SF/F good person of the day: Charles Tan

The hate continues to consume the science fiction and fantasy genre, including cross-over hate from our gaming cousins. So I've decided to continue my fight against this hate and intolerance by highlighting another good person who gives me optimism for the future of our genre: Charles Tan.

This is my first pick of someone I've yet to meet in person. But I've interacted with Charles so many times over the years through Twitter and online that it's easy to forget we haven't met. And it's simply impossible to imagine our genre without him.

For those who don't know Charles, he's edited Lauriat: A Filipino-Chinese Speculative Fiction Anthology, the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler, and the Best of Philippine Speculative Fiction 2009. He's also a fiction writer whose stories have appeared in Philippine Speculative Fiction and the anthology The Dragon and the Stars while his nonfiction has appeared in places like Fantasy Magazine, The World SF Blog, and SF Signal. 

One of the things I love about Charles' writing is he's very outspoken about the issues facing our genre, as in his most recent post "Understanding #Gamergate and Why it's Problematic." Charles' posts and essays are also extremely detailed and analytical, laying out the evidence until you understand exactly why he's making his larger point. When you combine this approach with his deep love of our genre, well, amazing things happen.

And Charles' deep love of SF/F is infectious. For example, a while back I discussed why I thought science fiction was more of a worldview than a genre, and asked others to share their SF worldview with me. Which was when I discovered that most people don't share my passion for deep analysis of genre issues. In fact, the general reaction from people was that it was irritating to even consider issues like this.

Not Charles Tan. He emailed me his insightful thoughts of the issue, which have stuck with me ever since. Here's what he said:

“My world view is that fiction — whether you call it fiction, science fiction, speculative fiction — isn’t unique. In fact, I think the division between fantasy and science fiction is a lie — and often perpetuated by Western paradigms.

The value of fiction is that despite its conceits, despite its contrivances and window dressings, is its ability to convey a certain truth. One advantage of science fiction is that you have access to every tool, whether it’s metaphor, elements of romance and mystery, or the extremes of ‘what if?’. That’s not to say a writer successfully uses these tools, or that they should use ALL of them, but it is a useful option to have, unlike, say, Realism, which is confined by the tropes of what is mimetic.”

Those are the words of someone who loves our genre and loves fiction and fully sees the true potential of all science fiction and fantasy can and could ever be.

Thank you, Charles, for all you do. And I hope one day to meet you in person.
 

Don't forget to check out my previous good person picks: K. Tempest Bradford, Maurice Broaddus, and Jim C. Hines.

Should authors avoid short stories if they desire literary success?

A young writer recently asked me what's the best path to becoming a successful author. Specifically, she asked if she should focus on short stories or novels or both.

I told her the path to take was up to her. I suggested she study the careers of authors she liked for clues on which path to follow, with the understanding that what worked for one writer might not work for another. And most importantly, she should write the types of stories she yearned to write.

But I also said that if she wanted to have a shot at literary stardom or hitting the bestseller lists — if that was how she defined being a successful author — she should avoid focusing exclusively on short fiction. In fact, maybe she should avoid short stories altogether. Instead write novels. Or nonfiction. Or memoir.

Anything but short stories.

Anyone who knows me will realize I'm not saying this to dismiss short stories. I'm primarily known as a short story author and I love reading and writing short fiction. My stories have been published in a number of top magazines and book anthologies — from Asimov's Science Fiction and the British magazine Interzone to journals such as Pindeldyboz and the Beloit Fiction Journal — and have been translated into many languages including Chinese, French, Russian, and Czech. I've won arts fellowships and awards for my stories. I even founded and edited a literary journal named storySouth, through which I ran a well-known award for online short fiction.

I'm not saying this to brag. I'm trying to show how much I love short stories and how much I've invested in them.

But I still wouldn't recommend new writers start their careers with short stories.

