I used to think editing an anthology merely meant choosing some stories you liked, banging them together into a book and – voila! – you had an anthology, easier than frying two eggs and altogether less messy.

I still wish that were the case.

Editing an anthology is closer to being a cattle rustler in the old Wild West, only writers are a lot worse than cattle, and publishers are far more dastardly than any old-time outlaw. To be an editor one needs a pair of mental six-shooters, the patience to lie in wait, still, unmoving, waiting for prey to come unsuspectingly down the trail below. One needs a cold and calculating heart, a killer’s instincts, but worst of all, one needs romance.

Without that last bit – without that grand illusion, that wonderful delusion that what you are doing might just be important, the rest fades to insignificance. There are very few commercial editors, a handful of people making – or, rather, eking out – a living from anthologies. Like gold prospectors in ’49, they dig into the ground, coming up with nuggets until the next mine. To do it, one has to want to do it, needs to believe in doing it – but why bother?

I like short stories. I read them here and I read them there – I read and read them everywhere. I read them in collections, in anthologies, in magazine, online. I pick and mix. And now and then, at low ebbs, when the moon is bright and the wolfmen howl etc, etc, I get the urge to put together an anthology.

I don’t really know why that is. It might just be that it’s a cool idea for an anthology, and I’d like to read some stories in this particular theme, and there aren’t any, or there are only a few. This is what happened with A Dick & Jane Primer for Adults that finally came out last year from the British Fantasy Society, but was an on-going project for so long that I don’t care to remember it any more. The idea was simple: short-short stories in the style of the old Dick & Jane primers, but with adult themes. How great! I thought. This can’t fail! They called me mad, but I will show them, I will show the world! Mwahahahaha!

They did call me mad. Several writers did when I pitched the idea to them. Some liked the idea and kept asking me about the anthology every now and then but also said they had no idea what to write for it. And others just wrote them. I had to beg and cajole and threaten and, in one particular case, hold a writer hostage for a week in an abandoned basement, chained to the leaking radiator, until–

Where was I?

And once you have the writers, and the stories, you need a publisher, and I wish someone had told me that in advance. And finding a publisher for an anthology, original or otherwise, is like hunting yetis in the Himalayas – you might see footprints, but you never see the actual beast.

Something else I should have been told: try not to lose money editing an anthology.

I decided to remember it next time, and also that there will never be a next time.

And then, of course, it was a full moon or the tides were high or maybe I was, and I decided I really, really, really wanted to edit another anthology.

That’s how The Apex Book of World SF came into being.

But perhaps that’s not true.

In fact, I’ve been compiling anthology ideas – and occasionally pitching them around – for a while now. A few years ago, for instance, a friend of mine and I – both big steampunk fans – decided that what the world needed was – wait for it – a big steampunk anthology!

The rest of the world, being short-sighted and indifferent to passion, thought differently. We were turned down by several big UK publishers but were offered a limited edition deal on condition that we sell a trade edition, which we couldn’t do because no-one wanted it.

It was, I realise now, a case of being ahead of our time since, three years later, the world was startled with not one but two big steampunk anthologies (Extraordinary Engines edited by Nick Gevers, and Steampunk edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer). I would sue, but they’re really quite nice people, so I won’t, plus I hate losing.

I have a few anthology files lying on the hard drive, and occasionally I add stories I come across to them. They’re themed, and maybe one day I’ll get to do them after all but, in the meantime, I managed to con Apex into doing my world SF anthology, and that deserves some explaining.

I’m one of those people whose first language isn’t, in fact, English, and who didn’t grow up in that block of English-speaking countries that so dominate global popular culture these days. And so I’ve always had an interest in what’s being done out there – in places like China and Malaysia and Israel and France and Peru – those places that obviously do have a long and respectable literary tradition but – gasp – no English-publisher cares very much about it and, if they did, it would be to translate a rare best-seller or a Nobel prize-winning writer (thank you, Sweden!) – and science fiction and related genres end up, of course, at the very bottom of the list.

However, having an interest is a wonderful thing. It’s all you really need. People respond to it. So, this way and that, I ended up knowing a fair bit about the stuff being written in other parts of the world. In China, I was a guest of SF World Magazine in Chengdu and hung out with a bunch of science fiction writers no-one outside China has ever heard of, and they were great. I picked up comics and horror books in Malaysia, Bulgarian and Russian science fiction in Eastern Europe, talked to people from all around the world as a guest at the French Utopiales festival and, somehow or other, met and talked to and exchanged views with writers from all around the world, from the Netherlands to the Philippines to South Africa.

And I wanted other people to care, too.

The Apex Book of World SF is a project I’ve wanted to do for years before I actually did it. I badgered Apex until they said yes, and I chased the writers I wanted and begged and cajoled and threatened until they gave me their stories. In one case I had to kidnap a writer’s elderly mother and dangle her upside down from a helicopter above an underwater volcano before–

Where was I? Right.

It took me about a year to put it together. A lot of trawling for stories, reading, selecting, asking, chasing, negotiating – but it was still a hell of a lot easier than Dick & Jane. Maybe I’m growing up.

So now my second anthology is coming into being. I’m still not making any money out of these things – perhaps I need to think about editing as a hobby, and everybody needs a hobby, right? – but at least I’ve not lost any, so far, and besides – it’s all about that grand illusion, that wonderful delusion that what you are doing might just be important.

I think it is. I wish there were more anthologies like it. I think there have been about five over the past century. I could be wrong. It might be six. And I wish people would read it, because there’s some great stuff out there beyond the British Isles and the American mainland, beyond the seas and far, far away. Not that far away, really. Very close, in fact. Just around the corner from where I’m writing this. And I hope people read it not because they think they should, but because it’s fun. There’s a lot of fun out there in the world. Some depressing and scary stuff too, but a lot of fun. I think The Apex Book of World SF has a bit of both.

So if you buy it, and read it, let me know if I was right. And now, as I write this, the moon is uncommonly bright, and the wolves are howling in the forests, and the compulsion is taking me again. Must. Fight. The. Urge!

It’s no use. They’re closing in on me. Anthologies. Fluttering their pages in the silent wind. Baring teeth as painful as paper cuts. They’re out there. Waiting…

If you read this–

I–

Help m-

Lavie Tidhar writes weird fiction. This is his web site. He grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and lived in South Africa and the UK. Most recently he’s lived in the Banks islands of Vanuatu, in the South Pacific, one of the most remote and isolated places on Earth. Lavie’s website is http://www.lavietidhar.co.uk/.

In 2007, Apex Publications released a collection of Jewish adventure stories titled HebrewPunk from Lavie Tidhar. This book is available as a direct order from the Apex Store and from the Apex aStore.

In 2009, Apex will be releasing his anthology of world SF titled The Apex Book of World SF.