Author and editor Stephen L. Antczak writes with news of an anthology he’s trying to put together with James C. Bassett. The two have previously teamed up for Zombiesque (published by DAW) and Clockwork Fables (forthcoming from Roc).
Their newest project, Alien Gods, has several big-name authors lined up. They offer this description of the book: “The concept for this anthology is to present stories about the religions of aliens encountered by humans as they explore the universe, and the culture clash that ensues. Will humans convert the aliens to our religions, or will it be the other way around? Do the aliens believe that they have a divine right to our world? Do they believe that their gods have decreed that only their race can inhabit the universe and all others must die? Are their gods actually an advanced alien race themselves, or an upper-caste of their own race? How will humans act in the presence of alien gods who seem to actually BE gods, when our gods never manifest themselves—or is that what it will take for our gods to finally reveal themselves to us all?”
Authors who’ve promised to contribute (if the editors can raise the funds to pay for the stories) include: John Barnes, Orson Scott Card, Alan Dean Foster, Joe Haldeman, Mike Resnick, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Allen Steele.
Putting together Alien Gods is an experiment with pre-selling a book via a Kickstarter project. Specifically, the editors write, “You may notice that we are not offering incentives for contributors to this Kickstarter project beyond copies of the book.… We are, in effect, pre-selling this book to you and NOT asking for donations, per se. We, and several of our authors, feel that offering incentives like t-shirts and buttons and other doodads to be inappropriate for this particular project.
“We see ourselves as resurrecting the classic ‘subscription’ model that writers from Voltaire to Mark Twain used to finance their writing and publishing endeavors, with the new twist of utilizing the Web to make it happen. The success, or failure, of this Kickstarter project will tell us if, indeed, what we have on offer is actually something that people want. If this works we intend to pursue this method with future anthology projects.”
For full details, or to pre-order a copy, see this Kickstarter page.