Mar. 1st, 2005

coalescent: (Default)
There's an interesting discussion going on at the moment at the Nightshade forums, titled 'The resurgence of the small press zine'. It starts out as an enquiry about what zines are out there--things like Flytrap, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Electric Velocipede, and so on--and moves on to consideration of the value of such outlets. Following the suggestion that the pro mags are 'too conservative' for the material being published in the zines, Ellen Datlow responds:
In fact, I'll go further. I read all the boutique magazines mentioned above and others-- and they're basically just mixing genres and throwing in some mainstream. Some of the stories they publish are good. Others not as good. Very few break any kind of new ground in form or content. But overall, if you read all those magazines all the time only a few of the stories stand out. This is not to put them down but to put things in perspective. They aren't doing anything that hasn't been done before. It's always a positive to create more markets for good writers. More markets encourage more writers to continue to write short fiction.
And then on to why some writers, such as Jeff Vandermeer, aren't appearing much in the major venues:
Early on, I sent Ellen tons of stuff at Omni. Some of it, frankly, sucked, and some of it didn't fit Omni's brief. Since she's gone online I've had to overcome my natural aversion to submitting original fiction to non-hardcopy venues (which I'm over now). But now the problem is I'm writing very little short fiction and a lot of it gets snatched up by specific anthology venues. So Ellen's right--she's seen maybe 3 or 4 stories from me in the last few years. She didn't get a look at "Three Days" or "Secret Life," for example. I've decided to become more systematic in my approach with the short fiction I do have, so she will be seeing just about everything first from now on. Which doesn't guarantee anything. It's very *wrong* to assume an editor is not open to surreal or cross-genre work just because they're not taking *your* work.
And Gordon van Gelder talks about balancing commerce and art:
As I've been reading through this thread, the comments of one veteran editor keep ringing in my head---he said to me, "Of course Analog is selling better than any other magazine: it's the least risky."

I bring up that comment, I guess, to defend against the charge of a conservative attitude in F&SF. I don't particularly like that word, "conservative," but I'll be the first to say that I've got to balance the artistic side of things with the commercial side. For every reader who appreciates the challenge that a story like John McDaid's "Keyboard Variations" offers, there are two or three readers who favor less challenging work like Ron Goulart's lighter fare.
For what it's worth, I think 'Keyboard Variations' may be my favourite story of the year so far.

Anyway, there's more in the thread and it's all good, including Jeffrey Ford pointing out that any distinction between 'experimental' and 'traditional' fiction is essentially meaningless. What it did make me think about, though, was Hugo nominations. You'll be hearing a lot more from me about Hugo nominations over the next couple of days, but it just occurred to me that there's actually no category in which LCRW or Electric Velocipede are actually eligible for anything. They're not big enough to be semiprozines, and they're not fanzines; Locus put them in a category of their own, 'the miniscule press'. Have I got this right, or are they actually eligible in one of the categories? Anyone?
coalescent: (space baby)
The deadline for nominations for this year's Hugo Awards is March 11th, otherwise known as a week on Friday. If you're going to this year's Worldcon, or if you went to last year's Worldcon, then you're eligible to nominate, and I feel strongly that you should do so. I was shocked to find that last year only about 1 in 10 Worldcon attendees made any nominations for Best Novel, and that even less made nominations for all the other categories. For the Awards to mean anything, they need as many people's nominations as possible. It doesn't matter if there are books or stories you haven't read, or films you haven't seen: if you've seen something you think is worthy of recognition then you should nominate it. In most categories, it takes a lot fewer nominations than you might think to make the final ballot (more's the pity).

So. Over the next few days I'm going to make a series of posts, possibly as many as one per category, in an effort to (a) get people thinking about what they're going to nominate and (b) see if there's anything I should last-minute look at. OK, so it's unlikely I'll be able to acquire and read any novels, but I might be able to see films I've missed, or read some extra short stories. I'm hoping that we'll actually get some fairly substantial discussions out of this.

I plan to split the posts up between here, [livejournal.com profile] instant_fanzine and [livejournal.com profile] shortform, roughly as follows:
[livejournal.com profile] instant_fanzine

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
Best Related Book
John W Campbell Award for Best New Writer
Best Novel

[livejournal.com profile] shortform

Best Novella
Best Novellette
Best Short Story
Best Editor

[livejournal.com profile] coalescent

Best Fanzine
Best Fan Writer
Best Fan Artist and Best Professional Artist
Best Website
As I make each post, I'll link it back to this list; first posts to follow imminently.

The online ballot is here, and Cheryl Morgan's Hugo Award Voters Guide is here (and the recommendations list she keeps at Emerald City is here). And if you want to link to this entry to point out the discussion, feel free ...
coalescent: (space baby)
From the ballot, for the last time today:
A generally available non-professional publication devoted to science fiction, fantasy, or related subjects which by the close of the previous calendar year has published 4 or more issues, at least one of which appeared in the previous calendar year, and which does not qualify as a semiprozine.
Right. I freely admit that this is a category about which I know very little.

I have read and enjoyed Zoo Nation (edited by [livejournal.com profile] flyingsauce) and Banana Wings (brought to you by the [livejournal.com profile] fishlifters), so they'll probably both make my ballot. [livejournal.com profile] swisstone's Halo of Flies is another possible contender, and I don't want to be accused of taking Ansible for granted.

But I'm sure there must be more out there that I'm not remembering. Help me out?

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