by Charles Tan
Mike Allen is the editor of Mythic Delirium, a biannual sf poetry journal. A writer and poet himself, he is the editor of Clockwork Phoenix: Tales of Beauty and Strangeness, recently published by Norilana Books. Charles Tan interviewed him for SFScope. And we’ll have a review of the anthology tomorrow.
SFScope: Your latest anthology, Clockwork Phoenix, just came out. How did this project come about? Did you pitch it to Norilana Books or did they approach you?
Allen: Though I’ve edited a number of poetry-related projects, I started with fiction more than a decade ago, and my experiences editing the Mythic anthologies in 2006 whetted my appetite for more. And made me eager to try something more ambitious. At the time I was mulling this over, Norilana Books had announced the resurrection of the Sword and Sorceress series. I approached Vera Nazarian with the idea of an offbeat literary anthology, and quickly discovered that her concept of how it could and should be done dovetailed with mine. Ultimately she threw a lot of resources behind the book. I’m grateful for her patronage and humbled by the faith she’s shown in me and this crazy idea of mine.
SFScope: The title of the book is peculiar. Why Clockwork Phoenix? Would you consider this a themed or an unthemed anthology?
Allen: Originally the title was simply Phoenix, but wise friends of mine suggested that would risk confusion with Sharyn November’s Firebirds series. We needed another word, brain-stormed and added Clockwork. It’s a poetic choice, all about how the phrase looks as you see it and sounds as you say it. The title’s intended to evoke an unexpected juxtaposition—it means nothing, other than “expect strangeness here.”
There is no theme in terms of the subject matter. There are, in the final composition of the book, subtle resonances connecting the stories to each other. My wife Anita, who works with me on all my projects, helped me order the different tales so that they reflect off one another and build to what I hope is a cumulative emotional effect, that makes the book feel like a complete work of art, not just a bucket holding diverse voices. The Publishers Weekly review picked up on this, which delights me to no end.
SFScope: You posted guidelines in the Clockwork Phoenix site, but aside from what you mentioned there, what was your criteria in selecting the various stories?
Allen: Anita puts it succinctly: “Emotional ‘Pow!'” And that’s correct.
When I’ve been asked in person what sort of stories we’re looking for, I tend to get tongued-tied. I want stories that come at me from askew angles. I don’t believe any story can truly be original, but sometimes a writer can go out there just far enough that I as a reader think, “I haven’t quite read anything like this before.”
I’ll cite a couple of the simpler examples. Take Vandana Singh’s “Oblivion: A Journey.” Had that story chosen simply to retell the Ramayan epic, bringing new life/humanity/complexity to its players, an approach I’ve seen frequently in fiction, I’m not sure I would have used it, good though it may have been. But no, Vandana recasts the Ramayan as a bio-morphing, planet-hopping, vengeance-driven space opera—and then comes that beautiful closing passage, that to my mind takes the narrative to a new psychological level. Or Marie Brennan’s “A Mask of Flesh”: I received a number of stories based in exotic Mesoamerican culture but none approached it the way Marie did—there’s not a human to be found anywhere in that story. We’re not in the Yucatan any more, Toto.
On the flip side, I think it would be hard to argue that John Grant’s “All the Little Gods We Are” breaks any new ground. But what it sets out to do, in its exploration of love, and loss, and irrevocable choices, it does so masterfully that I wanted to include it for the sake of Sheer Story Goodness.
SFScope: What was it like going through the submissions? Is the anthology purely composed of submissions or did you have to solicit some stories?
Allen: It’s a mix: some stories simply surprised me through the submission pile, a couple were written at my request—for example, I specifically asked Laird Barron to create a “scary mindfuck” for me, and he did it.
I asked a number of authors whose work I like and who I felt could write in the range I was looking for to try things on me. Not all of them got in. Some did on the second or third try.
Quite a few of the stories in the book came in during the first week, even on the first day, that we opened to submissions. Since I had no true theme, since I was building from scratch, when I spotted a story that hit all the right buttons, it became a guidepost, a standard for judging others. The stories that came after had to fit or contrast somehow with the pieces that I already knew I wanted. Thankfully there were plenty to choose from.
SFScope: What in your opinion is something you did right in the submission process and what’s something you’d change in the subsequent volumes?
Allen: I’ll answer the second part first. The six-month-long reading window turned into an exhausting mental marathon. My assistant editor and long-time friend Cathy Reniere acted as my shield and vanguard and kept responses timely. Without her, I’d’ve been in huge trouble. I think, too, that long window inadvertently created a frustrating ordeal for some of the writers, who started shooting us dejected e-mails after trying six or seven times without getting in. Explaining that we had to whittle 1,300 stories down to 18 probably provided little solace. Anyhow, the reading window for Clockwork Phoenix 2 will be shorter, from 23 August to 16 November.
As for the first part, our maddeningly vague guidelines drew in wonderful varieties of high quality material, so those probably won’t change too much. Except that now that the book is out, I can now offer further instructions to contributor hopefuls, with perhaps a slightly evil smile: “Buy the book. Read what’s in it. Then send us something the same, yet different.”
SFScope: How did the cover come about?
Allen: The cover uses a painting by Pre-Raphaelite artist Eleanor Fortesque-Brickdale. I specifically hunted for a painting by a woman after hearing Cat Valente complain about how the proliferation of small press fantasy volumes using such art only selected paintings done by men. When I found this particular image it struck me that a simple tweak, a mirror effect, would take it into the realm of the bizarre. My graphic designer friend Bob Snare made it so.
SFScope: As an editor, how was working on Clockwork Phoenix different from your other anthologies?
Allen: For one, it’s the first one that had a general submissions call. That, combined with the lack of rigid theme, allowed me to cast the widest net I have ever cast. I think the book benefited enormously from it.
SFScope: What was the most challenging part in producing the anthology?
Allen: Probably making the final selections, when we had whittled all the stories down to a set we really loved, and still had to shove some out of the boat.
SFScope: What in your opinion would readers find most appealing about the book?
Allen: All of it, of course. [laugh]
I, personally, am a fairly jaded reader. I’ve begun to find the traditional competently-plotted-story-competently-told to be a bit of a drag. I want stories to take more chances in how they tell the stories they tell. On the flip side, much as I enjoy the games played in more experimental works, I often find that they end feeling incomplete and unsatisfying, that they end up forgettable because they lack emotional punch. They leave no mark.
In putting Clockwork Phoenix together I searched for stories, that for me, occupied the happy middle between the two, that were adventures both in how they read and what they said. It’s my hope that a reader traveling through this book will have the same experiences with these stories that I did.