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!

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.

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 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.

Don't have the power to vote or recommend either but maybe we can be infectious about it. Started a meme:
Vote and Recommend New Short Stories Meme

Thanks, Ellen! Yep, we need to get more people rec'cing.

I will say I truthfully haven't read as much stuff I've loved this year...but I'm about to jump into three different anthologies, so I expect to start rec'cing my little heart out soon.

And here's a confession: One reason I'm against the idea of making the Stoker recs anonymous is that I often use your recs as a reading guide. I just ordered GENERATION LOSS because I saw that you (and Nick) had recommended it. At this point I think vote-trading is less of a problem than any voting at all...

I try to spread the word to my non-writer ( and writer )friends as relatives as best I can. Usually this means buying them copies of my favorite reads as gifts, holiday and otherwise. Kind of like voting with your dollars a bit.

This is related to your lament re. King's essay. As members of literary communities that are often marginalized, it's very important that we promote our best. Whether the awards are meaningful or not entirely depends on the quality of the work they reward, and so nominations are extremely important. As a non-member, I can only recommend by publishing excellent fiction, and by word of mouth. Jaime Corbacho's "Honeymoon" is the best horror story I've read in some time. Paul Walther's "Splitfoot"--so I was informed--was recommended for a Stoker, and deservedly so. I'd like to recommend, for the journal category (is there such a category?), Supernatural Tales, which is one of the few horror journals I regularly enjoy--ST rarely publishes the middling horror I see so much of. For science fiction, Jan Wildt is one of the best authors working in the genre now, sadly underappreciated. He has some stories upcoming in Flytrap, I believe, and published a wonderful essay this year called "Assimilate This."

The suggestion made by some that good work isn't being published is extraordinary. You're either not reading very much or you aren't looking past the usual suspects. The latter is a rut I've seen people get into, and the only way out is for someone to make recommendations...

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.

>>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 :)

Does the decline in voter turnout for awards track the decline in voter turnout in real world elections?

(Got here through James Nicoll's post.)

I have to admit that of the magazines, the only one that I actually read almost all the way through is Black Gate. This seems to indicate a shift away from what I want to read.

On the other hand, I've liked the various "year's best" anthologies that I've read, yours and others. They're certainly of a higher degree of quality than I see in the magazines. I don't have access to anything other than the aforementioned Black Gate (and that by subscription), F&SF, and Analog, though I know that there are other magazines out there, I might like them. Don't know. Can't spend the money to try them if I don't see them/know about them.

I realize distribution is a separate problem, but I thought I'd give one (non-member's) take on the issue.

I do think good stuff is being published. I don't think enough great stuff is being published. "Publishable" stuff is being published, which is mildly depressing. More importantly, though, is if people aren't voting for things that fact might be symptomatic of something else. While it's admirable to suggest people vote, the fact that they aren't would mean to me, possibly, that they're not that enthused--at least, not enough to vote.

JeffV

too many of the threads here have just gotten ridiculous. You asked what to blog about that would be of interest - well, you are one of the people most immersed in a constant reading and examination of short fiction.
That would be of interest, not just the usual content and quality/lack of quality blah blah, but the whole spiel - past, present, future. Where are we now, where are we headed.
Zines doing innnovative stuff (not just story-wise, but in every other component - packaging, new features).
Talk about the entirety of the medium, from the practical and specific, to theoretical.
Don't know about others, but that would interest me.
Blade Runner ain't a bad topic, though.

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