Wanted: Web magazine for two top short fiction editors

The November 2008 Locus arrived in my mailbox today and it features a great interview with Gardner Dozois. In the interview, Dozois remarks on a recent conversation he had with Ellen Datlow, who (like Gardner) is also out of work. Gardner said, "We should really start a web magazine where you do the horror and fantasy and I do the science fiction. Now we just need somebody with deep pockets to fund it. If somebody approached us, there's no doubt we would do it."

Am I the only one dumb-founded that the two best SF/F editors around are not currently editing a magazine? If I had deep pockets, I'd start this web magazine. Since my pockets are shallow, I'll do this instead: If someone starts this magazine and hires Datlow and Dozois as editors, I'll commit to a subscription up front.

Recent reviews and comments

There have been some really nice comments about my fiction in recent days. S.M. Duke really liked my short story "The Ships Like Clouds, Risen By Their Rain" from Interzone #217. He includes this high praise:

I simply think that this is a terrific story with a fantastic, if not unique, vision. It puts Sanford in a category of people I admire and perhaps hope to be like--not in the sense of imitation, but in the sense of rising to that level. And he's in good company (Tobias S. Buckell is on that list, along with John Scalzi, Paul Genesse, and a handful of other fine writers)

All I can say is "Wow!"

And in another very nice complement, Aaron Wilson said reading my story "Where Away You Fall" helped him pass the time before presenting his MFA defense. Glad to hear his defense was successful. I wouldn't recommend waving copies of Analog: Science Fiction and Fact before too many MFA defense committees, but I'm glad to hear that there are some open-minded institutions out there.

Rehashing the Cormac McCarthy / A Canticle for Leibowitz war

A year and a half ago I published an essay in the New York Review of Science Fiction which took literary critics to task for not mentioning the influence of Walter M. Miller Jr's classic A Canticle for Leibowitz on Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel The Road. (You can read a reprinted version of the essay here).

I was severely taken to task for this essay by some critics. But history has a nice way of vindicating simple truths. The proof is over on the Guardian book blog where a short essay states that "Walter M Miller Jr's A Canticle for Leibowitz is a direct ancestor of Cormac McCarthy's The Road" and "Rare and brave were the mainstream critics who recognised its SF antecedents without coughing and spluttering about how it somehow transcended the genre."

It's always nice to get the last word in an argument, especially when someone else echoes what you'd been saying all along.

Review of Fast Ships, Black Sails

My featured review of the new anthology Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, is now up at Monsters and Critics. There are a number of great stories in this collection, including "Boojum" by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, "A Cold Day in Hell" by Paul Batteiger, "Beyond the Sea Gate of the Scholar-Pirates of Sarskoe" by Garth Nix, and my favorite story, "Araminta, or, The Wreck of the Amphidrake" by Naomi Novik.

This collection is an all-star treat which both plays with the pirates we all know and love, and takes those self-same pirates into new and exciting waters. Check it out.

An insider's guide to SF for insiders

My new review of Strange Horizons' fiction is now up at The Fix, and in the review I discuss why science fiction is so often written for SF insiders. As I say in the review,

It’s not that we don’t like readers. After all, every literary genre lives only through the graces of that genre’s readers. The problem for science fiction writers, however, comes in explaining to the general public many of our genre’s current insights—concepts such as the singularity, neural downloads, nanotechnology, ansibles, and so on. While all these concepts are well known to science fiction insiders, they can easily confuse people who don’t continually immerse themselves in the genre. So every time science fiction authors write a story, they have to decide how much explanation they’re willing to give for ideas which their biggest fans are likely already familiar.

The result is a chasm between science fiction which is accessible to the general reading public and that which can only be appreciated by science fiction insiders.

So what's the solution? I'm not sure. But unless SF can gain new readers, it risks become inbred. And like anything that becomes too inbred, extinction is the end result.

The hard work that goes into being a successful writer

Leah Bobet is an up and coming fantasy and science fiction writer whose stories and poems have been published in places like Strange Horizons, Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, and a number of prestigious reprint anthologies. In addition to being a great writer, she obviously she has enough name recognition that her submissions don't get buried in the slush piles.

But despite this success, she still receives many more rejections than acceptances. I know this because she tracks her submissions on her website. For example, in 2003 she wrote 101,150 words of fiction and poetry, made 179 submissions, and received 151 rejections and 17 acceptances. As her success has grown through the years, her ratio of rejections to acceptances has improved, but she still receives many more rejects than acceptances. Such is the life of any writer.

I think Leah's submission statistics are a great illustration of the hard work a writer must put in to be successful. I suggest new writers look at her numbers. If you aren't willing to put in that type of effort, don't expect to be successful.

Editor aims to help writers--even boneheaded ones!

