Kazuo Ishiguro on Science Fiction (Oops... Sci-Fi)

Less than 3 hours after publishing my previous blog post on Earl Kemp's Who Killed Science Fiction? -- Christopher Barzak¹ posted a quote on his Facebook page from Booker Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro. The quote specifically mentioned the ghettoization of science fiction, which I had touched upon in the Kemp piece. I was so taken with the quote that I queried Christopher on the source, and he pointed me to a February 4 article in Scotland's Herald online, entitled "When 21st-century sci-fi meets human emotion."²

For those unfamiliar with Kazuo Ishiguro: According to Wikipedia, he "is one of the most celebrated contemporary fiction authors in the English-speaking world, having received four Man Booker Prize nominations, including winning the 1989 prize for his novel The Remains of the Day." By chance does that 1993 film title ring a bell?

Ishiguro is also the author of the 2005 novel Never Let Me Go. The film adaptation was released in the UK on February 11, which explains why he was in the news -- and being interviewed for this Herald article -- a week earlier. Last year I had read Never Let Me Go (courtesy of my local San Jose library system) after learning that the novel was being adapted into a movie.

Here's the quote:

It's almost like they've given us older writers licence to use it [science fiction]. Before, it was ghettoised and stigmatised. For years there has been a prejudice towards sci-fi writing, which I think has been to the loss of the literary world, and not vice versa. But with things like graphic novels now, people are taking it seriously.

—Kazuo Ishiguro

Though the quote speaks positively about SF, I would suggest that were you to ask authors Alex Garland and David Mitchell, whose work is specifically acknowledged in this article as examples of this "science fiction in lit" trend, both would vehemently deny that their stories have anything to do with "sci-fi." Rather, they would argue that their stories are about people, and real emotions, and the human condition in a setting that is different from our own reality. Heaven forbid these authors -- and their publishers -- should be associated with science fiction.

My point is made two paragraphs later when Ishiguro goes on to dis SF readers and moviegoers. The article reads: "In truth, the sci-fi label is misleading, says Ishiguro. 'I'm just wary like everybody else that it'll bring in the wrong audience with the wrong expectations.'"

I guess Ishiguro is worried the theatre attendees will be nothing but freaks and geeks -- Spock-eared, light-sabre-wielding, loin-cloth attired -- expecting onscreen space ships and/or dinosaurs.

Never Let Me Go, the film, stars Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, and The Social Network's Andrew Garfield. The film was adapted by Alex Garland, an old friend of Ishiguro's, and directed by Mark Romanek. It opened last year in the US.

If you did, in fact, see this film last year, I do hope you dressed appropriately, and viewed the film with the proper respect, sophistication, and expectations.

As to my take on the novel itself. This blog is not a "reviews" blog, per se, but I will say that, though I enjoyed the novel (it was indeed well written), it left a lot of questionable holes, sort of what I would expect from a writer, writing SF, but with no experience in the genre.

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Footnotes:

1. Christopher Barzak wrote the foreword to M. Rickert's first collection (and first book) Map of Dreams, which won the World Fantasy Award for best collection. I acquired and edited this collection for Golden Gryphon Press.

2. Gawd, I absolutely detest the use of the word "sci-fi" -- one can always tell when an outsider (read: mainstream) attempts to discuss "science fiction." Am I a snob? Well, yes, I guess I am. So be it. A snob proud of my involvement in the genre.


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Earl Kemp's Who Killed Science Fiction?

Paul Di Filippo, in a recent column in Barnes and Noble Review, recapped the state of science fiction and its various subgenres through the first decade of the twenty-first century. I'll leave the details of Paul's reviews and commentary for you to indulge in at your leisure, but Paul does mention that some continue to proclaim the demise of science fiction. Paul writes:

Of course, as we all now realize, the twenty-first century is proving both more and less science-fictional than the literature imagined, in strange and perhaps essentially unpredictable ways. This condition bedevils SF to some extent, as both its continuing credibility and utility come under question. Some authors and critics have recently even gone so far as to pronounce the mode deceased. Such statements regarding the death of SF are eternal. In 1960, for instance, a famous seminar was conducted under the heading "Who Killed Science Fiction?"

So for more than 50 years now, we've been hearing about the death of SF, especially with regards to genre magazines. I even freelance for one such magazine -- Realms of Fantasy -- that has seen three different owners/publishers in as many years, and yet the magazine's 100th issue will be published in June!

I was intrigued by the "Who Killed Science Fiction?" seminar -- actually, it was a survey rather than a seminar -- to which Paul referred, so I followed the link he provided to a fanzine -- eI29, December 2006; this particular volume is entitled The Compleat and Unexpurgated Who Killed Science Fiction? by Earl Kemp¹. eI29 includes the original 1960 edition of WKSF? plus the updates Kemp wrote in 1980 and again in 2006, all with new introductions.

In mid-1960, Kemp put together a questionnaire on the state of SF magazines (keep in mind that by 1960 the earlier, prolific pulp magazines had all ceased to exist) that he sent to 108 individuals, a virtual Who's Who in Science Fiction at the time: Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, Alfred Bester, James Blish, Robert Bloch, artist Hannes Bok, Ray Bradbury, Marion Zimmer Bradley -- and that's just a few of the names and only from the first two letters of the alphabet!

February Links & Things

This is my monthly wrap-up of February's Links & Things; you can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern. Note, however, that not all of my tweeted links make it into these month-end posts. Hopefully, you will find some value in what follows; and if you are new to my blog, you may want to catch up on my previous month-end posts: just look for the "Links and Things" tag in the right column of this blog.

• I want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the passing of author Melissa Mia Hall on January 28. I never met Melissa personally, but knew her from her stories in such acclaimed anthologies as Razored Saddles (Lansdale & LoBrutto), A Whisper of Blood (Datlow), and Post Mortem (Olson & Silva), to name just three. Melissa might very well be alive today had she been able to afford health insurance; sadly this is the situation for many new, midlist, and freelance writers, and editors. I've written about this previously and don't wish to dwell on it. But isn't it ironic that Melissa's tax dollars contributed to the government-sponsored healthcare for those very same individuals who are now attempting to dismantle the new healthcare law. Ironic, indeed. If you didn't know, or know of, Melissa Mia Hall, you can read PW editor Peter Cannon's heartfelt eulogy; if you have a need to know more about Missy's health and health insurance issues, please read Sarah Strohmeyer's "The Least Among Us" on The Lipstick Chronicles blog.

• If you haven't done so, please read my previous blog post on the Writer's Knowledge Base. This search engine was designed specifically for writers (and editors) and should be bookmarked immediately.

