Note: I’ve been working on a special report about how AI art and writing programs might affect artists and writers. The report will be out next week. Also, this column is also available free to the public. If you like my writings on genre issues, consider backing my Patreon.
Seek the Light in 2023!
Thank you to everyone who shared their condolences on the recent death of my father. The last few months have been rough for me. At times, it seemed like the only bright spot was the support I received from the science fiction and fantasy community.
One reason I report on our genre is because the SF/F community is my second family. I also love genre stories because reading them while growing up gave me the light needed to keep going. Sometimes the only way to withstand the reality of this damn world is to let fiction into your life. To read stories and novels and manga. To play video games. To watch impossibly cheesy films. To embrace and love the imaginary even as you keep living the best life you can in our so-called reality.
My friend Jake Adam York passed away ten years ago this month. His poem “Abide” is a favorite of mine and I urge everyone to read it. The poem’s opening and closing lines always resonated with me, and even more so in recent months:
Forgive me if I forget
… if I wonder how long your light
has taken to reach me here.
I want the SF/F genre to be a light for anyone who needs it, as I needed it when I was young. As I’ve needed it in recent months.
Embrace the light wherever you can see it. Seek the light wherever it can be found. It doesn’t matter if the light is a story you love or a poem that touches your heart or a convention you attend or a friend you talk to. Seek that light.
So again, thank you and know how much all of you have helped. And seek the light in 2023!
Good News
When only two people came to new author Chelsea Banning's book signing, a number of famous authors such as Neil Gaiman and Stephen King responded with their own horror stories of how bad their first signings went. In addition, King and many others also promoted her next signing, which is a good example of how people in the genre frequently try to help each other.
After a judge blocked the $2.2 billion Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House merger, the two publishers called off the deal. Can’t get much better news than that for authors.
Excavations at the village of Sayburç in southeast Turkey have revealed one of the earliest known human narratives in 11,000-year-old stone carvings. Essentially, the narrative can be seen as an ancient comic strip or graphic novel panel carved on a stone bench. While there's no way to know what story these carvings told, we can know a narrative story was told by people 11,000 years ago. A reminder that humans have long loved telling and embracing stories and that this is unlikely to change anytime soon.
Great thread from Chuck Tingle about his love of fan fiction and how "art does not begin and end on the canvas or the page. it is what you had for breakfast the morning you wrote those words, or the story stuck in your head after watching a show the night before. art is the bud who wrote a romance story about your characters. we are here to create as we push back against the blank empty void, and we prove love is real every time we fill this blank space with little pieces of us. i will not stand in the way of that, and it is honor to fill this space with a web of inspiration from one bud to the next.”
Twitter Keeps Increasing Our Regretted User-Minutes
Sadly, Elon Musk crashing Twitter like a burning Telsa continues to be a major issue in the genre community. For steps to take and alternative platforms to explore, check out my recent report on Twitter’s last days. I've been updating the report with new information on a regular basis.
So far it appears many people in the genre have gone to Mastodon (in particular to the Wandering.Shop instance) followed at a distance by Post. For a while it looked like Hive might gain a critical mass of new users. But the app crashed so often that by the time Hive was again working in mid-December, many adopters appeared to have given up on it.
Again, see my report for info on these and other alternatives to Twitter.
Otherwise, what can I say about Twitter that we haven’t painfully witnessed in recent weeks? First, Twitter possibly violated antitrust laws by banning mentions of Mastodon and other platforms before changing that policy after a public backlash. The platform then suspended a number of journalists, giving lie to Muskie’s claims about allowing voices he disagrees with. Followed by Musk holding a Twitter poll on whether he should step down as CEO and promising to honor the results, but when he lost he decided only paid Twitter Blue users should be voting (which led The G from Nerds of a Feather to say, "Remember that kid who would pull the plug on the Sega Genesis so losing in Madden/Mortal Kombat wasn’t 'official?'").
Twitter also announced the shut down of Revue, their newsletter platform. The end date is January 18, 2023, at which point all data on Revue will be deleted.
