Q: You’ve treated us to some great anthologies of fiction, including The Big Book of Pulps and The Big Book of Black Mask Stories. Coming up next is a telephone directory-sized omnibus of adventure. Tell us about it.
Honestly, this has been the most fun of any book I've done in years, maybe because it brought me back to my early reading years. It's about a thousand over-sized, double-column pages (like the other "Big Books") of stories in such genres as sword & sorcery, science fiction, horror, espionage, man vs. nature, fantasy, westerns. There are stories set in Africa (when it was still largely unexpolored) and at sea and in other times. Among the characters featured here are The Cisco Kid, Hopalong Cassidy, Buck Rogers, Tarzan, King Kong, Conan the Barbarian and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.
Q: How did you go about selecting which stories to include in this highly-anticipated gem?
Like all the "Big Books," there was a lot of reading. I usually read 500-600 stories to find what I think are the best. I started with a list of famous characters, another list of authors, and a third list of stories. I remembered a lot of my reading from decades ago, so KNEW I had to have stories by certain authors, like Jack London, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, etc. Among my favorite stories were classics like "The Man Who Would Be King" and "The Most Dangerous Game," which everyone knows, and "Leinengen versus the Ants," which is one of the most exciting stories of all time but less well known. I also made contact with friends who know more about pulp fiction than I do, Robert Weinberg and John Pelan, who were tremendously helpful in recommending stories that were slightly more obscure except to die-hard pulp fans. Sometimes I found myself reading additional stories by a writer after I'd already picked a story for the book, simply because I enjoyed reading them so much.
Q: The Big Book of Black Mask Stories includes the serial version of Hammett’s Maltese Falcon. Will the Big Book of Adventure Stories offer any similar special publications?
There really isn't anything quite comparable to The Maltese Falcon. There is a full-length Tarzan novel, and a previously unpublished pulp adventure by Lester Dent, the Doc Savage author.
Q: The cover is nothing short of incredible. Who is the artist?
All credit for this goes to the great team at Vintage. I had nothing to do with the cover except approve it--which was easy to do. It is taken from a pulp cover, and probably photo-shopped a bit, but that's about all I know.
Q: Do you have any other anthologies planned for the future? Please tell us that you do!
Oh, yes. A lot of them, in fact. In addition to the annual Best American Mysteries 2011 (Harlan Coben is my Guest Editor this year), which I've edited for 15 years, I have more "Big Books" coming from Vintage. Scheduled for the fall of 2011 is one with the subtle, understated title of Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!, a sort-of sequel to The Vampire Archives. In the spring of 2012 will be a big book of ghost stories (so far untitled), which has been delivered. I'm now working on another book that goes back to my reading roots, a giant collection of "locked room" mysteries and "impossible" crimes. I'm in awe of the brilliance plotting pulled off by so many writers, both household names and authors known mainly by their parents.Several others are planned, but contracts have yet to be finalized. Check in with me in a couple of months and I'll fill you in.
Otto Penzler has worked with Elmore Leonard, Nelson DeMille, Sue Grafton, Mary Higgins Clark, Robert Crais, Michael Connelly, and many other authors. The Mysterious Bookshop is one of the oldest and largest bookstores specializing in mystery in America.
The Big Book of Adventure Stories
Paperback: 896 pages
Publisher: Vintage (May 31, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 030747450X
ISBN-13: 978-0307474506
To pre-order, visit: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Adventure-Stories-Vintage-Original/dp/030747450X/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1301347602&sr=1-7
