Today, it was announced that a took a big step forward (and sideways) in my career: Now I am not only an editor and anthologist, but a publisher as well. I just acquired the two magazines I edit–Lightspeed and Fantasy–from their current publisher, Prime Books. I’ll officially take over as publisher as of the January 2012 issue. Here’s the press release:

Prime Books Sells Magazines Lightspeed and Fantasy to Editor John Joseph Adams

ROCKVILLE, MD, NOV. 7—Prime Books is pleased to announce the sale and transfer of ownership of their acclaimed online magazines Lightspeed (www.lightspeedmagazine.com) and Fantasy (www.fantasy-magazine.com) to John Joseph Adams. Adams, the current editor of both magazines, will officially assume the role of publisher starting with the January 2012 issues.

“With the continuing expansion and success of Prime Books, my attention and time is increasingly consumed by book publishing,” publisher Sean Wallace said. “With John already doing a terrific job as editor, it simply made sense for him to take over as publisher as well.  We’re really thrilled that this has worked out for both John and Prime.”

New publisher John Joseph Adams says he is delighted at the prospect of taking over the magazines and looks forward to the challenges ahead. “It’s an exciting time to be involved in publishing,” he said. “Models are changing and so is the readership, and online magazines have a better shot at sustainability than ever have before. I believe the possibilities for growth are tremendous, and I look forward to staying in the vanguard of this new frontier.”

Fantasy Magazine was established in 2005, and has been edited by Sean Wallace, Paul Tremblay, and Cat Rambo, with Adams taking over as sole editor earlier this year. Lightspeed—published by Wallace and edited by Adams—debuted in June 2010 and was a 2011 Hugo Award nominee. Numerous stories originally published in Lightspeed and Fantasy have been reprinted in best-of-the-year anthologies, and Lightspeed and Fantasy stories have been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, and others. Lightspeed’s first year of fiction has just been published by Prime Books in the print anthology Lightspeed: Year One (ISBN: 978-1-60701-304-4).

About John Joseph Adams

In addition to his duties with Lightspeed and Fantasy, John Joseph Adams (www.johnjosephadams.com) is the bestselling editor of many anthologies including Wastelands, The Living Dead, Brave New Worlds, and The Way of the Wizard. In 2011, he was nominated for two Hugo Awards and two World Fantasy Awards.

About Prime Books

Established in 2001 and published by Hugo Award and World Fantasy Award-winner Sean Wallace, Prime Books (www.prime-books.com), is an independent publishing house specializing in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, with national distribution by Diamond Book Distributors.

Contacts

John Joseph Adams, john@lightspeedmagazine.com
Sean Wallace, prime@prime-books.com

Read More

So this year’s Hugo finalists have been announced…and I’m up for the Best Editor, Short Form award! Additionally, Lightspeed is up for Best Semiprozine, and a story we published in Lightspeed, “Amaryllis” by Carrie Vaughn, is a finalist for Best Short Story!

To say I’m thrilled would be a huge understatement. It’s been so hard to keep this quiet until the results were announced, so it’s great to finally be able to share the news with you all. It is a huge, huge honor to be nominated, and one I will always cherish.

A big congrats to Carrie Vaughn–it’s her first sf award nomination!–and to all of the other authors who have appeared in Lightspeed. And also a sincere congratulations (and HUGE THANKS) to everyone who works with me on the Lightspeed team. I’d like to especially single out my assistant editors Christie Yant and Erin Stocks, my former assistant Jordan Hamessley, my editorial assistant Stacey Friedberg, our podcast/audio editor Stefan Rudnicki, our former nonfiction editor Andrea Kail, and our amazing webmaster Jeremiah Tolbert–you guys helped shape Lightspeed pretty much from the very beginning, and we couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks too to all of the current team members who have helped keep the ship afloat–managing editor Molly Tanzer, current nonfiction editor Esther Inglis-Arkell, editorial assistant Robyn Lupo, and everyone who works on the slush team. And, last but not least, we all owe a huge debt to Lightspeed‘s publisher, Sean Wallace, for taking the bold step to launch the magazine and for giving us all the tools to put out a great product that we’re all really proud of.

And more generally, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Gordon Van Gelder for being such a fantastic editorial mentor; I wouldn’t have the career I have today if not for his tutelage. And thanks too to Ellen Datlow and all of my other editorial colleagues who have helped me along the way (both directly–and indirectly, by showing me the way with their great anthologies).