Today relatively few people read short stories, at least compared to novel-length fiction. If you're a new writer with a solid first novel, you have a decent chance of landing a publisher. Self publishing has also been very friendly to novels.

But approach a publisher with a short story collection and they'll run away screaming. Try to self-publish a collection of short stories and you're unlikely to ever make the Amazon bestseller lists. The reason — short stories and collections of stories rarely sell anywhere near the copies sold by the worst of novels.

Things were not always this way. The September 2014 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction contains a fascinating essay by Robert Silverberg in which he reminiscences about breaking into the SF genre during the early 1950s. As an ambitious young writer trying to land his first publication, Silverberg set his sights on what at that time was the one true measure of successful SF authors — short stories.

As Silverberg states, "Science fiction was primarily a magazine medium in the early 1950s, with only a handful of book-length works being published each year. The best writers of the field — and there were dozens of top-notchers at work then — wrote short stories, bushels of them, more than even the numerous magazines of the time could absorb.

To Silverberg and the other SF authors of that time period, short stories earned more money than novels and were also where authors gained the most exposure and prestige. Readers loved short stories, and the market was set up to provide readers with as many short stories as they could take in.

The same pattern applied decades earlier. For example, F. Scott Fitzgerald once told Ernest Hemingway that he wrote short stories for magazines because they paid enough to support his novel writing. Fitzgerald believed this was "whoring" but that he had to do it to earn enough money to write "decent books."

But the days described by Silverberg and Fitzgerald are long gone. In the 21st century almost no top author in any genre focuses exclusively on short fiction, and very few write much short fiction at all. Instead most authors focus their energy on novels, where the potential payoff — and the potential readership — far exceed that of short stories.

For example, John Scalzi is one of the science fiction genre's bestselling authors and the winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel. But he didn't achieve this success by publishing short fiction in traditional SF magazines. As he tweeted a while back:

I am suddenly reminded I have never sold a story to Asimov's, Analog, or Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine. Huh.

— John Scalzi (@scalzi) August 7, 2014

I suspect Scalzi is being polite with that "huh" comment. For the time he'd invest in writing a 6,000-word short story, he'd make more money and reach far more readers by putting those 6,000 words toward a new novel. And while Scalzi has written a few short stories over the years, his novels like Old Man's War are what have reached the largest readership and taken him to where he is now.

If you look at current bestselling or highly acclaimed authors, you can't help but notice that only a few of them have published much short fiction in recent years. Or if they have, it was earlier in their career before they turned their focus to novel-length fiction. Or you'll find they only write the occasional short story as a promotional tool for their novels, or as the literary equivalent of charity.

There are simply more readers and money to be had with novels. 

Of course, there are still people like myself who worship short stories and will keep on writing and reading them. And if you're a writer who loves short stories, by all means follow your passion. Short stories are also a demanding fictional form which can force you to sharpen your skills as a fiction writer.

And some new authors continue to make it big after starting with short fiction. One of the most exciting new authors of recent years is Roxane Gay, who first hit the scene with her amazing short fiction. In 2010 one of her short stories was a finalist for the Million Writers Award, and in that same year she placed an astounding six stories on the award shortlist.

In the SF genre, Paolo Bacigalupi is another author who hit it big after first becoming known as a short story writer, with his stories originally being published in leading magazines and winning major awards. He followed up these short stories with ground-breaking novels like The Windup Girl and Ship Breaker.

Gay and Bacigalupi are both great examples of authors whose reputations as short fiction writers helped them climb to literary success when they began publishing novels.

And it's always possible to defy the norms of today's publishing world, as author Ted Chiang has done. Chiang is solely a short fiction author, having published just over a dozen short stories across the last two decades. Despite this limited output, his stories have won multiple Nebula and Hugo Awards and his influence in the genre rivals bestselling authors. Hollywood is even making a major motion picture out of his "Story of Your Life."