Now Musk is pledging that “New Twitter will strive to optimize unregretted user-minutes,” which as King Typo said is an inane way to state you want to make something “worth your time.”
Instead of oversharing all the Musk/Twitter drama, here are some insightful takes from people who are indeed worth your time to read:
As Margaret Owen said “with YA relying so much on social media to get the word out, I really hope in the new year publishers adjust their plans and budgets to account for Twitter’s decreasing promotional utility.”
Catherynne M. Valente’s essay “Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media” gives a high-level look at how we got to this point with Twitter.
DongWon Song offers a good exploration on what the end of discourse means.
I love how Stephen King gets under Muskie’s skin like no other author around, such as when he said “Pretty soon the only advertiser left on Twitter will be My Pillow.”
In a related bit of humor, DeathMetalViking said “Stephen King should update Christine but it's just a Tesla someone left on autopilot.”
As Jesse von Doom said, “I was skeptical before, but after seeing his management skills in action I think letting Elon Musk oversee the migration of Earth's wealthiest people to Mars is a great idea.”
Truth from RPG designer Monte Cook: “For a long time, when I'd read a comic with Lex Luthor in it, and he'd be... I dunno, conspiring with a guy who's super power is that he is mediocre at riddles, and maybe Solomon Grundy or someone like that, in order to launch their army of poison turtles into Metropolis, I'd scoff and say, ‘it's unrealistic that the world's richest man would waste his time and money on something that's only going to showcase to the world how incompetent he is.’ I owe DC comics an apology.”
HarperCollins Strike
Staff at HarperCollins have been on strike since November 10. It's disappointing the publisher appears unwilling to make a deal because the demands of striking staff are very modest. As MarindaOnline said, “come on, publishing execs, we don't want raises because we're ungrateful or greedy or demanding or whatever. We want them so we can quit our second, third, fourth jobs we work in addition to our publishing jobs to survive.”
And just in case you think HarperCollins can’t afford to pay their staff better or that there’s no money in book publishing, Rachel Kambury kindly shares “Did you know HarperCollins made upwards of $2 billion in profit last year? They certainly had enough to bid $1.2 billion on Simon & Schuster, our next biggest competitor.”
A large number of agents and authors are supporting the strike. Perhaps Page Powars said it best in summarizing why authors should be paying attention to all this: “Does HarperCollins really not understand that authors—future and present—are witnessing this, and now the last place they’ll feel confident publishing with is the one leaving their employees out in the cold for weeks after asking for the bare minimum?”
For more information on the strike, check out this link tree put together by the HarperCollins Union.
Because of the holidays, the union has paused their in-person picket line, which will resume on January 3.
Sanderson Raises Audible Concerns
Brandon Sanderson released his annual "State of the Sanderson" essay, which is worth a read for the insight in the writing career of one of the world’s bestselling genre authors.
In particular, Sanderson talks about his record-breaking Kickstarter, where he adds that the Kickstarter books will not be on Audible for the foreseeable future:
“This is a dangerous move on my part. I don’t want to make an enemy of Amazon (who owns Audible). I like the people at Audible, and had several meetings with them this year. But Audible has grown to a place where it’s very bad for authors. … The deal Audible demands of them is unconscionable, and I’m hoping that providing market forces (and talking about the issue with a megaphone) will encourage change in a positive direction. If you want details, the current industry standard for a digital product is to pay the creator 70% on a sale. … Audible pays 40%. Almost half. For a frame of reference, most brick-and-mortar stores take around 50% on a retail product. Audible pays indie authors less than a bookstore does, when a bookstore has storefronts, sales staff, and warehousing to deal with. I knew things were bad, which is why I wanted to explore other options with the Kickstarter. But I didn’t know HOW bad. Indeed, if indie authors don’t agree to be exclusive to Audible, they get dropped from 40% to a measly 25%. Buying an audiobook through Audible instead of from another site literally costs the author money.”
