Book Deal Announcement: Space Oddities & Super Freaks: The Secret History of Science Fiction And Fantasy

I'm very excited to report that I've sold Worldwide Rights to my next coffee-table book, Space Oddities & Super Freaks: The Secret History of Science Fiction and Fantasy, to editor David Cashion at Abrams Image, in a robust deal via my agent Sally Harding (The Cooke Agency).What is Space Oddities & Super Freaks?The unexpurgated behind-the-scenes story of one of the world’s most popular forms of entertainment, from movie projects gone terribly wrong to mysterious rock-album SF worlds, from eccentric, flamboyant personalities to some of the most interesting art, performance, music, movies, and fiction of the 20th and 21st century...this is Space Oddities & Super Freaks....and not just the secret history, but also the story of the underappreciated, the eccentric, and just plain off-the-charts strange--across all forms of storytelling/media. The project will involve writers and artists from all over the world, like previous projects Wonderbook and The Steampunk User's Manual. However, this is likely the most wide-ranging book I've done yet with Abrams--roving across decades and diverse points of view, involving research and a lot of interviews.Sometimes books like this can be organized like encyclopedias. This is not that beast. This will have clear through-lines thematically and organizationally to focus on telling the most entertaining stories, and then hang other fascinating details off of that. Over 350 full-color pages and 120,000 words of text.Working with Abrams Image has always been wonderful, and teaming up against with editor David Cashion and everyone else at Abrams is going to be great. My wife Ann will be involved with creating this book as well.(Image below by John Jennings: a two-page spread from current Abrams project The Steampunk User's Manual.)