Sci-fi/fantasy anthologies caters to young readers | Arts & Entertainment

Growing up, James Maxey moved around a lot with his family. In each new town got to explore, Maxey would set out on his bike and find the nearest public library where he would check out every available science fiction anthology.

“Back in the 70s, it was still kind of the heyday of print collections, original shorts and short stories in that genre,” Maxey said. He noticed the stories were seldom targeted toward kids, though his interest in the genre stayed embedded in him into adulthood.

He began publishing novels in 2003, with his first book being a superhero novel called “Nobody Gets the Girl.” Maxey moved on and started writing dragon novels — about six of them — for Solaris Books, a publishing house out of the United Kingdom. 

In 2011, he began self-publishing through his own label, Word Balloon Books, and selling them on Amazon. Maxey’s stories were now weaving through science-fiction/fantasy, involving dragons, superheroes, graphic language, and violence. And while he was happily exploring the far corners of his imagination, experiencing some level of success, and having a genuinely good time attending comic book conventions, that even his books were not for kids was still bothering him.

Maxey and his wife, Cheryl Morgan, began brainstorming ideas to create a collection of sci-fi/fantasy stories that are aimed at younger kids. 

“One of the things that we notice doing these live shows at these big comic cons is nerd culture is really very adult oriented,” said Maxey, who moved to Hillsborough in 2006. “There’s a lot of money being spent towards attracting older teens and people with deep pockets. It’s not 12-year-olds that are going out and searching for ‘slab’ comic books that have a $10,000 price tag attached. (‘Slab’ is slang for getting a comic book professionally graded and encased in an un-openable, hard, plastic shell.)

“The best path, I thought, was to outsource the work to people who knew the market better than I did,” Maxey said. “We decided to edit anthologies. I know hundreds of other authors through various connections, so we put out the word that we were looking for stories that could be read by middle grade readers, which is 8- to 12-years-old.”

The first release was “Beware the Bugs,” a tight collection of 21 stories that run the gamut of classic 1950s movies where giant insects stomp through cities, or spiders chasing kids.

“Nothing too nightmarish, but still a little Twilight Zone-ish,” Maxey said. “And just just good, solid science fiction and fantasy stories that kids will love, but also good, solid writing. I’ve been at this for 20 years, so I had some pretty strong opinions for what I was looking for. I wanted a nice, clear story. I didn’t want anything too simplistic. I didn’t want to talk down to kids, but I didn’t want to have the more disturbing elements that parents worry about.”

“We came up with three different concepts to start out with,” said Morgan, who is a Hillsborough native. “Beware the Bugs,” and “Rockets & Robots, both of which we now have published. Our third book is going to be called “Paradoxical Pets,” and that’s going to be coming out in December. 

The two are getting set to launch a Kickstarter to pay for the artwork for the third book. Maxey did all of the artwork for “Rockets & Robots,” and did most of the illustrations for “Beware the Bugs.” For the three books, Maxey and Morgan received more than 500 submissions that were narrowed to the best stories for the three books.

For “Rockets & Robots,” each of the 22 stories had to be set either in outer space on alien worlds, or if they’re on Earth, set far in the future. 

“We have a Hugo Award-winner named Eric James Stone, who has a story in the book called “Attitude Adjustment,” that reads like something straight out of the Golden Age of science fiction,” Maxey said. “Just a flight around the moon on a rocket that gets sabotaged. Without computers, the crew hasto do the actual rocket science to get them back safely and to avoid a crash landing. It’s a really nice, full story.”

The three books represent the first time Maxey has published other peoples’ writings under his label. Maxey, who has a sci-fi story that will be in the November edition of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine, has written a story for each of the three books. Maxey said writing stories for younger kids is freeing in that he doesn’t feel he has to devote page after page to explanations of how things happen.

“It is what it is,” he said. “We’re not going to explain why the dinosaurs are intelligent and speaking multiple languages. We’re not going to explain references to their colonies on the moon. Here it is, take it or leave it. And it works. It’s audacious.”

Even though he has enjoyed the liberating experience of writing about the terrifying futures of the past, Maxey said he spends much of his time with head stuck in fantasy land.

“My mom warned me if I kept reading so many books that was gonna damage my brain, and she was right,” he said. “When I had a real day job, half of me would be working and a half of me would be planning my next Dungeons & Dragons campaign, drawing out maps to fantasy lands and coming up with names for new dragons. It turns out if you’ve got an imagination and you also can string together a coherent sentence and type it down, that’s writing. Writing isn’t rocket science, except in “Rockets & Robots,” where some of the stories actually are rocket science. I can’t imagine a better life for me. I wrote my first novel when I was 25, and I didn’t get published until I was 40. I was turning 40 when I saw my first book in the bookstore. It was a long apprenticeship, but I really wouldn’t do anything else.”

“Beware the Bugs” and “Rockets & Robots” are available for purchase at Purple Crow Books at 109 W. King St. in downtown Hillsborough.

To learn more about James Maxey, his books, and the anthologies produced by he and his wife, Cheryl Morgan, you can go to:

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