In 2000 Gordon Van Gelder became publisher of Fantasy & Science Fiction (F&SF). He has edited several anthologies.
Regarding The Very Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume Two, fan interactions helped me decide which stories I'd omitted from volume one should go into volume two.
It's hard to pick out one comment amid the cries of "Van Gelder, you're an idiot! How could you not include So-and-So???"
Many, but it's not often I have time to return to many of them. I did recently reread a Kate Wilhelm story that I loved as a kid and I was pleased to find the story was even better this time around.
I find myself thinking of politicians like Barack Obama and Cory Booker, athletes like Graig Nettles and Jorge Posada, performers like Diana Rigg and Tina Fey, and a couple of objects of lust I won't name . . . but I can't pick one. I *can* tell you that I don't ever want to be trapped again on a slow-moving elevator with three or four defensive linemen from the New York Jets. They took up all the available space.
Charles Grodin. Or Martha Stewart. They're not the same person, are they?
Whatever my daughter might give me for good luck on the trip.
To meet my own standards. My work might sell or it might not, it might get raves or it might get panned, but if I'm satisfied that I've done the work I'm capable of doing, I don't worry much about the rest.
Born: New York City, 1966.