• The Ooh Tray blog describes itself as "a digest of film and literary culture -- independent, investigative and satirical.... written for those [who] want more from their criticism [with] less hyperbole." The Ooh Tray has been reviewing books that it terms "Modern Classics," which includes the recently reviewed The Empire of Ice Cream, a collection of stories by Jeffrey Ford. The reviewer, Richard McCarthy, writes: "Ford has looked at the nature of story-telling and understood that its power can lie not just in evoking, informing and sharing but also in reshaping that which we consider to be already known." [Note: I acquired and edited The Empire of Ice Cream for Golden Gryphon Press. The stories contained therein have won numerous awards: "Botch Town," original to the collection, won the 2007 World Fantasy Award for best novella; title story "The Empire of Ice Cream" won the 2003 Nebula Award for best novelette (and was a finalist for the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial awards); "The Annals of Eelin-Ok" won the Speculative Literature Foundation's 2005 Fountain Award; and the collection itself was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of the year.]

• On K. M. Weiland's (@KMWeiland) WordPlay blog, guest blogger Victoria Mixon (@VictoriaMixon) writes about "The 4 Most Common Mistakes Fiction Editors See." Victoria writes: "Before you rush your beloved manuscript off to an editor, here are the four most common mistakes fiction editors see:" 1) Unfocused structure; 2) Misplaced backstory; 3) Underdeveloped character; and 4) Unpolished prose. For the details behind these points, and to read the more than 50 comments, do click on the link to WordPlay.

• Thanks to Robert J. Sawyer's Facebook post for this: Canada's Globe and Mail online asks: "Where have all the book editors gone?" And the answer? "With the publishing industry in turmoil, beset by competitive challenges unknown a decade ago, the long-lunching gentlefolk who once managed the mysterious process of literary midwifery are being replaced by fast-paced production workers, paid by the paragraph and often operating from home. If Jackie O were still in the game, she would likely be outsourced.... Authors, finding today’s downsized publishers increasingly unwilling to invest their own resources in the often laborious process of polishing rough diamonds into marketable gems, are now often forced to hire their own editors -- before even submitting their manuscripts for publication." Though the article focuses on specific Canadian publishers, the comments and analysis pertain to the industry as a whole. [Note: As previously noted, I am a book editor; I am available to work with authors on their manuscripts.]

Locus 2010 Year in Review - Anthologies

In a previous blog post, I wrote that my co-edited anthology Is Anybody Out There? (with Nick Gevers, Daw Books, June 2010) had made the Locus 2010 Recommended Reading List (RRL).

I observed after the RRL was posted, that there was mixed feelings from those whose work appeared on the list. Many, like myself, were pleased/excited/grateful/overwhelmed (select appropriate word depending on the individual's emotional level at the time) whereas others couldn't have cared less.

So I thought I would take this opportunity to share some thoughts as to why I was pleased upon learning that IAOT? was on the list.

Since I no longer subscribe to Locus magazine¹, Felicity Shoulders, one of the contributors to the anthology, graciously provided me with all the relevant information in the February 2011 issue.

Here is Locus's introduction to the Anthologies category for the 2010 year in review:

We're recommending a total of 19 anthologies, down from last year's 26. We received 121, up from last year's 101. [FULL DISCLOSURE: People on our reviewing panel have edited some of these anthologies. They were not allowed to vote for their own books and received no special treatment.]

We split the anthologies in the way we list them, though not in the voting, between original, reprint, and Year's Best categories.

Original anthologies are the most important in that they are a major source of new short fiction. This year's 9 is a significant drop from last year's 13.

— Francesca Myman & Amelia Beamer

Nineteen recommended anthologies out of 121 received: that's less than 16% of the total -- and that total represents 20 more anthologies than were considered last year. So more anthologies were received this year than last, and yet only 9 original anthologies have been recommended over last year's 13 recommended titles. I realize I'm simply reiterating what Locus stated above, but I'm trying to emphasize my point here: Is Anybody Out There? is one of these 9 original anthologies -- the only mass market paperback -- and is listed among such heavyweights as The Way of the Wizard (John Joseph Adams), The Beastly Bride (Datlow & Windling), Black Winds (S. T. Joshi), Warriors (George R. R. Martin), Godlike Machines (Jonathan Strahan), and Swords & Dark Magic (Strahan & Lou Anders), among others -- and this is just the original category and doesn't include the year's best volumes and other reprint anthologies.

So, yes, I'm pleased that IAOT? was recognized by the powers that be at Locus, such that the anthology was included in the RRL. My hope is that more readers will learn about the anthology through Locus -- and Locus online -- and consider reading the stories contained therein.

Of course, in the "year in review" columns, each reviewer chooses his/her own way of recognizing any particular title. Sometimes the book garners a complete sentence, more often a phrase within a sentence, and occasionally the book is listed as merely one of a number of titles that the reviewer acknowledges. With that in mind, here is what each individual reviewer had to say about my co-edited anthology:

Francesca Myman & Amelia Beamer: "The search for intelligent alien life is examined in Is Anybody Out There?, edited by Nick Gevers & Marty Halpern (DAW): from Paul McAuley's introduction: 'the truth is likely to be far stranger than anything we can imagine and that's why it's important to imagine everything we can.'"

Gary K. Wolfe: "Other anthologies, usually theme-based, seemed designed to see what writers could do with some of the field's most time-tested conventions:...first contact (Is Anybody Out There?, Nick Gevers & Marty Halpern)...."

Gardner Dozois: "Is Anybody Out There?, edited by Nick Gevers & Marty Halpern, featured good work by Pat Cadigan, Jay Lake, Alex Irvine, Matthew Hughes, and others."

Jonathan Strahan: "These were not the only worthwhile anthologies of 2010, though. I also happily recommend...Nick Gevers & Marty Halpern's Is Anybody Out There?..."

Rich Horton: "DAW cut its schedule of original anthologies quite a bit in 2010 -- of those that appeared, the clear winner is Is Anybody Out There?, edited by Nick Gevers & Marty Halpern, an anthology of Fermi Paradox stories."

This last entry is from Locus online, Lois Tilton's 2010 Short Fiction Reviews in Review:

The "Fermi Paradox" anthology Is Anybody Out There? had David Langford's neat "Graffiti in the Library of Babel."

So there you have it. The Locus 2010 Year in Review as it pertains to anthologies, and specifically IAOT?

If you are new to this blog:
Right below the More Red Ink header logo at the top of the blog, you'll find a tab entitled "Is Anybody Out There?" that leads directly to a dedicated page. This page links to and summarizes all my blog posts on the anthology. Amongst these blog posts you will find the complete text to six of the stories included in the anthology -- the stories by Michael Arsenault, Pat Cadigan, Sheila Finch, Jay Lake, David Langford, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. If you haven't already done so, I hope you'll take the time to read these stories, either now or later. But if you've gotten this far and wish to check out the stories now, here's the page link. Enjoy!

