Genre Grapevine on F&SF

Note: This column is available free to the public. If you like my writings on genre issues, consider backing my Patreon or subscribing to my Substack.

On July 5th, British author David A. Riley announced on his website that his novelette "Ossani the Healer and the Beautiful Homunculus" had been accepted by The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (F&SF) and would be published later this year. The announcement didn't receive much attention until three days ago when Christopher Rowe wrote a now-deleted thread on Twitter/X asking why the magazine was publishing someone who'd once been in the United Kingdom's National Front.

Many people outside the U.K. are not familiar with the National Front and of Riley's association with it. The National Front is a straight-up fascist political organization that during the 1970s was briefly the fourth-largest party in England. The National Front is also a white supremacy party with truly horrific views.

Riley's association with the National Front gained some attention in 2016 when he was a board member of the Horror Writers of America and a jury member for the Bram Stoker Award. According to screenshots from a Tumblr account called "David Andrew Riley is a fascist," Riley admits he was in the Nation Front from 1973 to 1983. In a 2016 interview he said he now regrets having been in the National Front even as he denied there is anything for him to apologize for, instead believing the National Front was "widely viewed as a patriotic nationalist party with serious concerns about the high numbers of immigrants who were coming into the UK at the time."

However, an excellent analysis of all this by Doris V. Sutherland raises serious questions about Riley's current version of what the National Front stood for. As Sutherland writes, in 1974 when Riley ran as a National Front parliamentary candidate, his party's election manifesto "took the uncompromising stance that Britain's population should be entirely white, as should much of the wider Commonwealth."

As quoted in Sutherland's analysis, the National Front’s election manifesto at that time read:

“All experience has shown that African, Asian and West Indian immigrants cannot be successfully assimilated into the British population. The National Front advocates a total ban on any further non-white immigration into Britain, and the launching of a phased plan of repatriation for all coloured immigrants and their descendants already here. This programme will be put into operation with the greatest possible humanity, but we do not suppose that it can be effected without some hardship to a portion of the people concerned. We simply prefer to risk hardship to one generation of immigrants than ensure hardship for countless future generations of people in this country.”

That was the background leading Christopher Rowe to ask why F&SF was publishing Riley. And I haven't heard from anyone who believes F&SF knew all this when the story was accepted. Riley's background in the National Front and what the National Front stands for are not well known in science fiction and fantasy fandom in the U.S.A, where F&SF is published. It's also doubtful Riley advertised his background when he submitted his story to F&SF.

Anyone who either knows F&SF's editor Sheree Renée Thomas or knows her incredible work can be certain she doesn't support in any way fascism or white supremacy. Along with editing the groundbreaking 2000 anthology Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, she has also worked to turn F&SF into a trailblazer in publishing diverse voices and stories.

Despite this, Thomas has emerged as the focus of attacks over F&SF accepting the story. Nevermind that Gordon Van Gelder is the owner and publisher of F&SF and, as such, Thomas's boss.

Van Gelder has yet to make a public statement on what is happening.

N. K. Jemisin wrote a powerful, must-read thread on Bluesky about all this, pointing out that:

"Rescinding an acceptance is (Van Gelder's) decision. Even if Thomas wants to publish it -- and I doubt she does, because she's Sheree Fucking Thomas, but Black women get held to a higher professionalism standard which she *has* to consider here -- GVG is the ultimate arbiter of what gets published. And let me get real blunt for a sec. It's easy to say this should be an easy choice. For a Black woman, it is not. She has to consider safety. The impact on other marginalized professionals in the field. It's easier and safer for white men to speak on these issues. He should do it for that alone."

We saw a similar pattern of attacks last month when complaints were raised that F&SF was running late with contracts and checks. Initially the attacks about the issues were directed against Thomas even though as publisher Van Gelder was responsible for contracts and checks. Eventually Van Gelder acknowledged the problems and said the magazine was working to fix them.

I’d hoped those contract issues were indicative of an isolated problem at F&SF. However, after I read this Bluesky thread published yesterday by C.C. Finlay, Thomas's predecessor as editor, I realized the problems at F&SF run deeper than previously understood.

