Who says the gods haven't a sense of humor?

[sovay]

Does anyone on my friendlist know Dorothy J. Heydt and why her Cynthia stories were never collected? They are some of my favorite short classical fiction and they are impossible to find and read in order unless you have access to fourteen Sword and Sorceress anthologies, which I almost do.

I grew up with the original Sword and Sorceress (1984) on my parents' shelves. It was my introduction to a whole bunch of authors, including Heydt, but "Things Come in Threes" never made that much of an impression on me as a child. I got the rock-paper-scissors punch of the ending, but the historical in-jokes eluded me until my first or second year of college when I could read Greek as well as Latin and I was learning classical history and all of a sudden the story was hilarious. After that I foraged through used book stores for the last sixteen years of Sword and Sorceress and bought all the ones that contained stories of Cynthia, daughter of Euelpides. Evidence of this box I just unpacked suggests that this process maxed out in 2000 with "An Exchange of Favors" in Sword and Sorceress XVII, leaving me with eleven anthologies. The Internet Database of Science Fiction tells me there are three further Cynthia stories I've never read. I don't know if they form a full cycle or if they break off. I hope they stay good. As late as 2005, I was hoping the author would put out some kind of collection or mosaic novel—the Cynthiad, maybe?

It's ten years later and there is still no collection and this makes it very difficult to recommend the stories. At this point I would accept an e-book, and I hate reading off screens. Was there some weird copyright issue? I can't believe there wasn't enough of an audience for beautifully written, wry, well-researched, correctly estranging and intelligent third-century-BCE history plus magic to make publication worthwhile. Does anyone have any idea what happened?

[edit] I have been informed that the editor who bought the stories individually rejected the collected cycle on the grounds that it lacked a plot. I disagree with this profoundly, factually as well as morally. Self-published edition? I'd throw money at it.

[edit edit] The author provides an explanation for the absence of self-published editions in comments.

Comments

[sovay]

Book View Cafe requires writers to do some work for the collective. I kind of doubt she'd be able/interested.

Thank you; that's another thing I didn't know about.

I appreciate all of this information.

[pameladean]

Just a tidbit to add -- I looked seriously into Book View Cafe, and not only do they very reasonably want authors to work for the collective, they are overflowing, as one might expect, with copy editors and proofreaders and would really like to find some more technically savvy members to deal with various issues. I am possibly more technically savvy than Dorothy, but probably not by much.

P.

[sovay]

Just a tidbit to add -- I looked seriously into Book View Cafe, and not only do they very reasonably want authors to work for the collective, they are overflowing, as one might expect, with copy editors and proofreaders and would really like to find some more technically savvy members to deal with various issues.

Also good to know.

May I ask who you and Pat Wrede published Points of Departure with? That seems the closest analogous situation, collecting a long-out-of-print cycle of short stories that effectively forms a novel (and a really good one, I should mention).

[pameladean]

It's with Diversion Books. The reason for that is that Diversion had already published Pat's Wrede on Writing and really liked working with her. The deal was done through Pat's agent. But yes, they were quite open to the idea of the collection, and the situation is really quite a bit like that of the Cynthia stories.

P.