Edmund Schubert, editor of Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, has written two must-read posts for new writers on his blog. The first, "Submission Basics," tells what every author should include on their submission: Their Contact Information! It's highly possible your cover letter will get separated from your sub somewhere in the editorial process. The next post is "Basic Definitions for Writers" and defines all those pesky words writers and editors throw around when talking about the submission process.

In addition to being a working editor, Edmund is also a fiction writer whose first novel Dreaming Creek will be published in two weeks. So I suggest giving him a listen, because he's experienced this business from both sides of the submission fence.

Joe Sherry wins Interzone subscription

I'm a little tardy in announcing the winner of my great Interzone subscription contest, so with any more delay the winner is Joe Sherry from the Adventures in Reading blog. I just purchased him a six issue, one year subscription to Interzone. Congrats to Joe and thanks to everyone who took part in the contest.

And in more Interzone news, my story "When Thorns Are The Tips Of Trees" is slated to appear in Interzone issue 219.

Did some independent bookstores deserve to die?

With a number of science fiction authors like Tobias Buckell complaining of late about their books being "skipped," Andrew Wheeler has a long post both explaining the situation and stating why chain book stores are "vastly better than the bulk of the existing independent bookstores" they replaced. Here's the paragraph that will probably get up a lot of people's noses:

One thing is indeed true: about eighteen years ago, there were 7,500 independent bookstores; now there are 1700. Sure, some good stores closed. But the rosy-colored view of the wonderful lost indy bookstore, land of miracles, where enlightened, Buddha-esque bookmen and -women sold only the finest of literature to a happy and contented audience is pure bunk. Most of those vanished stores were too small, undercapitalized, badly run marginal businesses run by cranks. They went out of business because they were bad at business, lacking any point-of-sale systems or serious inventory tracking at all. If they didn't return all that many books, it was because they had no idea what they had or where it was. Oh, and most of them -- as those of us who remember those days without the gauzy light of nostalgia -- were actively hostile to science fiction and fantasy. (Remember? This is the era when SF sold mostly in paperback, through entirely different channels, or in small hardcover editions to libraries. Those supposed wondrous independent stores of yore didn't carry SFF.) The independent stores still open are probably 90% of the well-managed independent bookstores that ever existed; there's a serious selection bias in looking at what's still around and extrapolating that back to all of the stores that didn't survive -- most of them didn't survive for a reason.

I'm a fan of independent bookstores and shop at them quite often, but I can also see where Wheeler is coming from. Growing up in central Alabama during the 70s and 80s, there were no good independent bookstores in the area that stocked quality science fiction or fantasy. Only with the arrival of the big chain stores did central Alabama suddenly have access to the same great books that were taken for granted in the big cities.

That said, the best bookstores in the country tend to be independent bookstores. My favorites include Dreamhaven Books in Minneapolis, Burke's Book Store in Memphis (run by a great writer named Corey Mesler), and the wonderful Book Loft near my home in Columbus, Ohio. So while I understand what Wheeler is saying about poorly run independents being replaced by chain stores, I also know that the bookstores which make the biggest impression on me are always independents. And what worries me about the current bookseller landscape is that too many of the great independent bookstores I care about are also at risk of disappearing--and I know the unreal pressure they're facing is not because they are poorly run.

Two notes on my writing

My essay "Singing the Songs of Arthur C. Clarke's Distant Earth" is in the current New York Review of Science Fiction (October 2008, issue 242). The essay examines the many different versions of Clarke's story The Songs of Distant Earth, which was the late grandmaster's self-professed favorite novel.

In other great news, Richard Horton, who reviews short fiction for Locus and edits anthologies such as Fantasy: The Best of the Year 2008, selected my story "Where Away You Fall" as one of four impressive short stories to appear this year in Analog: Science Fiction and Fact. He discussed this on his blog, where he also provided a very nice overview of what Analog published during 2008. Many thanks to Richard for the kind words.

Artist or ape? Faulkner or machine?

Here's a great little quiz I discovered, in which you try to decide which of the examples of abstract art are actual masterpieces created by great artists, and which were painted by actual apes.

I only scored 33%, meaning I missed most of the questions. Fortunately, the one picture I actually liked turned out to be by an artist, so homo sapiens didn't totally suck.

Take the quiz here.

The site also has a William Faulkner quiz where you try to decide if a sentence is something Faulkner wrote, or if its simply a machine translation of random German text. I refuse to reveal what my score on this quiz was.

Her dying wish to vote

As this political season winds down, I hope that people will keep some perspective on why we go through this turmoil every four years. Voting is the greatest of civic virtues. However, in the heat of a political campaign, with mudslinging and attacks all around, it's easy to forget why people throughout history have struggled and fought so they can have a voice in their government.

One person who truly understood the power of voting was an amazing woman it was my honor to briefly know: Suzanne McDaniel Hayes.

