In recent weeks, my Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction has won the British SF Association’s award for nonfiction and been named a finalist for the Hugo Award and the Locus Award. Congrats also to the main art contributor, Jeremy Zerfoss, for being up for a Hugo with me for Wonderbook. A special shout-out to main text consultant, Matthew Cheney, too, and my wife Ann, whose help was amazing on this project. As well as Luis Rodrigues who designed the website and Gregory Bossert who created the trailer.

It’s been incredibly rewarding to see such great reader reaction to the book–it’s being taught at more and more universities, including Brown. I’ll be using it as a text to teach from at Yale, Shared Worlds (teen writing camp), and the Clarion workshop this summer, too. Thanks to readers for making this a title that’s been hard for booksellers to keep in stock–and for engaging with the book’s sense of humor in such a marvelous way. I’ve also been pleased with how much Wonderbook has caught on as a general creativity guide outside of creative writing, and as a source of inspiration across media.

The main purpose of this post is to thank the dozens and dozens of text and art contributors to Wonderbook from all over the world. You’re the ones who help make Wonderbook work for so many readers, and also make it a reflection of the richness and depth of science fiction and fantasy, not just the reflection of one person’s perspective. So thank you–I’ve name-checked you below. Those readers who haven’t encountered some of these writers before, I endorse them all whole-heartedly. You should seek them out.

The accompanying Wonderbook website has a ton of content, too, all of which went up at the same time the book was published last October.

MAIN TEXT CONTRIBUTORS

The main text, written by me, is about 90,000 words. The Appendix includes features on LARP and Games in the context of fiction by Karin Tidbeck and Will Hindmarch respectively, in addition to a 7,000-word exclusive interview on craft with George R. R. Martin.

Here’s the full list of writers who have short essays (sidebar articles and spotlight features) interwoven into the layout. Most are original to Wonderbook.

Joe Abercrombie

Lauren Beukes

Desirina Boskovich

Matthew Cheney

David Anthony Durham

Rikki Durcornet

Scott Eagle

Karen Joy Fowler

Neil Gaiman

Lev Grossman

Ursula K. Le Guin

Stant Litore

Karen Lord

Nick Mamatas

Nnedi Okorafor

Kim Stanley Robinson

Peter Straub

Catherynne M. Valente

Charles Yu

I also conducted a lot of interviews for Wonderbook, and also used some material from interviews I’d done for other venues and quotes from conversations with writers who saw various parts of Wonderbook in a beta version. One advantage of the longish gestation period for the project is that I could discuss sections with various people and then change the text if I thought something had been left out or could be better expressed.

So within the book you’ll find wisdom and experience from the following writers, listed below. Some interviews for the book, like ones with James Patrick Kelly, Stant Litore, and Leena Krohn, appear exclusively on the (in progress) Wonderbook website. (I also made use, with permission, of substantial material from lectures by Karin Lowachee, Nick Mamatas, and Ekaterina Sedia.)

If someone has an asterisk by their name, Wonderbook interview Q&A that didn’t make the book is on or will probably be posted to the website.

Tobias S. Buckell

Matthew Cheney

John Chu

John Crowley*

David Anthony Durham*

Matt Denault

Junot Díaz

Brian Evenson*

Jeffrey Ford*

Lisa L. Hannett

Will Hindmarch

Jennifer Hsyu

Stephen Graham Jones*

Caitlin R. Kiernan*

David Madden

Michael Moorcock

Ian R. MacLeod*

Kate Maruyama

Cassandra N. Railsea

Thomas Ligotti*

Johanna Sinisalo*

Vandana Singh*

Catherynne M. Valente

Kali Wallace

Charles Yu*

In addition, many writers’ work is quoted from, including that of Amos Tutuola, Brian Evenson, Elizabeth Hand, Greer Gilman, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Lisa Tuttle, Premendra Mitra, and Lewis Carroll.

DISRUPTION DRAGONS

Basically, after there was a rough draft of the entire book in a near-final layout, I sent a PDF to various writers and asked them to create a “yes, but” statement for sections where they thought additional interrogation was needed or where they disagreed with the text in some way. This, to me, begins the necessary process for readers of thinking about what’s being read and reacting to it, not simply accepting what is put in front of them. So you’ll find very wise and useful Disruption Dragons in the page margins from:

Nathan Ballingrud (x2)

Kelly Barnhill

Matt Bell

Desirina Boskovich

Amal El-Mohtar

Kij Johnson (x2)

Brian Francis Slattery

Sofia Samatar

Karin Tidbeck

REVISION LIZARDS

For the revision chapter, I thought I’d ask some writers about their specific experiences revising a particular novel. The results are capture on two pages of somewhat whimsical Revision Snakes, with their eyes showing the number of revisions. You’ll find accounts from:

Daniel Abraham

Aliette de Bodard

Tobias S. Buckell

Jesse Bullington

Jim Hines

Simon Ings

Stephen Graham Jones

Richard Kadrey

Nicole Korner-Stace

Karin Lowachee

Ian R. MacLeod

J.M. McDermitt

Nene Ormes

T. A. Pratt

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Patrick Rothfuss

Sofia Samatar

Pamela Sargent

Delia Sherman

Peter Straub

Jeffrey Thomas

Lisa Tuttle

Carrie Vaughn

***

In addition to Jeremy Zerfoss’s original art and diagrams (about 150 individual pieces) and author photos for sidebar essays, the following artists and photographers are represented in Wonderbook. Many have multiple pieces in Wonderbook. If someone known only for their writing is listed, I’ve put the nature of their artistic contribution in brackets. If the art was commissioned specifically for Wonderbook, I’ve put an asterisk by the name. The artists are primarily from North America and the U.K., but also France, Finland, Spain, Serbia, and Poland, among others.

ART

Ninni Aalto*

Joe Abercrombie [map]

Hawk Alfredson

Aeron Alfrey

Mo Ali

Kristen Alvanson

Gregory Bossert*

Michael Cisco [diagram]*

R. S. Connett

Molly Crabapple

John Coulthart

John Crowley [writer’s journey diagram]*

Leo and Diane Dillon

Rikki Ducornet*

Scott Eagle

Stephen Fabian

J.J. Grandville

Richard A. Kirk

Stant Litore [diagram]*

Tomasz Maronski

Ian Miller

Nnedi Okorafor [art/novel structure]

Victo Ngai

Matthew Revert*

Óscar Sanmartín

Eric Schaller

Dave Senior

Ward Shelley

Ivica Stevanovic*

Ben Templesmith

Jason Thompson

Ben Tolman

Sam Van Olffen*

Charles Vess

Myrtle Von Damitz III*

PHOTOGRAPHY

Kyle Cassidy*

Patrick Eriksson

Leila Ghobril

Tessa Kum*

Angel Rodriguez

Jorge Royan

Paul D. Stewart

Henry Söderlund

Mariana Tavares*

Ann VanderMeer*

Robert K. VanderMeer*

Corrie White

Wonderbook: Thanking the Contributors originally appeared on Ecstatic Days on May 8, 2014.