Read Sanderson's entire essay for more on all this.
ISFDB Fights Using Author’s Name
The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB), the SF/F genre’s main database of publication-related information, fought against changing Lee Mandelo’s name in the site’s author listing for over a year. Instead, ISFDB insisted on continuing to use Mandelo’s deadname.
“The moderators have rejected every edit folks try to make, despite clarification that my legal and professional name has changed,” Mandelo said on Twitter. He added, “Given that all of my past publishers have updated prior works to be under my correct name, it’s especially ironic that the moderators keep rejecting this correction, because aside from my own feelings… it means their records are wrong???”
One ISFDB moderator eventually stated the bigoted reason behind their resistance: "So what happens if you decide to de-transition, as so many people in the news have said they're doing lately because they realized they shouldn't have transitioned in the first place?"
Finally Mandelo went public with the fight, with Jordan Kurella, Jaymee Goh, and many others also criticizing ISFDB’s actions. The bad publicity appears to have convinced ISFDB to make the change. Mandelo’s entry and associated publications now lists his correct name.
As Mandelo told me afterwards, “the reason this matters to address is that I’m certainly not the only person this policy, or lack of policy, effects—and that the best practices for archivists regarding trans (and other!) name changes already exist, they just aren’t following them.”
Barnes & Noble
Michael Damian Thomas shared an interesting observation about Barnes & Noble: “Ventured to my local B&N and discovered: 1- They decreased the SFF shelf space again. They now have about as much SFF as a mall Waldenbooks in 1990. 2- Half of the stock is Dead White Men. 3- Many, many recent award winners aren't in stock. 4- The staff picks are Dead White Men.”
I noticed a similar issue when I recently visited a local B&N. It’s possible this is tied in with B&N expanding sales of games, toys and other items in stores at the expense of all types of books, but ultimately the reason doesn’t matter because the end result is fewer books.
Worse, this comes on the heels of outrage over B&N’s policy of only “stocking hardcovers that have proven sales records.” An NBC News report on the policy quoted CEO James Daunt as saying it allows Barnes & Noble “to exercise taste in the selection of new titles ... and to send lower initial quantities into stores.”
Of course, those words are essentially double-speak for not stocking hardcovers by many authors, which makes it more difficult for readers to discover these writers. Add in B&N appearing to decrease the space for new SF/F books and it’s almost like the chain doesn’t want people reading any SF/F that isn’t already a bestseller.
Awards
With regards to awards, there’s a great thread from Cat Rambo on promoting your work. In particular, Rambo pointed out that “It's easy for established writers to sneer at self-promotion, but it's a shitty look, and a great way to perpetuate the old boys (and girls) club that doesn't need self-promotion because the establishment is doing it for them.”
Scott H. Andrews, editor-in-chief and publisher of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, has recused the magazine from further nominations for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. BCS was a finalist ten times for the award and as Andrew said in his announcement, “There are many other indie zines, run by dedicated staff and publishing great and important stories, whose work in our opinion deserves a Best Semiprozine finalist and the boost in reach and support it can provide. We want to see them get it.” This is a great move by Andrews and BCS and I commend them for doing it.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) named Robin McKinley as their 39th Damon Knight Grand Master for her contributions to the literature of science fiction and fantasy. This was both an unexpected and inspired pick. Wonderful as SFWA hasn’t named many Grand Masters who’ve focused so much on writing for young adults and children. And inspired because McKinley helped launch the genre of retelling fairy-tales with modern takes, with her works inspiring countless readers and fellow authors.
Chana Khol won the Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices with other finalists being Christopher McLucas, Tonya Moore, and Kingsley Okpii. I confirmed with Analog that the award will run again in 2023. For complete details on submitting, see the award guidelines page.
As reported by File770, the Dragon Award will change the number of award categories from 15 to 11 in 2023 by eliminating the Media Tie-In and Military Fantasy/Sci-Fi categories, merging other categories such as Comic Book and Graphic Novel, and creating one new category for Best Illustrative Book Cover.
