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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Now some people think that this might be because no one likes the work being published.

Ding ding ding!

You're welcome to speak for yourself, but overall that's just bullshit. There's plenty of great short sf/f/h fiction out there--I read it all the time and have been reading it for over 25 years. As an active member of HWA I've recommended tons of good stories--unfortunately, it doesn't seem that more than one or two other members have read those stories, which is a shame.

Ellen,

I think there may be fewer people who are reading and writing short fiction that are part of the professional organizations and therefore not eligible to nominate or vote.

John Klima

Ellen, thanks for the post. I'm going to post something similar to my own blog and get the word out. And of course, read more and nominate more!

I would be happy to nominate some stuff, but unfortunately I'm not presently a member of any of the relevant professional organizations, so that's out.

but I'm not eligible, sorry. 8-(

Me neither, unfortunately.

I would if I could. I read short fiction and novels all the time and have several favorites.

Perhaps next year I will be eligible to nominate some.

Fan-voted awards need recommendations too, and they also tend to be light on short fiction. At Science Fiction Awards Watch we'll be starting our major push for recommendations in December, but the lists are open now. If anyone here would like to make recommendations we'd love to hear from you. Hopefully our lists will also help jog the memories of people who can vote in the awards Ellen is talking about.

But wouldn't you have succumbed to madness by now if you didn't like short fiction?

I review this stuff for a living. I don't have to like it at all. I just need to be able to finish it. Before I started doing that, I have to admit I stopped reading the magazines in the 1990s because the ratio of what I wanted to read/what I actually got was too low. In general, I was pleasantly surprised when I began to be force-fed the various Best Ofs after 2001 [1] (I especially liked the Nature Shorts [2] that got into, hrm, Hartwell/Cramer? in 2006(?)). I still don't read the magazines because I am clearly not their target market.

The Best Ofs in 2007, particularly SF, which is the genre closest to my heart, were amazingly grim reading. I would not have finished the SF collections if I didn't have to. I expect Americans to be suicidally depressed but even the Wilson that kept turning up was bleak and depressing and he's Canadian, if you hold him up to the light in the right way.

It's like living through a bad rerun of 1970s Dismal.

[Do I need to qualify the above? No, nobody would be shallow enough to assume that if I don't want a solid diet of "Oh, woe! We are doomed! Doomed! Woe! And also, all romantic relationships are inherently abusive and my socks don't match." that means I want saccharine happy endings instead, although I can see why it would be rhetorically handy to pretend that I did]

1: Funny story. I once mentioned that I had one of your anthologies in the to-read stack and was looking forward to it as a break from the amazingly long MSes I had been reading. I can't recall how long it actually was but I think somewhere near 1000 pages in MS.

2: There's a collection of 100 Nature short shorts out. Do not read it in one sitting.

I'm going to second this comment.

I'd love to have the hard data, but since I don't I can only toss some speculations in the ring which comes down to less and less people are HWA and especially SFWA members, or interested.
Again, I don't know the hard facts, but somebody a while back mentioned that it looked to her that increasingly younger writers were simply not interested in the SFWA; this sentiment seemed mostly to be confirmed on a poll Mary Robinette Kowal had on her blog.
A lot of people who did qualify for at least associate (or haven't yet) were either not interested at all, or ex-members with no intention of renewing membership.

There, most probably, is your problem. I think people would vote, but they're not allowed. The problem may have nothing to do with short fiction itself and everything with the organizations themselves losing ground with people.
(sorry, John, just wanted to second your comment, and it turned a bit ramblish)

Is it kosher to put your own stuff on those pages, or would that be tacky?

Yes, I agree and that's a real problem. I would like to encourage newer (younger or not) writers to join both SFWA and HWA but that's a whole other issue.
What about those who already ARE members? They're not recommending.
For the Stokers so far I've recommended:
Two first novels
two novels
Two collections
One anthology
24+ short stories
11 long stories
(there are only two short fiction categories in HWA and they're separated by the 7500 word limit)

I'll be recommending more as I continue to read for YBFH.
So as far as I can see it's not a question of quality.

Great. If those who CARE about the awards (and short fiction for that matter) don't do something we can't expect anything to change.