Jhumpa Lahiri is another author who defied these reading and writing trends. Her first short story collection Interpreter of Maladies won the Pulitzer Prize and sold millions of copies. Her follow-up collection Unaccustomed Earth likewise earned major acclaim and a large readership.

But Chiang and Lahiri are in many ways the exception which proves the oh-so-cliched rule. For a new writer to try and duplicate their success would be like hoping to win the lottery after being abducted by aliens who drop you off at an interstellar casino headlined by Elvis himself. If you have the talent and ability, and your short stories resonate with people, there's indeed a chance you might make a career from short fiction alone. But few people would bet on such an outcome.

So here's my advice to new writers — write short stories if you love the genre, but don't expect them to carry you to the bestseller lists or literary acclaim. For that you'll need to branch out into novel writing. 

I have no regrets about my love of both reading and writing short stories. Even though I recently wrote my first novel, I'll always love short stories and will always write them. Short stories fit perfectly with what I want to do with my fiction. Short stories are too large a part of who I am to ever be forsaken.

Perhaps one day short stories will again be loved by readers like there were in the first half of the 20th century. Perhaps one day authors will again compete to publish the best short stories in the best venues. Perhaps one day short stories will again be the golden standard of literary success and acclaim.

But until that day comes, I suggest new writers who desire to become successful authors think long and hard before writing short fiction.

"Sublimation Angels" now available in Polish

The Oct. 2014 issue of Nowa Fantastyka, containing the translation of my novella "Sublimation Angels."

The October 2014 issue of the Polish SF magazine Nowa Fantastyka is now available and includes a translation of my novella "Sublimation Angels," which was a Nebula Award finalist a few years ago. 

Nowa Fantastyka is a beautiful 8.5 x 11 inch magazine containing 80 pages, with half its content printed on full-color glossy stock and the rest on black and white newsprint. For a glimpse of the magazine check out this PDF download, which includes the first page of my translated novella.

"Sublimation Angels" was originally published in the British magazine Interzone.

This is the third of my stories to be translated and published by Nowa Fantastyka. The other two are "Heaven's Touch" and "Monday's Monk," both originally published in Asimov's and named to the annual Locus Recommended Reading List.

Best short stories of the year (so far)

As 2014 edges into its last few months, I want to highlight those short stories which have impressed me this year and which will be on my shortlist for next year's award nominations.

Here's my first group of must-read stories:

• "Steppin' Razor" by Maurice Broaddus from Asimov's Science Fiction, Feb. 2014.
  This impressive steampunk novelette is a great introduction to Maurice's fiction. The story is set in an alternate-history Jamaica, where competing factions and beliefs compete for dominance and power.
   
• "When it Ends, He Catches Her" by Eugie Foster, Daily Science Fiction.
  This story is both touching and disturbing, and an beautiful elegy on life and death. I was blown away by this story when I read it and immediately knew it'd be on my year's best list, with this story ranking in my mind with Eugie's Nebula Award winning "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast." I only wish I'd been able to tell Eugie how much I loved this story before she passed away.
   
• "Marielena" by Nina Allan, Interzone 254
  I've long been a fan of Nina Allan's beautiful stories, and "Marielena" must surely rank among her best. The story is the tale of a refugee in near-future Britain who is both haunted by a literally demon from his past who lives alongside the demons of the present and future.

In the coming weeks I'll highlight other stories on my emerging year's best list. I also suggest checking out K. Tempest Bradford's weekly io9 columns, which are essential reading for anyone who loves genre short stories.

The love-hate relationship between science fiction and Kurt Vonnegut

You can read my new essay "So goes the love-hate relationship between science fiction and Kurt Vonnegut" over on Medium. The essay explores ... hell, the title sums it up perfectly. If you want to learn more then read the essay.

The essay was originally published in the Czech SF magazine XB-1 but this is the first English-language publication. Which is amusing, considering that I write in English. But so it goes (to quote Vonnegut's famous phrase).