Dream Foundry has announced their 2022 writing and art contest winners. This is a great competition for new SF/F writers and artists without the issues of a certain other "future of the writers" contest. Keep an eye out next year for the next contest entry period.
Winners of the Chinese Nebula Awards for Science Fiction.
Winners of the 2022 Premio Italia.
Finalists for the 2023 Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Writing.
Winners of the 2022 Rhysling Awards. In addition, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association announced new guidelines for the Rhysling, including the addition of a jury in the award process.
Winners of the Goodreads Choice Awards, with a number of genre categories.
And this is interesting. Tenebrous Press will be publishing volume 1 of the anthology Brave New Weird: The Best New Weird Horror of 2022 in early February. But they’re also running the anthology as an award. Everyone whose story was selected for the anthology is a Brave New Weird winner, and they also announced the award shortlist. I look forward to reading the anthology.
Finally, nominations for the Nebula Awards are open through February 28. Members can log into the SFWA website to make their nominations.
Other News and Info
The 2022 #BlackSpecFic Report has been released, examining the representation of Black authors within the SF/F short fiction market. FIYAH offered a good overview thread on the report, noting that since the first report in 2015 the percentage of Black authors represented in the examined markets went from 1.9% of stories published to 6.7%. However, FIYAH also pointed out that “The comparison of markets is not apples-to-apples because a LOT of the markets originally examined in the earlier iterations of the study have since shuttered. Of the 37 markets that closed since 2017, only 13 of them had published at least one Black author in that year's study.” And SL Huang noted that some well-known pro SF/F markets published zero 2021 original stories by Black authors, including The Deadlands (with 20 stories published) Future SF (18 stories) Galaxy's Edge (52 stories with 1 reprint by a Black author), Interzone (9 stories), and Nature (70 stories).
Escape Artists announced they are becoming a 501(3)(c) registered nonprofit as of January 1, 2023. As their announcement said, “Building on its tagline of ‘One Story, Told Well’, this transition will support EA in its continuing mission to publish free and accessible speculative literature to a global audience. Completion of the multi-year nonprofit conversion will allow EA to reduce its operating expenses and seek grant funding, while maintaining its SFWA qualifying pay rates to authors.”
In an email on December 27, SFWA announced they’d reach the milestone of 2,500 members.
The acting Arisia 2023 convention chairs Alan and Michelle Wexelblat have resigned. This happened after details emerged that senior staff at Arisa knew back in 2010 that a child sexual assault had taken place at the convention but didn’t ban the alleged perpetrator until 2022. A complete report on what happened is on File770.
Bloodshot Books is being criticized for not paying authors. Briane Keene shares the details and offers good advice, which is pay your authors!
Journey Planet released a must-read special issue edited by Amanda Wakaruk and Olav Rokne of Hugo Book Club that deep dives into the intersection of climate change and speculative fiction. The issue includes my essay "Songs of a Disposable Earth" and works by many other authors including Camestros Felapton, A. L. Yakimchuk, Juan Sanmiguel, Paul Weimer, Collin Horn, James Bacon, Nicolas Pallaris, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Chris Garcia, Stephen Griffith, Marshall Boyd, Cora Buhlert and Gautam Bhatia.
Polish SF/F fans are running a petition calling on the 2023 Chengdu Worldcon to revoke Sergey Lukyanenko’s invitation as a guest of honor. The petition is presented in English, Chinese, Polish and Russian and has so far gained 1,196 signatures.
The USA Today Bestseller List is on hiatus after Gannett laid off 200 newsroom employees including longtime editor Mary Cadden, who had maintained the list since 2007.
Locus Magazine's fundraiser has raised $87,000 with 5 days to go, surpassing their original goal of $75,000.
U.S. copyrights on the remaining Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle will enter the public domain tomorrow, along with the seminal science fiction movie Metropolis.
If you’re a fan of Minecraft, you may have seen or heard of the End Poem that appears after you kill the Ender Dragon. The poem was written by Julian Gough, who has released the poem into the public domain. Read this entire thread to learn why Gough released the poem for anyone to use.
