proposed set of gods, which I gleefully copy and send to the other contributors.
He heads his ten-page letters with ‘To Colossus: The Asprin Project’. It occurs
to me that with his own insight as an anthology editor, this could be more truth
than humour.
To make my job a little easier, some of the authors start playing poker with
their character sketches: ‘I won’t show you mine till you show me yours.’ They
delay submitting their sketches until they see what the other authors turn in.
One of these is Gordy. Remember him? He’s the one who got me into this in the
first place. He’s the one who ‘had his character’ before there was an anthology!
Terrific!’
John Brunner submits his story – a full year before the stated deadline. So much
for transatlantic delays. I haven’t gotten all the character descriptions yet.
More important, I haven’t gotten the advance money yet! His agent begins to prod
gently for payment.
Roger reappraises his time commitments and withdraws from the project. Oh, well.
You can’t win them all.
Poul wants to know about the architectural style of Sanctuary.
Andy and Poul want to know about the structure and nationality of names.
A call comes in from Ace. Jim Baen wants the manuscript a full three months
ahead of the contracted deadline. I point out that this is impossible – the new
deadline would give me only two weeks between receiving the stories from the
authors and submitting the complete manuscript to New York. If I encountered
difficulties with any of the stories or if any of the submissions came in late,