Review of YBFH#20

[ellen_datlow]

A review by Paul Kincaid:
Sfsite

I rarely argue with reviews. When I have on one or two occasions is correct a review, which I will do here--this is what Kincaid says:

"Just about all of them pay reverence to the ghost stories of the past, perhaps most blatantly in Gene Wolfe's "Sob in the Silence," a nasty but inconsequential tale that, I suspect, would not have been included here if it didn't have Wolfe's name attached to it."

I object to this most strenuously.

Perhaps Kincaid didn't care for the Wolfe story, but I found it creepy and scary. I don't know what what he means by "inconsequential" --perhaps it's not a socially instructive moral tale such as Geoff Ryman's "Pol Pot's Daughter (a Fantasy)" which Kincaid considers the best story in the book. But IT DOES WHAT IT IS MEANT TO DO.

However, that is not what annoys me. What I do object to (and I hope someone sends him over here to read this) is the idea that I included the story because of the presumed marketability of Gene Wolfe's name. Sorry, but that's not how I edit YBFH.

I have NEVER taken a story for YBFH for the name value. I've NOT taken plenty of stories by writers whose names have a much greater impact on the marketing of a book than Wolfe's.

I have no interest in responding to the rest of the review but to say that Kincaid seems not to understand horror vs fantasy. Horror is usually better served in traditional forms/structures --which isn't to say that occasional experimentation isn't sometimes effective in evoking horror. But I'd say that too much structural fooling around can dissipate the mood.
Comments most welcome.

Comments

[golaski.livejournal.com]

Let me start by saying that Wolfe's story is excellent, but its excellence is easy to miss--in spite of the very direct telling of the tale, and in spite of the clear violence described, what *actually* happens is only whispered. That whisper is--I believe--what makes the story so good. This is not to excuse slopping reading. Nor to excuse the leap the reviewer apparently makes (I haven't read the review). Perhaps this is a reviewer--as Ellen you suggest--not familiar enough with the genre to review the story properly, but I'd suggest that the real problem is not reading the story well, because the story is one of those stories I would proudly give to someone who doesn't read genre, but who is a serious reader.

And now a question: I once attended a panel with several big name genre editors, and one of the editors explained that for their original anthology to be published by the big house they worked for they had to use publisher-generated checklists when choosing authors. The lists were described like this: your antho must include one author from these two huge names, three authors from these ten big names, and five authors from these fifteen mid-list names. After that, the editor said, they had maybe six slots they could fill with whomever they pleased. Are those sorts of requirements common, or did I just attend a panel starring the unluckiest editor in the world?

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I've been lucky enough to have sold most of my anthologies without having to make such promises, although I am currently working on one anthology for which I had to extract promises from about three big names.

The thing is, there are very few sf/f/h writers whose names on anthologies will sell those anthologies. Maybe: Stephen King, Laurell Hamilton, Neil Gaiman, Orson Scott Card, George R. R. Martin. To get BIG money you might have to guarantee certain names. For a decent advance, no.

[pm-again.livejournal.com]

It would be abominable in a Years Best volume for an editor/publisher to mandate certain authors.

But we all have our favorites :)