Coalescent

Monday morning quarterbacking Jeremy and Jason's decisions about publishing is rather presumptuous on my part as they've managed to keep Nightshade thriving through difficult times in publishing. I like both of them as people and I give them a lot of credit for the work they do. That said, the minute I saw this book cover it struck me that it was an all male line-up. It struck me for two reasons. The first was that I have become somewhat sensitized to the issue what with recent discussions online. These have been educational for me in certain ways -- not the send Gordon Van Gelder a slush bomb way but in the fact as to how ingrained sexism is in our society and as an exstention, publishing. The second thing that struck me about the all male roll call on the cover is that I knew what the table of contents was, and I was really psyched to have a piece of fiction in this anthology. I admire pretty much all of the writers in it, and more importantly it looked to me to be a very interesting mix of writers. Jonathan has been doing a great job with the anthologies he's been putting together, making very unique choices and combining different writers. I was somewhat disappointed because I thought one of the real strengths of the anthology would be the diversity of writers and styles -- I'm not speaking merely from a gender perspective here but I'm not excluding it either. I'm an avid short story reader, and two of the writers I'd be apt to plop down some money for are Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages. Of course, I'd do the same for Margo Lanagan and Lucius Shepard, no matter how many of their stories I'd already read this year. So this was an opportunity missed, I thought. I'd hate to see people not pick up the anthology and read it because of an issue with the cover. And again, the names are on the back, and it is important to sell books if you want to sell more. I think this discussion is something to keep in mind. The problem in publishing that some of the peole are pointing to here, like the one in society, is so insidiously endemic and entangled in economics and market perception, etc and incredibly difficult to excise without taking good tissue with it, but if the job is to be done there is nothing to do but dive in with the scalpel. I sincerely hope readers like the book and that Nightshade has a great success with it. I also hope people will remain vigilant about this issue.