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Footnote

¹ I subscribed to Locus for more than 20 years, but increasing philosophical differences with the magazine's content and disagreement with how the Locus Awards were managed compelled me to allow my subscription to expire a few years ago; nevertheless, this in no way detracts from my appreciation of and respect for the magazine's (and staff's) dedication and contributions to the sf/f/h communities. When I have requested information and photographs from Locus, over the years, for use on dust jackets and in this blog, the staff has always been forthcoming, for which I am grateful.

The Writer's Knowledge Base

You may have noticed the Writer's Knowledge Base badge in the right frame of my blog... in between the Google Search field and my Facebook icon; it's been there for a few weeks now.

The Writer's Knowledge Base (WKB) is a joint project between a mystery writer and a software engineer: Elizabeth Spann Craig and Mike Fleming, respectively.

Elizabeth states, in a blog post dated January 25, that when she did a Google search for "POV," the "top sites returned are for a video that PBS made (which isn't on writing POV), a couple definitions by Wikipedia (several of which have to do with automobiles), a racy YouTube video, and some freeware." So she asked herself, What does an author do when Google isn't enough?

Elizabeth goes on to explain how this "Search Engine for Writers" came about and where she gets her sources for the links and information. She (@elizabethscraig) first started tweeting the information and links that she found, but unfortunately not all writers are on Twitter. Then she started sharing the links weekly on her blog, but the links weren't easily searchable. Until, that is, Mike worked with the links that Elizabeth provided him -- links from over 1,500 blogs, and counting -- and created the Writer's Knowledge Base: a free resource "enabling writers to access information that would help them write better books and articles."

Elizabeth quotes Mike Fleming in her blog post, and I'm going to do likewise; even if you choose not to read her blog, you should read this brief quote from Mike to understand how the WKB works:

The search is done instantly over thousands of writing-related articles ranging from character development to author promotion on social media. Unlike Google, all of the results are relevant to you as a writer. They may not all interest you, of course, but at least searching for "plot" will bring back articles on how to plot your story and not news articles on terrorist plots.

And in a follow-up blog post, Elizabeth answers a few questions about the search engine, like the types of content she includes: "I’m usually looking for craft-related, industry-related, social media, promo-related, or writing inspiration posts. I love posts that are easily skimmed (as opposed to a block of text--most writers are working with short amounts of time), have great content, and can be helpful to many writers."

So I decided to give the Writer's Knowledge Base search engine a test run. Recently I wrote a blog post in December on "style sheets," a subject near and dear to me as a book editor. I entered "style sheet" in the WKB search field, which provided 124 results. [Note: This test was done a week or so ago; I've just run the test again and was provided 127 results. That's a good sign, as it means new resources/links/information has since been added to the WKB.] The first result is (still) "Writing a series? Why you should use a style sheet." My blog post on style sheets is listed as the sixth entry. [Note: This has since changed; my post is now the ninth entry. The key reason is, though I used "style sheet" in the body of the blog post, it's not part of the title, which is: "Writing with Style (Sheets, That Is)." You know me, always one to have to write with a flair!]

Do check out both of Elizabeth's posts on the WKB for more details, and how to potentially include your blog posts in the search engine. If you are a writer and/or editor, be sure to bookmark the WKB, and take advantage of all the time and energy that Elizabeth and Mike have put into creating and refining this tool.


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Picasso on Art via Pablo Cortez

Another story that I've recently read, which I am seriously considering for my Alien Contact anthology (forthcoming from Night Shade Books in November), is "Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song," by Ernest Hogan. See my previous blog post, "We Have Alien Contact," for background on this anthology, including a complete listing of the stories (so far) that have been submitted and/or recommended to me, in addition to stories that I myself have added to the list.

When I contacted Ernesto about a possible contribution to the anthology, here's what he had to say about "Guerrilla Mural...": "It's about a Chicano muralist/graffitist who turns out to be the person who breaks through to communicate (sort of) with telepathic microbes that live in Jupiter's Great Red Spot. Later I expanded it into my first novel Cortez on Jupiter."¹ Sound intriguing? Indeed. "Guerrilla Mural..." involves art, and a Zulu, and Aztecs, and alien contact, and is written from the POV of a Chicano -- and is pure zany Ernest Hogan. The only other author with whom I can compare Hogan's writing would be Paul Di Filippo.

"Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song" was originally published in issue four of Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine (Summer 1989), edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch; this particular issue was devoted to "Science Fiction," as noted on the cover above. The graphic is a bit difficult to see/read because all the Pulphouse magazine covers were stamped using an iridescent ink, thus reflecting the light. (According to former Pulphouse publisher Dean Wesley Smith, the process is called "foil stamping.") Each issue of the magazine was published in an edition of 1,000 numbered trade hardcover copies and 250 signed (by all contributors) and numbered leatherbound copies. I bought a copy of the first issue (#19 of 1,000), liked what I read, and then subscribed; so all of my later editions have matching numbers: #71 of 1,000. The last volume, number twelve, was published in Fall 1993. Pulphouse Publishing just may have been the first press to self-publish at that time.

But back to "Guerrilla Mural..." Here's the protagonist in the middle of one of his rants:

Me, Pablo Cortez, infamous guerrilla muralist from the wild, crumbling concrete and stucco overgrowth of L.A. -- who refused to be absorbed into the decaying society I satirized in my work long after my fellow wall-defacers were caught, arrested and offered a chance to become honest artists who paint on neat, clean canvases that are displayed in sterile galleries, and bought by the affluent to show everybody how sensitive they are by what they choose to decorate their expensive, prestigious apartments with. I, who tattooed the Picasso quote, "PAINTING IS NOT DONE TO DECORATE APARTMENTS. IT IS AN INSTRUMENT OF WAR FOR ATTACK AND DEFENSE AGAINST THE ENEMY" on my own left arm with a felt-tip pen and a safety-pin. The guy who really meant it when he helped paint -- fast, so we could get it done and get the hell out of there before getting our heads busted -- Quetzalcoatl choking on smog, Uncle Sam holding up the heart of a draftee for the "disturbance" in South Africa (soon to be Zululand -- again) to the gaping jaws of a Biomechanoid War God, mutilated/spacesuited corpses and countless mass portraits of the ever-growing throngs of the homeless to decorate the featureless, empty walls of the blank architecture where Mr. and Ms. Los Angeles could see as they did the freeway boogie to work. Siquerios and Orozco and every spray-can wielding vato would’ve been proud!

Personally, I'm not much of an art aficionado; when I read the Picasso quote I immediately searched for it on the web -- and was shocked to learn that it was, indeed, a legitimate quote. Picasso dissing apartment art! Who woulda thought....

Ernest Hogan, the author of this story, and I go back a ways; he contributed an original story, "Coyote Goes Hollywood," to my co-edited Witpunk anthology, which was published by Four Walls Eight Windows in 2003. So when I was looking for a previously published, over-the-top "alien contact" story that involved another culture (Earth culture as opposed to alien culture), I immediately thought of Ernesto.

