Vote vote vote--and rec rec rec rec

[ellen_datlow]

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!

Comments

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

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.

[bluetyson.livejournal.com]

Any evidence your superior taste is actually reaching a broader audience, then?

If not, what do you think the probability that you are right is, compared to the others of whom you speak, if this trend continues abd you don't reach such an audience?

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

The audience for CW is growing with every issue, and is reaching out internationally (an advantage of the web, both in publishing international authors and in getting a worldwide, albeit English-reading, audience).

The increasingly inaccurately titled "big three" have seen their circulations decline each year and this trend will not stop. The response to this decline has been, as far as my reading, more of the same exact content associated with the declines. As far as the semi-pros, more people read CW material through the link I put up on my blog each month than many semi-pros have readers overall.

If you want to measure quality by way of popularity, then clearly the SF magazines are doing something very wrong. People are subcribing and then just not renewing. Newsstand returns are very high. Compared to even marginal publications on niche subjects, the circulation of SF mags is tiny.

If you want to simply test quality via reading, go right ahead. Frankly, if Ellen can claim that her reading tells her that there are plenty of good stories, my reading can tell me that most published SF/F/H short stories are tedious at best and awful at worst.

[bluetyson.livejournal.com]

If it is growing, then some evidence, sure, if growing faster than your garden variety internet usage growth, perhaps, or other similar publications.

I may have read a story or two, I will have to check. At one a month, won't take long, regardless.

Online is more accessible for a lot of us, no doubt.

However, at several thousand stories a year, some will be outstanding, on probability. Likewise at the other end. The majority will be mediocre or worse taking into account the following:

Admittedly I have never read at the very low end just as mentioned by girliejones recently where one market had 4 issues in a row all stories 2 out of 5 or less, so a bit of a horrible tail, there.

Even if only to pick a random number (and lastshortstory will give a rough guide to this if they publish their numbers) 10% are 4 out of 5 or better, that will still leave a few hundred that are good.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Fascinating. Tell you what, have Ellen post her royalty statements for the last five anthos she did, and I'll put up the numbers for the last year of CW.

I always find it amusing how fanboys react to people whose material they didn't grow up reading.

Your attempt to place story quality on a bell curve is wrongheaded, and stories are qualitatively different from one another.

[bluetyson.livejournal.com]

Qualitatively? No kidding. :) That has little to do with where they place. A tennis ball is qualitatively different to a story, too.

Sorry, but to a broad audience, in general, they are good, or not good. You yourself have said some are better than others, speaking of wrongheadedness.

Disagreeing with that common activity of rating material is one thing, if you are more of a 'literary fetishist' type that can't bear to bring yourself to do that, you aren't the only one.

I have read one, Orm the Beautiful, so I will give you that one if you chose I gave it 4.5 out of 5. Not sure that dragon archaeology is designed to appeal to a broader audience though. :)

Don't think I have seen any of the others, off the top of my head.

[bluetyson.livejournal.com]

It obviously isn't a bell curve, either, that should be pretty clear.

0.5 0.000
1.0 0.005
1.5 0.009
2.0 0.033
2.5 0.086
3.0 0.290
3.5 0.298
4.0 0.210
4.5 0.045
5.0 0.025

As what I have for a sample of genre fiction stuff, which will include a lot of 'best' type material, not your garden variety monthly magazine publication, which would shift it lower. If you had to read all the stories in a year and rate those it would look like different.

You could interpolate a continous function from this, but pretty clearly discrete. :)


If all you can manage is binary, or trinary, then do that. ;-)

Would be pretty impossible to grow up reading Elizabeth Bear, given that she is from North America as far as I know, and her approximate similar age, I would most likely have learned to read somewhat before she did.

Who else but a fanboy would be editing an internet fantasy magazine and writing the stuff, anyway?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

If we're talking international venues, then the benchmark isn't the ailing American SF magazines but China's Science Fiction World, which sells about 300,000 copies a month and which might have a million readers [1]. SFW is doing well enough to have hosted the Chengdu International Science Fiction and Fantasy Festival. My impression is that the Chinese currently tend to go for what would be considered fairly traditional forms of SF.

I think most reasonable people agree that outsourcing SF (in the restrictive sense) to non-American writers is the wave of the future. Americans can contribute to the field as consumers, the most valuable part of any commercial field.

The audience for CW is growing with every issue [...]

