The road to publication for The Starry Rift was extraordinarily long and complicated. A book normally takes about two years from conception to publication: this one took four. There are all sorts of reasons for this, and it impacted on the final book in unexpected ways. One of them was that it changed the table of contents slightly.

Back in September 2004 I met Neil Gaiman at Noreascon. I think we had sushi with Jack Dann for lunch and, just before we headed out the door, I asked him if he’d write a story for a book I was doing with Sharyn November. Neil is a really nice guy, and he treated my request with far more kindness and graciousness than it deserved, and he said “Sure”. I was pretty happy.

A year or so passed and a story, “How to Talk to Girls at Parties”, dropped in through my email inbox. It was good. Very good. Good enough that I wanted to wait a couple days before responding to him - read it and read it and be sure. I told him I liked it, we did the contract thing, and we were all set. Time passed. Neil needed a story for his new collection, Fragile Things, and a lot of time had passed. The story needed to be in Fragile Things, and Neil would write me another story (which became “Orange”). The original story ended up on the Hugo ballot and was widely loved.

If you’ve not read the story, and want a taste of what The Starry Rift could have been like you can read the full text of it here.

April Spisak has given The Starry Rift a very good review in the Bulletin of the Centre for Children’s Books. The review says:

STRAHAN, JONATHAN, ed. The Starry Rift: Tales of New Tomorrows: An Original Science Fiction Anthology.
reviewed from galleys R Gr. 9-12

Veteran compiler Strahan here brings together sixteen stories, all but one original, that envision a future world. The stories cover both the genre standards (virtual reality, cloning, and post-apocalyptic environs recur throughout) and the unexpected (futuristic vampires and end-time prophets). In addition, a dramatic range of writing styles is represented, from Neil Gaiman’s short “Orange,” where the reader is only presented with a set of answers to an interview about the respondent’s bizarre older sister, to “Anda’s Game,” by Cory Doctorow, which is a more in-depth exploration of a young girl’s rise to fame in a virtual reality environment. Even in their variety, however, these tales are all fairly sophisticated and traditional science fiction (in overall story structure, narrative perspective, and topics included); this is a collection clearly intended for fans of the genre. The inclusion of adolescent protagonists, environments in which teens could imagine themselves (schools, virtual reality spaces, or on spaceships as apprentices), and almost universally fast-paced, snappy narratives will all be particularly appealing to YA readers. In fact, SF buffs, long resigned to crossover adult compilations, will likely be thrilled by this extensive selection written specifically for this audience. Authors’ notes that offer intriguing insights into the inspiration behind each story accompany brief contributor biographies. AS

Neil Gaiman was born in England in 1960, and worked as a freelance journalist before co-editing Ghastly Beyond Belief (with Kim Newman) and writing Don’t Panic: The Official Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Companion. He started writing graphic novels and comics with Violent Cases in 1987, and with the seventy-five installments of award-winning series The Sandman established himself as one of the most important comics writers of his generation. His first novel, Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett), appeared in 1991, and was followed by Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods, and Coraline. His most recent books are The Sandman: Endless Nights and picture book The Wolves in the Walls (with long time collaborator Dave McKean). Gaiman’s work has won the Hugo, World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, Locus, Geffen, International Horror Guild, Mythopoeic and Will Eisner Comic Industry awards. His most recent novel is Anansi Boys. His short fiction has been collected in Smoke and Mirrors,  Fragile Things and M is for Magic. Upcoming is a new novel, The Graveyard Book. Gaiman moved to the United States in 1992 with his wife and three children, and currently lives in Minneapolis.