GigaNotoSaurus was founded by Ann Leckie in 2011 but she stepped back in recent years, with Rashida Smith and then LaShawn M. Wanak managing the editorial and publishing work. Now Leckie has stepped down completely, with Wanak taking over administration, financing, and all other aspects of the magazine. In addition, GigaNotoSaurus will increase its pay rate per story to $200 starting January 1.
In exciting news, Hugo Award winning editor Diana M. Pho is now the executive editor at Erewhon Books.
It appears Harper Collins is “phasing out all physical ARCs for any book that’s not a lead title. There will be none for fall 2023 releases and beyond, according to the current plan.” As Margaret Owen added, “multiple publishers/imprints have quietly phased out physical ARCs in lieu of e-galleys and event-specific bound manuscripts.”
Paul Graham, a computer scientist, venture capitalist, and author with 1.6 million followers on Twitter, ticked off the writing community when he said “Editors aren't intrinsic to writing. They're just an artifact of how the publishing business works.” He then compared editors to plastic bags on loaves of bread in a follow-up tweet. Many people took Graham to task for this inane view, with Gautam Mishra perhaps summing it up best: “Never before have so many people with such little knowledge expressed their uninformed views with so much confidence.”
Sigh. Jayne Martin-Writer did indeed beg writers to stop making their characters sigh and said if she reads a single sigh in a story she’s done. Sigh. Numerous authors responded to this emotive target including Dave Ring who said “Stop making your characters sigh. Stop making them nod. Stop making them move—it's too dangerous. Dialogue tags are for posers; if the craft is there, the reader should be able to tell when someone is speaking. The word just should only occur in your manuscript 11 times.” And Matthew C. Brown added, “If I open a book and see you put words in there I will automatically DNF.”
Nature offered up a number of amazing photos from the James Webb Space Telescope that will expand your mental horizons.
Did you know the films Beneath the Planet of the Apes and Hello, Dolly! appeared to use the same Hollywood set?
The release of the Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves film has been rescheduled multiple times, which as Owen K.C. Stephens said is “a power move to prove you understand the IP.”
A young girl in Los Angeles wanted a unicorn license so she wrote Animal Care asking for one. Their response was wonderful and will melt your heart. They also sent an official license and a tagged uniform toy.
This video of Taiwan 7-Eleven mascot Open-chan flying away to freedom always bring a smile to my face.
Opportunities
The Bechtel Prize for Innovation in Creative Writing Instruction seeks unpublished essays describing "innovation in creative writing instruction." Pays $1,000 and publication. Deadline February 10. Details>>
Eye to the Telescope issue 48 will be edited by Avra Margariti and seeks speculative poetry on the topics of mushrooms, molds, and other fungi. Deadline March 15. Details>>
New horror magazine Ghoulish Tales is currently open for submissions. Pays 7 cents a word, deadline February 15. Details>>
Planet Scumm accepts submissions of all types of speculative fiction and pays 6 cents a work. Deadline February 21. Details>>
Heartlines Spec seeks speculative fiction about long-term relationships including platonic, romantic, or familial. Pay$0.08/word CAD, various deadlines. Details>>
Hexagon SF Magazine will be open to submissions for the first 7 days of January. Per a tweet the magazine shared, they want submissions on organ/consciousness transplants, haunted/cursed items, the permanence of plastic, and pirates. Details>>
Weird Little Worlds seeks “sci-fi, fantasy, horror, supernatural, steampunk, alternate history, steampunk, etc.” While the guidelines say pay rates are still being worked out, the editors say they will pay authors. Details>>
I feel so happy to see you on Substack. I will do a remix version of my review of "The Eight Thousanders" (https://medium.com/transgender-soapbox/terror-at-eight-thousand-feet-26b7e7ab052a?sk=7da2bc56f3eb180d9a8078827df12b9c) just to point people to you here.
Cheers!!