One final comment on Pulphouse Publishing:

My most prized set of books from them is The Collected Short Fiction of Robert Sheckley -- five slipcased volumes, signed by the author as well as the introducer of each volume. My set is #282 of 300. I haven't really thought about this set of books until now, so I did a web search just to see if there were any sets available "out there": I found a few hardcover sets like mine (the set was also published in trade paperback), ranging in price from $600.00 to a high of $1,240.00. Whew.

I bring up Robert Sheckley because if there ever was a witpunk, Sheckley is (was) it. And I have to believe that Sheckley's sardonic writing had a direct influence on both Ernest Hogan and Paul Di Filippo.

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Footnote:

¹ Unfortunately, Cortez on Jupiter has been out of print for quite some time; it was originally published as a mass market paperback by Tor Books in 1990. This is another example in which a midlist author's books have gone out print long before their time. I would suggest to Ernest Hogan that he consider releasing the book in a variety of eBook formats as well as print on demand (POD). There are a myriad of cost-effective resources now available to authors for eBook and POD publishing.

Sony Daily Edition eReader Goes High Calibre

[Updated August 15, 2012: See Comments below]

I "received" a Sony PRS-950 Daily Edition eReader for the holidays (it was on sale at the time at Best Buy). After much research, I found that the Daily Edition handles PDF files better than any other eReader, with the capability to split columns, and even display a two-page mode when in landscape. The eReader has Adobe Reader Mobile installed. Since I receive a lot of electronic submissions from authors, either as Word docs or as PDFs -- and I can convert any Word doc to a PDF¹ -- the Daily Edition seemed the best fit. If viewing a PDF is important to you, and you're in the market for an eReader, then this video, which lasts a bit over 8 minutes, showcases the PDF capabilities of the Sony PRS-950. One caveat, however, regarding the contents of the video: the person demonstrating the device states that when you increase the font size of the PDF, the eReader will reflow the text. This is technically correct. However, the reflow will essentially split the line where necessary, regardless of word spacing; so the majority of lines will have a word cut, with the remainder of the word on the next line. This has been one of the most frustrating aspects of reading PDFs on the eReader. If I don't increase the font size, then the print is too small to read. If I increase the font size, then words are split at the end of nearly every line. My alternative is to read the PDF in landscape, which for some reason automatically increases the size of the font without splitting words. The caveat with this, though, is that it takes three landscape screens to view an actual page of text. Flicking your finger across the screen after only a few lines in order to move the text becomes tiresome when reading a very long file.

This eReader also has an improved e-ink display and better touchscreen capabilities than the slightly older PRS-900 model. And more: I can, if needed, highlight text within a story, look up a word in the internal dictionary, and even scrawl a basic note on a page with the included stylus.

I absolutely despise reading any content of length online/onscreen, so an eReader of one brand or another was at the top of my list of "wants." Whenever I want to read anything of length (say more than 3 pages or so), be it a short story, online magazine article, blog, whatever, I'm inclined to print out a hardcopy to read. Now, I have the eReader, which will hopefully allow me to be more mobile with my reading, and reduce a lot of the hardcopy.

My other reason for selecting the PRS-950 Daily Edition was its wireless access to a web browser, as well as apps like Gmail, Twitter, Wikipedia, etc. During my reading, I often come upon something in the content that I want to look up or share with others, and the wireless capability of the PRS-950 would allow me to do that, especially if I'm mobile.

But, alas, this is where the PRS-950 fails. Sorry, Sony, but that's the truth! I tried the wireless option in one environment (my home) with AT&T wireless and in another environment (my daughter's home) with Comcast wireless. In both instances the PRS-950 continually dropped the connection, couldn't retain the connection, and would inevitably lead to a "DNS server" error every time. Once the eReader displays that nasty DNS error, there is no other option but to return to the "Home" screen and then access the app again and try to reconnect. Over and over and over....

I contacted Sony's online chat eSupport. The support person had me "reset" the eReader (which I had previously done on my own), rekey the wifi encryption code (which I had previously done on my own, which didn't make sense even then because I had a connection, the eReader just wouldn't hold it), and other such stuff, all of which I knew would make no difference whatsoever, but I played along anyhow. After a 20+ minute chat, the support person provided me with a case number, an 800 telephone number, and recommended that I call that number and request "level 5" support. I did. I was on hold for more than 35 minutes before my call was taken. The entire telephone call lasted just over 73 minutes. During that call, the support person literally took over control of my PC (after requesting my permission, of course) to check my wireless modem settings, etc. But I told him that the eReader demonstrated the same problem under two separate wireless environments so it couldn't be my AT&T modem settings, it had to be a problem with the eReader. Bottom line: Sony replaced the eReader. I provided a credit card number for security and received a new eReader within the week; I was required to return my defective eReader within 14 days (a return FedEx label was provided so there was no cost to me), otherwise my credit card would be charged for the eReader. No problem. The replacement and return went smoothly.

No Beginning, No End...

I've been reading previously published stories for my Alien Contact anthology, to be published by Night Shade Books in November. This reading is an ongoing process amidst everything else I do, other deadlines that I have. See my previous blog post, "We Have Alien Contact," for background on this anthology, including a complete listing of the stories (so far) that have been submitted and/or recommended to me, in addition to stories that I myself have added to the list as well.

Currently I'm reading the novella-length story "Bradbury Weather" by Caitlín R. Kiernan, which was originally published in 2005 in Subterranean Magazine issue #2. The story is included in the author's science fiction collection, A Is for Alien, also published by Subterranean Press, in 2009. Caitlín recommended two stories to me that she felt would be appropriate for the anthology, and kindly provided me with a review copy of A Is for Alien in PDF format, which I am now able to read on my new Sony PRS-950 Daily Edition eReader. (I already have a blog post planned on the eReader and related issues.)

I don't recall ever quoting a fictional character in one of my blog posts, so this is probably a first. But I was so taken with a quote in the opening paragraph of "Bradbury Weather" that I had to post it here. The paragraph appears in a collection of proverbs written by an anonymous Gyuto monk; the book is in the possession of Dorry, the protagonist in the story:

No story has a beginning, and no story has an end. Beginnings and endings may be conceived to serve a purpose, to serve a momentary and transient intent, but they are, in their truer nature, arbitrary and exist solely as a construct of the mind of man." ― a Gyuto monk

So is the monk simply referring to the beginning and end of an actual story? Or is he referring to the story of one's life? Or am I just toying with some philosophical conundrum that really has no meaning whatsoever other than to occupy a few lines in the opening paragraph of a fictional story? Indeed, this is a quote from a fictional character in a work of fiction, but then again aren't these words, in some, albeit creative, way, spoken, or at least written, by the author herself?

