Extant!
EXTANT! publishing announced its intentions back in June:
More than ever, there’s space in the market for new ideas and new voices – and that means there need to be plenty of dynamic new venues where the emerging writers can experiment and polish their craft. Where better than in the modern, digital equivalent of the pulps.
That’s what I want to do with EXTANT! Here I plan to publish the most amazing fiction I can, both old and new. I’ll be going back to basics, looking for exciting, energy rich stories to put in front of readers. And there are so many new authors popping up today that I’m sure the hardest part of my side of the job will be choosing them.
Springtime for fantasy and sci-fi readers continues to bloom, and one more flower is ready to open it’s petals and reveal…thrilling twenty-first century tales. The author list includes writers whose work has already made me a fan such as Alexandru Konstantin, Misha Burnett, Schuyler Hernstrom, and Rawle Nyanzi , and a list of familiar names that I’m excited to see what they can do – like Nathan Dabney, Tomas Diaz, and Dan Wolfgang. But this collection is just the start.
Last week, EXTANT! officially announced it’s first project, “a collection of stories that aim for the passion and drive of Radium Age action and adventure, but drag that energy into the modern age.” I’m happy to say that one of my own stories will feature in this collection, but I’m even happier to say that EXTANT! has plans for even more collections. Check out this line-up:
•Weird New World: Secret histories of the Americas (in planning)
•Karakuri: Action and adventure…with robots! (in planning)
•In Nomine: Dark forces – and the faithful who face them (in planning)
•After Us: Tales of adventure from a world after human civilization (in planning)
•Fair is Foul, Foul is Fair: The parallel world of the fae (in planning)
If that series of collections doesn’t get your heart pumping for a nice long reading sessions, you’re reading the wrong blog, buster.
The man behind EXTANT!, Kevyn Winkless, knows his stuff. When it comes to walking encyclopedias of knowledge about the original pulps, he ranks as one of my personal Big Three. (For the record, Cirsova and The Pulp Archivist are the other two members of the triumvirate. If none of those three have the answer to your burning pulp question, then it probably wasn’t a question worth asking.) Not only that, but his steady demeanor and solid analysis have talked me down from more than one clock tower of literary ranting.
Kevyn and I might never see eye to eye on Donald Wollheim*. But who cares? Kevyn has a keen eye for the written word and a excellent taste in fiction, and I trust Kevyn to serve as a phenomenal steward for this latest branch of the resurgent tree of pulp. It’s an exciting time to be a reader, thanks to men like Kevyn.
* Don's later career notwithstanding, I find it hard to have much faith in a man who so fully embraced the Communist plots of the 1940s and 50s. Particularly given the predilection of those types for infiltrating society like termites to subtly undermine its foundations.