Suzanne has been fighting terminal cancer for the last two years. As the end of her fight neared, she told her doctor she didn't care what he did to prolong her life, just as long as "I live to vote." Suzanne was able to vote by absentee ballot last Wednesday. She died on Saturday. Suzanne lead an amazing life right up until the end, and what an example she set for all of us on how voting is a sacred duty.

To learn more about her struggle to vote, listen to this public radio interview or this American Public Radio article (which includes links to photos).

My deepest sympathy goes out to her husband Bill and their three kids.

Screw-up places submissions, rejection letters online

Last year Geoff Ryman, Julian Todd and Trent Walters began accepting online submissions for their mundane science fiction issue of Interzone. I wrote a story specifically for the issue titled "Where Away You Fall," which I submitted into their online submission system. The story was a hard science fiction tale of very high altitude ballooning which, according to the editors, didn't fit with their mundane manifesto. Not a problem. Don't be a writer if you can't take rejection. I turned around and submitted the story to Analog, where the story was accepted and published in their just-released December 2008 issue.

So imagine my surprise when someone e-mailed to say they'd found a copy of my story on the internet. At first I thought someone had copied the story from Analog, but when I followed the e-mailed link I saw a Google cache of the submission I'd sent to Ryman et al. For some reason Google was able to access all the submissions for the mundane Interzone issue, along with many of the rejection letters. Among the writers affected by this are myself, Terry Bisson, Carrie Vaughn, James S. Dorr, Jeff Crook, and many more. It appears that these submitted stories and rejection letters are no longer live on the web, but they are still stored in the Google cache (you can view some of them by clicking on the cache function of individual pages found through Google searches such as this one).

Just as writers have a responsibility to not abuse the submission process, editors also have a responsibility to not let those submissions and rejections show up on the web. For the record, Interzone is not responsible for this screw-up because Geoff Ryman, Julian Todd and Trent Walters ran the submission process through their own website. I have no problem with their decision to reject my story. What I have a problem with is letting that submission and rejection letter be placed on the internet for all the world to see.

Top SF/F editors tell all

John Joseph Adams has published a great interview with three of the top SF/F magazine editors: Gordon Van Gelder, the editor and publisher of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction;Sheila Williams, the editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction; and Susan Marie Groppi, the editor-in-chief of Strange Horizons.

Adams gets the editors to explore how authors can get their stories to rise out of the slush piles, what plots they're tired of seeing, and more. Perhaps their best advice is that all writers should be readers, meaning you should continually read examples of the fiction you strive to write. The complete interview is here.

Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun

Last week I finished reading Gene Wolfe's science fiction masterpiece The Book of the New Sun. This is a novel which easily stands up to all its critical acclaim and is, in my opinion, one of the best examples of world literature across any genre. In fact, this book is now on my short list of favorite late 20th century American novels, alongside Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, Beloved by Toni Morrison, and The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx.

I have ordered the coda to the novel, titled The Urth of the New Sun, and once I finish that I'll no doubt have more to say about this masterpiece. Until then, I strongly urge people to hunt down this four-part novel. Yes, it's a dense read. But if you give this novel them time it needs to reach into your consciousness, you'll come away amazed at what great literature can accomplish.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Godzilla21I remember my first comic so clearly: Issue 21 of Marvel Comic's late 1970s series Godzilla King of the Monsters. I purchased the comic at a 7-11 just down the street from my grade school, turning in enough refundable coke bottles to cover the 35 cent price.

The title on the cover reads "Godzilla battles the raging might of Devil Dinosaur in The Doom Trip." I read that comic until it literally fell apart. While it wasn't a comic masterpiece, I fell in love with both comics and fantasies from that point on.

Final week to win a subscription to Interzone

We're entering the homestretch of the great Interzone subscription contest. Among the most recent bloggers to take part are:

John Ottinger at Grasping for the Wind also was nice enough to do a review of my short story, in addition to his previously mentioned plug for Interzone.

Remember, the contest ends on Wednesday, Oct. 8. For more details on how to take part, go here.

New look for Asimov's and Analog looks really good

As previously mentioned on this blog, Asimov's and Analog are undergoing their first major redesign in years. Their new size is called an L trim and is 5 and 7/8 inches by 8 and 5/8 inches, with the per issue page count reduced from 144 to 112 pages. But since the new pages are larger than the oldpages, the amount of words lost each year will be minimal.

But it's one thing to know logically what the new magazine size will look like; it's quite another to actually pick up a copy and read the stories inside. Today the December 2008 issue of Analog arrived. (SHAMELESS PLUG: Be sure to read my short story "Where Away You Fall" in the December Analog. END OF PLUG.) The magazine looks really good in the new format. Not only does it feels more modern and "streamlined," as John Thiel said over on the Analog forum, I also think the thin cover stock the magazines use go better with this size than with their previous digest dimensions. So overall, an excellent redesign which should also help the bottom line of both magazines.