By the way, the protagonist reads that one paragraph one last time, three pages before the end of "Bradbury Weather": "I open the book and read the words aloud again, the words underlined in red ink, that I might understand how not to lose my way in this tale which is almost all that remains of me."

Is Anybody Out there? and the Locus 2010 Recommended Reading List

Since I'm obviously not in this business for the big bucks... (What, you ask? No big bucks? Sorry, no, but it's not that I wouldn't like big bucks!) ...I have to hope that my efforts at least -- and those of my contributing authors -- gain some recognition within the genre after the book is published. My anthology Is Anybody Out There? which I co-edited with Nick Gevers (Daw Books, 2010), has been selected as one of 9 original anthologies on the Locus 2010 Recommended Reading List. The list has just been officially posted today on Locus online.

All 8 of the other anthologies were either published in hardcover or trade paperback; and there are indeed some fine original anthologies on that list. I'm in the company of editors Lou Anders, Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, Gardner Dozois & George R. R. Martin, and Jonathan Strahan, to name just six. Whew! There is a lot of anthology fire power behind just those names alone.

Is Anybody Out There? is the only mass market paperback on that list. I believe this is due, in part, to two reasons: first, few publishers publish mass market paperback anthologies; and of those who do, the stories typically tend to be less substantial, with IAOT? fortunately being the obvious exception to the rule. So I wish to thank both Gardner Dozois and Rich Horton for reviewing IAOT? in Locus magazine. I'm certain that their detailed, concientious reviews had an impact on the anthology -- and three of the anthology's stories (see below) -- being included on the 2010 Recommended Reading List (hereafter known simply as The List). The links on Gardner's and Rich's names will lead you (eventually) to their respective reviews.

In addition to the anthology as a whole, three of the stories are included in the short story category on The List. All three stories were previously posted in their entirety on More Red Ink; I don't know if posting those stories for free here helped influence their inclusion on The List, but it obviously didn't hurt. What is sad is that none of the other stories made The List...

That said, the three stories are "The Taste of Night" by Pat Cadigan, "Permanent Fatal Errors" by Jay Lake, and "Graffiti in the Library of Babel" by David Langford. The links on the story titles will jump you to the individual stories themselves for your reading pleasure (assuming, of course, that you haven't already read them). I have a blog page set up for Is Anybody Out There? that includes links to three additional stories -- by Michael Arsenault, Sheila Finch, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch -- plus more reviews and news.


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January Links & Things

This is my monthly wrap-up of January's Links & Things; you can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern. Note, however, that not all of my tweeted links make it into these month-end posts. Hopefully, you find some value in what follows; and if you are new to my Links & Things blog entries, you may want to check out my previous posts: just look for the "Links and Things" tag in the right column of this blog. There are 26 previous blog posts.

• The beauty of the internet... Where do people find these things? Lee Thomson has posted a PDF of Gene Roddenberry's "First Draft" dated March 11, 1964, of his original pitch for the Star Trek television series -- typos, warts, and all. Unless you are a very hardcore Trek freak, you probably didn't know that originally the captain was named Robert M. April, aboard the Yorktown; and "Mr. Spock" was to be the first lieutenant: with "a face so heavy-lidded and satanic you might almost expect him to have a forked tail. Probably half Martian, he has a slightly reddish complexion and semi-pointed ears." Many episodes are suggested, and if you are a fan of the show, you'll actually recognize a few of these. (via Robert Sawyer's Facebook post)

• My friend, the author Andrew Fox, whose work includes Fat White Vampire Blues, Bride of the Fat White Vampire, and, most recently, The Good Humor Man (which I edited for Tachyon Publications), was interviewed in The Green Man Review. When Andrew was asked the following series of questions: "Do you read reviews or comments of your work? Do negative comments bother you? How do you suggest handling unfair public criticism?" -- he responded in part: "One of the early reviews of my most recently published book, The Good Humor Man, or, Calorie 3501, included some unfair (and I thought underhanded) criticisms, essentially tarring me with the 'R' word [Racism]....The more you protest, the deeper you end up rubbing the dirt into the carpet. As a satirist, I realize I’m going to come in for some holier-than-thou criticisms from readers who (a) don't get my sense of humor; (b) sense that I may lean in an opposite political direction from them; or (c) are looking for any excuse, no matter how small, to vent their righteous fury in print or pixels. So, rather than engage with that critic, I let it go...." Excellent interview.

• In a recent blog post I wrote about Sony Corp's recent exhibit featuring a flexible electronic paper (e-paper) device. Well, Crunch Gear recently announced that Samsung had acquired display technology (aka e-paper) firm Liquavista BV. The article provides the full Samsung press release. I suspect e-ink displays will be replaced by e-paper devices at some point in the near future. (via @crunchgear)

• Are you in the market for a new short story market? You may want to consider Realms of Fantasy magazine. On the Clarion Writers' Workshop blog, RoF editor Douglas Cohen provides some insights into getting published in the magazine. Granted, the magazine has had two new publishers in as many years, but no issues have been skipped since the previous owner's first issue, and the new owners, Damnation Books, have just sent their first issue (February 2011) to the printer. The April issue is on schedule; and the June issue will be 100 pages marking the magazine's 100th issue. (And yes, I am associated with RoF magazine.)

• Author John C. Wright provides readers his "Patented One Session Lesson in the Mechanics of Fiction," which may be one of the best writing manuals, accomplished in a single, albeit lengthy, blog post, that I have ever read. According to John's intro, he put this "lesson" together for a friend who is a nonfiction writer and is toying with the idea of writing fiction. This friend couldn't have had a better instructor. This really is an awesome post on writing. You don't get a teaser/excerpt here from John's blog post; go forth and read it yourself. And check out the 50 comments, too. (via @johnottinger) [Note: After reading John's blog post above, I feel that I no longer have to blurb any other "how to write" posts -- ever; so, that's it, at least for this Links & Things blog post. This is the only one you need to read.]

David Langford's Story Is Also One of the Best

I received an email from David Langford, informing me that his short story "Graffiti in the Library of Babel" will be included in the Year's Best SF 16 anthology, which is co-edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, and forthcoming from HarperCollins/EOS in May. No cover art is available as yet, but the book can now be preordered.

"Graffiti in the Library of Babel" was originally published in Is Anybody Out There? -- an anthology of original stories on the Fermi Paradox -- which I co-edited with Nick Gevers, and was published by Daw Books in June 2010.

Six stories, including "Graffiti in the Library of Babel," have previously been posted on this blog in their entirety. If you are new to More Red Ink, the following link will take you to the main IAOT? page from which you can access all six stories, plus details on the book's genesis, reviews, and information pertaining to the Fermi Paradox and the SETI program. Or, if you just wish to read David Langford's story at this time, you can click here: "Graffiti in the Library of Babel."