There's an obvious case to compare this to but unfortunately that experiment was derailed by other factors that will not apply to the Clarkesworld experiment. Also, in light of the other factors, I don't think I entirely trust their circulation numbers now.


1: Or about one person in 1,300. If one US magazine had a similar fraction of Americans as readers, they would have about 230,000 readers (But only about 80,000 subscribers, which isn't that much better than the Big Three). Clearly the problem here is that the US is horribly underpopulated and its niche markets are accordingly puny in absolute numbers. US SF editors should consider contributing money to campaigns to increase American TFRs [2] as well as immigration to the US to preserve their own futures. This could pay off in less than a generation.

Mind you, the Baby Boom didn't really pay off for the traditional SF magazines because the bloom in the early 1950s was cut short by the destruction of the American News Company. As long as there isn't some kind of headlong rush to consolidate magazine distribution into a few large and vulnerable companies going on today, it seems unlikely that a similar event could occur in the near future.

2: Humanely. Romanian-style programs need not apply. I'm not a monster and I think it is entirely possible that there is some humane path between the underpopulation of today and a more reasonable population density in North America. Even matching the UK's population density would get the US to about 2.5 billion people.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

SFW is hardly a relevant comparison, not anymore than pointing out the number of bicycles in China is when discussing the woes of the Big Three automakers in the US. I know the magazine fascinates you, but the entire line of argument is jejune, not the least reason being that I was talking about a) the Web specifically and b) the English-reading audience.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

As long as there isn't some kind of headlong rush to consolidate magazine distribution into a few large and vulnerable companies going on today

Also, surprise, you're soaking in it!

But again, that's actually irrelevant. A more recent ID crunch happened a decado ago, but, and here's the big but:

what other sector of the trade periodical business would allow 5-20% decreases in circulation per annum for a decade without making any notable changes to the product, in either its content, design, price, format, name, etc.?

Can you name ANY?

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Nick, so you're saying you actually read everything published in the field of fantastic fiction? If not, how would you know?

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

No, are you saying that you do? I know you make a solid attempt to read all the short fiction, but that you also don't have much of an opportunity to read a large number of novels.

However, one doesn't have to read Every Story EVAR in order to have an informed opinion. I do read a heck of a lot of stories, and more this year than last as I am now once again local to an SF specialty shop that gets the obscure stuff and small zines, and in one of the most heavily serviced areas for bookstores in the country.

I don't read everything, but given the amount I do read and the markets I do read, it would be a bizarre demographic quirk wherein almost all the best stuff is somehow only published in the magazines and by the publishers I miss.

[scarypudding.livejournal.com]

It's not like you to use space on your own strengths that might be spent on other people's weaknesses, Nick; I think you're slipping.

(Though, come to think of it, I already know why I don't read the traditional SF venues, and it would probably be more useful to me in the long run to hear more about why I should read CW. Though less entertaining in the short run.)

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

You can read CW or not. We're not one-at-a-timin' hyah, we's mass communicatin.'

It is true that many venues have circulations so minute that a handful of readers makes a big difference. It is also true that not a few readers have embraced a consumptionist aesthetic because of this; thus plopping down at cons and on messageboards and whatnot and making demands of editors and publishers and booksellers (Shocklines is notorious here, as you may have seen from my journal). I've also seen people declaring "boycotts" of one (i.e., not a real boycott) against writers such as Orson Scott Card, and engaging in all sorts of other telling actions: they really think that one person's decisions in a marketplace matter.

And when a mag has only a few subscribers, that may be even true. But that's not a workable model if one is looking for a broader audience. For a cult, sure, then it makes sense to stand in the airport and hand out pamphlets, but I'm not looking for a lifetime of engagement or to provide someone with a cultural index for their lifestyle, I'm looking for people who, when they hear about a good story online for free, go and read it.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

Of course, by denying Moles' request, you've also inadvertantly thumbed your nose at everyone else who might be reading the thread...

(or you could provide a link to a story or two which you're particularly proud of and/or represent what you're trying to do.)

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I came back to this thread this morning and started participating again because Ellen intimated that by not pretending that the world was full of good stories I was slapping everyone I ever published in the face. (Apparently, I am only capable of publishing average stories, not stories that belong to the small minority of excellent stories written each year.)

To link to a handful of stories that I am particulary proud in a public venue would actually involve slapping the writers I've published across the face. Not gonna do it, sorry.

