ellen_datlow | Vote vote vote--and rec rec rec rec

Vote vote vote--and rec rec rec rec

Ok. Here's my impassioned plea/push/nag for anyone who reads this blog and is eligible to recommend stories and or novels for the various peer group science fiction, fantasy, and horror awards.
I know that some people feel that awards themselves are a bad thing and that they should all be abolished. I'm not talking to you. I don't believe that and I know I'm not going to change your minds.

Awards are NOT going to go away but they could become less visible (which I think is a bad thing). As an editor I really appreciate it when the stories/books I edit make final award ballots and win awards. And I think most writers are even more appreciative of this. It gives a sense of validation for what you're doing by your peers (for the Nebula and Stoker).

Right now is "award rec season" and there are discussions on both the SFWA Bulletin Board and the HWA Bulletin Board about how their respective awards are dying --not enough members are recommending works to even make a preliminary ballot.

Now some people think that this might be because no one likes the work being published.
Others that no one is reading enough short fiction to be interested in recommending works in those categories.
I have a really difficult time believing the first reason. I've been reading sf/f/h short fiction for twenty five years and have found no drop off in quality in any of those fields.

I can't answer for the second but I hope it's not true because if so my profession will die and I love editing short fiction.

If you care at ALL for the genre short story then I urge you to recommend the stories that you think are worth bringing to the attention of your peers.

This is totally off the cuff and I know if I thought about it more I'd have more to write--but I'd also probably just delete the whole post...

Comments welcome!

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No, I'm South African:)

It would appear Interzone and Albedo One isn't as available throughout the whole of Great Britain, as the Irish girl I mentioned knows about Interzone but has never seen one.

well, blog what you want to blog about, right? In your case, people would likely take a large interest in the reading for YBFH - stories that get taken, but also ones that come close, etc. So, yes, that would help a good deal.
Same with discussing novels, anthos, etc as and when you read them. Yes, that would likely help a great deal.

Have you seen the Dozois essay on Amazon about building the Year's Best SF?

I'd like to see one of those from each of the Super-Editors. :) Same goes for your partners in crime of tje annual camel killer potential tome.

Similarly, you said you have a new Del Rey hopefully series anthology come out - how did that happen, how do you stock it, etc.?

Jay Lake had a generic 100K word anthology explanation on his livejournal which was nifty, and the Conflux podcast had Dann and Strahan and Congreve and Stevenson and the odd other talking about anthology making, so the more the merrier.

You did a magazine recently - same with that, perhaps, what is different about doing that, etc.?

The only magazine I have seen recently is FSF. They did used to be around.

Fictionwise multi-year subscription a lot more consistent, there, and around 1/7 the price.

If you don't like sitting at the computer reading 'em, you could consider a cheap old Palm pilot, fits in a pocket nicely.

What stories exist is partly a mystery, too, to most people?

I can go and look at LibraryThing or an online bookshop and find a novel, or book even - if it is an anthology/collection, the chance that the stories in it are listed is often slim.

Dozois' essay says the list he works on is in a notebook, handwritten!

Having a central story list of some sort would be of interest, certainly. Whether it is possible to do, not sure. Locus website and isfdb etc. will get a lot of them eventually, but that is zero use to those interested in the new and current now. That is bibliography and archival work, not sales and marketing.

Whether a 'current sfstories.com' website/wiki would ever happen with editors submitting their stuff, I dunno, or if they even want people to be looking at other work from other publications?

For instance, if someone would like to read a lot of the Horror stories from one year, how do they do it? No list exists outside the offices of some professional places? Same for Fantasy/SF. If you were a fantasy fan you might know some stories in Asimov's are fantasy - but which ones? Good luck finding out.

If Weird Tales or DarkHorrorWebzine3 had a couple of SF stories in a month, I would never know unless they got picked out into a collection.

Given all the competing interests, I am sure it is probably not likely to happen, but just having that list of stories would be helpful for readers, I think.

There are websites that do some sort of compilation of places writers can submit stories to, but that is not at all the same thing, locus has a list of places too, and both may or may not be up to date.

No money in doing the work to provide this info for people, perhaps, either. :(

However, the editors that get to hear about it all and are making spreadsheets are the most central people for the info that I can see.