For a full list of the finalists, check out Locus Online’s reportage of the nominees.

Read More

Here’s the table of contents for my forthcoming dystopian anthology, Brave New Worlds, which comes out in January.

• Introduction — John Joseph Adams
• The Lottery — Shirley Jackson
• Red Card — S. L. Gilbow
• Ten With a Flag — Joseph Paul Haines
• The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas — Ursula K. Le Guin
• Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment — M. Rickert
• The Funeral — Kate Wilhelm
• O Happy Day! — Geoff Ryman
• Pervert — Charles Coleman Finlay
• From Homogenous to Honey — Neil Gaiman & Bryan Talbot
• Billennium — J. G. Ballard
• Amaryllis — Carrie Vaughn
• Pop Squad — Paolo Bacigalupi
• Auspicious Eggs — James Morrow
• Peter Skilling — Alex Irvine
• The Pedestrian — Ray Bradbury
• The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away — Cory Doctorow
• The Pearl Diver — Caitlín R. Kiernan
• Dead Space for the Unexpected — Geoff Ryman
• “Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman — Harlan Ellison^®
• Is This Your Day to Join the Revolution? — Genevieve Valentine
• Independence Day — Sarah Langan
• The Lunatics — Kim Stanley Robinson
• Sacrament — Matt Williamson
• The Minority Report — Philip K. Dick
• Just Do It — Heather Lindsley
• Harrison Bergeron — Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• Caught in the Organ Draft — Robert Silverberg
• Geriatric Ward — Orson Scott Card
• Arties Aren’t Stupid — Jeremiah Tolbert
• Jordan’s Waterhammer — Joe Mastroianni
• Of a Sweet Slow Dance in the Wake of Temporary Dogs — Adam-Troy Castro
• Resistance — Tobias S. Buckell
• Civilization — Vylar Kaftan
• For Further Reading — Ross E. Lockhart

Read More

Here’s the cover of my next anthology from Night Shade Books, Brave New Worlds, an anthology of dystopian fiction, which is due out in January 2011. The art and cover design is by Cody Tilson.

Here’s the cover copy:

YOU ARE BEING WATCHED.

In his smash-hit anthologies Wastelands and The Living Dead, acclaimed editor John Joseph Adams showed you what happens when society is utterly wiped away. Now he brings you a glimpse into an equally terrifying future — what happens when civilization invades and dictates every aspect of your life? From 1984 to The Handmaid’s Tale, from Children of Men to Bioshock, the dystopian imagination has been a vital and gripping cautionary force. Brave New Worlds collects the best tales of totalitarian menace by some of today’s most visionary writers, including Neil Gaiman, Orson Scott Card, Kim Stanley Robinson, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

When the government wields its power against its own people, every citizen becomes an enemy of the state. Will you fight the system, or be ground to dust beneath the boot of tyranny?

The contents are not final on the book yet, so I can’t post them yet, but all of the authors on the cover are finalized, so they’re definitely in the book. Like my other recent Night Shade anthologies, the book will run around 230,000 words all together.

Read More

The website for my new zombie anthology, The Living Dead 2, is now live. The url is https://www.johnjosephadams.com/the-living-dead-2.

On the site, you will find 8 stories in their entirety, available both as regular web pages and in a downloadable ebook sampler (currently available in epub and pdf format, with additional formats forthcoming from the Baen Webscriptions store). There will also be 36 different author interviews with the contributors. They’re scheduled to appear daily, starting today, with the final one scheduled to run on Oct. 4. And last, but not least, you can also read the introduction and the header notes to each story in the anthology. (Okay, maybe that IS least!)

The anthology features all-new, original stories by zombie masters Robert Kirkman, Max Brooks, David Wellington, Brian Keene, Jonathan Maberry, Carrie Ryan, John Skipp, and Mira Grant, for a grand total of FORTY-FOUR STORIES. This includes a mix of originals (27) and reprints (17) (none of which have ever appeared in a zombie anthology before).

The free stories, which you can find here, are:

• The Skull-Faced City — David Barr Kirtley
• And the Next, and the Next — Genevieve Valentine
• Flotsam & Jetsam — Carrie Ryan
• Mouja — Matt London
• Who We Used to Be — David Moody
• The Days of Flaming Motorcycles — Catherynne M. Valente
• Obedience — Brenna Yovanoff
• Rural Dead — Bret Hammond

Read More