As far as this: "Of course, by denying Moles' request, you've also inadvertantly thumbed your nose at everyone else who might be reading the thread..." you prove my point. Individual readers in the SFnal hardcore think that they have massive power in the marketplace, generally because they operate under the belief that their actions are identical to or represent the actions of many many others.

This is not the case. This is a fishbowl, not the world. We shouldn't confuse the two, especially if we're looking for a broad audience.

Moles can take a few seconds out of the day to read CW if he likes. If he doesn't, that's fine too. But I'm not going to respond to "Dance, monkey, dance! Maybe I have a penny in my pocket, and you have to dance for it!" not when the pennies flow freely anyway.

I'm certainly not going to start dancing in a manner that would involve me smacking the writers I've published across the face.

[jamiam.livejournal.com]

Since Nick is too busy quoting Coen brothers to answer: because Nick is pulling the best out of the slushpile, without too much regard for name-recognition? So he tends to publish the best stories from a lot of the same up-and-coming talent you see at, say, SH. Except that Nick's editorial "voice" is very different from the SH guys; if you're looking for something short, dynamic, dark, and well-written, Nick's selections at Clarkesworld are a good place to get a quick 4000-word hit.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Not to put down Nick's taste at all but if I would judge by percentage I doubt I'd like any higher percentage of the stories Nick picks than I do for many other venues I cover ;-)

From out of everything I read for YBFH, I hate most of it. And a lot of it I like ok but don't think is either good enough or appropriate for the horror half of YBFH...

But that doesn't mean that I don't like enough of what is published annually in and at the edges of the genres to think that there's "plenty" of good fiction out there.

[bluetyson.livejournal.com]

You don't like those, I don't see any reason why you would like this one, either. Not much different, maybe a little more of the 'not really quite genre', if that is your sort of thing.

[scarypudding.livejournal.com]

Well, my reasons for disliking all of those are fairly similar to Nick's stated and/or implied ones.

[bluetyson.livejournal.com]

Well, he has failed to be much different.

No old-fashioned guys talking like they are from 1959 tooling around the asteroid belt in any of those stories though, as far as the Analog sort of thing goes, and not much core sf except one massive blast of a story.

Other than that, and the odd pretty mainstream story (although that happens elsewhere, nothing that you wouldn't find in a bunch of other places.

Dragon hoards, girls turning into mice, zeppelins and sorcery, dead wives, fantasy princesses, conquering overlords, writing/book references, body part removal, etc., etc.

[bluetyson.livejournal.com]

You consider them that, but they aren't.

You have a couple of excellent, a couple of good, some decent, and more than half average or worse.

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, how can we forgot the informed critical opinion of an lj commenter fuming about "literary fetishism", Tolstoy, and semi-colons. (Forget the fact that you don't seem to know which stories I've edited.)

[bluetyson.livejournal.com]

No, why would I know (or bother looking up), what you edited? You already told me that one of the best stories you didn't, so you are behind there to start with. :)

I do have the most informed opinion of what is good to me.

No-one else anywhere that I know of has said you are the best. So doesn't that leave you versus everyone else? Or, in all likelihood, best you not be.

Fuming? No, I just mentioned that because there are people that won't deign to judge writing, but happy to have a movie review that says X is 3/5 and go along with it. Amused is the actual feeling. :)

[nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com]

When I review a book or publication, I make a point to actually make myself familiar with it.

For example, were I reviewing Clarkesworld, I'd note that the masthead has two editors, and that the submission guidelines reflect half the published work, and note that half the work is via solicitation to the other slot.

But, of course, I'm a real reviewer (in that people solicit my reviews and pay for them).

No-one else anywhere that I know of has said you are the best. So doesn't that leave you versus everyone else?

Have you spent any time looking? No-on anywhere that I know of has said "Yeah, that bluetyson fellow doesn't ever fart in the tub and eat the bubbles," thus...


Fuming? No, I just mentioned that because there are people that won't deign to judge writing, but happy to have a movie review that says X is 3/5 and go along with it.

Actually, you mentioned "literary fetishism" unbidden in one comment, elitism in another, and then Tolstoy and semi-colons in yet another. And even now you ironically use the word "deign". Seems to be a rhetorical twitch you have. It's a common one, actually. That it comes over repeatedly even when not all that important or in context is pretty clear evidence of long-term fuming over the possibility that, garsh, "five stars!" isn't really a review.