In the thread, Finlay describes a number of serious problems that came up during his tenure at F&SF. He states that when he took over as editor, he "inherited a story that ended with a sexual assault and the implication that the woman deserved it. I didn't see any way to rewrite the story to fix the problem, and I didn't want my name attached to its publication." He took the problem to Van Gelder, who was "not sympathetic to my concerns." Finlay ended up paying the kill fee for the story out of his own pocket so it wouldn’t be published, an astounding thing to see happen at any magazine.

Finlay also describes accepting three different stories, "only to have the publisher reject them. I was forced to retract my acceptance letters, which is something that, as a writer, having had that happen to me, I know sucks." (As a side note, one of these stories appears to have been by Erica L. Satifka, who said her story was rejected for "disturbing content." The story "Lucky Girl" was later published in The Dark.)

Finlay also details other issues: "My emails to the publisher asking for updates often went unanswered. Several writers withdrew stories I wanted to buy, I expect due to frustration at long waits and lack of communication. I don't blame them. Writers comparing contracts would sometimes notice that they received different pay rates for stories of the same length, and ask me about it. It seemed to me at the time that the lower rates went disproportionately to new authors to the magazine."

Finlay's thread is extremely damning and the problems he raised suggest Thomas has been dealing with similar issues. Or as Finlay says, Thomas is being forced to deal "with a huge number of frustrating problems in private, taking responsibility for things completely outside of her control."

I can't begin to describe how angry I am about all this. F&SF is one of the first SF/F magazines I read and their stories heavily influenced my development as a writer. In addition, Thomas's tenure as editor has been amazing, with the magazine publishing so many new and up-and-coming writers in their pages.

And for Thomas to be attacked over something that she has no control over … all I feel is anger!

As L. D. Lewis said in another must-read Bluesky thread:

"You now have a Black woman who has published more Black authors at a magazine in her brief tenure than the publication has in its entire 75 years of existence, whose entire career has been dedicated to the diversification of the field fending off accusations of fascism by people who know nothing. You never see this energy for the SMOF-types keeping their bigoted friends' stories and presences alive in hallowed halls of the industry. You don't even see this energy for GVG who considers himself simply too busy to offer a response."

All of this is taking place at a dangerous time for SF/F magazines, with Amazon ending Kindle Newsstand subscriptions on September 4. That change will hurt the fortunes and readerships of many magazines including F&SF.

My fear is that if F&SF ends up going under, Thomas will be blamed. Even though she isn't the owner and publisher and so not in charge of the magazine.

But that said, people in the genre are beginning to realize what's going on here. Christopher Rowe deleted his original thread and apologized to Thomas for his part in directing anger toward her.

Van Gelder needs to speak up about all this and address how he and F&SF will handle this situation. As N. K. Jemisin said, "If he thinks his silence is neutral, it isn't. It's sending a bunch of messages -- to fascists, to marginalized authors, to the mainstream that's always so quick to call us irrelevant and regressive."

Too often in genre circles the people who are attacked are those who don't have the power or ability to correct a problem. And there are also real dangers in speaking out against those who have the actual power to deal with such problems. C.C. Finlay alluded to this at the end of his thread, saying "Speaking out about this now may completely fuck my chances to work as an editor again or sell another story to F&SF, which has published almost half my short fiction over the years. But I'm the only person in a position to tell this part of the story."

As of now, Van Gelder hasn't spoken about what he will do. Or I should say, he hasn't spoken publicly. Gareth Jelley, the new editor and publisher of Interzone, posted on Bluesky that he "emailed GVG on 22 Aug and asked him why *he* was publishing a story by 'a writer whose political connections are repulsive'. He replied to me y'day, but didn't answer my question and took zero responsibility. He also said, whenever a story is published, there's a chance it will cause anger."

A chance a story will cause anger?

Trust me, the anger is already there.

Update: Gordan Van Gelder shared this statement on Facebook on August 28, 2023.