And if you haven't read "Graffiti..." please do so; it's a wonderful story of alien contact via a library's database.

And now that the nominating has begun for the 2011 Hugo Awards, please do consider the stories included in Is Anybody Out There? In addition to David Langford's story being accepted for the Hartwell and Cramer Year's Best SF 16, Pat Cadigan's story, "The Taste of Night" -- also from Is Anybody Out There? -- was accepted for both Dozois's Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection and Strahan's The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 5 -- which I also blogged about and you'll find links to these as well on the IAOT? page.


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Liz Williams's The Iron Khan -- First Review

If you are a fan of the Detective Inspector Chen series by UK author Liz Williams, and you've been eagerly awaiting the publication of book 5 in the series, The Iron Khan (print edition), then your wait is -- Finally! -- over, thanks to the amazing efforts of the folks at Morrigan Books.

The Iron Khan trade paperback edition is currently in stock at Amazon.com via CreateSpace, an Amazon company. Morrigan also has plans for a limited hardcover edition to be available through Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore in San Diego. I have no additional information on the limited edition at this time, but I will post further details as soon as I have them.

The first review of The Iron Khan (at least the first review that I am aware of) has appeared. What's intriguing about this review can be summed up by a comment Liz Williams made in a recent post on her LiveJournal: "...reviewers often (as in this case) pick up on themes which were not intentional/subconscious, but which nonetheless seem to have emerged as dominant."

The review appears in Strange Horizons, and is penned by Kelly Jennings, who does double duty by reviewing the previous DI Chen title, The Shadow Pavilion, alongside The Iron Khan. Jennings writes:

In The Shadow Pavilion, Lord Lady Seijin, a dual-souled (one soul is male, the other female) immortal assassin, has been hired to assassinate Mhara, the new Emperor of Heaven. Having taken the throne, Mhara at once begins making changes. Some of Mhara's subjects welcome these changes. Others do not....

This theme -- both that change can be good, and that it will be resisted, often violently -- is the common thread running through both novels. With such a topic, the slide into cliché would be easy: simple villains opposing good, simple heroes charging the barricades. Williams resists that lure, writing situations to demonstrate that change in itself is neither good nor bad....

[In The Iron Khan] every plot movement from the opening pages turns on change. Indeed, we begin to see, reading this text, how throughout the series every relationship has turned on changes in social and spiritual attitudes, which have made possible bonds which were previously forbidden.... There is, further, the matter of Inari’s pregnancy -- her child, still unborn at the end of The Iron Khan...is the reincarnation of Lord Lady Seijin, who was the enemy of Heaven throughout the previous novel; the enemy, also, of Inari and Chen. Not only does this suggest a major change for Seijin -- that the villain can change -- but consider what it says about Chen and Inari: their enemy will be their child, whom they will raise up and love. Is this not the definition of true change?...

At the end of The Iron Khan, Inari’s child, forecast to bring some major change to Heaven and Earth and all the several Hells, is about to be born. Considering who the child was and what he/she has been up to, even before birth, I can’t wait to see what comes next.

I've you've not read the Detective Inspector Chen series, then hopefully this review will give you just a wee taste of what you've been missing -- a series that is in a class all by itself. Please do read the full review on Strange Horizons. And yes, I'm prejudiced about the DI Chen series: I was fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to work (as editor) with Liz Williams on all five titles.

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E-Paper: A Precursor to Protean Paper

In my previous blog post on "accidental plagiarism," I included the full text of the story "How to be a Fictionaut, Chapter 19: Safety Check" by Ian Watson; the story was originally published in the April 1996 issue of Interzone. And if you hang in there with me on this blog post, you'll find the text of yet another story included in its entirety.

I was going to include the following entry in my month-end Links & Things, but I decided, instead, to dedicate an entire blog post to the subject....

As reported in the Asian journal Tech-On!, Sony Corp exhibited a 13.3-inch flexible electronic paper (e-paper) device at Eco-Products 2010, a trade show on green technologies held in Tokyo, December 9-11, 2010. This was the first time that the e-paper device had been displayed publicly. Sony evidently had little to say of this new device. However, Alan Henry, in an article for Gearlog.com, writes: "The [device] is designed to be a prototype for a gadget that could display images and text in high resolution and possibly someday replace traditional paper in a thin, flexible, and portable way.... Sony also didn't note whether the technology would be coming to any future product, but we can assume they wouldn't put it on display if they weren't thinking about it." Alan states in the article that he used to work in lab "helping design and test thin-film circuitry" that could be used to create "flexible displays that could be mounted on clothing or on other malleable surfaces like backpacks or briefcases."

Sony's e-paper, and Alan Henry's comment about flexible displays mounted on surfaces like backpacks and briefcases, all reminded me of a story by Paul Di Filippo entitled "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" This story was Paul's contribution to anthology The Silver Gryphon, which I co-edited with publisher Gary Turner (Golden Gryphon Press, 2003). The Silver Gryphon marked the twenty-fifth book -- as in the silver (25th) anniversary -- from the press and included contributions from all the authors who comprised the first twenty-four books. These authors included Kevin J. Anderson, Kage Baker, Michael Bishop, Andy Duncan, Jeffrey Ford, James Patrick Kelly, Joe R. Lansdale, Robert Reed, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Lucius Shepard, Howard Waldrop, and others -- 20 authors/20 stories, with cover art by Thomas Canty.¹

2010 Year End Links & Things

I completed two hard-deadline projects the first week in January, which is why you're reading my December Links & Things in this, the second week of the new year. The first project, working on the PDF layout for the February issue of Realms of Fantasy, is the subject of my previous blog post in which I shared some of the problems I encountered using the new Adobe Reader X. My second project was the new Darger and Surplus novel Dancing with Bears -- which I reviewed and copyedited -- by Michael Swanwick and forthcoming in May from Night Shade Books. And as I type this, the fifteen manuscript files for the April Realms of Fantasy have just arrived in my Inbox.

This is my monthly, though occasionally late, wrap-up of Links & Things; you can receive these links in real time by following me on Twitter: @martyhalpern. Note, however, that not all of my tweeted links make it into these month-end posts.

