As told by Spectra founder, Lou Aronica:
People told me I was crazy when I said I wanted to start an SF/fantasy imprint at Bantam. Bantam had tried with SF in the past and always lost interest quickly, they said. If Fred Pohl–one of the great sf minds–couldn’t get a program going there, what makes you think that you can at age twenty-six with all of five years of publishing experience?
These were valid concerns. It was, after all, true that Bantam had dabbled in SF for a long time without ever doing much in the field. And it was certainly true that Bantam focused heavily on publishing blockbusters. SF was experiencing a post-Star Wars commercial renaissance at the time, but I could hardly expect to compete with L’Amour, Ludlum, Forsyth, and Krantz for the company’s attention.
I did, however, have a few things going for me. I had the mentorship of Ian and Betty Ballantine (working at Bantam in an at-large capacity), who’d been committed to the field from its very beginnings and who for some reason decided I was worth taking under their wings. I had the guidance of Irwyn Applebaum (Associate Publisher at Bantam when I took over the SF line, though he’d moved on to Pocket as Publisher by the time Spectra launched), who vouched for me and showed me how to work within the company. I had “Team Spectra,” which included resident genius Tappan King, keeper-of-all-things-cool Dave Stern, and Jamie Warren, the best art director I ever worked with.
In addition, we had some momentum. David Brin’s Startide Rising, the first book I’d ever edited, had won the Hugo and Nebula and had sold extremely well. David Palmer’s Emergence, another early editorial gig, had been nominated for the Hugo and had sold way out of line for a first sf novel. Harry Harrison’s West of Eden had generated great buzz and impressive sales, as did Robert Silverberg’s Lord Valentine’s Castle and John Crowley’s Little, Big. We had Ray Bradbury, Ursula LeGuin, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Alas, Babylon, and Dhalgren on our backlist.
We also had a vision. I didn’t want the program to be a hodgepodge of science fiction and fantasy titles. I wanted it to have a particular point of view. “Scope” and “substance” became the in-house buzzwords. The books needed to be ambitious–I was a huge fan of world-building stories and not particularly interested in self-referential or cute–and the writers needed to write them with conviction. While we were definitely out to convert the non-SF reader, our real goal was to excite the core market while being embraced by people who only bought two or three SF books a year. I wanted our books to be memorable. It wasn’t enough for them to entertain; I wanted people to reflect on them and to keep reflecting on them. One of the things I’m happiest about in my professional life is how people still talk about the early Spectra books, whether it’s Dan Simmons’ Hyperion novels, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash (a book Jennifer Hershey had to talk me into buying because I thought cyberpunk was dead), or Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy.
The twin goals of Spectra were commercial viability and literary relevance. Some suggested that these were opposing goals. They were wrong. Many of Spectra’s biggest bestsellers are also among its best and most enduring novels.
Anyway, twenty-five years later, it turns out that it wasn’t crazy to start an SF/fantasy imprint at Bantam. Things seem to be holding up okay.
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