FutureTense

If you’re like me, not only do you still have a few covers in your collection that look like this, you probably still have the Popular Science magazines in which they appeared.

“Intonation of Primacy” is back from Fortean Bureau. Jeremy, one of the editors, was quite kind.

A shame, really. FB publishes excellent work. I would have been delighted to have appeared in their pages.

Anyway, off to F & SF. Alas, poor Gordon. We knew him well.

If all stories were written like science fiction stories is annoying, trivial and disingenuous as it makes fun of the very worst of SF from a bygone era.

On the other hand, this parody is uncomfortably close to how most SF is still written today. [judithberman]

Cathy Buburuz posts the following call for submissions from FT readers:

If anyone out there has an entertaining horror story that takes place in a boneyard or is somehow related to a cemetery, please know that I’m editing a new print anthology titled Potter’s Field for Sam’s Dot Publishing that will see print in January 2005. Visit the GUIDELINES page here for details and pay rates…submit soon. If all else fails, paste this into a search engine: http://www.samsdotpublishing.com -Cathy Buburuz

I had a little trouble getting to the website so be persistent and patient. The first time, I was redirected to a random search engine. The second time I got through.

“Great Escape” has been renamed “Intonation of Primacy”, brushed up and sent off to Fortean Bureau, which I’ll say more about after I hear about “Intonation.”

Thanks to all who helped out, especially Charlie O’Dowd, Gwen, Gret and Erica.

Alan

You always thought books appeared on the shelves of your local B&N because underpaid stockers put them there.

My favorite: ignore everybody. Number 4 is the one to pay attention to. Don’t wait around for a silver bullet story that will break you into national attention. [matociquala]

A resource for the next time your characters slink around in the sewers.

Originally dated Jan. 29, 2004, this one got lost in the “Draft” box.

Sometimes things rise to the surface and disappear without a trace when they really should stir a groundswell of comment.

“Name withheld upon request” uses the law of supply and demand to justify retiring SF/F workshops.

Why are we SF pros helping Clarion, Odyssey etc. crank out new writers? All I see in Locus are unfamiliar names, crowding out the old, established pros, many of whom are not ready to retire.

There are many reasons for new names crowding out the old, established ones. Take economics for example. An established mid-list writer should expect about four times the per word rate for a novel than for a short story.

I’m not at all certain this was a serious proposal: it’s not a thorough or serious consideration of the issues facing the field. What bothers me is how these inflamatory statements reveal a subtle bias in the field.

It is we pros ourselves who are destroying our own livelihoods by HELPING the workshops crank out new writers who then flood the market with tales, like dollar-a-bushel corn.

I don’t have any sense the intent of this proposal is to produce better work. What screams out to me is the suppresion of new talent in order to maintain a monopoly. Let’s make the pool smaller, more controlled, so that writers appear in print based on age and monopoly, not talent.

Shut down the workshops and what will you have? Less competition? No. Poorer competition? Quite likely. Will that restore old favorites to ascendency? They aren’t writing short fiction right now. (When they do, they’re get the lion’s share of the limelight. An established name is a strong draw.) Who really looses under this proposal?

The readers.

Who might be satisfied to see the return of old favorites? Old readers. Maybe. Who do we need to satisfy in order to keep the genre growing? Young readers. Who is more likely to appeal to a young reader: an older writer or a younger writer? Toss up: each has their strengths. Truth be told, we need both but we already have a lot of the former.

What might happen to short fiction in the long run, with insuficiently trained writers? Your guess is as good as mine—might even be better–but I can’t imagine that it will good for the overall health of the short fiction field.

As much as I deeply appreciate the writers who have provided me with countless hours of entertainment through the years, somewhere along the line some writers have slipped over to think that this business is about the writer. This kind of proposal carries with it a deep, almost unconscious thread of privelege where the writer has no repsonsibility to the reading public. The author is entitled to write what they want to write, get published, get paid. The needs of the reader are secondary when considered at all.

I thin what distressed me was not the proposal itself–I expect people to look out for their own interests to a certain extent–but that no one seemed to have thought through the implications far enough to measure the ultimate effect on the readers.

That galls me a bit.

Alas, this silent proponent of archaic writers is getting at least part of his or her dream. The number of applicants and, in some cases, attendees, at the Clarion workshops is dropping. Part of it is the time committment. People are arriving at that point in their writing careers later in life, when they are already committed to family and jobs. They can’t afford the six weeks so they’ve moved to shorter format workshops like Viable Paradise. That alone will tell you something that disturbs me: short fiction has become a hobby. If it were a real job, people would pursue it as an employment opportunity instead of taking some other job first to pay the bills.

But another reality of the face of science fiction is the change in career building. Twenty five years ago, you made your name in short fiction. Having honed your craft and gathered an audience, you moved over to novels.

With the modern short SF market so small and competitive, a beginning writer would be foolish to expect to start out this way. It’s just as hard to “break in” through novels but you get paid better.

Clarion doesn’t teach novels. “Name withheld upon request” will get his or her hearts desire if the workshops gradually fade. Those Clarion trained grads will no longer be out there contributing to writing groups across the globe. That won’t stop writing groups or new writers. They’ll just be on their own, honing their craft to the best of their ability. In the end, who suffers the most? I say its the reader.

If the reader can’t find what they want, how long can we realistically expect them to hang around?

Best regards,

Alan

The Third Alternative Spring 2004 review posted at TangentOnline. Perhaps overly harsh. Still, of all of the magazines I’ve reviewed since February, TTA is the one I would suggest you try. If you like slipstream, it’s a must.