• Paul Di Filippo, one of the contributing authors to my co-edited anthology Is Anybody Out There? brought to my attention this BBC News article: "Why haven't we found aliens yet?" by Alex Hudson. The article covers most of the basic theories, and people, that are oft-quoted on this subject -- except this one: "Philosophy Professor Nick Bostrom, of Oxford University, has even posed the question whether humans are living in a computer simulation created by beings with a superior intellect. In this model, other beings would not be created within that programme." Interesting thought, that we are residing in some greater beings' virtual Earth....
• The classic "psychic warrior" novel Dream Baby -- one of the best war novels I have ever read -- written by my friend, author Bruce McAllister, is finally back in print from CreateSpace. One of the book's blurbs is from James Sandos, Intelligence Officer, US Air Force, Southeast Asia: "Dream Baby captures the combat experience as few novels do and unmasks our 'secret war' -- the one that still hasn't really been revealed. This is one of the few Vietnam novels that will last." Check out this book if you haven't yet read it. The novel is based on the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award-nominated novella of the same name.
• So, you think that as a writer and blogger you're all alone in the world? Well, you're really not alone, per se, just by yourself. Josh Duboff at The Awl shares with us his experiences in "The Night Blogger Blogs Alone." Josh writes: "One thing that happens is that you stop speaking altogether. One Thursday afternoon, shifting between various gchats -- all with friends bored in their cubicles at offices across the city -- I realized that I hadn’t said a word out loud in close to 18 hours. So I said 'test' out loud. For a split second, before the word came out, I was actually worried about whether or not I was still able to speak. After I found that I could, I then worried about the fact that I had been legitimately worried about this." (via @Mediabistro)
• And speaking of blogging, Warren Whitlock's Best Seller Book Marketing blog has a guest post by Denise Wakeman entitled "13 Mistakes Authors Make on Their Blogs." Denise breaks out the 13 mistakes into three categories: Content, Design, and Marketing. She adds: "I've discovered several common mistakes authors make with their blogs. Most aren't using features available with blogging software. Eyes glaze over with the mention of RSS, pinging, trackbacks and permalinks. Does this describe how you feel? You may be ignoring these things, hoping you don’t really need to know. But you do if you want great results from you book blog." (via @WarrenWhitlock by way of @BookBuzzr)
• If you've read Damon Knight's Creating Short Fiction then you'll be familiar with the concept of "Fred" -- if not, then you need to read this "Classic Guide to Writing Short Fiction" (that's the subtitle, by the way), like now! -- then you'll enjoy Jonathan Danz's (@JonathanDanz) blog post entitled "Working with Fred" wherein the author briefly quotes from Knight's book and also Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

Adobe Reader X Gotcha

I completed my review and copyedit of the layout PDF for the February issue of Realms of Fantasy magazine; this will be the first issue under new owners Damnation Books.

I had just installed Adobe Reader X (aka Version 10), which complicated the process, because I had never used this version before for editing. I had worked about three hours on the layout, highlighting many (many) words and sections of text and, where appropriate, inserting comments; highlighting and comments are new with Reader X. At one point I saved my work but it appeared that Reader had crashed: the entire Save screen had grayed out, and there was no moving hourglass, no "working" text, no "saving" text; nothing to indicate that the app was indeed doing its thing correctly. So after about fifteen or so seconds of this, I hit the ole Ctrl-Alt-Delete sequence of keys and killed the program. I reopened the file and all my work was gone; I was looking at the original unmarked PDF; three hours at least of work lost. I tried various combinations of Save, like saving under a new file name, but the Save screen continued to go all gray. Finally I tried another Save and decided to just let the app run its course, with hopes that a Reader-specific error message would appear that I could research. After more than thirty seconds the all-gray Save screen closed and all was well with the world; the PDF had been saved. No problems, no errors, no crash.

It turns out that the only real problem here is the poorly designed Adobe Reader X user interface (UI) -- and the fact that the Save process takes exceedingly long. Had I been given some kind of indication that the program was working, I wouldn't have killed the file and lost all my work. (Plus, I tend to be impatient, alas....) Granted, I should have Saved the work earlier, so that's on me; yet I still don't understand why the built-in autosave didn't work, and why there was no autosaved file to restore.

The other issue I have with Reader X is that the user cannot customize the toolbar. So I do a lot of advanced searches and every time I need to do this, I must use the Edit menu to select Advanced Search, or enter the key combination Shift-Ctrl-F -- not an easy combination of keys to select in that order with one hand.

Bottom line: user beware; this is a heads up on the Save process should you upgrade to Adobe Reader X, and also to be prepared for the not-so-friendly UI.

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Safety Check: The Antidote for Accidental Plagiarism

My last blog post for 2010.... As for 2011? Bring it on!

I was scanning my Facebook news feed last week, on Tuesday, December 21, when I happened upon a post by Nicola Griffith; her blog appears to be linked to her FB account, so when she publishes a new blog post it also posts to FB. The blog post is entitled "Accidental plagiarism: a terrifyingly narrow escape." The idea of "accidental plagiarism" totally intrigued me, so I clicked on the link; Nicola began her blog post with the following:

Last week I wrote a funeral scene that pleased me enormously. Wrenching, raw, powerful. Wow, I thought, I nailed that! I kept coming back to two images I'd used, one in dialogue, "mothers are such wingless things," the other in description, "lullaby, with elegy blowing through it." I couldn't stop thinking about them. I kept pulling up the paragraph and re-reading. I couldn't let it go. (This is not normal behaviour for me, FYI. I love beautiful prose, but I don't generally fall in love with my own. I'm a believer in prose serving story and character, not standing out from it.) Gradually, I grew unsettled. Then suspicious. These images didn't feel quite right. Good, yes; evocative, absolutely; perfect for the period, no doubt. But not right.

I tried to trace their origins back through that labyrinthine machine I call my writing mind, and the trail petered out.

After much worry and soul-searching, Nicola finally gave in and keyed those two wonderful text images into Google, and discovered that she had taken the words verbatim from a poem. She goes on to say:

I've never believed those sad sack writers who, when pilloried for plagiarism, wail, "It was accidental!" But now it's happened to me. Well, almost; I caught it long before publication.

But it feels like a very narrow escape.

This has always been a huge fear of mine, but from an editorial perspective, and I said as much in a comment to Nicola's FB post:

As an editor, one of my fears is that I will allow a book or story to get past me, one in which the author has knowingly plagiarized content with which I'm not familiar, but yet the content is just well-known enough that others will catch it -- too late!

As I've said previously (and probably on numerous occasions), I haven't read everything, certainly very little poetry (though I have read Ginsberg's "Howl," and the like, in a past life), so plagiarized content sneaking past me is always a possibility. Though the author is inevitably responsible for the content of his/her manuscript, allowing plagiarized content to see print certainly won't help my reputation as an editor.

Anyhow, my comment on Facebook led to some further comments from, among others, Kit Reed, Lee-Anne Phillips, Geoffrey A. Landis, and Ian Watson, as follows:

Kit Reed google is your friend in every event. Not the title, but type in a string and you'll probably find out who did what.

Lee-Anne Phillips The truly memorable phrases are probably the ones to watch out for, the words so wonderful you wish you'd written them. "Joe stepped into the bar and took a look around. The usual seedy characters were there..." is commonplace. Who'd bother to lift it? Who'd care? "There is a tide in the affairs of men," on the other hand...