However, none of that is focused or filtered enough to help people find what they are looking for.

JBU has some of the right idea - fantasy stories/science fiction stories at least labelled. New stories or serials? They forget about it there. Your big Year's Best splits it up - Strahan's didn't, that sort of thing, too.

Yeah, all the writer types should just give up because they all suck. Novels, stories, whatever, people prefer tv and movies and video games anyway, don't they?

Forgot about Fictionwise:) they are an additional option, although they don't have many mags there - F&SF, Asimovs, Analog. Who else? ASIM just does pdf through their own website, but at least they are offering options, which too many are not.

Something that occurred to me just now (and I'm going to tap on you a bit, Tyson), but - are only writers allowed membership in the organizations and therefore eligible for voting?
What about non-writing affiliated readers, like Tyson? meaning, voters coming in as readers, not because they're writers or editors. Surely, if such an option existed and more effort was made from HWA and SFWA to include a form of associate for "fans only", with perhaps no say or privy to writer issues, but at least a vote in the Nebula, Stoker, etc.
The awards are pretty much fan/ popularity driven anyways, aren't they? so, imo, including non-writer readers into voting rights would make buggerall difference except there could be more nominations. And that's pretty much the issue right now - not enough votes. Non-writers would pay for minimal membership if they could vote, no?

I don't think anyone would care what I think, or anyone else like that, David. :)

Reader affiliate memberships and let the people who buy the stuff in? Those commoners? Lol. Wouldn't think so, in a writing organisation.

You do have a bit of a point though. Charles Stross for example I saw say writes the stuff, doesn't read it, and a lot of writers are likely similar, so lots of the members will be about as useful as an octopus at a three legged race meeting for things like nomination. A lot of them will be wasting valuable reading time doing insane stuff like write 200K word novels for hours and hours a day.

Would having just the major editors pick the stuff be better? Any particular way will have flaws or biases, etc. No-one else can easily get to most of the stuff, anyway.

Some good news coming on that front, David, perhaps :-

Interzone electronic, perhaps?

They have done their Crimewave mag in the same format as Asimov's etc. Looks good.

Speaking of costs though, with a membership and a sale at the time I think two year subs to the digest type mags came out around $2 each in that Northern Hemisphere monopoly money.. Not a big deal difference to the yanks who can maybe get print similar prices doing the same thing, but is to us.

Aeon? Is that a yearly? You can get that electronic, too I have seen. ElectricStory.com perhaps?

So you can't nominate that stuff despite being a world-leading expert editor type, is that what you are saying?

If so, that is pretty whacky give you have to read lots of it. Is it similar for, say, Locus people?

>>I have a really difficult time believing the first reason. I've been reading sf/f/h short fiction for twenty five years and have found no drop off in quality in any of those fields.

I can't answer for the second but I hope it's not true because if so my profession will die and I love editing short fiction.//

(no, we don't know each other--I'm here through David de Beer's blog :) Hi!)

I adore short stories, too, adore them! I've never talked about them with others, for some reason, but I certainly will now, in case it does make a difference. I think I've never felt qualified to nominate and vote. That seems best left up to people who know what are the best stories and novels, and who have read them all, too.

I also have not seen any drop in quality; if anything, the opposite. It seems unbelievable to me that people don't like the work being published; stuff today is fantastic! I feel as if now is a golden age and others are somehow missing it :D.

Anyway, this is a wonderful post, and thank you for sharing :)

Yup, that's just about the most simplistic misinterpretation of my comment one could possibly come up with. You win a kewpie doll!

Darn, and I already handed out the kewpie doll.

I do edit a magazine. I buy one story a month. I could buy, given what is submitted to me, maybe as many as eighteen stories a year.

Were I tasked with filling a digest ten times a year, I almost certainly would end up having to stuff the pages with the exceedingly minor works of major authors, stuff with little value other than nostalgia, and short shorts artifically blown up to novella length.

When I flip through or click through magazines and see stories that I rejected for CW, I surely like them no better than I did when I bounced them four months or a year previously.

