures in that world (which is set in the same universe as The Razor). For that project he hired professional actors, flying them out to Santa Fe, where he lives, and having them perform together, playing off one another in his recording studio. Pre-pandemic, he was also in the process of producing his dramatic science fiction podcast, Derelict. Barton Mitchell is the author of the YA novels The Conquered Earth Trilogy, and the prison planet novel, The Razor.
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