Geoffrey A. Landis Frightening indeed. My mind is full of bits and pieces of things I've read, and half-remembered images and words; I just have to hope that my memory is so bad that I couldn't actually lift something in a complete enough form for it to be plagiarism.

Ian Watson Actually, I anticipated this problem in Interzone ("How To Be a Fictionaut: Safety Check", April 1996) :-) but I don't suppose I can add the complete 5 pages as a Facebook comment... Oh what the deuce, let's see what happens!

DI Chen Finally Turns 5 Redux

In my December 1 blog post, "DI Chen Finally Turns 5," I presented Reece Notley's cover art for the ebook editions of novel The Iron Khan by Liz Williams, and published by Morrigan Books. If you've been anticipating the fifth Detective Inspector Chen novel, and ebooks are your media of preference, you can purchase the Kindle edition directly through Amazon.com, and all other ebook formats (epub, LRF, PDF, and mobi, too, as well as others) from Smashwords.

But if you prefer the smell of real paper, the feel of a real book in your hands (as opposed to cold metal, plastic, and glass), then your wait for the print editions of The Iron Khan will soon be over. So I'm taking this opportunity to showcase the new cover art (sans the typography) by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law for the print editions. On Ms. Law's website, you can click on the "Detail closeups" link, allowing you to take in all of the amazing details of this artwork. The art features one of the story's main characters, Raksha (recently reanimated!), flying atop her elegantly plumed blue crane, with the floating city of Agarta in the distance. If you are a fan of the DI Chen series and a collector of art as well -- or just a collector of art -- you can purchase an 8.5 x 11-inch print for only $15.00; or, if you just happen to have an extra $1,500.00 available, you can snag the original art itself, 12 x 17 inches, pen and ink. I'm simply amazed that the artist can work all this detail into only 204 square inches.

The Iron Khan print editions will be published in two states: a trade paperback edition and a limited hardcover edition. The trade edition will be available through Amazon; the limited hardcover edition will only be available (so I am told) through Mysterious Galaxy. I have purchased books from Mysterious Galaxy (probably the most recent was a first edition/first printing of Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan); the store takes great pride in the quality of their books, as well as the quality of their packing and shipping. So should you purchase The Iron Khan from them you will have nothing to worry about.

And then we all get to anxiously await book six (the final volume?) in the DI Chen series: Morningstar, which should be available in late 2011. [Liz, if you're reading this, I hope you are furiously writing because I need to find out what impact Inari's child has on the world of Singapore Three.]

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Writing with Style (Sheets, That Is)

In my December 19 blog post I mentioned that I had completed my review and copyedit of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Five, edited by Jonathan Strahan, forthcoming from Night Shade Books in March 2011. One of the stories included in this volume is Theodora Goss's "Fair Ladies," which was originally published in the August 2010 issue of Apex Magazine.

As both a reader and an editor, I read a lot of genre fiction -- primarily short fiction -- but no matter how much I read (and, unfortunately, I read quite slowly), I still can't be expected to read everything. There are many authors whom I have not read at all; and of those I have read, there are seemingly an infinite number of worlds and realms that they have written about that I am not familiar with. Now, if I were editing a series of novels, it would be in the best interest of the author and the publisher to have me work on book one, and then continue through the entire series; I would thus be able to help ensure consistency with characters and characterization, place/environment, events, word usage, etc. throughout the series.¹ But short fiction is entirely different: even related stories are published in different venues -- various online and print magazines and anthologies. Since each of these are edited by someone different, none of the editors can be expected to be intimately familiar with every world/realm about which the authors write. Nor should they be. Each story needs to stand on its own because each story will be read by different people depending on the venue in which it is published. Each magazine has its own set of readers, though of course there may be some overlap. Some readers may read only free online 'zines. Others may not read magazines of any sort, but may focus on original anthologies from specific publishers, or by specific editors.

Nick Gevers and I accepted Jay Lake's story "Permanent Fatal Errors"² for our anthology Is Anybody Out There? (Daw Books, June 2010). This story is part of Jay's Sunspin cycle of stories; in Jay's December 19 blog post, he lists the six stories (so far) that make up this cycle, five of which have been sold, to five different venues (though two of those venues are published by Subterranean Press). My co-editor Nick Gevers was more familiar with Jay's Sunspin cycle than I was, but the story still had to work for me -- and be unique and intriguing and, of course, well written -- without any knowledge of prior stories or the series itself.

Which brings me back to Theodora Goss's story "Fair Ladies," set in her fictional world of Sylvania. It's a wonderful story that stands on its own quite nicely; but no editor, or reader, is going to have the background knowledge -- environment, religion(s), history, culture, etc. -- of Sylvania that Dora has, since this is her world. As a copyeditor, I have to do the best job with the content that I have in front of me, following the rules of grammar, punctuation, etc. while trying not to affect story content or the author's intent, or even the story's rhythm.

In "Fair Ladies," Dora uses the monetary unit "kroner." The word only appears twice, in two separate sentences on consecutive pages. (Actually, the word appears three times, but the first doesn't count, because it's used as a proper name, the Café Kroner.):

"That's Friedrich, the painter," said Karl. "I've never seen him talk to anyone since I started coming here four years ago. I'll bet you four kroners that she's a film actress from Germany."

The party had lasted long past midnight. The Crown Prince himself had been there. The guest list had also included the Prime Minister; General Schrader; the countess of the feathered hat, this time in a tiara; the painter Friedrich; the French ambassador, Anita Dak, the principal dancer from the Ballet Russes, which was staging Copélia in Karelstad; a professor of mathematics in a shabby coat, invited because he had just been inducted into the National Academy; young men in the government who talked about the situation in Germany between dances; young men in finance who talked about whether the kroner was going up or down, seeming not to care which as long as they were buying or selling at the right times; mothers dragging girls who danced with the young men, awkwardly aware of their newly upswept hair and bare shoulders, then went back to giggling in corners of the ballroom.

In the first sentence, we have the plural form "four kroners," and in the second sentence the singular form "the kroner." I knew the word "kroner," but looked it up in a list of world currencies to confirm: I found the currency "krone" (Danish and Norwegian) on the list, as well as "krona" (Swedish) and "króna" (Icelandic). The plural form of "krone" is "kroner." So, by definition, "kroner" is plural and no ending "s" is necessary. I marked the ending "s" for deletion in the first example in Dora's story; I see now that I should have marked for deletion the ending "r" in "kroner" in the second example, for the singular form, but I didn't. This would have been consistent with world currency. Unfortunately, I don't recall what my thinking was three weeks ago in this one example. Regardless, I eventually completed the project and submitted my copyedits to Night Shade Books. All was well and good. That is, until the following status appeared on Dora's Facebook page on Friday, December 17:

Does fantasy writing create particular problems for a copyeditor? For example, I just corrected a copyeditor on a detail about imaginary currency...