I consider the stories I publish the very best stories being produced, and this despite the fact that I don't buy the "names" for the magazine. I read the other magazines and with every issue I am convinced that the editorial taste and other factors reflected in their tables of contents are simply inferior to mine in virtually every way. They buy names; I buy stories. They cater to a shrinking audience; I am seeking out a broader audience. They need to fill pages; I don't. They literally have no idea how human beings really act and what motivates them or at least believe that their readers do not; I don't edit the Internal Bulletin for the International Society for People with Asperger's Syndrome.

I use the rec system to know what I don't need to bother to read! At least with the Stokers, there's one fellow who does very well each year recwise thanks to having four or five friends who apparently love everything he does. He managed to even crawl into the ballot once, two years ago if I remember correctly.

Reading almost any of one thing in one sitting will kill ya!

That's my usual method of reading things. I admit it doesn't work well with stuff like Martin's Terrible People Doing Horrible Things series (But I did get through Moore and Kuttner's Two-Handed Engine in one long session). Bloat only affects fantasy novels these days, so all of the SF and mystery MSes are a reasonable length for my approach.

I admit that I don't understand how you can review it regularly if you don't like it.

In a word, money. As long as someone is willing to pay me, I will read anything that is sent to me. Uh, but the someone paying me can't be the author of the work in question. I do reserve the right to occasionally scream "Stars move!", "No educated person thought the Earth was flat in 1492!" or M/m = e^(Vdelta/Vexhaust)!" at books. I don't do that on the bus anymore.

There's also the possibility of very pleasant surprises, the discovery of a subgenre that I like that I would never have considered looking at on my own.

By checking the magazines I mention in my summary of the year, the reader can get a feel for what's in which magazine (I mention those magazines that are mixed-genre every year and mention darker stories I found in each one).

I'm not a big fan of labelling as a lot of the stories I read can be classified as both dark fantasy/horror. For example, one person's sf is another's horror story.

I haven't seen Gardner's essay. Where is it?

I'm often on panels that are about putting together anthologies and I've been asked in interviews over the years, too. It's not a secret ;-) But if you (and others) think it useful to describe the process, I can do that...more later, I'll respond to your questions when I have more time.

Thanks Kara, I'm delighted to see everyone's interest in the subject.

see, this is the part of pimpin your mates that doesn't sit well with me. It's fine, to a point, and sure a lot of us do it, but mostly I just prefer to let people know "XYZ has a story at ABC mag"; if I read and liked the story, then I'll say so as well, and I do think it needs to be balanced with pimping stuff by non-mates.

course, I pay more attention when the pimping is by people I know, or whose tastes I don't utterly distrust, but the pimp-a-mate on the blogs and forums can get very annoying very fast.

Panels and interviews that are 15,000km away may as well be secret. :)

Here's the essay (an amazon short, you have to buy it).

Building Year's Best

Simplistic comment for the simplistic sound made from a simplistic comment at an old fashioned simple sideshow, eh?

David,
Yes, only fiction writers are allowed into SFWA as active members. But fiction and nonfiction writers can join HWA as active members. The idea is for these to be "peer" awards unlike the Hugos, which are a fan award --anyone can vote, just pay the fee.
To allow fans into an organization only in order for them to vote is a bad idea. HWA and SFWA, as imperfect as they are, are intended to help professional writers.

Sure, but some idea/guide is better than none. Horror people will claim some stories as horror, sf as sf, etc, which is fine.

the digests cost me either $40 x 7 = R280 for 1 year, or $80 x 7 = R560 for 2 years. And since I make sooooo much money (I squat over the toilet and the diamonds roll out, you know), it's totally not a problem!

hehe, yes, writers make so many unappreciated sacrifices for the fans, like offering up their beloved reading time to write stories. Slaves to the fans, ungrateful wretches!
All the more reason, in point of fact, to get people involved who DO read the stories!

ta for the link on Interzone, not a forum I'm often on, will keep an eye on that.

Oh, and a year or so later, or whenever someone gets the book doesn't help with the 'read stuff and be current to nominate/talk about' angle, at all, which is more the point I think?

Charles Brown got into the organization as an active member through some earlier rules (I have no idea how). But now, you have to be a fiction writer. Nonfiction does not allow you to be an active member.
HWA does allow nonfiction credentials and that's how I became an active member.

You're the expert, being the simpleton of the moment and all.

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