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eBook Category: Science Fiction/Fantasy
eBook Description: AEon Speculative Fiction is a quarterly electronic magazine/anthology of science fiction, fantasy, and related nonfiction by new and established authors. AEon Five features stories by Howard V. Hendrix, Jay Lake, Mark Bourne, Renee Stern, Dana William Paxson, Craig English, and Justin Stanchfield, and poetry by Scott E. Green and Jaime Lee Moyer. Dr. Rob Furey returns with a provocative column in which he takes on 'intelligent design,' and Kristine Kathryn Rusch contributes her fifth in an ongoing series of perceptive and insightful columns.

eBook Publisher: Quintamid LLC, Published: 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: November 2005

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [644 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [644 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [327 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.6 MB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [148 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [546 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [202 KB] , hiebook (KML) [854 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [732 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [210 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [1.1 MB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [1.0 MB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [401 KB]
Words: 48956
Reading time: 139-195 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
ISBN: 1931305862

"AEon continues to publish excellent work."--Nick Gevers, Locus

"Beyond finding strong, well-crafted stories, AEon manages to publish fiction that engages not only at the level of story, but is filled with challenging ideas. This is fiction for the contemplative reader."--Bluejack, Internet Review of Science Fiction

"AEon stands poised to be a strong, fresh face in the speculative fiction arena.... If it can continue to publish such worthwhile offerings, I fervently hope it becomes a mainstay in the industry."--Eugie Foster, Tangent Online

I just finished reading Jack Finney's Time and Again. Even though the book is a science fiction classic, I had not read it before. Our only copy was a first edition, and since I'm notoriously hard on books, I didn't want to ruin it. So I didn't read that copy--and I was too cheap to buy a new one. Finally, I ran across a battered reader's copy in a local bookstore, and settled in my favorite chair for a long summer's read.

Those who say the golden age of science fiction is twelve forget that many of the genre's classics weren't written for twelve-year-olds. Time and Again is a heartfelt work ("Romance, mystery and time travel!" my copy's cover blurb says) but a twelve-year-old wouldn't grasp the subtext. In the novel, Simon Morley, an artist working in the late 1960s, joins a project that enables him to go to 1880s. Finney recreates the period with incredible detail. He also makes living breathing characters who interact in their various worlds with complete believability. The comparisons he draws between 1960s New York (a decaying city which would go bankrupt not ten years later) and 1880s New York are palpable.

Ultimately, though, the novel is about loss and regret and making correct choices. It's also about the value of a single human life, and it poses an interesting question about what kind of actions will have enough importance to influence history.

No wonder the book is a classic. Thank heavens I didn't read it when I was twelve.

The bio at the back of my battered reader's copy told me that Jack Finney had written many. I felt surprised. I had read Invasion of the Body Snatchers twenty years before, and as many of Finney's short stories as I could find. But I had only heard of these two novels.

I asked my husband the book collector and former owner of a used bookstore if he'd read Finney's other novels. He seemed surprised. He too thought Finney had only written two.

Using Bookfinder.com, I located half a dozen of Finney's novel, including his first which became the basis for the original Oceans Eleven movie. I've ordered them and will work my way through them slowly.

But this incident got me thinking about classics and how they are made.

During his lifetime, Jack Finney was a working writer. He was prolific. He published short fiction in magazines, sold his work to Hollywood, and wrote novels--at least a dozen that I could find.

Two have been issued and reissued. In my (albeit sketchy) research for this column, I walked to one of the best used bookstores in the United States (sometimes choosing where you live is quite a perk!) and scanned the shelves. Five copies of Body Snatchers--one the original paperback edition, two 1970s editions with a still from the Donald Sutherland movie on the cover, and two more from the mid-1960s. No Time and Again, and nothing else.

Since Finney's first novel was suspense, not sf, I moved to the mystery section. No Finney. Then to the mainstream section. No Finney. Finally, I gave up and had the owner search his database for me. Only the 5 Body Snatchers. As he searched, he said, "I had no idea Jack Finney wrote other novels. I'll have to look them up."

Some folks might find this little anecdote discouraging. I find it encouraging. Finney, the lucky dog, happened on the magic formula twice. Twice he wrote books good enough--and powerful enough--to touch a universal note, one that will bring readers to his work decades from now.

Most writers never achieve that. I've been alphabetizing our book collection, culling duplicates, and finding dozens of books by authors I'd never heard of--writers who were famous in their day, but go unread now. Writers who, despite their popularity, never managed to hit that universal note.

Which is why I think it so funny when publishers declare a book an instant classic. How do they know? I have hundreds of books on my shelves with that kind of hype on the cover, and none of them are remembered today.

I also find it amusing when writers tell me they've slaved on a novel for decades because when they finish, they know it will be a classic. Let's assume that the book is good (most aren't; few novelists who make statements like this even get published). The chances of that book becoming a classic are between slim and none.

Readers do what I do. If they find a novel by someone they like, they'll search for more books by that person. They read, preferring some books to others, and recommending the very best to their friends.

As a result, some books become classics years after they've been published. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby disappointed readers in its first publication because they weren't ready for its message (a disillusionment with the Jazz Age, among other things). The book became a classic after Fitzgerald died in the early 1940s. In his obituaries, he was declared a has-been who never quite achieved his bright promise. But his death revived his works, causing people--who were now disillusioned with the Jazz Age, and familiar with loss because of the Depression and the beginnings of the Second World War--to rediscover him.

Huckleberry Finn was not the most popular work of Mark Twain's lifetime. Twain, too, was a prolific author and, except for Twain scholars, few of us read more than one or two of his novels. The universal book is the one that survives. The others fade away.

So how does a writers write a universal book? They don't. They just write as much as they can and market those works. The market and the audience take care of the rest.

But those of you who love to read create the next classic. If you like a book, do this: Give a copy to your best friend. Hand your children the favorite novels of your childhood. Give them the books you loved as a young adult.

Read to your children. Discuss books with your friends. Word of mouth is what creates the next classic--not publisher's hype, not even million-copy sellers. Readers' enthusiasm keeps books alive.

So I am now as enthusiastic about Jack Finney's Time and Again as the friends who recommended it to me. If you haven't read it, buy a copy. I can't promise that you'll like it--none of us can predict what others will like. But I can promise that the book will take you to another place and another time. I can also promise that it'll make you think.

As for the rest of Finney's works, I don't know much about them yet. Maybe there's a reason they've been forgotten. Or maybe, like Gatsby, they haven't been revived yet. If I like another as much as Time and Again, I'll report it here.

If I like it, then maybe you will, and so will your best friend. Maybe we'll begin the process of creating a classic--together.