Well, keep reading anyway and if you like some blog about it... I'm not a voting member of SFWA so all I can do is whine :-)

As I said to someone else--you can still read and talk about the stories/novels you like--just to get other readers interested. It's not ONLY about awards (as far as I'm concerned) it's about the life of the sf/f/h short story. That's what awards are good for--bringing attention to the forms that are given awards. But reading is the most important thing.

I should probably hit the library more often, though, instead of just thinking "I can't afford a new book right now."

I don't think it's a quality issue or even having less readers. I love reading short fiction and come across stuff I love all the time. I wish there were an award I could recommend these stories for, but I'm not a member of the organizations you mentioned. I'd join SFWA if I was eligible just for voting priviledges!
Are there fan-based awards that we should all be recommending for?

I would recommend one of your stories if I were eligible to do so. So, um, you could put up your own and say it's from me...:)

That's as much as you can do --as long as you recommend your favorites to other readers. Part of what I enjoy about reading for and editing the YBFH over all these years is that my job is to tell readers what I've loved reading during the year. I'm a pusher ;-)

Absolutely! (But I thought I could only chew the two bits I bit off --the Stokers and the Nebulas).

I don't know about the Stoker, but nominating for the Nebula is so easy that there shouldn't be any excuse at all for an interested member not getting in his/her nominations. The list of currently nominated works is available in the private area of the SFWA website, and all nominators need to do is click on an already listed story and type in their name and e-mail address. To nominate a work that isn't on the list already is also easy and can be done on line.

No idea why the current members aren't voting; maybe they really aren't reading. You do get that - writers who want to be read, but don't have time for reading others because they're writing and put their fans first *cue eye-roll*

I read, there's more material out there than i have either money or time for, but I do still like reading. So do a lot of people I know here on lj. Time is an issue, more so than the money needed to buy the mags and anthos. One thing that counts for online fiction of course, and does work, is that it's easy to pop a link to a story you like.
(money - people are more likely to spend on novels, though, all the more reason why I seriously believe short mags should move online, with themed anthos for print.)
That works to bring attention to shorts people would have missed otherwise, and there are enough people who do follow the links when they're posted. But, a few may be doing it, but how many overall? mostly, it's still people linking themselves (understandably) or friends (also understandably and needed), but linking for strangers? not so much.
Print, whether mag or antho, is a whole nother thing. It requires money and accessibility, and outside the US it appears short fiction print is like hunting snow in the Sahara. Zero accessibility, so why would I hand over money for it?
I have, in total, seen one copy of Asimovs in my bookstores; a girl from Ireland has seen one copy total of Asimovs in her stores; apparently in Australia they don't get much either.
(I do have a few subscriptions, but it's bloody expensive and required a great deal of blind faith on my part).
There's one aspect of it.
Mostly, it's the lack of dialogue, by which I mean open and unprompted talking about short fic; as opposed to novels where it happens a lot more on the blogs and forums.
There's no real dialogue, just a huge silence for the most part, except "ooh, short fiction is doomed! short fiction is doomed!"

re: membership - hmm, yeah,another time maybe, but right now from what I hear the HWA is a maybe, the SFWA bah. (for myself, and I do qualify for associate, I think).

shouldn't you be asking this directly to the members themselves? the ones on the boards? why do they say they are not reading and recommending (not why isn't everyone else, why aren't they?)

>I'd join SFWA if I was eligible just for voting priviledges!

really? hmm, I don't know, that seems wrong to me, like it should be a (small) side-aspect of the SFWA, and yet...this is the only genuine reason people appear to want to join.

Reading almost any of one thing in one sitting will kill ya!
I admit that I don't understand how you can review it regularly if you don't like it.
But yes, as an editor, if I didn't like what I was reading most of the time and love what I was reading some of the time, I'd quit.

In fact...the question I really have for Nick (I had to run out the door before thinking seriously about his post) is if he really truly believes that there isn't any good sf/f/h short stories being published then what's he doing editing a website of short fiction and how/why did he edit an original anthology a few years ago? Does he mean that nothing he has published (as an editor) has been worth recommending for an award? That's exactly what he's implying. If he does think that it's a swat in the face of anyone whose work he's ever bought.

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