Ellen Datlow: Alien Sex

Years ago, the essays of Loren Eisley, noted anthropologist and naturalist, made me aware of how foolish and limiting such a view of evolution really is. The forces that brought about the opposable thumb and the upright stance are with us still; the changes haven’t stopped. The future is coming and we really don’t know what it will look like.

ELLEN DATLOW IS AN ACCLAIMED, AWARD-WINNING science fiction, fantasy, and horror editor.

Born and raised in New York, Datlow aspired to be a veterinarian when she was a child, but changed her plans when she realized how much she preferred reading and writing to math and science. Her first publishing job was in the New York office of Little, Brown & Co. in 1973. During the next eight years she worked at a handful of other publishing companies before finally finding her calling in 1981 as an editor of short fiction at OMNI magazine, where she worked until 1998. She has also worked at the online magazine Event Horizon and at scifi.com.

Datlow has edited more than fifty anthologies, including the bestselling collections Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy , Supernatural Noir , and Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror . She has published important science fiction and fantasy writers such as Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Ursula K. Le Guin, Clive Barker, William S. Burroughs, and many more.

She has also edited or co-edited numerous critically acclaimed anthologies of speculative fiction, including the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series. She often collaborates with renowned co-editor Terri Windling, with whom she worked on Snow White, Blood Red , a work of adult fairy tales that has been one of their most successful projects together.

Datlow is the recipient of several awards, including multiple Shirley Jackson awards and Bram Stoker awards, Hugo Awards for Best Professional Editor, Hugo Awards for Best Short Form Editor, and Locus Awards for Best Editor, to name just a few. She also received the Karl Edward Wagner Award for “outstanding contribution to the genre.” In 2011, she was the recipient of a Life Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association. Datlow also co-hosts a popular reading series, Fantastic Fiction, at the KGB Bar in New York City, where she resides.

I SHOULD LIKE TO thank the following people, who in various ways, made the publication of Alien Sex possible: Bruce McAllister, Lucius Shepard, Ed Bryant, Harlan Ellison, David Hartwell, Merrilee Heifetz, Jeanne Martinet, and particularly, all the contributors.

In addition, The Science Fiction Encyclopedia, edited by Peter Nicholls and John Clute, first edition (1979), was used as a source in my Introduction.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

“The Jamesburg Incubus” copyright © 1990 by Scott Baker.

“Dancing Chickens” copyright © 1984 by Edward Bryant. First published in Light Years and Dark , edited by Michael Bishop. By permission of the author.

“Roadside Rescue” copyright © by Pat Cadigan. First published OMNI Publications International, Ltd. in 1985. By permission of the author.

“How’s the Night Life on Cissalda?” by Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1977 by Harlan Ellison. Reprinted by arrangement with, and permission of, the author and the author’s agent, Richard Curtis Associates, Inc., New York. All rights reserved.